Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  Anna said, “I will do it now.”

  She turned away, almost bumping into a party of carpenter’s mates carrying bulkheads. She ducked around them and ran up to the quarterdeck, her head panging at each step.

  When she reached the rail, she stopped in shock. In the fiery, cloud-streaked sunlight she saw nothing but destruction in all directions. Debris floated on the water, and small boats. There seemed to be people in the water as well, some clinging to snarls of rigging and wood, as little boats plied about, pulling them up.

  The damage to Aglaea had looked terrible to her when she first glanced along the deck, but when she saw the wrecks listing dangerously, some completely dismasted, she began to comprehend how lucky they had been to escape relatively lightly.

  “Pass the word for the skipper’s wife!”

  The words echoed down the ship. Little Mr. Corcoran appeared, almost unrecognizable but for his small size in the uniform much too large. He was streaked with dirt and smoke, his voice shrill. “Come away along, ma’am, it’s Belleisle’s long boat, if you please.”

  “Why do you require me?” she asked, following him carefully over the debris and the wood and rope being laid out for repair work.

  “It’s in want of the female, that is, they think she’s gabbling French, but it’s a kind we none of us can make head nor tails of.”

  They reached the larboard rail in the bow, where Anna gazed down into a boat crowded with people. She recognized tattered remains of French sailor’s clothing on some. At the very front, a bedraggled figure sat, nearly lost in a pea coat that obviously did not belong to—her?

  “She was in the water, ma’am,” a tall, thin lieutenant called up to her. “Someone says you can parse the lingo?”

  The woman lifted her head. Anna could only make out straggling dark hair and a pair of bruised-looking eyes. Anna called down in French, “They wish to know who you are, why you were in the water?”

  The woman clasped thin hands together. “I am Jeanette Caunant,” the woman cried in rapid village French. “I worked aboard the Achilles, dressed as a man. I take the powder to the guns. It was so I can stay with my husband, but the ship, he is afire, and they say we are sinking—that my husband is dead—and I cannot swim! That I can stay afloat if I throw off my clothing! This I did, and when the lead was melting, I hurled myself into the water, where a man, blessed by the angels, he gave me an oar to clasp. And so it was I floated on the sea until these English in this boat, they plucked me out of the water, and put this coat about me!”

  Anna repeated it all to the lieutenant, who saluted, turned to a harassed young midshipman struggling with a pencil and a damp logbook, and said, “She’s off the Achilles, running powder, married. She goes to the Pickle as a seaman. Oars out!” And as the heavily laden boat labored away, the lieutenant called, “Thank you, ma’am!”

  Anna turned away. French again, and that accent—for a moment she did not see the grisly wreckage of battle, but the coast of France in spring, the swallows rustling in the eaves.

  But France’s coast had also suffered, the shadow of the Vendee behind the wariness, the angry voices, the poverty.

  “Achilles exploded,” Mr. Corcoran said, and in triumph, “we thumped it into ’em, ma’am. We thumped it into ’em good, and we won.”

  “Corcoran,” d’Ivry called hoarsely. “If you are quite done showing away, it’s nearly eight bells, and there is the muster to be made, now the shot holes are plugged. Pray summon the men of your division.”

  Mr. Corcoran bounded over the debris and vanished in the direction of the gun deck.

  As d’Ivry spoke to Anna, she saw in his thin face shadows of the lines that would mark it if he lived long enough to become a man. “The captain requests your presence, ma’am,” he said formally. “He insists on rising, on giving our three dead the proper send-off, before the weather turns foul. We are in for an uncommon blow.” He glanced at the limb of the sun vanishing, blood-red, under tangled clouds of livid crimson and violet.

  The entire ship’s crew—those not too wounded to rise—gathered in clumps, the lanterns casting a forgiving golden glow along the ruin of the deck. The three dead had been sewn into hammocks.

  Perkins had supported Captain Duncannon to the upper deck. The captain leaned heavily on his steward, who had managed to ease his coat over his bandages. Anna was going to join him, but the strict rows of the officers (those able to stand) and the mass of men suggested a ritual, one that bound the shipmates into a whole that did not include her, and so she remained on the companionway, behind the knot of warrant officers’ mates.

  On the quarterdeck, Perkins helped the captain open his Bible. The ship yawed, the masts above describing an enormous arc against the cloud-streaked sky. Wood creaked and blocks clattered as the ship plunged down and down. Anna watched the company sway with the pitch, then lean as the prow aimed toward the sky, water streaming off both sides.

  “Hats off,” the officer of the watch bawled.

  Every head was bared. The captain read the service, but all Anna could hear from her distance was the cadence of the words, nearly smothered by the wash and hiss of the sea. But those words seemed to comfort those who could hear, before the three were committed, one by one, to the deep.

  Another rise of the prow caused Anna to clutch at the pitch-covered ropes behind her, and then the ship dropped into a valley between gray-green waves. The Captain swayed, and Perkins caught him. McGowan and Perkins helped the captain down to his cabin, which had been put together again, though bare of any furnishings save that swinging cot.

  Anna followed, one uncertain step at a time. She was unsure where she ought to be, what she ought to do, until Perkins looked round, and his heavy brows lifted with relief when he saw her.

  Anna passed the smoke-streaked marine guard, whose stubbly chin and red-rimmed eyes testified to the day’s immense labors. His gaze flicked to her, and his face relaxed minutely. Anna tipped her head in greeting, wondering if it was a relief to sink back into order after the chaotic exertions of the day.

  “Ma’am,” Perkins said. “He needs his dose. We only got half into ’im.” He pressed a wooden cup into her hand.

  She took the cup, and watched after he ran down toward the galley.

  Parrette was nowhere in sight; everyone was busy. The sense of relief, almost a holiday relief, when she first came topside had vanished with the sun, and the disappearance of the dead into the water.

  Anna closed the door behind her, to shut out as much noise as she could, and stepped toward the captain’s cot, but pitched into the bulkhead when the ship yawed. Her shoulders bumped the carving in the wall as she braced herself, knees locked, her hands tightly holding the cup to keep it from spilling.

  The steady swell was building, or maybe it was her own exhaustion. When the floor slanted the other way, she ran the few steps and caught herself against the swinging cot, and did her best to steady it.

  Captain Duncannon lay with his eyes shut. The lantern swung behind her, and as her shadow crossed his eyelids, he opened his eyes. He saw her, and turned his head minutely, his eyes narrowing.

  “Please drink this.” Anna slid her fingers under the curve of his neck, a gesture well remembered from her father’s last days. She lifted his head, and in spite of the sway of deck, bed, and light in three distinct parabolas, she held him steady enough to get the rest of the cup into him, sip by sip.

  Then she gently laid his head onto the pillow, her fingers sliding through his hair. It was unexpectedly fine, in spite of its tangled state, the grit of brine, of dripping pitch from the rigging, of smoke.

  She knew what she could do. “The grit, should you want it removed? This I can do, a simple task.”

  “Thank you.” His voice was soft. He made an effort that she could see, and added, “I confess I couldn’t bear the notion of Perkins mauling me about anymore. A good man. But accustomed to the vigor of a polishing cloth.”

  She smiled in assent. So he wis
hed to talk? “A wounded man is not a silver teapot.” And won a brief smile, no more than a quirk of his dry, cracked lips, but she felt it a victory more strong than any battle. That brought a new thought, one that ought to please him, after all his efforts, surely? “Little Mr. Corcoran says that the battle is won. Is this true? The sea, it is filled with burning and ruined ships.”

  “We are better off than most,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Did you follow our movements?”

  “I did not,” she said, returning from giving the order for water to the sentry outside. “I could only feel, and hear, but saw nothing until the wounded were bringing in.”

  “Do you wish to hear?”

  “If you have the strength to tell me, I listen,” she replied.

  His eyes opened, and met her gaze. “We remained untouched until we were ordered in, to Victory’s aid. She was fairly clawed by the time we neared, and then we could not come at her for the smoke. We took shot, aimed in the smoke—I suspect that is when I gained this splinter wound, but I noticed it not as poor Robert Leuven was cut down. We followed Neptune until a pair of French frigates came at us, intending to drive us off. That is probably when a French marksman put this ball in my leg.”

  He stirred under the bed clothes, and his eyes drifted shut for a moment. Then, “It was warm work, very warm, smoke as thick as fog. We aimed by the fire of their broadside, the only thing visible, and fought both sides of the ship until Achilles exploded. Perhaps that is when my head was cut by the debris raining down. We hauled wind after the French, but there was no chasing them in those airs. After that, our task was to rescue those in the water, enemy and friend alike.”

  A quiet knock, and the water and the cloth appeared. She set the jug between her feet, and wetted the cloth. Then she stood with water dripping down her fingers into her sleeves, for she had put on her second best winter traveling gown, as sturdy as the one she had ruined.

  His eyes opened slowly. Once again his pupils were enormous, the effect of laudanum on a sorely tried body. Sorrow flitted through her and away at her remembered motions: only instead of her dear father, his beloved features wasted from fever, here was this much younger man. There was no puffy flesh, but the clean, strong bones of his jaw, the fine ridges of his cheeks. His high, smooth brow, the curve of his temples over his eyes. His eyes, their expression so cool, remote, so alert, sometimes crinkling from laughter inwardly held, and now, barely open, so that only a reflected gleam shone beneath the long lashes.

  He lay there in his shirt, the front opened, his free hand loose. The bed clothes had been pulled to his waist. She began with his hands, working up over his wrists above the shirt frill.

  “I beg pardon,” he murmured. “For my state of filth.”

  “Cleanliness,” she said, “how is it to be expected, given today’s events?”

  “And yet here you are.” His eyelids crinkled in a smile. “How did you manage that?”

  “When the last of the wounded left, me and Parrette creeped into the hold like mice, with our buckets of water, while the ship’s people must do more duties.”

  “We have come off relatively lightly,” he said.

  She finished with his hands, wrung the cloth out extra hard, and began to brush it over the top of his head, getting rid of sticky grit everywhere but the bandage.

  “Thank you,” he said, low-voiced. “You cannot conceive how well that feels.”

  “Oh, on contrary,” she said, laughing a little. “I know it, much.” Her nose wrinkled. “Prodigiously well!”

  “Sayers tells me you and Mrs. Duflot labored the entire time in the orlop. I thank you for that.”

  She smiled ruefully. “But it is expected of the women, this I find aboard the flagship. I only did my part.”

  “Those other women chose to follow someone aboard,” he said, and tried to lift himself on his elbow, but the pitch of the ship, the bed, and the effect of laudanum defeated him. “Confound it! I should have spoken to you before,” he said in an urgent tone. “You were taken, I am very much afraid against your will. I find I still do not entirely comprehend whether you were a guest or a prisoner of the Spanish.”

  “I think,” she said, “I was both.”

  “You will have to explain that, but at your leisure. More important, what was your intention, had you not been brought aboard us?”

  This was treading into dangerous territory. Anna wished she did not have to converse in English, which still took so much effort. Mindful of her promise to Parrette, Anna said only, “I had not thought so far ahead.”

  That much was the truth. She was reluctant to utter lies, and so, to skirt the danger, she laid her finger over his lips. “Do not speak! This ship, how it rolls. I must take ver-ry great care that I do not poke out your eye, and that marine without the door, he must shoot me for mutiny.”

  He shook with silent laughter, and closed his eyes with such readiness that she knew her labors were appreciated, and not politely endured. She smoothed the cloth over his hair until it lay damp, and tousled, but clean, upon the pillow.

  She could see how good it felt in the way he held his head steady, or turned it for her, and in the deepening of his breathing. She found that she was enjoying it as well, and took her time, dipping and wringing the cloth, then smoothing it again over every plane and curve of his face, tender over the fine skin of his eyes, a stronger motion curving with the back of his neck, and down, following the jut of his collarbones.

  She drew the cloth over the visible flesh inside his shirt, along the sling; with a sudden movement, he grunted, shrugged, and the sling came loose. Anna lifted it over his head and set it on the checkered deck covering, next to the jug.

  Then she worked very carefully, avoiding the bandages, and at last lifted the cloth to wring it out once again.

  He lay very still, his clean hair lying on his brow, his chest beneath the loosened shirt rising and falling slowly. With a tentative finger she brushed the hair off his forehead. It was soft as silk.

  The sway of the ship, the cot pressing against her hips, the sough of wind in the rigging, the wash of water down the side, the scent of his skin, each sense sharpened, closing around her protectively. She glanced down at his lashes so still on his cheeks, the shape of his face, his mouth, so stern when he stood on his quarterdeck, so entrancing when he smiled broadly enough to cause those little shadows to wink in his lean cheeks. His lips, so severe, and yet so soft to the touch.

  Heady with exhaustion, she gave in to impulse and leaned over the edge of the swinging bed to touch her lips to his, light as the brush of a feather.

  Warmth flared through her, as bright as starlight. His eyes opened, and his steady gaze blended with hers: she made herself look away, to busy her hands without having purpose.

  A toss of the ship, the slosh of the bucket, recalled her to the cloth still gripped in her hands. “The water is monstrous dirty,” she said, a little breathless. “Shall I send for more?”

  “I’m an idiot,” he whispered. She looked startled, and he could not prevent a laugh, though it was entirely against himself. He had been a captain too long. No one had dared to speak to him, king aboard his wooden castle, no one to tell him he was a fool to superimpose one woman’s perfidy over them all.

  Anna had come into his life through no merit of his own, and she was nothing like Emily Elstead. That was all he knew, which was entirely his fault; when he thought about how nearly he had come to throwing away this chance, whether by a French cannon ball or by his own pig-headedness, he reached and caught her wrist as if to never let her go.

  She stilled, balanced against the cot: it swayed, and she swayed with it. He looked up at her smiling eyes, the tender arch of her lips, the stray curl hanging neglected by one pretty ear, the sweet curve of the neck of her gown below the little hollow of her throat, and he pulled, not insistently, but with question in the lightness of his grip, the pucker of his brow.

  She understood the question, and looked about her
with her own pucker of question. It might be considered foolish to crawl into the cot, next to a wounded man, but if she could comfort him, who was to gainsay? In the eyes of God and of man they were one. She had never felt like a wife—she was not certain even now what a wife might feel like—but the question, the future, everything else could wait.

  Practiced now, she hitched her hip over the edge of the cot, and curved her knee. A slight wince, a grin as he shifted, and they swung together in the cot, the bedclothes rumpled between them. He pulled her close with his good arm, and she carefully fitted herself so that she would not press against the damaged one, and turned her face to his.

  Their lips met, and met again. Comfort flared into sweet, ardent insistence; unnoticed, the washcloth fell to one side, his bandage to the other, and then, at length, the bedclothes thumped softly to the deck.

  They laughed breathlessly as each made adjustment, question conducted through touch, caress, and then answer in their truly becoming one.

  After a time, he laughed huskily, and sighed into her neck, “Ah, Emily.”

  His breathing deepened into sleep.

  21

  Emily?

  She glanced at that sleeping face, wondering if this man she had married—the man who had become her husband now in every way—even knew her name. Or was Emily someone else?

  She swung there, listening to his breathing as she tried to sort her emotions. Affront, regret, bemusement, she recognized, and underneath them laughter. That steadied her. How little they knew one another, after all; the captain was full of laudanum, wounded, desperately tired. Though now she believed she had a right to them, this was no time for questions. He needed his rest—as the cot swung more deeply, she recollected the warnings about weather.

  Storm. Thirst. One by one the demands of life crowded in, and so she waited until the swing returned and flipped herself smoothly out of the cot. A quick glance back showed the captain still asleep.