Rondo Allegro (31 page)

“It is novels I am most partial to,” she said. “Though I
think I would read anything. Books in English have been rarely met with. For
example, before I came away, I was nearly to the third volume of Mr.
Richardson’s
Clarissa
.”

They were both glad to find in the other an unexceptionable
subject of which they were genuinely fond, and it was therefore the topic of
books that occupied them for the remainder of the journey back to
Aglaea
. By the time they climbed aboard,
they had made the shift to music. Duncannon gave in to impulse, and invited her
to listen to the quartet who habitually met in the cabin.

The midshipmen of the
Aglaea
held their captain in the highest respect, but when they talked over chaps with
good humor, Captain Duncannon’s name was not the first to come up.

Yet soon after dawn lightened the horizon, the lookout
called down when he spotted a familiar topsail nicking the horizon. The
midshipman of the watch duly reported it to the captain. “Tender, sir, off the
starboard beam.”

This news would be generally approved, the midshipman knew,
because the tender would be laden with much-needed supplies (the midshipmen’s
mess was always short), and possibly even post, but never before had the
arrival of the tender caused the captain to lift his brows, and utter a short
laugh.

Altogether it had been a week for surprises, the midshipmen
were agreed when the watch changed.

In their cabin, Anna and Parrette were woken by the rhythmic
grinding sound of the waisters holystoning the deck. This sound began daily well
before dawn, but until this morning they had been so exhausted that neither had
been aware of it until now. Consequently they woke betimes, and so were ready
for the day well before the thunder of feet presaging the change to the
forenoon watch.

They were consequently waiting for the bell when there came
a scratch at the door. They were both taken by surprise when a muffled man’s
voice spoke:
“Maman?”

Parrette flew across the checkered canvas deck and flung
open the door to a wiry young man with curly black hair worn in a long sailor’s
queue, and black eyes very like her own.

“
Maman
, it
is
you,” he said in French, but he got
no farther because Parrette had hurled herself into his arms, squeezing his
breath out.

“Michel, my little cabbage,” Parrette exclaimed in the
accent of the streets of Lyons. “Ah, not so little anymore!” She stepped back
to smile tenderly up into her son’s face, an expression Anna had never seen and
would have thought alien to Parrette’s nature. Her eyes filled with unnoticed tears
as she asked, “How is it that you are
here?”

“We’re just come aboard this minute, and the captain sent me
to the cabin. I’m a purser’s mate now,” he said in English, a note of pride in
his voice. His French accent was almost gone; he had absorbed the accent of
Wapping with his seafaring duties. “Mr. Gates, he’s the purser, sent me and a
crew to Gib for supplies.”

“Michel,” Parrette said, wiping her eyes. “You are alive,
le bon Dieu
be thanked! How did this
come about?”

Michel blushed, crushing a shapeless hat in his hand. “The
captain found me in Denmark, after our brush with the Danes. Brought me aboard,
and I went from topman to yeoman of the sheets. My being a dab hand with
numbers, the skipper promoted me Michaelmas last.”

The bell rang then, and he looked past his mother to say
hastily to Anna, “Ma’am, I am to ask, would you honor the captain with your
company for breakfast. He is waiting.”

“Go, go!” Parrette pushed Anna through the door.

Her heart light with gratitude, Anna walked into the dining
area to find the Captain standing courteously.

“I wish to thank you,” she said as he seated her. “Oh, such
a prodigious surprise! Michel Duflot, alive—and here! Parrette is
aux anges
.”

Through the thin bulkhead came the sound of rapid French,
mixed with happy laughter.

Anna hazarded a quick glance, but the streaming light from
the windows rendered the captain in silhouette. She could not make out his
expression.

He watched her face turn his way. One moment she gazed at
him, brilliant pinpoints of sun in her eyes, then she lowered her head, her
eyelids shuttered, the blue veins delicately traced.

He had let a silence build. “I was happy to oblige,” he
said. “And in fact I need no extraordinary thanks, as it was entirely by
accident that I encountered him, and though it was impulse that brought me to
hire him, he has proved to be so excellent a crewman that there is scarce
credit in keeping him by. With his facility for languages he has preserved my
pursuer from being practiced upon by foreign dockyard sharps, and I expect to
see him a purser, or even a quartermaster, should he desire to give over
sailing, before he is much older.”

The steward had served the food and poured out tea. On his
departure, the captain said, “What is their story? When I first found him, he
was still learning English, and said only he had been pressed from the French
army. He had been just a boy.”

“Parrette Duflot would not object to your knowing, as you
have done her so very great a favor. She was married off, oh, so very young.
Duflot proved to be a drunken, gambling brute, who scarcely could find work, he
was so troublesome. He led her a life of the most dismal, and that was before
it was discovered he had already had a wife in Marseilles.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” he said, distracted by her hands,
the way she ate so neatly, so daintily, that absurd ring winking and gleaming
on her finger. It did not fit, and she sometimes flexed her little finger to
right it. He considered how to broach the question of how soon she might rid
herself of it altogether, as she laid down her fork, and, with her fingers
supported her cup against the pitch of the ship.

She went on. “You know there was terrible destruction during
the Revolution. When his first wife came to Lyons to find him, Duflot threw
down his tools and went off to the Vendée, taking along Parrette’s son. He was
a little boy.”

“We heard that the Vendee was a terrible slaughter.”

“So it was! In Lyons, Parrette was left with his debts. The
first wife quarreled very much with Parrette’s family over Parrette’s bride
price. Then Fouché began committing atrocities of the most sanguinary in Lyons,
the entire street was destroyed, and with it, their livelihood. They all fled
the city. Through Duflot’s relations, Parrette discovered that Duflot went off
to Italy with his corps, and she followed, wanting much to get Michel back.
When she at last finds—found—them, it is that her husband was killed in a brawl
with a sailor, before their ship fell into the hands of the English. The
prisoners were told, choose impressment or prison. She found the prison, to
discover Michel chose impressment.”

“How did she come to your family?”

“My mother discovered her penniless and abandoned in
Calabria. She hired Parrette as a tire woman, but soon promoted her to personal
maid. Parrette was devoted to my mother, oh, much, and after she died, she was
like a mother to me.”

The sun had gone behind a cloud, dimming the strong
sunlight. When she glanced up, her eyes met his. She dropped her gaze to his
hands, clean, with well-kept nails. “She never gave up hope of finding Michel.”

Then a new thought occurred to her. Michel had come with the
supply ship. It was here.

She glanced out the stern windows, and made out the uneven
line of Spain on the horizon. They had left the great ships behind, and were
now closer to land. “Are we to expect to be sent to Gibraltar, then? Our trunks
can be made ready in a moment.”

Captain Duncannon bowed slightly. “My sincere apologies, but
my orders from my superiors will have to supersede my offer. The tender shall
be required to run dispatches. I beg your forgiveness, and I promise we shall
do our best to accommodate you as we can.”

She was spared the necessity of expressing her
disappointment when there came an insistent scratch at the door. A small
midshipman came in, hat squashed tightly to his side. He flushed scarlet when
he saw Anna. “Sir, the officer of the w-watch s-sent me t-t-to . . .”
He lost his breath, shut his eyes hard, and let out the word, “Signals.”

“Thank you, Mr. Corcoran. I shall be on deck directly.”

“S-s-sir.”

The captain rose and reached into a trunk behind him. He
came out with a small stack of books, which he handed to Anna. “I took the
liberty of making up a collection, between Sayers, myself, and the surgeon’s
mate. I must return to duty. Will you honor us with your company at dinner?”
And then, “I mentioned our musicians. Perhaps I ought to warn you that we must
rely on ourselves for entertainment, and so you are not to be expecting
expertise. It would be perfectly understandable should you object to hearing
music written for strings tootled on winds.”

Anna did not know what to make of this grand statement,
whose effect was somehow overpowering. She knew him too little to detect the
signs of embarrassment, even guilt for the necessary lie to cover his orders.

She spread her hands. “I am happiest hearing music,” she
said. “Any music will do.” She curtseyed, then picked up the books. She meant
to whisk herself out, but she had scarcely made it two steps before the ship
pitched sharply.

Her hands being full of books, she teetered. He sprang to
her side and set his palms along her arms. His breath stirred the top of her
hair. She felt the heat of a blush from her cheeks to her toes and sped into
the little cabin next door.

She set the books on her trunk, relieved to find herself
alone. She brushed her fingers over the top of her head, and blushed again, but
at least no one was there to see it.

o0o

Dinner was enlivened by the presence of three of Captain
Duncannon’s officers: the tall, gaunt surgeon’s mate, Mr. Jorgensen; a
spotty-faced, gangling midshipman named Mr. Jones, who seemed lost in his
uniform; and pale-haired Mr. Sayers.

Initially, Anna could see how constrained they were by her
presence. Every remark occasioned a quick glance her way, often with another peek
at the captain as if to see how he judged their words. Only Mr. Sayers and the
captain spoke easily, their accent very alike—even the rise and fall of their
voices, their phrasings, so similar that Anna suspected before the captain
mentioned it that they had known one another in school.

“Even then,” Mr. Sayers said to Anna, “the captain was your
great musician, though only in the fourth form. I was inspired to take up the
flute because of him; you may either congratulate or condemn him after we have
played for you.”

Anna had never seen Captain Duncannon smile like that. There
were attractive shadows outside of his mouth, small ones that made him seem
young as any of the boys, though only for a moment. His smile was quick, there
a moment then gone, a grace-note. Mr. Sayers smiled steadily, his eyes narrowed
with good humor.

“Though I was always partial to music, learning the clarinet
began entirely as a subterfuge,” Captain Duncannon admitted. “I was ten years
old, and discovered that the headmaster gave extra leave to those who went into
the village to an old Italian music master who had retired there, teaching
several instruments. I would do anything to get out of school on long spring
and summer afternoons, and I thought the clarinet would be easier to learn than
the violin. The joke was on me, as it became my boyhood passion.” He turned to
Mr. Jones. “You said you found the flute easy, I recollect.”

Mr. Jones flushed. “Only because I’d first learnt trumpet—”
His voice broke. He flushed even redder, abandoned whatever he was going to
say, and gulped his wine.

Anna was relieved that Captain Duncannon had occasioned only
two bottles of wine to be set out, and there was tea as well as water. Mr.
Jorgensen, it transpired, did not touch wine. Anna was able to water hers, and
confined herself to a single glass.

She noted that the captain only refilled the boys’ glasses
once, and the rest of the second bottle was split between him and his first
lieutenant.

When they drank the health of the king, the meal was deemed
finished—and she was not expected to go sit alone. Instead, the captain told
her they would set up for music, and she might watch if it would amuse her. The
steward brought in a couple of his mates, the table was knocked apart into
pieces with a couple of smart blows from a mallet, and then tidied away in the
matter of a minute, as the four musicians took out their instruments and
readied them.

Grog was brought out, a tankard set by each music stand, and
then the mates departed.

The four tapped the checkered deck, watching each other,
then struck up the well-known Bach air “Wachet auf.” It was odd, hearing it
played by wind instruments rather than violins, but then Anna had also heard it
on the harpsichord as well as the fortepiano. Though the musicians varied in
skill, she rather thought that Maestro Paisiello would approve of the
arrangement.

Oh, Maestro Paisiello! She hoped he was well in Paris,
writing great music now that he had an emperor as patron.

Paris. She did not miss Paris as much as she missed the
maestro, or maybe it was really that she missed those warm days in Naples’
summery weather, the smell of orange blossoms drifting in the open windows
while she was singing her scales. Looking out upon the lacy fig trees and
myrtle hedges as she practiced her first arias.

She recollected how fervently she had promised never to
slacken her studies, and she resolved to find some corner of the ship where she
could at least hum, to warm her voice and work on her breathing. Perhaps she
could recapture the old joy.