Free Rondo Allegro by Sherwood Smith Page B

her eyes, Anna walked off, the
only sound the quiet thud of her footsteps. She made it to the street door
before the tears overwhelmed her.
    Not two days later, a short, round, balding little man
attended Madame’s salon, and after Anna sang for the company, he was introduced
to Anna as Monsieur Dupree.
    “Very fine, Signorina, ah, Citizen,” he said, bobbing his
head. “I think you would sound well at my theater, the Théâtre Dupree. On the
Boulevard, you know. Intimate. My wife is the principal singer, but we need a
new young soprano for Madame de Pipelet’s Sappho .
Our Lorette is too old for a soubrette, and at all events she prefers the
breeches roles.”
    Anna had been all along the boulevard by then. She
remembered the Théâtre Dupree as one of the smallest, in a ramshackle barn of a
building that probably had been old when Louis XIV came to Paris to attend the
theater. Old, she knew, meant abysmal pay, but poor pay was better than no pay
at all.
    She thanked M. Dupree gratefully, and discovered the
following day that though the theater was indeed exactly as old as she had
feared, its size was perfect for her voice. Madame, taller and larger than her
husband, joined M. Dupree in their enthusiastic praise.
    Anna had become a professional.
    o0o
    “Listen, Duncannon, the Prince of Denmark appears to be as
decisive as a shuttlecock,” Captain Fremantle said as they stood on the deck of
the Ganges , overlooking the smoke-filled
harbor at Copenhagen.
    Captain Duncannon coughed, blinking his stinging eyes. The
smolder from the sea battle and the subsequent fires wreathed them, blurring
Fremantle’s round countenance, though he stood not two paces away.
    “Nelson is to go ashore in the morning,” Captain Fremantle
said. “I will stay and oversee finishing the burning of the captured ships.”
    “All of them?” Captain Duncannon asked in surprise. The
Danes built beautiful ships. Though one had blown up, and others were severely
damaged, that was after fighting every bit as intense as the Battle of the
Nile.
    “We can’t spare people to man the prizes,” Fremantle said.
“We are stretched thin enough as it is. Speaking of orders, I want you to
inspect the wounded taken ashore. I need someone I can trust to sort out the
prisoners. Make certain that none of our men are among ’em, and that includes a
few rascally French pretending to be ours. We’ve already caught one son of a
Whitechapel bird-catcher trying to talk his way aboard of the grounded Bellona , my guess is to get at the
gunpowder.”
    Captain Duncannon had already been awake for most of the
night before the day’s long, fierce battle. But there was too much to be done
for anything more than a bite of bread and a sip of very cold coffee to wet his
mouth.
    His gig rowed him ashore, where many of the wounded had been
landed, Danes, French, and English mixed promiscuously. Out of the chaos
appeared a smoke-blackened lieutenant, who hailed him with relief. “You are
timely come, Captain,” he exclaimed once Duncannon had explained his orders.
“Though we’re a vast deal better than we were a few hours ago.” He turned to a
short, thin young man whose black hair was queued in a seaman’s pigtail, one
arm wrapped in a sling.
    “This here is Seaman Dafoe, out of Bellona . He fell off the foremast yard when Bellona struck. He’s been rousting out the Frenchies—speaks the
lingo, including all the dialects that I can’t make head nor tail of.”
    ‘Dafoe.’ The name was familiar, but Captain Duncannon could
not recollect why, and he was too busy to take the time to reflect.
    He nodded at the seaman, and said, “Explain what you have
here, and we will go on from there…”
    Some time later, they paused at last, no fresh wounded
having been brought in the past hour. Someone had brewed up coffee and tea,
bringing it around, and they were able to sit for the first time in uncounted
hours.
    Duncannon was just stretching his aching feet to the