Rondo Allegro (29 page)

Anna sighed, then inwardly chuckled. ‘
The
Captain’ was back. She wondered what Parrette would call him
once he turned them off in Gibraltar like so much unwanted lumber.
And it cannot be too soon
, she thought,
looking at those white gloves, which she knew would be a bother to keep clean.

The steward scratched. She left her cabin, and found The
Captain in his best coat, waiting with a gold-laced hat clasped under his arm.
It was going to be a longish journey past two or three other ships of the line,
and they must not be late to the flag.

She shrouded herself in her new boat cloak, and pulled the
gloves on. They were tight, but fit, and the old thrill of sorrow purled
through her at the idea of her mother’s fingers once warming them.

She was startled from her reverie by the clash and stamp of
the red-coated marines and the bosun’s wailing signal. Captain Duncannon
escorted her to the side. She held her breath as she was lowered carefully in
the bosun’s chair. The captain clambered nimbly down the side and stepped into
the boat, watching as his coxswain assisted her as gently as if she were made
of glass.

The gig’s crew all wore jackets they had made themselves,
their caps embroidered with
Aglaea
on
the fronts, the seams of their trousers worked with ribbon.

“We all look very fine,” Anna said, smiling around at them.

The sailors vouchsafed nary a word—she did not know that
they were to row in strict silence—but she caught smiles and becks from them,
before Captain Duncannon gave the nod to his coxswain, who roared, “Stretch
out!”

They left the ship behind them. Captain Duncannon cast his
eyes from long habit at the set of
Aglaea
’s
sails, the clouds, the color of the ocean, and the motion of the current as
they rowed away. It gave him time to think.

It was not her fault that this false wife of his had turned
up in his life again at the worst possible moment. He glanced at her tightly
gripped hands. This situation could be no easier for her. “Are you comfortable,
ma’am?”

“I am become accustomed, thank you,” she said, proud of the
remembered phrase.

He nodded. At least she tried to make the best of things,
unlike some he could mention. Perhaps he ought to mention? “There are scarce
suitable women for you to meet in company, but what we have, I am to tell you
that the admiral has invited on your behalf, to be better company at dinner and
so you will not be alone in withdrawing after the covers are removed.”

Covers?
Anna
thought, groping mentally for meaning. Was that the cloth upon the table that
she recollected from childhood, or the items set upon the cloth?

“There is Lady Lydia Neville, daughter of the Marquess of
Oversley,” Captain Duncannon went on, hoping to convey a sense of the honor
Lord Nelson was doing her, without being oppressive. “She recently married
George Neville. You might recognize the family—they are very distinguished,
long service, though he’s a third son. Captain Neville of the sloop-of-war
Mermaid
, very fast in stays, will run
dispatches if we come to battle. Then there’s the wife of Lieutenant Fellowes, from
Polyphemus
, of 64 guns. Mrs. Fellowes
has charge of the ship’s boys; her father was a headmaster of some northern
school, and she is famous for her shining parts. She has been sailing with him
these three years. And finally, though perhaps in respect to age I ought to
have mentioned her first, there is Mrs. Porter, wife of the premier of
Sirius
, 36…”

He was acutely conscious that he was chattering. Did she
comprehend any of what he said? Though she kept glancing at the ships they
passed, and at the mild sea, the cant of her head, her tightly gripped hands
seemed to indicate her listening closely.

And she was. 64? 36? Why these numbers, after he named a
ship? She did her best to distract herself from how very close by he sat. He
was so very, oh, so very tall, his legs in their white breeches so much longer
than hers. She looked away from the curve of his thigh as if she had been
caught in personal trespass; her clearest emotion was a dread of severity.
Would not a mutiny be caused by a very great degree of tyrannical behavior?

“. . . He is even older than Captain Prowse,
but a fine officer. It is a vast shame that he has little in the way of
influence, and so he is still a lieutenant at sixty. However he is much cherished
by captains who know him, so there is no danger of
him
languishing on the beach with half-pay. I understand she’s
crossed the Line some eighteen times, in course of following him. It is
understood in the service that they always sail together.”

As he spoke, they bumped and jolted past a ship larger even
than the
Aglaea
. It was imposing,
with its gleaming black hull layered by row upon row of yellow bands, which
were in their turn broken by gun ports in black squares. The effect was a great
checkerboard of menace. Anna stared past the sinister round mouths of the cannons,
and glimpsed people moving about. Incomprehensible hails passed between someone
high on the ship and the coxswain, and then they left that ship behind.

Unaware of the protracted silence, she gripped her hands
anew in her mother’s gloves as they bucketed over the ship’s wake. The men
rowing paid the bumps no heed, so she shut her eyes.

He checked his pocket watch when the
Victory
was in view and he gave a satisfied huff of breath.

The ceremonial for boarding the flagship was even grander,
as the Captain ascended the side with an ease that nearly made Anna’s heart
stop. The ceremony was solely for the captains, she saw, as another followed on
Captain Duncannon’s heels from the boat that had come up behind them.

She sustained this unsettling sensation that she was
invisible, excluded from the arcane customs and language reserved exclusively
to men. The very way she soared easily into the air in the canvas seat, and was
set gently on the deck, seemed to underscore her strange position, not within
their ordered world, but not altogether shut out as she curtseyed to this
staring mass of officers with orders, medals, sashes, epaulettes, gold lace in
their cocked hats, which they swept off as they bowed.

From the leeward side, without her husband (being a mere
lieutenant, not invited) Lady Lydia Neville watched jealously as the naval blue
and marine red coats parted. Only four months a bride, and already
old—uninteresting—and who was this Mrs. Duncannon anyway? When Lady Lydia’s
mother had tried to convince her not to marry dear Charles, she had pointed out
that these naval men married pot-house women, flower sellers, anything with a
pair of pretty eyes, and she would be forced to give way before such if the
husband had a higher rank than Charles Neville.

At that moment the wind whipped along the quarterdeck,
blowing open Mrs. Duncannon’s boat cloak. The men stirred; Lady Lydia caught
her breath at the lady’s grace, from the fascinating curve of her Spanish
headdress down to the little French slippers. She embodied
le bon ton
, she was
beautiful
.
Lady Lydia eagerly read every French fashion newspaper; she would take an oath
that exquisite gown had come straight from Paris.

And every single man stared at
her
.

Thoroughly intimidated, Anna dared not look anyone in the
face as she performed her curtsey. Then there
he
was—it could only be he, the famous Lord Nelson—holding out his
left hand.

She proffered her own as she gazed into a pair of blue eyes,
one with its black pupil larger than the other. There was no mistaking the
sweetness of Admiral Lord Nelson’s smile as he uttered words of welcome; she
said something disjointed and tried to marshal her wits as the mass moved past
white-gloved marines and orderlies to a beautiful suite much, much larger than
Captain Duncannon’s.

They paused as Nelson quickly performed introductions. Lady
Lydia appeared to be about the age of the dancer Helene, no more than seventeen,
with diamonds flashing at her neck and in her headdress. Mrs. Fellowes was tall
and thin, her gown dove-colored. Last was Mrs. Porter, a smiling gray-haired
lady who touched Anna’s arm and said, “The cloak room, and what will pass for
our own parlor, is here in the Admiral’s day cabin.”

Day cabin?
This turned
out to be a ship’s cabin rich with white wainscoting gilt in squares, with
portraits on the walls. Anna glimpsed a framed silhouette that called Lady
Hamilton to mind, as the other ladies removed their cloaks.

A pigtailed sailor with white gloves took the cloaks and
effaced himself, leaving the women alone. The youngest lady cast her reticule
and gloves carelessly upon Lord Nelson’s fine carved desk, and covertly studied
the new Mrs. Duncannon. Why, taken separately, her features were no more than
ordinary: a pair of brown eyes, a straight nose, a firm chin, a broad forehead
under those artful curls. What did the French call them? Kiss curls. Lady Lydia
would adopt them. She was sick of frizz.

She turned away, satisfied that this new bride was really no
prettier than she was, in spite of that fabulous gown, and the way she held her
head. She wore no diamonds, and as for that ring, it was the merest trumpery.

Lady Lydia glanced complacently into a pier glass, then
exclaimed in a high voice, “I knew it. I said it would be so. Mrs. Duncannon,
you will have to forgive me for my wretched appearance—a thousand pities we
must venture out in this gale. But you will forgive me, I know.”

Mrs. Porter said, “You look charmingly, as always, Lady
Lydia.”

Lady Lydia bridled, casting her eyes skyward. “You are too
kind, Mrs. Porter.”

Mrs. Fellowes turned Anna’s way. “What pretty lace! Is that
not the Spanish style of headdress?”

“It is,” Anna said. “Thank you.”

“But your accent is French,” Lady Lydia cried. “And here I was
just thinking that your gown must have come straight from Le Roy, if it wasn’t
for this vile war. Lady Bessborough made us all die a million deaths from envy
when she wore her French gowns the season before last. Or was it two seasons
ago? Oh, my head.” She fluttered her fingers. “She could talk of nothing else
but Le Roy, though she never met Madame Bonaparte, now an empress, as she took
against Napoleon. I don’t suppose
you
met
Bonaparte’s wife? Oh, but you was in Spain, I collect?”

The white-gloved sailor stuck his head in again. Glad for an
excuse not to answer, Anna said, “The officers, they wait, is it not so?”

The sailor touched his forehead. “Which the bells is about
to ring the watch change, if you please.”

“And we know the entire fleet would sink if they were a
stroke past the hour sitting down to their dinner.” Mrs. Porter chuckled.
“Shall we join the gentlemen?”

“I must lead the way,” Lady Lydia began, rustling toward the
door, then she paused with a dramatic start. “No, no, it is Mrs. Duncannon who
is the guest of honor—”

Whatever she was going to say next was lost as the ship’s
bell rang. The ladies only had a few steps to walk. The sound caused all the
officers to be in motion. Once again there was the dazzling display.

This time Anna was able to take in more details: young and
old officers, fat and thin. Most of the younger ones, like Lord Nelson, wore
their own hair fairly short, but several of the older captains wore beautifully
powdered wigs, and one wore his own hair queued and powdered; snow dusted his
shoulders from the wind.

Lord Nelson himself escorted Anna into the dining room,
which was dominated by a long table ablaze with light. Golden candelabra
gleamed richly down the middle, between two rows of exquisite china dishes.

Anna was seated to the admiral’s right. She was relieved to
see the other women placed at her end of the long table, each with an officer
on either side. Lady Lydia was highest up, across from her. Another thought:
how was she to be addressed? Was Lady Lydia the informal use, like the French
tu
, reserved to intimates and children? She
tried to recollect the tangle of titles and usages her mother had taught her;
she was fairly certain she had the exigencies of birth rank straight, but what
happened after marriage? Was this young bride properly addressed as Lady
Neville, or was she Mrs. Neville?

In Paris, all the rules had been topsy-turvy, and they had
never been quite the same as her mother’s careful lessons in English, that much
Anna remembered from her childhood. Oh, yes: the Captain had referred to her as
‘Lady Lydia Neville.’ All right, she could remember that.

As they were served, Lord Nelson turned to Anna. “And so you
were born at Naples, Mrs. Duncannon?”

“Calabria, sir.”

The admiral did not hear. He was lost in fond memory. “Ah,
the beauty! You were acquainted with Lady Hamilton, were you not?”

“A little,” Anna said, and, catching sight of the glitter on
her finger, reflecting the light from the candelabra, “This is her ring.”

Lord Nelson’s smile was brilliant. “Ah, so kind, so
generous! A toast to Lady Hamilton.”

“Lady Hamilton,” the officers said, raising their glasses.

With genuine good will, Lord Nelson leaned toward Anna. “And
so you ended up in Cadiz. Music, was it? Did you chance to look into the
harbor?”

“I walked down the very first day, to take the fresh air,”
Anna said. “It was a very hot journey down the river.”

“And what did you see in the harbor? Did you observe how
many ships of the line were gathered?”

Anna’s brow puckered. “It was a forest of tall poles, so
many. Some of the ships were very big, oh, I think there was one prodigiously
greater than this one we sit in. But I could mistake. It is difficult to tell,
from the wharf, and I was mostly looking out to sea. It was my first sight of
the Atlantic.” She became aware of the entire table listening to her, and
glanced uncertainly. “I beg pardon. I am so ignorant of these things—for many
years I have seen no ocean at all.”