Rondo Allegro (32 page)

Her reverie ended with the Bach air. The players went
straight into the “D Suite,” to which she unconsciously tapped her foot to the
strongly marked time, gazing out from under the low ceiling of the quarterdeck
into the golden afternoon sunlight. The music carried beautifully, and in this,
the first dog watch of the late afternoon, those not on duty gathered on deck
to listen, to make and mend, and a few sailors on the forecastle used the beat
to dance hornpipes. One young upper yardman dared the capstan, twirling and
kicking nimbly without missing step in spite of the roll of the deck.

The captain’s outer doors standing open, Anna was drawn out
by degrees to observe, until she heard an adolescent snort of laughter, and
caught sight of two midshipmen bumping a third, a very small boy, in her
direction.

She recognized instantly what was going on, from her days in
the royal nursery: the older ones were using rank, or size, or both, to propel
the younger one into doing something he was reluctant to do. She recognized
little Mr. Corcoran, who couldn’t have been more than twelve.

Catching her eye, he paced stiffly to her, bowed and made
his leg, then said with a kind of desperate formality, “Will you honor me with
a dance, mum?”

She held out her hand and said, “Why yes, thank you.”

And with her toes pointed, and her hand held high, she
minced with the gratified Mr. Corcoran to a small space in the waist between
two boats, and they pranced out the measures of a minuet.

She rejoiced at her ability to perform the dance without
falling.
Men have strong legs, sure
,
Lise had said what felt like a lifetime ago.
But their balance is all in their shoulders. Watch their turns, it is
always shoulders first. But us? The secret is to lead with the hips.

And so Anna let her hips sway with the yaw of the ship. In
the slanting rays of afternoon, with the light airs abaft the beam in the
frigate’s happiest point of sailing, sailors—the most superstitious beings
alive—universally regarded her smiling, graceful presence as a lucky omen.

At the end of that piece, the bigger boys summarily thrust
aside their junior, and each brazenly offered to dance with Anna. She enjoyed
the air and the exercise, and smilingly assented to each.

The quartet played, and she danced, until the
ting-ting
announced the second dog
watch. The music ended. The thunder of feet on the gun decks meant cannon drill.
Most of the rest of the great cabin vanished as summarily as the dining table
had, revealing carronades housed in the stern. Only the little cabin assigned
to Anna remained, and she perforce retreated to it so as not to be in the way.

Parrette was still absent. Anna guessed she was with Michel,
and picked up the top book,
Splendid
Misery
, by one Thomas Skinner Surr. She sat on the stern window bench to
read by the fading light, but she was distracted by the rumble and bump of the
guns being run out and back. Her thoughts drifted from the sound to the man who
commanded such effort.

She had never seen Captain Duncannon smile before this day.
The contrast was marked. It demonstrated how very reserved he had been.

“I suppose I am a burden to him,” she thought, tucking her
feet under her, the book open upon her lap, as she gazed out at the
ever-widening wake.

In a sense it was just, for she had found him a burden, too.
False marriage—false expectations on the part of others—even the false
conclusion about his ship having mutinied against him—she could not blame
him
. It was the awkwardness, the
unsettled sensations that she disliked. Balked of being conveyed to Gibraltar,
she could not plan her life until she was quit of him. No doubt he felt the
same.

Promptly at eight the watch changed again, the din of
running feet now caused by the bringing of hammocks from the netting to be
slung between the guns, as the great cabin was put back together again. The
ship gradually quieted as much as it ever did, and she ventured out to take a
last turn upon the deck before retiring for the night.

She spied Mr. Leuven, who tipped his hat courteously. He
broke into a broad smile when she greeted him in Italian, and they made their
way, laborious on his part, through a stilted conversation about the weather (
bello
), the music (
bella
), and the ship (
bellissima
)
before he went below. She did not correct his errors; she thought he would
learn the faster by hearing her phrasing.

She had reached the bow, and was turning to walk back when
she was surprised by a party of midshipmen who had evidently been lying in
wait.

Once again it was little Mr. Corcoran who approached.
“Please, mum,” he said, doffing his hat and making a leg. “Do you know any
French songs?”

“You wish to learn French songs?” she asked.

“Not in the way of singing
French
songs,” he began, looking left to right. “By that I mean,
not their words.”

The tall, handsome blond master’s mate, his uniform better
made than the others, pushed impatiently past. “My name is d’Ivry,” he said
with an air of expectation, his cleft chin raised. “If you please, will you
accompany us to the cockpit—that is, to our quarters? Our question is in the
nature of a . . .” He glanced quickly around, as if worried
about being caught. “Of a
privileged
nature.”

“But of course,” she said, hiding a spurt of amusement at
the covert nudges and shifty glances exchanged between the boys.

She remembered the stuffy little hole that the captain’s
clerk had shown her. It was exactly as stuffy as she’d remembered, smelling
strongly of adolescent boy, though the small, oddly spaced shape was
scrupulously tidy. The trunks had been shoved together in the middle to form a
rough-and-ready table for the boys to eat and work at, and shelves fitted into
the walls and even overhead, into which were stored plates, glasses,
newly-brought loaves of sugar, clothes brushes, boots, cocked hats, dirks,
writing desks, and even musical instruments. In the far corner sat sacks of
potatoes, containers of sea biscuits and other comestibles belonging to their
mess.

Five of the six midshipmen gathered around the trunk-table,
on which sat a single candle and a plate of butter; one boy was missing, being
on watch. “You see, Vesuvius Jones, here, is a poet as well as a capital flute
player,” d’Ivry began, indicating the boy with the spotty face—the latter
rolling his eyes to convey his silent opinion of his nickname.

“We have been putting together a review, for the ship,”
d’Ivry said. “The seamen put on a play aboard
Victory
, you know, and we aim to top them with a better. They sang
the same old songs. Jones writes new words to songs.”

“In the way of ‘Yankee Doodle,’” another midshipman put in,
a thin, earnest boy with spectacles flashing on his nose, and a somewhat
pedantic manner. “Which was all the crack in our fathers’ day. Started out as
‘Lucy Locket,’ you know.”

“Stop your gob, Gilchrist,” Bradshaw muttered. “You and your
fathers’ day.” He yanked the younger boy back.

“But it’s
true
—”

“Oh, stick a macaroni up your—”

“You don’t
stick
macaronis, you
were
one,” Gilchrist
said painstakingly. “My Uncle Timmons was a macaroni—”

It looked to Anna as if Mr. Gilchrist was going to be choked
out of having his say. To prevent what looked very like impending murder, she
turned to him. “What, pray, do you mean by macaroni? I know another meaning, in
Italy, a food made of duram.”

Thus addressed, Mr. Gilchrist was summarily freed by
Bradshaw and Jones. As he put his spectacles right and straightened his jacket,
he said, “It was a fashion, you see. ‘Call it macaroni’ refers to a fashion. My
uncle was a famous one. Never spoke anything but French, wore great ladder
toupets, and painted his lips red.”

“They all painted,” Jones put in. “Men
and
women.”

“But not in pictures,” Mr. Gilchrist returned.

He was thrust aside by d’Ivry, who said, “At all events,
ma’am, Bradshaw has the way of it. We make new songs, to sing in the fleet, to
old tunes. We thought it would be capital if we might put new words to French
songs. But we’re keeping it dead secret, see. It will be so much better if we
spring it on ’em.”

“Ah,” Anna said, thought, and then quickly, softly, sang “
Ça Ira
.”

The boys instantly took to the catchy tune. “Might I trouble
you to sing it again, please?” Mr. Jones asked.

“I will take you through it in phrases.”

Anna pitched her voice to carry no further than the room,
and instructed them the way she had been taught, phrase by phrase, with the
result they not only got melody and words, but they were reasonably on pitch.
She was less satisfied with her own voice. To her sensitive ear, she sounded
lamentably rusty. She must at least find a way to do her scales, she promised
herself, as the boys complimented her on a thumping great song.

Seeing how pleased they were, she gave them “
La Carmagnole
,”
which they liked even better.

They fell to putting together their own phrases, calling out
to Jones for rhymes. Anna left them to their poetic afflatus, and made her way
along the deck, enjoying the fresh air. She acknowledged every knuckled
forehead, every lifted hat with a smile and a dip of her head, as polite to the
one-legged cook’s mate as she was to the first lieutenant, standing on the
windward side of the quarterdeck as she passed below into the cabin.

Parrette had returned. “Michel took me aboard the little
ship,” she said. “He was given a day’s liberty, that we might catch up.” She
wiped puffy eyes; she had apparently been weeping, but Anna knew better than to
take notice. “Oh, I am so happy. So happy!” She added with a hint of her old
ferocity. “Though I would be happier if we could but leave in Michel’s company
before this threatened battle that they all anticipate with such joy. Men!
Shall I lay out your night things?”

“Not yet. I am going to read for a time.”

Parrette gave a short nod. “So I shall repair to the
gunroom. Michel sits there, and I have offered to make myself of use. I will
mend anything I am asked.”

“Michel!” Anna exclaimed. “Surely he has told you his
history?”

Parrette’s lips thinned. “He has begun to do so. Even though
he was given liberty, he was interrupted, oh, so much! And we wandered down
many other paths. His memories of Lyons, what happened there. We talked in
circles,” she finished, with evident satisfaction. “It will take many days to
relate it all.”

“I would very much like to hear it,” Anna said.

“So you shall. Michel will tell you himself, when things are
settled.” She did not further define ‘settled’ but left the cabin. Anna curled
up into the bench below the stern window, between two lanterns, and opened Mr.
Surr’s novel.

But it was not the novel that claimed her attention. Her
eyes skimmed over the words, the sense escaping her. She began a page three
times before setting the book on her lap.

She knew what it was. She wanted, for the first time, to
converse with the captain. There was no urgent question. It was just that ever
since she had heard his music, and begun to know a little about his crew, she
longed to ask about it all. How long had they been playing together, was it
always Bach? Did he hire crew, or were they assigned in some way? Did he seek
musicians?

Innocent questions, she hoped, scarcely impertinent, or
encroaching. And yet she was hesitant to take the ten short steps to the door,
and to poke her head out, though she could hear him moving about directly above
her; there was the rumble of his voice through the skylight above his dining
cabin, on the other side of the thin false walls.

No one had told her to confine herself to this cabin. She
went to the door, opened it, and looked out. The great doors to the cabin had
been replaced after the gun exercise. She stepped out at the same moment the
door opened, and here was the captain himself.

He checked at the sight of her, as the marine guard clashed
his musket on the deck.

“Good evening, Mrs. Duncannon,” he said, his voice dropping
self-consciously a note on the name that neither was at all accustomed to. He
glanced to the side and then back, and said, “It is our customary time for
supper, and while in general I cannot recommend stale, weevily ship’s biscuits,
or the other heel taps we have been obliged to eat, thanks to the return of the
tender, we now have fresh hardtack and cheese to go with it. If you would care
to join us, we would be honored.”

The smell of toasted cheese had already traveled along with
the steward bearing a heavy tray. With suddenly awakened appetite, Anna thanked
him.

When she entered the dining cabin, the easy chatter stopped
as the officers rose. Anna saw the subtle signals of the constraint. To call
attention to their sudden restraint would only worsen it. If she wished to
banish it, she must find a topic that would circumvent it. And that, she
thought, meant finding something that would not keep her at the center of
conversation. “I enjoyed, oh, very much, the Bach quartets. But I asked myself,
why the violins thus arranged for wind? Are there not many fine pieces written
for winds?”

A quick exchange of looks, then Lieutenant Sayers said with
an apologetic air, “Mine is the blame, ma’am, if blame there is to be. It is a
favorite exercise, transposing them. If the lady will indulge me with what
might be a tedious explanation . . .”

“But there is nothing tedious about music,” she said. “It is
my favorite topic.”

Lt. Sayers flushed slightly. “Then with your permission: I
believe there is a strong affinity between music and mathematics. The purity of
the one translates to the purity of the other. While our esteemed Lt. Abrams
here maintains that the two have little in common beyond the numbers of notes
and bars.”