Fancy

“Poor old Clayton” loves and loses in this rather angsty tale that explores the melancholy soul of everyone's favorite foul-fated fiddler.

Part One

*****

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.

--John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale," 1819.

*****

He took another long pull on the flask. The burnt sugar taste of brandy was soothing and sweet on his tongue, and he let it linger before he swallowed what might be his last of that warm comfort on this Earth.

He offered the flask to Kennedy, who shook his head briefly and turned back to the window, where the forlorn landscape was switching past, nothing but tall, barren trees and a patchwork of brown and snow-covered ground, as the hired coach lurched and bounced and careened recklessly along the narrow, frozen road.

How serene he felt for a man going to meet his end. How almost…happy. It had been a long time coming, this day of reckoning, and even now, after all the years in Purgatory, he thought he still did not really know his own mind. He still could not tell if it had been cowardice or courage that had always stayed his hand before, if death had always been his desire after all. Perhaps this peace he felt now was his answer? He did not know. He only knew that he had been inspired for the first time in many years, inspired by the certainty of one who did know his mind, one who knew that it was better to risk dying than to live in half life and misery.

An even chance, Horatio had said, and Adam smiled to think of it. At most he had determined merely to carry Simpson with him to hell, but it was true, he might live yet. And what then? If this was to be a true reckoning, and the judgment in his favor, must that put an end to his indecision? Might he begin again, leave go of the past…?

There was music in his head, as there always was. He closed his eyes for a moment, just to listen. Sad and sweet it was, a thing he'd neither heard nor played in a long, long time. His shipmates loved the old, familiar songs: their "Black-eyed Susan" and "Farewell, Nancy", their "Hearts of Oak" and "Sally Brown". As he listened, as the melody took shape, he fancied he could see the notes forming in the air, floating down, one by one, to fall on a white page that was creased and curled with handling, the directives, in a beloved and familiar hand, a back-slanting scrawl…

 Adagio…pianissimo….

The light was poor in the captain's cabin. Tucking the fiddle and bow beneath his arm, he smoothed the curling page over his knee and bent forward, the better to see.

"Allow me," said the captain's dinner guest kindly, taking the page. He was a large and handsome man, not old at all, but by his dress and manner, very rich. He was a corn merchant, his ship one of those that "Princess Amelia" escorted in convoy. He brought his chair closer to Adam's, holding the music in front of him. "You do read, Mr. Clayton?"

"Yes, sir," Adam replied. "I learned from my father."

"My cousin's late husband, you may not remember, Conyngham, was the organist at St. Margaret's for several years," said Captain Hazlitt.

"Oh, indeed!" said Mr. Conyngham. "You hail from Lynn, Mr. Clayton? Indeed it is my own dear home!"

Adam nodded. "I was born in London, sir, but we moved to Norfolk when I was six."

He may have been very young, but Adam well remembered his father's grief at leaving the beloved capitol and giving up his fledgling composing career.  But he had lost his patronage when Lord Grove had decided to move abroad for an indefinite number of years, and with a discontented wife and six small children to care for, the generous offer from the wealthy aldermen of Lynn---who were keen to improve the cultural life of their town by acquiring a good music teacher for their daughters, and which had been arranged at some pains by an influential friend of his lordship's---was near impossible to refuse, and so he had accepted his exile with the best possible grace.

Four years later, smallpox had taken him and the three youngest children. Adam's mother had very soon remarried, and what remained of their little family dispersed---the girls to board in the country, and Adam, the only surviving son, taken into the Navy at age ten as a volunteer midshipman, a servant to his mother's cousin, Captain Hazlitt, with the eventual object of earning his commission.

He was now but a month shy of his sixteenth birthday. He was satisfied enough with life at sea; as satisfied as he might be anywhere, he supposed, and in any event, he had never given much thought to what other sort of life he might want for himself, had anyone cared to ask him. He'd performed reasonably well in his studies. A musical mind was often a mathematical mind as well, his captain observed, and he would make a decent navigator, at least, and a fair enough officer.

"Captain Hazlitt tells me that you play very well," said Mr. Conyngham, smiling and holding up the sheet music. "What do you make of this, then?"

"It looks simple enough, sir," Adam replied.

"Simple? Do you think so?" Conyngham looked a little incredulous. "It is the work of an Italian gentleman in my patronage, Signor Gabrieli, and I confess that I myself have not yet the facility…I should like to hear you play it, Mr. Clayton."

"Yes, sir." Adam raised the fiddle to his shoulder.

"I shall hold the music as you play, shall I?"

Adam shrugged. "I think I have it, sir." It was his curious gift, the ability to commit a page instantly to memory. He had not even to read it, only to look upon the letters, figures and symbols to mark them, like the stamp of a press, on the inside of his brain.

Conyngham's eyebrows went up, and again a look of slight incredulity crossed his amiable face. But he rolled the sheet music in his hand and sat back in his chair, crossing his legs, and picked up his glass of port, waiting.

The tune began in the minor key, the first notes low and deep and throbbing. Beneath his fingers the strings felt somewhat slack, and Adam worried that the sea air might have muddled his tune once more. Slowly he drew the bow across the lower strings and closed his eyes as he listened to the voice begin to come, just as he heard it in his head, low, despairing, like a flow of tears.

Slow, lovely, embracing, the music began to swell, the dark, sweet notes to climb, feathery tendrils of pure exquisite sadness reaching out to fill the shadowy corners of the room and Adam breathed along with its soulful, patient measure, his body swaying gently with the draw of the bow.

Yes, it was simple, but how perfect in its simplicity! And how perfectly suited to the voice of the violin, in all its hopeful longing, a voice more purely human, perhaps, than any sound on earth.

In the end, there seemed no real crescendo, no peak, only a gentle, inevitable rising and falling away, a tender and sympathetic dissolution, the final notes sinking and vanishing at last, the closing vibrato sustained to an ending as vague and inconsequential as a sigh.

Adam lowered the fiddle and bow to his lap, blinking as he looked up to see Mr. Conyngham dabbing at his eyes with a lace handkerchief. "Ahh," sighed the gentleman, a smile once again lighting his handsome face. "Bravo, Mr. Clayton." He blew his nose loudly. "Bravo!"

***

The coach came to a jolting halt, and Adam shoved the flask back inside his coat. There was a swallow or two left inside, which he supposed was rather a pity. Reaching for the latchstring, he glanced once more at Kennedy, and thought he could read the boy's searching expression. He shook his head, giving Archie a slight, close-lipped smile. No, he wasn't drunk. Not nearly, although he might be very drunk indeed, and Kennedy be none the wiser.  Like many a drunkard, he had perfected his art long ago, and he knew his limit to the drop. It had occurred to him on occasion to wonder why the discipline that enabled him so effectively in this deception could not be similarly employed in temperance. He could only conclude that his self-discipline was but an illusion, and only another symptom of his disease, the sickness that had plagued him since he was a child, the thing that made him love the taste of poison and made him dwell, in fear and guilt and confusion, on dark dreams of his own end.

The thing was like a parasite, he sometimes thought, that would feed its own life until it killed the host.

And at other times he knew that he was nothing more than a sad, self-pitying sot who had only himself to blame for his failures.

The others were waiting, shivering in their boatcloaks and looking like the chorus of doom. Cleveland and Hether, the pair of toads. Hepplewhite, pie-faced and vacant, and another man he did not know, standing above and apart from the rest on an outcrop of rock, looking down. Simpson's second, he guessed, and the one who had chosen this isolated and dismal patch of ground.

And Jack, standing with his back turned as they approached.

By God, he did want the bastard dead.

To feel himself so moved was an unaccustomed thing indeed. To want, to desire, to wish for anything more than a little peace and a drink---well, it had been some time, he thought, and in truth, in all his life the things he had wanted with all his heart had been so very few. But he had wanted to go with Mr. Conyngham all those years ago, when that good gentleman had offered him a place in his household. He wanted to work for Signor Gabrieli, to learn from the man who had written such astonishing music, music that seemed to reflect the very essence of his own melancholy soul.

But more than anything ever in this world, and more than the peace he hoped for in the next, he had wanted Fancy.

Jack turned slowly to face them. "Where is he?" he asked, with a typically contemptuous sneer.

Again, Adam marveled at his own calm, for it was not, he decided after all, the calm of resignation he felt, but rather a cool determination. He knew, quite suddenly, having come to this hour, this place, that he felt more alive than he had in years. Pray God he had done Horatio no real harm in striking him down. If he should only succeed…

"I regret that my principle has met with an accident that prevents his attendance this morning," Adam replied.

"You mean the little coward has pissed himself?" Simpson smirked.

To his own surprise, Adam almost wanted to smile. "As his second," he said, "I am willing to stand proxy. I shall fight the duel in his stead."

Let me kill him, he thought.

Emotion surged in him, strange, frightening, and thrilling.

 Let me kill him, and if I live, I vow, I shall try to begin again. I shall try…

And this time he nearly did smile. Now he was getting a little giddy with hope. It was quite ridiculous, but he allowed himself the thought, as absurd as it might be.

Fancy, my girl. I will try to let you go.

Go to Part Two