Title: Canzonetta sull’Aria (A little Song on the Breeze)

Title: Canzonetta sull’Aria (A little Song on the Breeze)
Summary: in which a marriage is saved by Mozart’s music, the daughters of an Admiral, and the evening breeze.
Main characters: Norrington, Gillette
Rating: PG-13
Setting: post-COTBP, not DMC and AWE compliant. In the same universe as The Hours .
Acknowledgements: Beta by Galadhir. Inspired by this pic [NC-17] by Menegroth .
Disclaimer: Considered what Disney did of them, I suppose I can play with them for my private entertainement.

Canzonetta sull’Aria
(A Little Song on the Breeze)

To Galadhir, for her birthday, with my deepest admiration and affection.

“Che soave zeffiretto
Questa sera spirerà
Sotto i pini del boschetto
Ei già il resto capirà”

“How gentle the zephyr
Will be this evening
In the pine grove”
The rest he’ll understand”

Susanna and the Contess, duet “A little Song on the Breeze”, from “The Marriage of Figaro”,
libretto by L. Da Ponte (based on a stage comedy by P. Beaumarchais), music by W.A. Mozart, 1786.
[for opera lovers: a vid of the duet can be found here]

They’re very different, Andrew and James. Andrew seems to think that nothing really exists unless it is plainly uttered in words. James, on the contrary, feels an instinctive diffidence towards words, especially in the matters of the heart. What’s the use of saying aloud, with trite and hackneyed phrases, the things that every day and every night are better proved in the flesh and in action?

James has never been a brilliant talker. He’d rather lead a boarding party onto the quarterdeck of a French three-decker than sit and hold a conversation in a drawing-room. Even concocting the amorphous reports to their Lordships of the Admiralty has always been hard drudgery for James. To make him talk about himself, as Port Royal’s ladies sadly know, is an impossible challenge. The nearness of a petticoat is enough to make him shut like an oyster.

Not that his few male friends are often allowed a closer look.

A too deeply rooted modesty, along with a lack of self-confidence that not even his victories at sea and Andrew’s absolute worship can shake, make James carefully refrain from any manifestation of his inner feelings. When put in a corner, he defends himself with the utmost Spartan use of the English vocabulary and a dry sense of humour that young marriageable ladies tend to find upsetting and his fellow officers have learnt to be afraid of.

No, James Norrington does not trust words. Words can betray and, more often than not, they are just an elegant silk cloak unfolded to cover the filth of the soul.
The most beautiful words, often, are nothing more than hollow sounds.

Two nights ago, in the music-room of the Governor’s House, James listened for the first time to a performance of the Canzonetta sull’Aria from the Marriage of Figaro, sung by a pair of Italian singers. Sitting at his right, Governor Swann was beaming with delight, proud of presenting his guests with this continental novelty. But a mischievous smile almost unmasked the shrewd politician hidden beneath the father-like, benevolent features, when he explained to James how the play by Beaumarchais, on which the opera is based, will cause the French Crown more damage than capturing Guadalupe and Martinique could ever do. The new opera by Herr Mozart, however, is comparatively harmless and, in the Governor’s opinion, greatly benefited from the removal of any political reference. The success in Vienna, he informed James, has been so overwhelming that the Austrian Emperor has been forced to limit the number of encores to be sung in theatres, in order to avoid the opera running all night long.

“An intelligent man, that Joseph II”, said the Governor with a knowing smile. “Enlightened enough to understand where you have to draw the line. You would never believe he’s the brother of that beautiful but light headed Queen of France, whose scandalous extravagances never cease to shock St-James’s.” The last was followed by a barely repressed sigh, probably caused by the sight of his daughter just entering the music’s room, late as usual and on the arm of that improbable husband of hers who, dressed and wigged like a gentleman, seems even more improbable than ever.

Indeed, the unearthly beauty of the duet between Susanna and the Countess left James almost breathless. He forgot all about the Turners, the troubles of the French Sovereigns, Martinique and the Austrian Emperor, and just listened in rapture. The slow and melodious intertwining of the two female voices was like an endlessly unfolding arabesque of crystal. An arabesque soaring to the sky in a spire of immaterial, luminous grace.

But James was thoroughly disappointed when Sir Weatherby, who speaks some Italian – legacy of his Grand Tour – translated the lyrics of the duet for him. Once put into English, those soft syllables that seemed like kisses and caresses revealed themselves for what they truly are: a boring and meaningless repetition of ridiculously idyllic words. Words that James, should he ever do something as improbable as writing a billet-doux, would be ashamed to use with a lover.

This afternoon, James’ disappointment with Mozart’s music is currently reaching a dramatic climax while, sweating to death under the wool of his uniform in the stifling waiting room of Admiral Vickers, at Kingston, he’s forced to undergo the additional torture inflicted by the Misses Vickers’ daily music lesson. Somewhere in the inner part of the house, they are practising at the harpsichord and, in the process, they are abusing notes and rhythm of an arrangement of The Marriage of Figaro with a systematic, almost voluptuous determination to kill and destroy that has the taint of evilness.

Andrew, who is a terrific flute player and very sought after in all Port Royal’s music-rooms because of his beautiful baritone, fidgets on his chair, making grimaces as if he had a toothache from Hell.

“Joseph and Mary, they should be keelhauled for playing like that!” he mutters under his breath at a certain point, beating his foot on the parquet in an outburst of uncontrollable annoyance.

James frowns at this ungentleman-like behaviour.

“Shame on you, Drew ! You’re awfully unkind.” he hisses, kicking Andrew’s ankle with his own foot, all the outwards semblances of a virtuous reproach on his fine features. He leans towards Andrew and, in a barely audible whisper, dramatically says “Think of all those poor, innocent fish! The would be frightened to death at finding themselves face to face with Miss Vickers and Miss Frances!” James’ tone is the most serious ever, but a single inky eyebrow elegantly lifts towards the snowy wig, in a way that transforms his whole expression into a paradigm of refined irony.

The wretched ugliness of the poor Misses Vickers is as proverbial, in Jamaica, as their inability to find a husband, and paralleled only by an equal inability to extract minimally pleasant sounds from any musical instrument. But they have the loveliest voices. And when those voices rise together in the “Sull’Aria” duet, covering the unmelodious and halting accompaniment produced on the keyboard by one of the sisters, James is –against any expectation and belief – drawn again into that crystal-like land of beauty and limpid quiet he had a glimpse of in the Governor’s music-room.

Later, once they have satisfactorily attended to the service, Admiral Vickers invites Commodore Norrington and Lt. Gillette for a cup of tea with his family. As soon as they catch sight of him, Laura and Frances Vickers capture Andrew between their hoops, and sequester him on a settee. Thence, they proceed to extort from him, by every means fairly allowed to young ladies (which include lots of sugar in Andrew’s cup and an outrageous amount of cream and strawberry jam on his scones), a promise to sing with them, next month, at a musical celebration for the birthday of Princess Charlotte.

James, from whom Mrs Vickers has since long lost any hope to extract anything more than a non-committal remark about the Caribbean weather, let alone a marriage proposal for her daughters, is soon abandoned to his own resources. In order to evade a subtle attempt of Mrs Vickers’ mother to make him confess Whig sympathies, James takes shelter behind the potted ferns surrounding the harpsichord. He would rather die than admit he’s unnerved by Miss Frances’way of drawing her fan across her cheeks while talking to Andrew.

So, he starts leafing through the scores with an assumed air of competence. His knowledge of music is very amateurish, actually. His sister Georgiana taught him to strum a few English nursery rhymes on their mother’s spinet, and for most of his life at sea as a midshipman and a lieutenant, Hearts of Oak and Rule Britannia have been the only significant addition to this musical repertoire. Only later, during their first years together in the West Indies, has Andrew coaxed him into learning the keyboard part for a few of Bach’s flute sonatas.

It could be said that only the affection of a sister and the passionate fondness of his most intimate friend can think of James as a musical being. But when the score of the Canzonetta sull’Aria falls under his eyes, even James, who can hardly read the notes at first sight if there are more than three of them in the same measure, is impressed by the beauty with which the written music unwinds itself on the paper. It seems a mysterious and elegant garland of black flowers, curving and rounding and twisting, following an infinitely varying pattern.

But James is not a poet. He’s just a sailor. And the most beautiful thing on earth he knows, apart from Andrew’s heart, is the sea. So it happens that the flowery, graceful pattern of the notes makes him think of wind-ruffled deep sea waves and blue Atlantic rollers. Beneath the notes, written in the flourishing hand of a copyist, are the Italian words of the duet, and as the memory slowly recovers their meaning according to Governor Swann’s explanation, James experiences, all of a sudden, a wondrous revelation.

Because he understands in a flash that those words, so foolish in their meaning, are not words at all. They are the sprays of lacy foam, the sparkling glassy crests of that waving ocean of notes. Light and fleeting in themselves, it’s true. More ephemeral than love’s vows. Yet they have the sea below. The strong, majestic, powerful sea. The sea that, since the dawn of time, has covered the earth and supported the ships, carrying them in her white and blue arms whose rising makes the waves. The sea that James loves and trusts and respects beyond any other thing.

The sea in Port Royal Harbour, that night, is a sheet of quicksilver under the full moon that floods the Caribbean with light. The masts of the ships at anchor are a thick black forest and the sight of the Union Jack hanging from every mizzen mast fills James Norrington with serene pride. It’s a tiny bit his merit, too, if that night the merchant captains, the common seamen, the fishermen, and all the many and several traders that are attracted to Port Royal by its safe and flourishing trade, will have a peaceful night’s sleep.

The Commodore’s bargemen do not comment nor do they complain when the Commodore, after a short exchange of half words with Mr Gillette, declares it is too late to row back to Fort Charles, all the way around the peninsula, and orders the barge instead to come alongside the little quay near Mr Gillette’s town lodging, very conveniently situated in Thames Street, right on the harbour waterfront and halfway between Admiralty Court and the Governor’s House.

Seamen’s tongues can be as sharp as those of the sharpest London’s gentlewomen, but not a single word, not even a single look pass after the Commodore and Mr Gillette disappear under the archway. The men have just gained an unexpected night of shore leave, to spend in one of the many taverns and cheap brothels thriving in the backstreets of Thames Street. No need to look too closely at their Commodore’s preferences. If he likes his first lieutenant’s company better than he can ever like women, cards, and wine, it’s only his affair and it will not be the Dauntlesses who question his choices.

Lodging, if applied to the fourth floor of 25 Thames Street, is a misleading term, rather excessive in optimism. They’re only two rooms, so small, so low, and so disarmingly lacking in comfort and right angles that, at his first entering there, James seriously considered the possibility of the house having been built by some retired Navy carpenter. Sitting on the bed that, by itself, takes a half of the larger room, James can perfectly follow Andrew’s comings and goings in the other, much smaller one. Originally designed as a dressing-room, this second room is currently used as a kitchen and James frequently regrets its demotion. A dressing-room could have come handy considered they often stop at Thames Street to change into their civilian dress, before going incognito to some masquerade or opera night at Kingston (too compromising to be seen together at Port Royal). The bedroom, after they’ve finished powdering their hair as fashion requires, seems an English countryside in winter, and everything in it gets a floury iris-scented quality that becomes obnoxious in the long term.

But Andrew is adamant: in the interval after dancing or listening to music and before what he, with unusual chastity, just refers to as “being together”, he needs a dinner to strengthen himself. A dinner to be savoured in James’ company, without half of Port Royal knowing of it directly from the taverns’ boys and the other half learning the details from the usual gossips of the drawing-rooms. And dinner is what Andrew is preparing just now, manoeuvring with a sailor’s nimbleness in the Lilliputian space, too small for two persons to move in.

Dinner too, is a term that may mislead, when applied to food prepared by Andrew Gillette. The only stuff Andrew can actually cook is toasted cheese and grilled fish. But it already represents a phenomenal achievement, considered that James is endowed with an uncanny ability to char anything edible falling into his hands.

Conscious of this sad failure of his in the housekeeping department, James carefully abstains from entering the kitchen and usually confines himself to a silent wait in the bedroom, after putting clean bed sheets on the mattress. The bed, it should be mentioned, is not a true bed, but a great bench with stunningly rounded arms, taken as an unofficial prize from a French privateer. With its white and blue striped silk upholstery, all elegant scrolls and luxurious carvings, wrapped in a gauzy shower of mosquito nets hanging from the ceiling, it has all the appearances of a love-nest suitable for a boudoir. But James knows how penitential it can be, especially when shared in the aftermath.

It is a particularly sultry night. Andrew whistles Roast Beef of Old England while, barefooted and with only his shirt on, he keeps the slices of cheese and bread on the stove under strict scrutiny, now and then expertly testing them with a fork. At his every movement, the hems of his shirt flap against his white and brawny thighs.

The mountain breeze is late, this night, and Port Royal is atrociously suffering under a smoothing cape of heat. James feels rivulets of sweat trickling down his chest and realizes that, whatever the gnats’ predilection for his pale British skin, it will not do to further keep on his shirt and stockings.

Looking at Andrew, flushed and sweating as he bends on the stove, with his dampened auburn hair dangling annoyingly into his face, where it sticks to his eyes and lips in the less opportune moments, James thinks of the many and strange ways love can show itself and feels a new respect for all those women who, that night, are bending like Andrew over some kitchen fire, cooking hard earned food for their men.

“How much for dinner yet, Drew ?” he asks in a guilty fit of concern.

Andrew mistakes the tone and turns with a heated glare. “The time it takes, Sir. Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s in the nature of cheese not to care a straw if your Lordship is hungry or not,” is his gruff reply. He sticks the fork in a slice of bread with dangerous energy. “God, what a pain in the arse you can be, James. – he mutters peevishly – There are times I’m inclined to suspect that eating, drinking, sleeping, and fucking are the only activities your brain is capable of, when you do not have a quarterdeck to shout orders from like a slave master !”

James raises his eyebrows, open his mouth as if to answer but then, wisely, chooses to take a deep breath and stay silent. Andrew and the Jamaican climate do not get along very well, and James knows better than to discuss with Andrew when it’s too hot. In the Caribbean, alas, it happens frequently.

And this night the air is devilishly sultry. Not even stripping himself naked to the very ends of modesty is giving James the expected relief. All he achieved in discarding his shirt and stockings is that now the sweat, instead of drenching his clothes, runs down directly between skin and breeches and the gnats are ravenous on his calves. He kills a pair of them with a slap of his hand, accompanying the stroke with a curse worthy of a middie experimenting in creative obscenity. From the other room, Andrew grumbles something about divine chastisement for undeserving men. The slightest breath of air ripples the mosquito nettings and James hopefully raises his face, praying for the mountain breeze.

The breeze does not come but, after a great sizzling of red wine poured upon the toasting bread, directly onto the plate of the stove, Andrew does, and he comes with a significantly improved mood, a plate full of deliciously smelling food, and a bottle of Madeira miraculously kept cool in a wet cloth.

They share the Madeira in the same way as, for years, they have shared everything, including James’ alleged tyrannical streak, Andrew’s foul tempers, and the crumbs of food in the bed. The crumbs of toasted bread, James has learnt, are the worst. They sting like needles and have an appalling tendency to find their ways into the body’ most private crannies. They are even worst than the gnats and the flies torturing him. This evening they are so rabid and attack James with such a perverse wickedness that Andrew puts out all the candles and resolves to close the curtains of the netting, even if it means stifling to death in the still, hot night.

“Now – Andrew says with the satisfied face he has after obtaining from the crew a set of perfectly spiral braced sails. – Look at this ! The Holy Ghost itself could not get through here. I bet my arse these little infernal whoreson hellspawn will go to search their dinner elsewhere.”

He’s kneeling on the bed, with his thin linen shirt sticking to his shoulders and chest, the sleeves rolled up his arms, his strong neck standing out from the limp open collar like a sculptured marble column. He seems enormous in the pool of milky and blue moonlight filtering through the nettings. A luminous mass of flesh and blood and deep dark eyes vibrating with life. Manly flesh in whose scent powder and cologne blend with smoke, tobacco, sweat, and a light, secret lime flavour with a bittersweet tang that James associates with sex. Eyes in which the heart of a whole world throbs, the light of a whole world burns. A face as white as the inside of a shell, so handsome that the air around seems to shimmer.

James looks at Andrew, reddens to his ears and then he goes off all in a breath, with a crazy glibness worthy of Captain Sparrow at his best: “I know I do not say it often, Drew. Indeed, to be honest, I almost never say it, and I know I’m wrong, because even if you already know it, it would be only fair and good if I said it, considering it’s only the absolute truth, and I never stop repeating it to myself every day and every hour, every second of my life, and thanking God for making us find each other, because I…” But there, on the brink of that so promising I, James’ speech miserably stops like a tide exhausting its impulse.

Andrew crawls on his knees on the mattress, coming nearer to James. He leans towards him, smiling encouragingly.

“Because you ? you what, James ?”

“Because I-I… be-be-because I…” stammers James in a fit of that tormenting child stutter which does not impede him from properly and solemnly reading the Articles on Sundays and making his orders heard over the blast of a broadside, but that embarrassingly comes back every time he has to say something intimate.

Andrew knows the signs. He crawls a bit nearer, putting his hand on James’ shoulder with a gesture which is at the same time an invitation and a loving reassurance. He leans towards James, his face smiling, his eyes sparkling, waiting.

“Because you? come on, dear, tell me…”

Andrew is so near, now, that his breath caresses James’ cheeks. James is accustomed to the overwhelming physical and spiritual feeling of Andrew’s presence, but tonight, in the close of the alcove, in that night that seems liquid fire, it is suddenly too much. Too much life. Too much feelings. Too much Andrew.

A startled blink of his long eyelashes then, reacting on instinct, he backs towards the arm behind. As soon as he is out of Andrew’s aura, words come back to him in full force. “Because I really think your toasted cheese is the best I’ve ever eaten, Drew. Absolutely the best.”

It is Andrew’s turn to blink, his face a battlefield of expressions where perplexity, amusement, and a vaguely resigned discontent openly alternate like sun and clouds on a windy day. Then he cracks a blank smile and moves back, sitting on his heels. He looks at James as if the young commodore were a landlubber at his first, unsatisfactory excursion on the shrouds.

“Oh yes, my toasted cheese. Of course.”

James feels like an idiot. He’s furious with himself. But it is useless. There are things you cannot change, whatever the strength of your resolution. He is like that. Nothing, no one can change it.

And that is the moment when the veils of the netting shake, then fill like topgallants taking the winds and start fluttering everywhere in a fantastic whirlwind dance of white aerial ghosts. Suddenly, it is as if they were at sea. The air freshens and the Blue Mountain breeze on their sweaty skin is as sweet as a benediction.

Andrew gets up and slips out of the nettings with that light step that makes him such so delightful a sight to look at when he dances. James, from the bed, watches as he strips off his shirt and, naked as the day he was born, stands in front of the basin, looking with total unconcern at his flat abdomen and at the thick prick, dangling heavily between his legs. James swallows. He cannot take his eyes off Andrew. The unashamed, marvellous confidence his companion has with his own body never ceases to surprise and enthral James.

Andrew pours some water in the bowl, dips a sponge, throws back his head with a swift, sure movement, closes his eyes and then, with a sigh of almost primeval relish, he squeezes the water over his face and chest to get some refreshment. Droplets of light fall down his arms and shoulders, like tiny, glittering diamonds, outlining the play of the muscles. Rivulets of water glide their way down all along the strong back, the buttocks, the inner part of the thighs, the hairy groin, the perfectly shaped calves, covering Andrew with a wet, tattoo of crystal shine. A dark stain forms at his feet, expanding on the wooden floor.

The veils of the netting shroud the bed in an evanescent mist. Through that mist, Andrew appears to James as unreal and eerie as a fairy creature of those Irish tales Andrew patiently tells him the nights he cannot sleep. His body glows with a white, soft, pure radiance. The tousled curls of his rich auburn hair fall on his nape and cheeks with a silver glimmer. The beautiful and powerful curve of his buttocks forms with his long legs a line of unsettling beauty. A line that makes James think of a mermaid’s tail.

When, still naked and wet, Andrew walks towards the window, James abandons the mattress and follows him. The room is as ugly as it can be, but the view of the harbour is just magnificent and enough to fill a sailor’s heart with happiness.

With their elbows on the windowsill, James and Andrew look together at the sea, watching the waves cross the harbour and break against a row of lead coloured rocks, raising fountains and fireworks of silver spurts.

James leans comfortably against Andrew’s solid body and smiles, an unreflective, little, sweetest smile of contentment. Through his breeches, he can feel the moist warmth of Andrew’s skin against his side and it feels marvellously good.

He turns towards Andrew with that candid, vulnerable smile only a lucky few are allowed to know. “North East wind.” he whispers as if it were a precious secret he’s sharing. “Good wind for sailing.”

Andrew nods, still looking at the sea. “Yes, good wind.” He breathes deeply the breeze that tastes of flowers and fruit that have no name in English. Then, smiling in his turn, with matter of fact simplicity, he adds: “And yes, I love you too James.”

---

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