Rondo Allegro (35 page)

The lieutenant hesitated, and Captain Duncannon knew why,
but he forbore saying anything. There was no letter to go home from him, and
Sayers knew it.

Earlier in the year, when they had been at the West Indies
chasing the French, the news that the packet carrying their post—an
accumulation of post going back to Christmas and before—had been swamped, the
captain alone had been unmoved. In their years of sailing together Sayers had
only seen Henry Duncannon write one letter, to his mother, after they read of
the death of his father in the newspapers half a year after the fact. He would
not write home now. As far as Captain Duncannon was concerned, a line in a
newsprint article reporting his death in battle would suffice.

The lieutenant glanced at the door. No one was in view,
beyond the musket of the sentry stationed at the other side. Trusting to the
noise of the rain pouring on the deck overhead, Lt. Sayers said apologetically,
“The lady?”

Captain Duncannon also glanced at the door. “Where is she?”

“She and the maid are both with the surgeon, learning his
ways. If . . . if it comes to me to direct her movements, what
are your wishes?”

Captain Duncannon felt an unwonted, and entirely undeserved,
pleasure, as if he could take credit from her creditable gesture. He deserved
no such credit. Her merits were entirely her own; if anything, his personal
resentments, which owed nothing to her, were such that he had not given a
thought to her eventual future should anything happen to him.

He felt, in short, rather like a scrub.

The idea unsettled him. He was impatient with himself for
weakness. This pride in her gallantry, his pleasure in her neat ways, her
grace, even the sound of her voice, it was nothing more than mere animal
nature—as ephemeral as morning mist and every bit as obscuring to the clear
sight he must rely on shortly.

Collingwood had kept her aboard the
Aglaea
, but after the battle, his scruples would have no basis. A
spy, absurd! She must go back to Naples, or wherever she called home; he could
make arrangements when she was comfortably established.

He was startled to find Sayers waiting for an answer.

The captain took his letter and locked it in his desk, then
he said, “Should anything happen to me, she will in course have my fortune.” It
had been so many years since he had let himself think in these terms it felt
very like opening a door into an attic long closed off. He nodded. “That will
leave her comfortably off. Exert yourself to see that she gets safely home,” he
added, thinking of Naples.

Then he returned to his desk, and the lieutenant went out.
He had come to like and even to admire the captain’s lady, though it was
apparent that the marriage was only on paper. They each slept alone. It filled
him with inexplicable sadness: he was old for a lieutenant, because his family
had no influence at the Admiralty. He longed for his step, for were he to be
promoted to post captain, he and his Mary, waiting patiently in Sussex, could
wed.

He longed for his step, he longed for money, and he longed
for his Mary. His old friend Henry Duncannon possessed the first two, but even
with what anyone might consider the perfect wife right at hand, he had not the
third, which, in some ways, was the most important of all.

Signal flags fluttered up and down the lines on both
sides.

Out at sea, boats plied to and fro, conveying officers to
meetings and dinners. Captain Fremantle hosted a splendid meal for his fellow
ship-of-the-line captains, far astern of the frigates strung out to make
certain the French did not slip back into port.

But Admiral Villeneuve had no intention of regaining the
harbor at Cadiz. He had obtained warning that the emperor had issued a fresh
set of orders contradicting all previous—and that these new orders were being
carried by his replacement.

His signals directed his fleet into readiness, and the
instructions he sent out with aides were to prepare for Nelson’s throwing away
the old line-of-battle rules in favor of cutting the line. “Use your own
initiative,” Villeneuve sent to both Spanish and French captains, and to try to
form the unwilling allies into a cohesive line, he insisted that they form up interweaving,
one French ship, then one Spanish.

Aboard the
Aglaea
,
Captain Duncannon invited all his officers, including the warrant officers, to
a crowded, high-spirited dinner, and made certain that the hands were given
their Sunday duff as dessert.

Anna dined once more with the officers. The talk began with former
battles, those the men had survived and those they had heard about, and the
meal ended after a lengthy review of every shot of the Battle of the Nile, at
which Captain Duncannon had earned not only a medal but his promotion to
commander.

After the meal, they dispersed to Sunday leisure, though
there was no relaxed atmosphere. Anna, walking the deck, surprised many
furbishing up uniform coats and accouterments as if for a general inspection. Captain
Duncannon seemed to be everywhere at once, dealing with an unending stream of
questions, while always checking the sky, the sails, and of course the signal
flags fluttering from the next frigate up in the line.

Presently Anna became aware of Mr. Jones, the lanky
midshipman with the large Adam’s apple and the spotty face, lurking forward of
the mainmast by the hatch. He appeared to want to speak to her.

She drew near, and when the boy made his leg and doffed his
hat, his gaze darted about, and his hands dove into his pockets, yanked out
hastily, then rubbed together. “I know Bradshaw, my particular mate, well, he’d
take snuff if he thought I’d talked to you, but if. . .

“Jupiter, this is hard, this sounded better in my head. If
anything goes amiss with Bradshaw. If you or the captain would carry the news
to his family. Don’t let ’em find out in the newspapers. He tried writing a
letter, for in case, you know, but d’Ivry said something about sentiment, and
Bradshaw got angry and threw it out the scuttle. Now he regrets it, but time is
too short to pen another.”

“But surely you will be below, you and the little boys?”

“Lord, ma’am, the reefers command gun crews, those who
aren’t on deck, and the boys will be running powder and the like. Even that
pompous goat Leuven will be on deck next or nigh the skipper, taking notes for
the official log.”

Anna looked into that pimply face, the earnest brown eyes,
and said, “I promise, should anything happen, I will do what I can. But I am
going to pray that nothing bad happens.”

“Thank you, ma’am, if you pray nothing bad happens to us,
but I’d as lief God would smite the froggies and the dons right, left, and
center,” he said, grinning. A flick of his hat, and he was gone.

o0o

Anna and Parrette slept in their plainest, sturdiest
clothing in case they were wakened early for the ship to be readied for battle.

And so it was. Scarcely had they been roused by
lantern-bearing shadowy figures than a party of seamen entered with mallets and
began banging away.

Anna walked up to the deck, peering out to the east. The
stars still twinkled, remote and glittering. There was only the faintest
lifting on the horizon. Close by, someone stamped, coughed, a low-voiced, “By
your leave, mum,” and here were the afterguard, ready with their holystones and
buckets, preparing to scrub the deck by lantern-light. Even impending battle
did not warrant an abatement of the naval passion for cleanliness.

Someone brought hot tea to the deck, and Anna stood at the
rail with it in her fingers, as the cool breeze lifted her hair. Life seemed
unreal at that moment: the peace of the night, so quiet, and so false with the
promise of violence by day.

A tall, slim male silhouette joined her, with a respectful
tip of the hat. “Mr. Sayers,” she said. “Has it been an anxious night?”

“The Admiral has been preoccupied,” he admitted. “The
captain has been summoned to the flag—all the frigate captains. As soon as we
have light, the boat will be in readying. We cannot let the French by.”

“If it should happen?” she asked.

“Why, then Boney will have his invasion at last.”

“Invade England?
Why
should he invade England?” she asked, and then shook her head. “I confess, I
have no head for politics, not at all. I cannot understand what he is about. He
was First Consul, he brought about a cease of terrible civil war in France. He
is now emperor. Why does he not decree an end to fighting?”

Lt. Sayers smiled. “When the Peace of Amiens was concluded in
the year two, that was what we all expected, even to Boney’s making himself
king. But the very next year he broke out—slandered the British ambassador—sent
armies on the march. We are told that Talleyrand, who, whatever else they say
about him, seems to understand that France would do better with peaceful
relations—is cast down, and Boney wants not only Europe, but will not stop
until he sees the Pacific Ocean under his command. But first, he must rid
himself of us.” He struck the breast of his best coat, the buttons shiny. She
noticed in the swinging light that there was even fresh lace in his hat.

“Good morning, ma’am. Lieutenant.”

They both turned, and there was the captain, his coxswain
behind him. Captain Duncannon took his hat off to his wife, noting the
simplicity of her dress, her tight shoulders. “I have given orders for cold
bread and meat to be served out, that the galley fires need not be lit. I doubt
the admiral will keep us long.”

Already the eastern horizon had paled, touching the waters
to a deep, serene blue. Blocks clacked, ropes creaked, as the captain’s gig was
hoisted over the side to splash down.

One last glance upward—Anna saw his face turned toward her,
or toward the lieutenant, she could not ascertain which in the uncertain
light—and then he settled into the boat, and the coxswain, a deep-voiced,
powerful man, called out the order to ready oars.

They watched the captain’s boat diminishing in the direction
of a cluster of silhouettes emerging from the gloom, their ship lights a galaxy
of yellow stars below the celestial blue-white.

Presently the watch changed, the rolled hammocks were
brought up, and it seemed to Anna that they were packed with extra firmness
into the shrouds; time began to flow, faster and faster, a flow from which she
caught individual moments.

The sun rose at last, and there appeared what seemed to be
an infinite line of ships—great, towering ships—rolling on a slow, building
Atlantic swell. But it was not an orderly line. Some sailed close together,
others seemed to be maneuvering in front of or behind their neighbors.

Voices seemed distinct, sharp. Bits of conversations:

“We’re in for a blow, or I’m a Dutchman!”

“That one has to be the
Santísima
Trinidad
.”

“Shift over, mate. Your dad warn’t no glazier. A man can’t
see through you, and I want a glim at them frogs.”

“They’re drunk as Davy’s sow, ha ha!”

“They appear to be wearing in succession,” Lt. McGowan
called down from the masthead.

“’S that what they call it?” a deep-voiced upper-yardsman
hooted, amid much laughter.

Lt. Sayers called, “Quiet fore and aft.”

The noise died away to soft-voiced mutters here and there.

Sights: little Mr. Corcoran, his voice shrill as a girl’s,
as he shouted imprecations at a party of seamen. D’Ivry with his head bowed,
his face absorbed as he listened to that little boy Gilchrist, his hands
gripped tightly together. Then both lifting their heads, quick as startled birds,
as the lookout hailed, “Captain’s gig two points off the stern.”

The officers all wore their best, as if they were going to a
ball. The marines as well, their cross-belts pipe-clayed white, red coats neat,
hair thickly coated with powder. Their sergeant walked along the gangway, the
brass gorget on his breast throwing back the strong sunlight. Some of his men
stood at the sides of the ship, muskets ready, others climbed into the tops
with their heavy bags of shot and powder, where Anna glimpsed them taking up a
station on the mastheads.

In contrast to them, the seamen grouped around the guns, now
cast loose on the bare deck, were simply dressed. Many had bared themselves to
the waist, tying handkerchiefs around their brows; she had not seen half-naked
men since she was a child running about the harbor at Naples. Some of the men
worked away at polishing their cannon to a gleam. On the forecastle, the
armorer and a party of burly sheet-anchormen polished cutlasses.

There was Captain Duncannon, his hat clasped beneath his
arm, his Nile medal worn on his coat.

He climbed with ease over the side, his gaze turned upward
as he checked the sea, the sky, the rigging and sails—the Union Jacks at
foretop stays, the peak, and the mizzen, so that they could be identified in
the smoke—and then he swept his gaze over the netting spread above to catch
falling debris, down the deck, along the guns gleaming in the low sunlight, the
gun ports open wide. He took in the fire buckets, and the sand sprinkled on the
dampened decks. The racks for the cannon balls had been filled. Lanterns were
lit, water casks opened, powder boys for once still, each with his box filled
and ready.

All was ready.

He turned, and started when he saw Anna, so very out of
place in this setting. She returned his regard with a steady, troubled gaze,
and he was aware of his heart stirring. There was no room in him now for
resentment; he wished suddenly, almost violently, that he had made the time to
talk to her. But what would he say?

“Good morning, ma’am.” He doffed his hat.

“Good morning,” she said, gulping in a breath to still the
tremor in her voice. “Pray, may I ask—those swords in sharpening. Is it
expected that the French will come aboard to attack us?”