Rondo Allegro (28 page)

When they rose, he said, “Should you care to take a turn in
the air?”

He had to get to his tasks, but knew the lengths his crew
would go to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Mrs. Duncannon. This was the best
way to go about it, under his eye.

She would much rather have retreated to her little cabin,
but she was afraid that such behavior might make her look uncooperative, and so
she said, “Thank you.” And then remembering her mother’s long-ago admonitions,
she added, “I haven’t a bonnet. We have been used to the Spanish custom,
wearing mantillas. May I fetch mine?”

He assented and she sped to the sleeping cabin, where
Parrette sat upon one of the trunks, her hands clasped anxiously. “And so?”

“He was very polite. We talked about music and Spain. But he
mentioned a dinner with the admiral. Perhaps that is when I shall be
questioned,” Anna whispered in Neapolitan as she whipped her mantilla around
her head, and tucked it secure with her decorated comb. “Now I am to take the
air.”

“It is well,” Parrette said, breathing easily at last. Perhaps
she could find whoever was in charge of mending and repair, and in offering her
aid, learn what she could.

When Anna reached the outer doors to the captain’s cabin,
she stepped back, startled by the sight of a marine standing there in his red
coat, a musket at his side. She was going to retreat into her cabin, afraid
they were prisoners after all, when the man touched his oddly shaped hat to
her, and said, “Gorton, mum, marine sentry. I’m to show you the way to the
quarterdeck.”

She thanked him breathlessly. “Is there always a sentry?”
she asked, turning huge brown eyes inquiringly up at him. “Or must you stand
there because of us?”

Gorton chuckled. “Bless you, Mrs. Capting, the skipper of a
frigate rates a sentry. Was you to attack him, why, I must come to his
defense.” He clashed his musket to the deck.

Anna peered up into his weather-beaten face, and discovered
a broad smile. The man was joking. She uttered a breathless laugh, more relief
than humor, and made her way up to the quarterdeck, where she was surprised to
find a small number of officers standing about, in addition to seamen busy at
their tasks.

Duncannon had, during the long months of chasing to the West
Indies and back, permitted a modicum of informality in the article of dress,
but ever since Admiral Nelson had rejoined the fleet, coats and hats were
required on deck.

However, once word had spread that the captain had a missus
and that she was coming aboard, a general interest in cleanliness had fired the
crew from First Lieutenant Theophilus Sayers to the smallest of the ship’s boys
in their watchet-blue jackets, and Master’s Mate d’Ivry had scraped his few
blond whiskers off so assiduously that the lower half of his face was quite
red.

The captain presented Lieutenant Sayers first. Anna felt as
if she were playing a role on stage to hear herself referred to as Mrs.
Duncannon; she peered shyly at the smiling first lieutenant, who doffed his hat
with an air, revealing a shock of nearly white hair above tufted white
eyebrows. Eyes of a startling blue gazed at her out of a sun-browned face.

“Mum,” he said, or that’s what the word sounded like.

She took it as an honorific, and curtseyed. Next was another
lieutenant, a thin young man with golden hair neatly queued back, called
Lieutenant McGowan. The last introduction was to the blushing d’Ivry, the
officer of the deck. His voice cracked horribly on the single word, “Mum,” and
she heard a muffled snicker somewhere on the lower deck behind her, and someone
else muttered, “Stop your gob, mate.”

But when the captain glanced that way, there was instant
silence, except for the groan and creak of wood and rope, the clatter of blocks,
and the wash of water down the sides.

The captain then said, “I beg to apologize, Madame—” He said
it the French way. “—but I have a great many tasks to attend to. With your
permission, I shall turn you over to my clerk, Mr. Leuven, who is ready to conduct
you on a tour of the ship, if that would please you.”

Anna was getting used to his speech by now. His words were
clear, his voice as deep as she had remembered. She curtseyed again, intuiting
what was expected of her, and turned to the sallow-faced fellow with unruly
black hair waiting expectantly behind the captain.

“If you’ll come this way, mum?”

She took her place beside this young Mr. Leuven, who
appeared to be somewhere between boy and man. He launched into a stream of
gibberish, delivered with a self-conscious, pompous air. Midway through an
impossible-to-understand description of the difference between a sheet and a
halyard, the sea gave one of its sudden lurches, nearly pitching her into the
waist of the ship.

He caught her, and blushed furiously as a watching topman
whistled high above.

“One hand for yourself and one for the ship, is what we say,
mum,” Mr. Leuven murmured with an anxious air, freeing her and backing a step
as if he had been shot. “Clap onto the rail anytime you like, and steady on.”

“Thank you.”

“The sea is kicking up a bit,” he offered apologetically, as
she experimented with bending her knees slightly, and taking the sway in her
hips. That seemed simpler than trying to stand stiffly upright.

He squinted upward, then observed, “Cap’n will have the
royals off her in a shake, see if he don’t. It would never do to encroach on
the line, never.”

They had scarcely taken ten steps when there was an
incomprehensible shout from the platform they had recently left, which Mr.
Leuven had explained was the quarterdeck, reserved to officers. Mr. Leuven
thoughtfully drew Anna back a heartbeat or two before a party of pigtailed
sailors stampeded along the gangway past her, and then scrambled aloft so
rapidly it made her dizzy to watch.

Sails flapped with thundering noise, loosened, and were
gathered in as Mr. Leuven conducted her to the front of the ship, which he
called the forecastle. There he painstakingly instructed her in the differences
between starboard (right) and larboard (the left side of the ship), windward
and leeward. The mighty spar that slanted up in front was the “jib” and the
three masts also had names. The masts were actually in segments, she discovered.

“Oh, yes,” Mr. Leuven said, smiling broadly. “You don’t want
t’gallant masts on her in a real blow, without you expect to be dismasted
altogether. Why, when we chased off to the West Indies, we all, the frogs too,
had to win miles of sea room against one of them
hurricanos
, which we ride out with only a scrap of sail, and pray
we don’t broach to.”

Anna shivered, which gratified Mr. Leuven mightily, and
commented that she could not understand how such a heavy object as a ship did
not sink even in relatively benign waters. He thoroughly enjoyed her French
accent, and could not suppress a glance of triumph at a pair of midshipmen
glaring at him from abaft the mizzen.

He then took her down the forward hatch and conducted her
along the upper deck, pointing out the galley, the midshipmen’s berth in the
forepeak, the waist—from which she could look up and see the gangway where she
had walked shortly before—and there were the doors to the great cabin. Down
they went again to the lower deck, and through the wardroom (which is where the
senior officers messed, he said briefly, without explaining who they were or
what “mess” meant) and on through to the gunroom, directly below where Anna had
slept.

Here, he pointed out where cutlasses, boarding axes, pikes,
and the like were mounted on the bulkheads, between which were stretched canvas
walls on which doors had been painted. These minuscule spaces were the cabins
of the junior officers, Mr. Leuven explained.

To her surprise he cast a furtive look about him as if to
make certain they were truly alone in the low-ceilinged space, and then uttered
a garbled string of words, his expression intent.

He paused, his expression a comical mix of pride and
apprehension. Belatedly Anna caught a badly-pronounced word amid the stream,
‘giorno’, the Italian word for ‘morning.’ She said, “You speak Italian, Mr.
Leuven?”

The apprehension vanished, and Mr. Leuven grinned proudly,
his homely face red to the ears. “My grandmother, m’mother’s mother, was
Eye-talian. She taught me some things when I was a nipper. This being my first
chance to try it out, as it’s my first cruise, on account of my grandfather
being the ship’s surgeon.”

“Your first?” she asked, aware of some disappointment. She
had been trying to think of a way to ask about the mutiny, though she did not
know what she would do with the information. “And your position one of
importance, I see?”

“Very,” he said, and then quickly, as if he might be
overheard showing away, he added in a lower voice, “m’mother sent me to
Grandfer Leuven, and thinking I’d be kept safe, conditioned for captain’s
clerk, on account I write a neat hand. She would pipe her eye was she to know
that, if we come to battle, why, I’m right there next or nigh the skipper,
taking down notes.” He laughed heartily. “And don’t I wish we may! Those mids
come it the high and mighty, don’t you know it. A brush with the frogs
and
the dons would put us all square.”

As he spoke, he conducted her along the length of the lower
deck, showing her where the crew’s hammocks swung in the night watches, and
where they messed. Next was the manger and sickbay, and then down again to the
main hold. She tried to hold her breath against the oppressive air, as Mr.
Leuven rapidly pointed out the magazine, the shot lockers, the spirit room, and
the stores. She peered obediently at dimly lit barrels and boxes, as little
light from the gratings reached this far below.

By the time they attained the sweet air of the deck once
more, the sky had changed dramatically, a low layer of clouds turning the blue
sea to grayish green. There was no sign of land in any direction.

The swell rolled deliberately, but she found that if she
loosened her knees in a manner that reminded her of certain dance motions, she was
able to balance more easily.

She was so absorbed with remaining on her feet that she had
no time to think about how she looked, and of course she was unaware of the
intense interest of men who had been long months away from the company of
women. The only female on deck, she drew the eye with her straight back, her
curls blowing under the frothy lace mantilla, and the thin gown outlining her
form. But she was the captain’s wife—a fact that had pretty much stunned the
entire crew—as well as a lady, and so she moved about in a kind of invisible
shield, the avid gazes sliding away if she approached.

Over the remainder of the day, it seemed that every time she
turned around she glimpsed crew members busy with some task. She was not to
know that the midshipmen and the junior officers all—with a wary eye
captainward—found some sort of work in the vicinity of the captain’s lady so
they could get a good look.

To each introduction, from Midshipman Corcoran’s hideous
stammer to Second Lieutenant McGowan’s mellifluous, and rather studied, French,
she returned a polite, friendly greeting. How did each wish to be perceived?
Royalty will take what they want to support
their dignity, but others, like you, if you give respect freely, they will like
as not give it back
, her mother had said. In Paris, ‘dignity’ had still
been a dangerous concept to those who could remember the mob and summary
hangings. With these English, she was cast back to her mother’s quiet morning
lessons.

The framed sporting prints she had glimpsed in the great
cabin, the weapons mounted as decoration in the gunroom, the continual rumble
of boots, the deep voices hallooing—this was a man’s world. She was an
intruder, not just because of her sex, but because of her origins. She was not
English in the way they understood. But they used the English rules of
behavior, and she did her best to respond in kind.

Before the sun set, the midshipman in charge of the flag
signals presented himself to the officer of the watch, and thence to the
captain, conveying the expected invitation to dine aboard the flagship on the
following day.

Anna had a night to dread the prospect of being brought before
Admiral Lord Nelson, about whom she had heard so much over the past six years:
wild admiration from the English at Naples, wild hatred from the French.

She had seen him from afar just once, the day she sang at Lady
Hamilton’s fete. She remembered little beyond a slim figure of medium height
with a sleeve pinned up, diamonds flashing on his medals and in his hat.

After intense discussion, she and Parrette settled on the
gown she had worn upon the stage in Seville. It was her finest, made up of
watered silk with a bodice of lace applique, with a Greek tunic over-dress in
eggshell blue, caught under the bosom with embroidered laurel leaves. Since she
had no hat, she wore her longest lace on her head, Spanish-style, anchored with
a filigree comb. The top corners of the lace attached to her wrists in flowing
drapes, the rest hanging down to the back of her skirt.

“I have made this over into a boat cloak,” Parrette added,
producing a voluminous garment with a triumphant air. “You must do The Captain
credit on Admiral Nelson’s ship. Here are your mother’s gloves. You see I have
kept them. They ought to fit. You are much of a size.”

“Gloves! It is not cold enough for gloves,” Anna protested.

“It is English custom,” Parrette said. “You will wear these
gloves, but not to eat in. At least, I remember your mother used to leave off
her gloves at meals.”

“Where do I put them?”

“In your reticule.”

“I did not think I had to take one, for I am not shopping,
am I?”

“You must have a handkerchief in it, and you put your gloves
in it until you need them.”