Rondo Allegro (26 page)

Anna straightened up slowly, and dared a look behind her.
High overhead, a gleaming row of lights marked the impressive fortress. They
had come a considerable distance already. Beyond the point, a part of the bay
curved, the lights of Cadiz winking like a necklace of glowing gold.

Anna had begun to doze while sitting up, until a voice
startled her. The command was incomprehensible, but clearly there was no longer
any fear of being heard. She straightened up, surprised to find a ship towering
a few yards away, ruddy light from square spaces along the hull glinting off
the cold iron mouths of cannon.

“Bosun’s chair abaft your elbow, mum,” someone said,
touching Anna.

Once again, rough-palmed hands took her arm insistently,
turning her toward a canvas arrangement suspended between ropes.

She discovered to her horror that she was expected to sit in
it. “Oh, no.”

“Just clap onto them ropes, now, and hold tight. We’ll boom
you up in a trice.”

Strong hands pulled her inexorably into the contraption,
whose slimy ropes she gripped with all her strength. Her body swayed
sickeningly in the air, then hands closed around her arms again, and she let
out a shuddering breath of relief. She opened her eyes to discover a deck under
her feet. Relief suffused her as she let the slimy rope free. She did not want
to wipe her hands on her gown, so she stood there, fingers spread like
starfish, as she looked around dazedly.

Then the figures around her parted, hands to forelocks, and
here and there the lifting of enormous cocked hats as a tall figure approached.

The swinging lantern light revealed a remembered hawk-nosed
face staring grimly down at her.

It was Captain Duncannon.

That morning, Henry Duncannon had received the signal to
report aboard the flagship, where Nelson received him, handing off a note sent
by the Spaniards under flag of truce:

My Lord Nelson, I make myself the honor to inform you I have in
the company here subsequent to the musicale fete the lady wife of
Captain-of-warship Duncannon, I am given to comprehend is honored to number
amongst the English fleet. Due to the unfortunate nature of events we are to
transpire I take the liberty to offer to restore the lady to the captain with
the good will of you.

Your very obedient servant to command . . .

Shortly thereafter Duncannon had been ordered to part
company with the squadron of frigates watching Cadiz from a distance, to
dispatch his trusted coxswain directly under the guns of the enemy.

Now here was his longboat returned with a problem he’d
thought lost years ago.

The first one over the rail was set down. He took in a
French lady, elegant from her ordered curls to the hem of the fashionable gown whose
style was scarcely marred by wrinkles and splashes of sea water. He forced his
gaze away, searching for the blotch-faced little weed he had been forced to
marry six years ago. But the next one over the side was a scrawny, needle-nosed
French maidservant. Strange, how so many of these southern French looked a bit
like birds, with their beaky noses and scrawny arms and legs.

The next object boomed up was a trunk, followed by a
second—and then the sailors began the process of bringing up the longboat. No
more passengers? Had their scouts managed to find the wrong women?

He discovered he had nearly crushed his best scraper under
his arm, and consciously loosened his grip as he brought his gaze back from
trunks to maid to lady. Was she familiar? He took a step toward her, trying to
find in that elegant countenance any sign of the wretched girl he’d so briefly
seen only twice.

Wind-tousled curls blew about a heart-shaped face in which a
pair of wide brown eyes stared back at him. The sodden gown revealed a graceful
form. Stepping past his first lieutenant, he saw her stiffly spread fingers.
The light from the binnacle gleamed on a ring he remembered sliding onto a thin
finger.

He swallowed, and took in that wide gaze. It, too, was
familiar, from that hot summer’s night on the terrace after Nelson’s fete when
she begged him to locate Michel Duflot.

Aware of every single pair of eyes aboard the ship, he extended
his hand. “Madame. Welcome aboard the
Aglaea
.”

“Captain.” She did not say
capitaine
, but she might as well have: her accent was decidedly
French. She dropped a curtsey, and then staggered as the ship gave a lee lurch.

He sprang to take her arm; her muscles were rigid. Anger or
fear? Could they possibly be more awkwardly situated? He forced himself to
smile, and to say as pleasantly as he knew now, “Permit me to conduct you to
the cabin, where my steward will make you comfortable. Is that all your dunnage?”

“
Dommage
?” she
repeated, looking round-eyed with worry. Her pupils were huge and black; it was
impossible to see the color of her eyes.

“
Dommage
?” he
repeated. What did that even mean? His French, never great at the best of
times, had completely escaped him. From her expression, it meant something
terrible. “Your traps. Trunks? Yes.” Acutely aware of the avid interest of his
midshipmen, a parcel of pranksters unless strictly governed, he shut his mouth
against saying anything further to entertain the ship’s company, and led her
down into the cabin.

Anna was aware of two things: the horrible way the ship
lurched around her, sometimes shifting between one step and another. In a way,
it was worse than the little boat, for the movement was slower, making her feel
a little dizzy.

The second thing was the grip of that hand on her arm,
fingers cupped firmly under her elbow. She would have fallen into these oddly curved
walls but for that hand. She tried to grasp the fact that he was still alive. So
he
had
survived that mutiny!

The captain led her into a spacious suite whose floor
appeared to be a tacked-down canvas covered with white and black checkers.

She blinked, the salt crusting her eyelashes stinging
unmercifully. She tried to make out the proportions of the rooms, but the
movement and the blur masked the unexplained odd shapes, defeating her.

There appeared to be a suite of small, oddly-shaped chambers.
The one she was conducted to had two broad, inward-leaning windows that opened
directly over the sea. Dominating the space swung an odd-looking bed, shaped
like a candy box, suspended from ropes. Its sides appeared to be made of
canvas. A bench lined the back of the room under the windows.

She sat on the bench, shivering in her heavy, wet clothing,
as Parrette narrowly watched the sailors stow the trunks between two curving
pilasters. They departed under the direction of a grizzled man with one sound leg
and one that appeared to be made of wood from the knee down.

“We’ll have hot water up in three shakes,” this man said to
Parrette, his accent so thick that she gazed back uncomprehendingly.

The man then touched his forehead and withdrew, his uneven
thok
-step,
thok
-step nimbler than either Parrette or Anna with two sound legs
apiece.

Duncannon appeared in the doorway, and cleared his throat.
“This is my sleeping cabin. You shall have it. I will take the after-cabin
beyond these bulkheads.” He nodded at the curving wood projections that Anna
had taken for pilasters. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“I would welcome some water, thank you,” she said,
enunciating carefully. He, at least, spoke clearly.

“May I suggest tea in its place?” he asked. “I fear that our
water is casked, and if you are unaccustomed, it can be disagreeable.”

She remembered her mother’s tea from her childhood; to
Duncannon, her shuttered expression turned wistful before her eyelashes
lowered. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Perkins, my steward, will see to it. I must get back on
deck to oversee our return to station. If you require anything, Perkins will
fetch it for you.”

He bowed again, and left, aware of his cowardly retreat. He
knew that Nelson would eventually be signaling for a report, at the least, but
he trusted to the thousand greater demands on the admiral’s attention. He could
not seem to think past the shock of seeing her again, and finding her so
different from the girl he’d so briefly glimpsed in Palermo and Naples.
Gratefully he lost himself in a swift flow of orders.

For Anna, sitting uncomfortably in the cabin, there was
nothing but questions no one could answer until the welcome arrival of the tea.
Anna drank it down gratefully, and discovered a secondary effect of the
beverage. It eased the unpleasant sensations in her middle caused by the
continual pitching of the ship.

She had finished a second cup when the hot water arrived,
great canisters carried by sweating mariners under the direction of a blushing
midshipman. The moment they were gone, Parrette held the door open to get rid
of the lurking steward, and on his egress, smartly shut the flimsy door. Then
she marched around the cabin pulling the stern windows firmly shut, and the
curtains drawn, as Anna regarded the gently steaming water.

“Now, you tidy yourself while I brush that hanging bed. I am
tempted to use our own sheets, though in truth this oddly shaped room seems
very clean,” Parrette said.

There was a single pier glass suspended at a slant between
two of what the captain had called bulkheads. In the light of the swinging
lamps, Anna was startled to see how dirty and bedraggled she had become. With a
brief resurgence of energy, she shed her grimy, stained gown and washed
thoroughly, then brushed out her tangled hair. By now she seemed to be sinking
under waves of exhaustion, but she was afraid to wear a nightdress. The captain
might return.

“You put that nightrail on, and climb into that . . .
object,” Parrette said. “You are going to need your wits about you come
morning. I will sit up a bit longer, to make certain you are not disturbed.”

Though it took some effort, Anna figured out how to mount
the swinging canvas bed. It smelled odd, like canvas, and under that a
masculine scent that was not unpleasant.

“Now, tomorrow, you must be the great lady,” Parrette said.

Anna shook her head. “Tomorrow, I expect I will need to
convince Captain Duncannon that I am no spy, before we even get to whether I
lowered myself to earning a wage. At all events . . .” Anna
yawned fiercely. “There should be no trouble annulling the marriage. You saw.
He could not get away fast enough.”

Parrette sighed. “Spies! I spit upon your future grave,
Marsac.”

In spite of the constant swing and sway of the canvas box
bed, Anna fell into a fitful slumber until the insistent ringing of a bell—
ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting
—following
which a voice bawled “All’s well!”

The cabin was dark. The ropes holding up her bed creaked.
She listened to those, and to unfamiliar noises farther away: the groan of
wood, the hum of rigging, the muted thudding of sails. Footsteps overhead. She
could not determine if she was alone or if Parrette lay somewhere in the cabin,
and she was afraid to look, lest she fall out of this swinging bed.

She skimmed the surface of sleep, dreaming of being awake
and trying to explain her history to a parcel of blurry-faced, tall men in
naval blue coats. Central stood the tallest, with a hawk nose and narrowed eyes
with tiny lines at the corners, lines incised by either anger or laughter, she
could not determine which . . .

As she slid at last below the surface of sleep, in the next
cabin over, Henry Duncannon lay awake in the hammock slung for him, listening
to the song of the ship’s timbers and rigging, sails and wind, counterpointed
by the splash-slap of water against the hull, as he considered the peculiar
note they had received from Gravina.

In company
. What
did that mean? How was he to get a purchase on this situation?

While Gravina was everywhere respected as an honorable man
as well as a fine fighting captain, his English left much to be desired.

“Duncannon, what does this mean?” Nelson had asked, as all
the captains stared.

“I have no notion,” he had been forced to admit, and then,
itching with embarrassment, though he could not have said why, he said, “If you
remember, sir, I came to you in London some time after Captain Troubridge honored
me with a request to take part in an arranged marriage, when we were at
Palermo. But she vanished, and I was never able to find word of her.”

Before the interested gaze of Captains Fremantle and Hardy,
Duncannon held back his own request for annulment.

“Palermo. Naples,” Nelson responded with a sentimental sigh.
“How happy we were there.”

Duncannon had remembered only the fighting, the heat, the
illness, the hanging of that miserable scapegoat Carraciolo, but such was his
respect—reflected in the faces of the other officers—for Admiral Lord Nelson
that they all smiled, and no one brought up the name ‘Lady Hamilton.’

“I remember that,” Hardy exclaimed, fists on his knees.
“Troubridge arranged it, just as Duncannon says. The girl’s father connected to
an Italian duke, mother a gentlewoman living at the palace in some capacity
before she died, the girl left alone. The father, Ludovano, no, Ludovicci,
Ludovisi, something of the sort—”

“Little Anna Maria Ludovisi?” Fremantle exclaimed. “No one
told me about this! She was thick as thieves with my dear Betsey and her younger
sisters at the Hamiltons’ parties, in ’97. Lord, I remember their shrill
gabble, like a parcel of parrots. They were just girls, the age of our smallest
reefers. Heyday, however she got there, we cannot leave her stranded in Cadiz!”

Before Duncannon went over the side with his orders to fetch
her, Collingwood had pulled him to the leeward rail, where the wind would sweep
their words over the water unheard. “You know the admiral. As canny a fighting
man as we could ever hope to see, but romantical in the article of ladies.
Especially ladies from Naples, d’you follow? I make no accusations, I insinuate
nothing, but I urge you to determine that she is all she should be.”