Free Rondo Allegro by Sherwood Smith Page A

she was keeping something back. “It is a very
bad precedent, but what can be done? Perhaps there is a way to secure gifts
that we do not know about. They say Talma is always sent back with fabulous
treasures, gold, and the like, when he gives recitations for the First Consul.”
    “That’s the First Consul,” Anna replied, but she was
thinking, Madame Grand is nearly as high.
    Parrette then said, “I believe you should be trying at the
large houses.”
    “The performers are all professionals.” Anna studied
Parrette’s averted gaze. “Am I to understand that you no longer object?”
    “Yes, I object.” Parrette lifted her chin. “But I have been
considering. I owe your mother my life, and I promised her as she died in my
arms that I would care for you as she would wish. And so I have tried to do.
And yet I am afraid that Madame de Pipelet is soon to be married, and you know
that the Count has no use for music, anymore than he does for Paris.”
    “That is true,” Anna said slowly. Though the Count had
obligingly hired her for her first concert, it had been apparent that he had
done it only to please Madame de Pipelet.
    Parrette went on. “The fact is, English rules are no use to
us here—we are not in English society, as there is no English society. If
Madame does marry, I do not think the Count will take us, and we must live. I
have repaid Madame’s loan, but only just, with your earnings, meager as they
are.”
    She made no mention of the fact that Anna was not paying
Parrette at all, but Anna felt the pressure of obligation just the same, as
Parrette said gently, “Perhaps it is time to think of joining a company. It
will be no different than what you do in the chorus at the Lyri-Comique, and
you can still live as a respectable woman.”
    Anna straightened her back and tightened her ribs. She
thought about Captain Duncannon with increasing rarity, and never without
conflict. Even supposing he had survived, it was true that he had put them in
the way of locating Parrette’s long-lost son—if Michael Deflew and Michel
Duflot were even the same person—but what kind of man would cause his men to
mutiny?
    “I want to sing,” Anna stated firmly. “And that is what I
mean to do. And we must live.”
    When she got up the next morning, the wedding ring joined
her trinkets in their box. She consulted Madame about auditions—who promptly
agreed, with a betraying smile of relief, as she promised she would do her best
to arrange auditions.
    Unfortunately, in spite of all the praise Anna heard at the
private concerts, her auditions were dispiritingly unsuccessful. At the major
theaters, she heard variations on the same judgment: “Excellent range, but no
volume,” and “Fine phrasing, vocal purity, but inaudible from the gallery.”
    Finally, after great exertion on the part of her patroness,
she was invited to audition before the great Talma. In trepidation she dressed
in her finest, walked timidly onto the great stage at the Théâtre de la
République and gazed wonderingly out at the tiers of boxes.
    She could make out no more than a shadowy form among other
nameless faces in the middle of the theater. Below the stage, a violinist and a
cellist struck up the bars of the music Madame de Pipelet had chosen for her,
from her friend Jeanne-Hippolyte Devisme’s Praxitèle .
“Modern is good,” Madame had said—and reminding great people of her friend’s
opera would be even better.
    Sing with a light
heart, and tight middle . Anna straightened up, tried to lift her heart and
tighten the top of her ribs . . . and though she could hear her
singing was pure, perfectly phrased, true to each note, she felt it dissipating
like steam in that enormous cold space.
    At the end, she was not surprised when the actor’s rich,
powerful voice echoed with apparent effortlessness back to the stage: “Thin.
Thin person, thin voice. Come back again when you’ve achieved some substance.”
    Blinking against the sting in