Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

“The bird,” someone else said. “You sang it on us, in the orlop.”

  She protested, “I am very out of voice—out of practice.”

  “Sing for us,” Mr. Bradshaw whispered. “We could have the French ones again, if you haven’t a better.”

  Anna had much better songs. She took a moment to hum her way through a couple of scales, and began softly, to warm her voice further. Simple tunes—“La marie et la mariée,” “Aucassin and Nicolette,” the lovely “Il fantasma dell’opera,” and “Douce Dame Jolie.”

  When she finished those, she looked around at her audience. Some slept, lulled by melody into a semblance of peace, but the others had turned her way, faces hungry for something that food, water, and medicine could not give. She thought she understood those waiting eyes, casting her back in memory to her early days, and how she longed for the heart-lift of song, so beautiful, so powerful though it could not be touched and held.

  This longing was what had motivated her to learn to sing.

  Mr. Bradshaw tugged insistently at her hand. “The bird. He said there was one about a bird. Please, mum.”

  She had to brace her feet wide against the deck, but it felt good to sing again, and better, it kept her from worrying about what she could not help. And so she sang through the brighter, happier arias in Magic Flute until one by one they slept.

  And then, though her entire body throbbed as she sat on that uncomfortable stool, she leaned against the trunk lashed to the wall beside her, folded her arms, and dozed fitfully until someone moaned and began thrashing.

  She jerked awake, and it was time to carry water around again, and to tend bandages.

  And so began a long, slow, unending nightmare. Time had become meaningless, impossible to measure: it was experienced in a series of images and expedients, emotions and snatches of nightmare-riddled dozes.

  When the sick-berth was awake, they wanted song, and so Anna sang. They were not the only ones. Unseen by Anna, those few who came, or were sent, below-decks crept forward, drawn by the rise and fall of her beautiful voice, a miracle amid the roaring maelstrom.

  It lasted until the storm, in a final act of viciousness, brought the foremast by the board. The crew chopped away like madmen lest the spar with all its complication of yards and rigging should drag the ship over and cause it to broach to. It wasn’t until the last of the tangle vanished in an enormous green wave that the captain was discovered senseless, an axe still gripped in his one good hand, caught by two crewmen before he could be swept out to sea.

  22

  “He is in a coma,” Mr. Leuven said. “Put him in his cot. He must be kept in darkness, and as quiet as can be, with as little movement as can be.”

  Numb with shock, Anna said, “I will tend him.”

  Mr. Leuven glanced from her to Perkins, saying, “You must keep him as still as ever you can. Violent movement, a sudden jar, can be mortal in these cases.”

  Anna stayed beside the captain’s cot for the remainder of that dreadful voyage.

  It was only a pair of days but time had long since lost its sense of meaningful measure. They had lost sight of the rest of the fleet, but steered for Gibraltar to discharge the load of prisoners. The tender, which alone had sustained limited damage, was sent ahead to report, and to alert the physicians there to the captain’s condition.

  The exhausted officers and crew relieved one another watch-on-watch so they could all get at least snatches of sleep, and the galley fires were lit again so that the ship’s people could be fed properly, though the stores diminished rapidly due to the addition of all those prisoners stuffed down into the hold. At least they had plenty of clean water, for the cook’s mates had set out rain barrels as the last of the storm swept overhead.

  Once the seas had diminished enough for the regular ship routine to resume, the officers of the watch suspended the holystoning of the storm-scoured quarterdeck. The sailors used swabs to mop what was already clean as nature could make it. Those who were required to stand on the quarterdeck walked softly. Even the evening gun was no longer fired off.

  Anna remained beside the captain’s cot, steadying it against the sway, and reflected on how the universal expectation of a wife placed her there. Should Anna Bernardo the opera singer have boarded the ship, the expectations due a single woman would have been so different. It would have been deemed inappropriate for an unmarried woman to nurse a man, even a man in a coma.

  Yet she was both women, and in her own mind, she was still more the singer than the wife. What, really, was a wife? She no longer possessed the outer marks of a wife, the ring, and—

  She glanced at the captain’s face. It hurt to think of him no longer living, and so she suspended thoughts of the future. There was enough to think about now, she decided as Perkins brought her a meal on the captain’s good silver plate. He would never have done that for a mere Miss.

  When her eyes burned she steadied the cot against her shoulders and tried to read. In desperation she finally made her way through the novel she had begun so many times. Perkins came to relieve her through the night watches, for which she was grateful. She woke herself before dawn and dressed hastily in the cold air, so that Perkins could retire. As the second day wore on, the ship rolling and creaking under fretful skies, she sat on a stool and steadied the cot against her hip while she finished plaiting her hat, and breathed for him, unconsciously pulling with her belly as if she could will him to waken.

  Late in the day she watched the wavering light patterns across the low ceiling and curving bulkheads, reflections of sunlight off the restless waters below the stern window, and observed his face. Where was his essence? Had his spirit departed, leaving only this faintly breathing shell, or did he lie helpless, locked somewhere below the surface, where dreams lived?

  She still could not define her emotions: sorrow seemed to hover just outside of perception, as if she could feel the beat of wings. Absurd, she tried thinking. She scarcely knew the man. If he woke, he might wish her away.

  And yet there were the memories, so many sides to him: the wounded man who laughed ruefully into her hair when she tried to find a place to fit her elbows, the hot breath of pleasure, the cool commander on his quarterdeck, looking up at rigging and the sky beyond as king over his wooden kingdom. His strong hands, his eyes closed, as he and his quartet wove a musical tapestry with the complicated patterns of Bach as the ship sailed on and on.

  She could not but wonder how much of that life would he share with her, given his waking again.

  But sometimes she held his hand, in hopes he could feel her warmth; she waited for the slightest twitch or tug as evidence he was there somewhere inside the slowly breathing body.

  At last, at last, the lookout shouted “Land ho!”

  Gibraltar had appeared on the wild horizon.

  She still did not permit herself to believe them secure until they had actually come into the harbor and the thunder of the anchor being let down rumbled through the ship. Her relief at safety—relative safety—so overwhelmed her that once again she could find expression only in music. Softly, softly: it was the aria Paisiello had written for Lord Nelson so long ago, sung from on high in that freshly painted palazzo.

  She hummed, her heart so full that tears blurred her eyelids.

  She began softly, but gradually, inexorably, the tide of emotion was too strong and she lifted her face and sang with all her power. She was no Catalani—they did not hear her on the quay—but all through the ship the hands paused, listening, and the prisoners being brought up were amazed by light and air and the beautiful sound.

  Unaware, Anna sang on.

  Because she sang with her eyes closed, she never saw the subtle movement beneath Duncannon’s eyelids, as at last his mind, drawn by the heart-lifting aria, drew him up and up through the layers until he floated just below the surface. He remembered that sound, the angels on high under the painted dome of heaven, but this was the real angel, not a palace smelling of paint, with officers shifting and
sighing right behind. This was the promised heaven, a realm of infinite peace, and he was alone with the angel, song, heart, spirit perfectly in tune . . .

  “The lieutenant wants you,” Parrette whispered voicelessly from the cabin door

  Anna stopped singing.

  “They want us ashore before they bring out the wretches locked below.” And, when Anna cast an uncertain glance at the captain, Parrette murmured, “I shall sit with him. He is not going anywhere.”

  Anna wiped her eyes, and got to her feet.

  Suspended somewhere between memory and exaltation, he was bereft. The angel was gone.

  He sank down again into dreams.

  o0o

  Lieutenant Sayers had made the wardroom his temporary headquarters.

  He sat on a bench, his bad leg stretched out to rest on a cheese of cannon wads. He steeled himself to ignore the ever-present throb of pain from his ruined knee, an attitude only partly effective.

  Tired as he was, he could not sleep well, partly from the pain and partly from his anxious wait for Collingwood’s orders respecting the Aglaea. Promotion was fairly sure, at least for all lieutenants who had been active in the battle (and had survived it), but what was very unsure was a ship. There would be many more new captains hungry for a commission.

  As acting captain, he now had power over the ship, but with it commensurate responsibility. That included attending on the flag the afternoon of his arrival at Gibraltar, when the signal was raised for All Captains.

  At this meeting, he discovered the personalities behind the shining epaulettes and the laced cocked hats; most he respected, though he grew to dislike Harvey’s constant carping about the victory, and what he would have done in this or that situation. Captain Fremantle muttered as Sayers climbed down the ladder behind him to their waiting gigs below, “That fellow has obviously never served in an action before Cadiz.”

  Sayers did not know if Captain Fremantle meant to be overheard, or if he forgot and thought that his old friend Captain Duncannon was following him, so the new acting captain kept a prudent silence.

  He also did so later that night, when he had himself rowed ashore to execute business concerning the prisoners, where he overheard captains muttering about Collingwood’s sometimes contradictory orders.

  While he disliked very much the idea of climbing over Henry Duncannon’s back, there was no arguing with the fact that the captain lay in the cabin hovering between life and death, and therefore unable to command the ship. Someone would have to take command, and Theophilus Sayers meant to be that man if he could. That meant driving the crew to a peak of efficiency that would impress the new C. in C. with his zeal.

  All this was in his mind when the post was brought to him. He had not expected much, as after all they had been brought post only a week or two past. And it proved to be scarcely a dozen pieces of mail. But it was his job to sort it and get it passed to its recipients . . . and so he stared down at the last of the letters, his mind stumbling to a halt for a time, until roused by the boatswain’s tweeting the hands to dinner.

  Tucking the last letter under the ship’s log, he roused himself to a new set of urgent tasks. He summoned his remaining midshipmen and sent them flying off on errands, some clutching notes. He would mention the letter to no one until he had his arrangements well in hand.

  o0o

  Anna and Perkins traded watches sitting by the captain’s cot, keeping it as still as possible. He never stirred except for his slow, shallow breathing.

  Late that night, once Parrette had made certain that Anna had hot water to wash, and a good meal inside her before she fell exhausted into her cot, she joined her son in the after-cabin, where the great table had sat empty ever since the captain’s injury. “Perkins says the captain is to be moved to the shore. I am certain that Anna will go with him, and so shall I. Do you come with us?” she asked in French.

  “My duty is here.” Michel took hold of one of her hands. “I am so glad to have found you again, Maman. But this is now my life.”

  “You were forced into it,” Parrette said.

  He shrugged. “I was forced to be a drummer boy, forced to many things when the army crossed Europe.” His expression altered to hatred. “I will never go back to France. Even if I did not have bad memories, however they change the laws, I will still not likely have a right to my name.”

  Parrette’s face was grim. “I confessed my part of that sin, and was absolved. I said my vows in good faith, and so even though he was a worthless man, I believe I have a right to his name. And so do you.”

  Michel shook his head slowly. “Maybe, maybe. But not in the eyes of Boney’s laws. And what sort of justice has he brought? Fouché would have murdered you along with the others if he had caught you. And what is the result of his butchery? Boney rewards him.” Michel shook his head. “I do not yet know where I might settle one day, but France is dead to me.”

  Sorrow contracted her heart, though she was not certain that she saw herself as a Frenchwoman anymore.

  “This is a good berth,” Michel said, seeing her expression. “Sayers is now acting captain. He’s as good to us as Duncannon, whose rules are his own. Mr. Gates says, another year or two, and I would be ready to put up my bond, supposing we come across a prize so I can raise the ready. He will give me a good character, and I would like to be a purser. I am good with numbers.”

  “And that is what I wished to talk to you about,” Parrette said. “I have been putting by my own earnings for a shop. But I will put up your bond, or buy a little house for us, anywhere you like, if you wish to give up the sea.”

  Michel grinned down at his mother. She was so small. In his memory she had been tall and strong, flying between him and his roaring, fist-swinging father, until the night his father yanked him out of his bed in the middle of the night and told him he was going to be a drummer boy for the Revolution. When he tried to run to his mother, he found her lying senseless on the floor. He had thought her dead.

  He patted her bony shoulder awkwardly. “I’m grateful, I am. But no man rightly lets his mother do what he must do himself, and Collingwood is sure to give us a cruise, on account of the dons who slipped back into Cadiz. Why, even if we don’t earn prize money, there’s the head count on prisoners, and in any case we have to clap a stopper over ’em or they’re sure to be up to their old capers. You take care of her.” He pointed with his chin toward Anna’s cabin. “She needs you more.”

  “I shall. That was my promise to her dear mother.”

  “And when she’s right and tight, why, then you go and buy that shop. It could be when I do give over the sea, I’ll come join you. I would like to be married someday, and the three of us can live together.”

  Parrette smiled. “You’re a good boy. I will have a Mass said for your safety.”

  “You do that, ma,” he said, but again cast a quick look around.

  She successfully interpreted that quick, guilty glance. It grieved her heart that these English seemed to have an animus against Roman Catholics, but perhaps he could be led back to the true church in time. That would not happen now, and she did not want to crab her gratitude that he was alive, that she had found him, that they had reached safety. So she said only, “If we must leave, be sure that when I know where we are settled, I will send a letter to this ship.”

  “Do. So that I will know where to write back when I know something.” Michel bent and kissed her, then they parted, he to vanish into the swarm of activity.

  o0o

  The next morning, Parrette intercepted Anna before she could go to the captain as usual. “Mr. Sayers wants an interview,” she said.

  Anna had scarcely seen the lieutenant since the burial at sea, as he stood swaying behind the captain with his bloody bandage around his knee.

  Sayers looked up at her entrance. “Mr. Jones,” he said to the midshipman busy writing at a side table. “Jump to the galley and discover if the cook can put up some punch for us, then see if the launch is arr
ived.”

  The boy bounced up, happy to get away from having to copy papers out in fair. “Yes sir, cook, punch, and launch.” He shot out of the wardroom.

  Sayers nodded at the sentry, who pulled the door shut behind the midshipman, leaving the lieutenant alone with Anna. “Pray take a chair, please. I trust you will forgive my neglect of you. It has not been intentional.”

  “I quite understand, Lieutenant,” Anna said, her expression one of polite inquiry.

  To her surprise, instead of coming directly to his point he fumbled with his pen, so for a moment all she saw was his pale hair, and then he reached past his neat stacks of papers to a battered book, and withdrew a sealed letter from beneath it.

  Her puzzlement sharpened to worry. She looked down at the scrawled direction on the letter:

  To the Rt. Hon.’ble Lord Northcote

  Captain, H.M.S. Aglaea

  “What does this mean? I do not understand. Who is this person?” Her brow drew together. “Northcote. I have heard this name, certain.”

  “It is the hereditary title,” the lieutenant said slowly, “of our captain’s family. Ma’am—Lady Northcote, I understand I should say—by your leave, I think you’re the only one who can open it.”

  “But this is not my letter,” she said, not hearing his correction. “And nowhere is mention of his name, his true name. Can it be an error?”

  “It is the correct direction,” Lt. Sayers said patiently, “if—if something happened to the captain’s elder brother, who was the baron, and he had no son to inherit, the title would fall to the captain.”

  She still looked blank.

  He hesitated again, striving to find some compromise between delicacy and making things plain to a lady who, however gallant, was still a foreigner, and therefore ignorant. “News is always sporadic for seamen,” he said. “We can go as much as six months, even a year before the post catches up, if we have been on a long commission. Then, there is lost post. The packet carrying six months of post had been swamped in the hurricane that drove us off our stations, for example, and most of the letters in our bag were ruined. One of those was probably for the captain, had we but known.”