Rondo Allegro (24 page)

“How do you communicate with him?”

“I don’t. Oh, I wrote before I left Naples, but I never
received an answer.”

“Naples?” Villeneuve repeated. “Five or six years ago . . .
that would be when Nelson was marauding all over southern Italy. You are
married to one of Nelson’s captains?”

“It was an arranged marriage,” she protested. “We saw one
another exactly twice, and never again.”

“Twice, and never again,” he repeated, “and yet you stayed
faithful, honoring your vows? I must request you do
me
the honor of not assuming I am stupid.”

“Honoring my vows,” Anna repeated, flushing in anger. “You
can only have got that from Jean-Baptiste Marsac, who made me a dishonorable
offer. In refusing, I said those very words. It must be spite. I cannot imagine
why he would even tell you!”

Villeneuve let out his breath in a sharp, hissing sigh.
“Your maid refused to speak to us, and we have her locked up elsewhere for
further questioning, if need demands. Three others of your company all attested
to the fact that you are married to an English sea captain. They also said,”
and he touched his fingers on each point. “You came to the company in Paris,
where you consorted with soldiers. Then you traveled with the company to the
north coast, the west coast. The south coast. And all over Spain, the kingdom
of our allies. For an innocent singer, you seem to have happened most
extraordinarily upon all the sites about which Nelson and his friends in London
would desire most to gain firsthand reports.”

“But I never—”

Another finger. “I am not finished! In each of these places,
you and this maid of yours sought newspapers. It was not in French that you
spoke to one another. Sometimes English, sometimes Italian. The maid was seen
on the north coast questioning mariners, and again on France’s coast. They said
you walked out to inspect the garrisons of every Spanish city you visited.”

“I did not.” Anna spread her hands in appeal. “I visited
cathedrals, and castles, and marketplaces. Why would I go to a garrison?”

“To inspect the strength of our allies,” he retorted. “And
yesterday you and your maid, upon arrival, walked directly to the wharf to spy
on our fleet. Do not deny it—you were seen by my own men!”

“I walked down to breathe the fresh air,” Anna began.

Villeneuve raised his hand to stop her. With his other, he
pinched his fingers between his brows. “In a very few hours, I must inspect the
fleet. That cannot wait. We will question you later, as vigorously as is
necessary. I am very sorry to have to say it. Making war upon women turns my
stomach; it is perhaps as well that Minister Fouché is not here, for he would,
from all accounts, enjoy nothing better. But I will do my best,” he promised
heavily as he rose to his feet. “Because it is my duty, and the devil knows we
are hard put enough as it is. As you no doubt saw on your tour along the wharf.
Bon soir
, Madame Sea-Captain.”

The last word was spoken with heavy irony, and the door shut
behind him, leaving her in the darkness. Anna stared in the direction of his
empty chair, for a time too sick and too numb to react.

Exhaustion caused her to doze fitfully until the crick in
the angle of her neck, and her dry mouth, woke her. Pale light, the color of
dirty milk, emanated from two tiny windows set up high on either side of the
cell’s door. Through them light filtered, enough to reveal dirty stone. In the
corner was a bucket, not even decently covered. Against the far wall, unseen
until now, was a narrow cot covered with what looked like rotten sailcloth.
Anna shuddered, her gaze wandering past to the three-legged stool at the cot’s
foot, on which sat a cannikin. She got up and looked into it. She smelled
water.

She tasted it cautiously. It was stale, but no more than one
got in most inns, and tasted slightly metallic from sitting in the can, but she
knew good well water when she met with it.

Anna drank half, forcing herself to ration it. Who knew when
she might get any more.

She returned to the bench, her arms wrapped around herself
tightly. Tears burned, but she would not let them fall. She had done nothing
wrong. She had to find a way to convince the admiral, and letting herself weep
and wail would not help her to think.

But her mind revolved in circles, impelled by questions she
could not answer. Gradually she became aware of occasional puffs of air through
the tiny grated windows, and she closed her eyes, trying to imagine the endless
sky as seen the day before, the seabirds diving and cawing, the restless green
waters.

Now the dancers will
be warming their limbs
, she thought, and she got to her feet. First
stealthily, jerkily, she began the well-known patterns, and soon found a small
measure of comfort in the movements. She did not have to think. She stretched
and arched and danced, aware of the kinks and tweaks smoothing away.

At the end she stood in the middle of the room, her throat
aching. Now she would have been warming her voice with scales. She found middle
C, and discovered it was comforting to sing her scales softly, almost under her
breath. When she had finished, her throat was ready, and her blood pulsed
through her veins. Sorrow flooded her heart, overflowing into song.

Berenise’s “Da Torbida Procella” poured forth as she sang
down mighty Pharaoh.

She sang aria after aria, songs of sacrifice, loss, and
passion.

She had finished Gluck’s “Je t’implore” from
Iphigenie en Tauride
and was beginning
Purcell’s anguished “When I am Laid in Earth” from
Dido and Aenas
when once again she heard the rhythmic tramp of
feet.

She flung herself back on the bench, her breath held in
terror. Again, the patrol halted directly outside her door. It was unlocked,
and to her amazement, the soldiers were not in the blue of France, but white
and gold, the livery of one of the dons.

“Senora,” spoke a tall officer with a ferocious mustachio.
“By the orders of Admiral Federico Carlos Gravina y Nápoli, you are to be
conducted to the Castillo de Santa Catalina.”

And so it was the fortress after all.

Blinking back tears, Anna pulled on her mantilla and stepped
out, and stared not over the ocean, as she had imagined, but down into a plaza
alive with seamen and officers and guards. Most of them were motionless, faces
upturned as they gazed at her. She looked away, glad of the relative shrouding
of the mantilla as she followed two tall guards, one bony, one stout, their
necks brown from the sun below the polished edges of their helmets.

When they reached the end of the gallery and turned through
a gate, she glanced up in trepidation at the fortress with its jutting points
overlooking the bay. The massive honey-colored stone building shouldered above
her menacingly.

The patrol escorted her up a narrow switchback that
gradually widened, until they passed through iron-reinforced gates, under ugly
cannon jutting between the castellations.

They crossed a vast parade ground as the smell of stables
wafted on the cool breeze, and into the stone building. Anna clasped her hands
tightly, terrified. But the patrol did not march her down into a noisome
dungeon. Once again they climbed tiled stairs.

Up and up, until at last they stopped outside a thick double
door beautifully carved with biblical scenes. The guards in white and gold at
either side stood stiffly, as one of her guards opened the door.

The mustached officer lifted his gloved hand to indicate she
must go inside. Anna’s knees trembled as she stepped tentatively in a beautiful
room with whitewashed walls, a brilliant rug covering the floor, and fine
carved chairs and benches arranged around a table with curved legs ending in
lion’s feet. An enormous epergne of silver sat upon it, framed by solid silver
candelabra. An intricately wrought crucifix hung on one wall, and on the others
gold-framed paintings of men in stiff, jewel-encrusted armor and sashes, either
mounted on rearing horses, or standing in what appeared to be marble rooms,
surrounded by the accoutrements of war.

At the other end of the room a second, even finer table had
been set, behind which sat a swarthy, handsome man wearing a tightly fitted
black coat with crimson lapels embroidered in gold, and a crimson sash. His
epaulettes looked to be made of real gold. Over the front of his splendid coat
extended a green and white silk sash, and on his breast a great medal whose
diamonds reflected light from the open east windows. The reflections caught the
streaming sunlight and threw rainbow splashes against the white walls.

The young officer clicked his heels and announced in a
hieratic voice, “His Excellency, Don Federico Carlos Gravina y Nápoli, Admiral of the
Spanish Fleet. Senora Duncannon.”

“Thank you, Captain. You may withdraw,” the admiral said in
the lisping Spanish of the don.

When the door had shut, a pair of narrow dark eyes searched
Anna’s face, then the admiral spoke in Neapolitan. “I understand that we are
countrymen?”

Anna was so startled to hear Neapolitan she gazed witlessly
for a heartbeat or two. Belatedly she remembered her curtsey, and performed it
with grace. When she rose, she thought she detected a slight easing, almost a
smile in the hard face before her.

“Your Excellency,” Anna said. “I am not a spy. I do not know
how this comes about.”

“It appears to originate in the surprising fact that a young
Neapolitan lady, living in France, appears to have somehow annexed an English
sea captain as a husband. Before we proceed to recent events, you might tell me
how this came about?”

Anna bit her lip, and decided that half-truths were worse
than useless. And she would scorn to lie. “Well, the origins begin in political
affairs in Naples. Your Excellency is surely familiar with those?”

“I left Naples as a lad of twelve, but consider me tolerably
well informed.”

“I did not quite understand it at the time, but rebels
having taken Naples and proclaimed a republic, my father’s man knew many of the
ringleaders . . .”

Out it all came, including Anna’s own lack of awareness of
what her father had traded in order to gain Anna a place, exactly as Parrette
had later related.

She finished, “. . . and so my father was
not
a spy. But Beppe had heard this
information through his friends among the
lazarones
,
and my father only sought to see me established, since there was no one else.
My mother being dead.”

Admiral Gravina said suavely, “I am sorry to hear that. God
rest her soul.”

Uncertainly, Anna went on. “There is little more to tell. I
was married to Captain Duncannon, who I subsequently saw exactly once, after a
fete, and then never again. The English fleet sailed away, and when Sir William
and Lady Hamilton departed Naples, I was left to my own devices. Maestro Paisiello—”

“A great man, a very great man,” the admiral interrupted,
the first real expression she had seen from him. “I myself have traveled great
distances to hear his work.”

“Yes, he is! He gave me an introduction to a lady in Paris,
a great patron of female musicians and singers. When Madame de Pipelet remarried
and quit Paris, I was hired into Company Dupree, and I have been with them ever
since. That is the truth.”

“And yet you do not explain your maid questioning mariners
on the north coast, and so forth? Or did your company all tell lies?”

“There were no lies. But misunderstandings, yes.” And Anna
told the admiral about Michel Duflot, ending with, “So you see, with
revolutionary feelings being so against the English, we thought it best never
to mention Michel. But we always hoped to find word of his ship, at least.”

The admiral moved a diamond-handled gold letter opener from
left to right upon his desk, placing it as if getting the correct angle was of
monumental importance, then he looked up. “My men have been calling you the
angel of sorrow.”

“I don’t understand, Your Excellency,” Anna said.

“Your singing,” he replied, lifting a hand toward the
window. “Perhaps it was not intentional? They could hear you through the
grating in what was actually a winter pen for donkeys. We had to clear those
cells out for the French, as we are very pressed for space. My prison,” he
added with a faint tone of irony, “being crowded with unruly and outright
criminals who call themselves French sailors. But you must have observed these
troubles between what are supposed to be allies.”

“I truly didn’t,” Anna said unhappily. “I mean, I might have
if someone pointed it out, but I was not looking at sailors and the like. I
wanted to see the sea and the sky, my first glimpse of the great Atlantic. It
has been so very hot, much hotter than it ever is in Paris. I don’t know how to
convince you or Admiral Villeneuve that I am not a spy.”

“Then you probably do not know that until fairly recently, I
was in fact an ally of the English,” the admiral went on.

Not certain how to respond, Anna made a little gesture, half
of appeal, then dropped a quick curtsey again—long-inculcated habit from her
days in the royal palace, when curtseying and dropping one’s gaze was often the
safest answer.

He observed her bewilderment, the unhappy quirk to her
brows, and went on, watching carefully, “I spent time in England studying their
methods of maritime warfare, and I was honored to serve alongside Admiral Lord
Samuel Hood at the siege of Toulon.”

From all the reaction Anna made to ‘the siege of Toulon’ he
might as well have been discussing events at the Antipodes. He made his
decision; she was only aware of his continued irony as he said, “But our Prince
of the Peace decided that Spain must throw in with the French republic,
specifically with the new Emperor of the French, and so . . .”
He lifted the letter opener. Light gleamed along the golden blade. “I am placed
under the command of Admiral Villeneuve by royal decree.”