Rondo Allegro

RONDO ALLEGRO

Sherwood Smith

www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Edition
September 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-428-4
Copyright © 2014 Sherwood Smith

Beta readers, Patricia Rice and Tadiana Jones,
with thanks to
Phyllis Irene Radford and Pilgrimsoul for proofing.

As the eighteenth century drew to a close, it seemed that
all the European world was at war.

A newly widowed woman peered out the rain-streaked windows
in hopes that the post had brought a letter from her younger son, which never
came; a boy shivered on the deck of a sloop-of-war, sobbing silently in fear
and loss as voices shouted in an incomprehensible language around him; a girl
walked out of the cook shop where she had been bound, and made up a new name by
the time she reached the crossroads.

All three will be met with, one by one, but my story really
begins on a simmering June day in Palermo, Sicily, 1799, as two men stood in an
archway under carvings of laughing demons. They gazed out at a young lady, each
man with very different thoughts.

The young lady sat on the rim of the fountain, staring
upward. She appeared to be singing softly, though no sound carried across the
sun-drenched courtyard.

Young lady? The younger man, a naval master and commander
with his single epaulette, was dismayed. She looked little more than a girl.

The elder, a discreetly dressed intelligence officer,
watched the commander covertly until the naval gentleman spoke: “You say her
father is connected to a ducal family?”

“Yes. We had the father investigated, of course, before we
approached him,” the intelligence officer replied in a low tone. “As you would
be justified in thinking, what noble gentleman, even a foreigner, performs as a
musician in someone else’s court? But the fact is indisputable: her father’s cousin
is the Duke of Ponte San Bernardo. Signor Ludovisi is considered a part of Naples’s
royal household, but unlike the rest of the titled rabble from various courts
hanging on around either the royal family or our legation, he is a master
violinist.”

“Where is Ponte San Bernardo? Or should I say, what?”

“It lies north, in one of the valleys, Captain Duncannon.”
The intelligence officer knew exactly where it lay, but he believed that naval
gentlemen—though capital on the waters—were ignorant as children when on land.
He waved his hand airily northward. “The title goes back to Frederick III in 1453,
which sounds more impressive than it is, as he reputedly handed coronets out
like coins on his way to his coronation. This one was in honor of a bridge
built by the Ludovisi, a cadet branch of the Ludovisi of Bologna. The duchy
itself is the size of an inkblot, where they seem to mainly grow grapes, goats,
and children. The girl will inherit nothing. There are numerous cousins in the
direct line of inheritance. But it sounds well, does it not? A connection with
a duke always sounds well.”

The intelligence officer paused to take in the effect of
these words on the captain. “You perceive I give you the truth, sir.”

The captain made a gesture that could have meant anything,
but would have conveyed to anyone who knew him his opinion of any ‘truth’
offered by intelligence officers. “So he is not a paid musician, yet he takes
money from agents from Whitehall?” His expression was habitually severe,
heightened by his hawk nose and strong chin; now his mouth thinned. “He’s a
spy?”

“Not at all, not at all, Captain Duncannon! He is a master
musician, and in the world of music, gifts are understood,” the intelligence
officer soothed, hiding his disgust. Really, these naval officers were so
simple! “He receives monetary gifts from King Ferdinand from time to time, usually
to acknowledge royal favor after an exceptional performance. Our contributions
are regarded in the same light, gifts from His Majesty’s government, to an
observer who has English interests at heart, due to his wife being English.”

“Another word for observer is spy,” thought the captain, who
did not, in fact, like or trust the low-voiced, soft-stepping intelligence
officers. Reason insisted that such men were loyal to king and country, but
Captain Duncannon’s private belief was that there would be far fewer wars if
the spies would all go home and employ themselves more honestly.

That was neither here nor there. So this impoverished cousin
to a duke spied for England, but who was to say he wasn’t also being given
pecuniary “gifts” by the French, the Spaniards, the Russians, the Ottomans, or
any other Mediterranean interest?

The captain studied with growing doubt the young
woman—girl—sitting there so patiently in the middle of that infernal courtyard.

The intelligence officer cleared his throat, and made another
attempt. “As you can see, she appears well-bred. Not even swarthy, as so many
Italians are.”

She was a thin slip of a girl, wearing a plain round gown,
her plank-colored brown hair pulled untidily back into two braids.

The intelligence officer, who had introduced himself only as
Mr. Jones, was an expert observer of his fellow man, and perceived his
companion’s misgivings. Time was pressing, and Nelson’s trusted Captain
Troubridge had insisted that young Duncannon—at three-and-twenty, he was known
privately by the younger officers of the fleet as The Perennial Bachelor—would
best serve their purposes.

Mr. Jones lowered his voice to scarcely above a whisper. “I
needn’t repeat that Nelson personally takes an interest. I know it’s irregular,
and what’s more important,
he
knows.
I was given to understand that anyone who obliges him in this way is sure to
make post sooner than later.”

‘Captain’ was a courtesy; Duncannon was only a very new commander,
his hope, like all his peers, that the rumors of fresh trouble from the French
would last long enough for him to gain his step. Once you made it to post, you
were on the list for life. Peace could break out, but you would be safely on
the ladder to admiral. A shipless master and commander was no better than a lieutenant.

“All you need do is marry her,” Mr. Jones repeated. “In
front of the old man. After which he promises to disclose certain information
that Nelson believes is crucial to the retaking of Naples. Signor Ludovisi
won’t last out the week, the physician insists. After that, you may do what you
wish with the girl.”

Duncannon turned Mr. Jones’s way. “Is she a papist? If so it
won’t do. But however, you said her mother was English.”

“Lady Hamilton assures me that the girl’s mother always
brought her to church with the English legation.”

“Who are the mother’s people?”

Mr. Jones shrugged. “The maternal grandfather, it is
rumored, was well-born but a scapegrace, who married against his family’s
wishes and took his wife and daughter to Europe. His wife died, leaving him
with a daughter named Eugenia. He ran out of money, or was cut off, and using
his wife’s name, took up teaching the sword to noble-born boys in Florence. We
know nothing for certain of his wife’s people; ‘Johnson’ encompasses, shall we
say, many possibilities?”

As does Jones
, the
captain thought, disliking the man’s insinuations.

“Miss Eugenia Johnson was a governess until she married
Ludovisi, produced our young lady, and died. There you have it all. If you
consider this background unsatisfactory, you are possessed of a near relation
who is a bishop, Troubridge tells me. With his aid, you can easily extricate
yourself from the legalities.”

Mr. Jones, perceiving the lengthening of Duncannon’s
hang-gallows face, understood that he had made a false step and changed his
tack. “Troubridge took care to assure me that though Naples’ court is known far
and wide as a hotbed of scandal, there is no evidence of her name among the
whispers. I myself investigated, and it’s true. Until the mother died last
year, whilst teaching French to some of the royal children, this young lady was
apparently counted among the miscellany in the royal wing. As they are, she is
a pupil under Maestro Paisiello.”

The man’s insinuation about his great-uncle, the bishop, was
no more than Duncannon had been thinking himself. But hearing the thought
spoken out loud irked his sense of what was just. Troubridge himself had sent
Duncannon toiling through the summer sun to this benighted palazzo, on
A mission of some delicacy, eh? Nelson would
entrust it to few, I need hardly tell you.

Jones, again hazarding a guess at the trend of the captain’s
thoughts, said persuasively, “Lady Hamilton is clamoring to put together the
wedding. She cannot do enough for the English in this way. Fremantle testifies
to that.”

The use of Captain Fremantle’s name had the effect that
Jones had hoped. Duncannon said slowly, “Considering the circumstances, I see
little reason to make a spectacle.”

“Then it becomes the simpler,” Jones said, bowing. “We’ll
have it at Ludovisi’s bedside, as he requested. Shall I carry your assent to
Nelson, then?”

“I condition only for assurance that the lady understands
what is going forward, and freely consents.”

“I will put a discreet inquiry in motion at once.”

o0o

Signorina Anna Maria Ludovisi sat in the strange courtyard
of Palazzo Palagonia, which had been the only palace large enough that could
house King Ferdinand, Queen Maria Carolina, the English legate Sir William
Hamilton and his lady, and their court. They had taken up the principal suites,
leaving the musicians and servants to find what quarters they could.

It was this scramble for a place to stay, under the hot
Sicilian sun, that had struck Anna’s father down.

Though he had been considered old when he married, Anna had
never thought her smiling father aged until quite suddenly, the year before,
when her mother had died soon after her little brother’s birth. Since then Papa
had been ailing, and soon after they reached this horrible palace, he had
collapsed.

She looked around, trying to fight the ever-present tears.
The riot of statuary had seemed so pretty from a distance, but once she’d
stepped close enough to see it, she’d found the statues of human-faced monsters
unsettling. The entire palace was like that, a strange, even unpleasant place,
making her feel as if she had somehow stepped from her own life with Mama and
Papa into one of the darker operas.

She shut her eyes, relieved when she heard the whisper of
men’s voices stop, and their footsteps fade away. Numb with exhaustion, and
aware of the ache of grief pressing at the edges of her consciousness, she
comforted herself with a mental review of one of Guglielmi’s more cheerful
melodies, one taught to the royal children as part of their musical education.
She could not bear to think about her father, slipping inexorably beyond even
her and her maid’s most devoted nursing.

Presently she spied the approach of one of Lady Hamilton’s
Neapolitan servants.

Anna liked and admired Lady Hamilton, who was beloved by
everybody who knew her. She made no pretense of hiding her humble beginnings as
Miss Emma Hart before her marriage to the legate. Anna had admired Lady
Hamilton as a child, seeing her weekly at the English church services at the
legation, before she was old enough to be invited to sing when Lady Hamilton
performed her Attitudes.

So her heavy heart lifted when the maid crossed the
courtyard to say, “Her ladyship wishes to speak to you, Signorina Anna.”

Anna followed the maid through the fantastical hallways to a
room full of marble inset. At least there were no monsters or satyrs here.

Lady Hamilton was alone, was gowned in the filmy draperies
that she preferred, a style that had changed decades of fashion. No one in
court now wore broad panniers or tight-waisted satin or brocade gowns.

She had carefully rehearsed what she was going to say to the
violinist’s girl. She felt sorry for the child, but uppermost in her mind was
her desire to please dear Nelson.