Shadow of a Lady

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “Oh, very well.” She knew it for the beginning of the end, but what else could she say?

  The King and Queen had just returned from their palace at Caserta, and the opera was unusually well attended. Since it was a favourite of hers, Gluck’s Orfeo, Helen could have wished this otherwise, but on the other hand, after Charles Scroope’s warning, she soothed herself with the thought that there must be some kind of safety in the crowds that thronged the great opera house. The Hamiltons and her own husband had returned with the royal party, and Lady Hamilton waved to her graciously from her box, close to the royal one. Even Lord Merritt, who detested music, had promised to look in later on. Trenche, on the other hand, had accompanied her and Charlotte in the carriage, and was now paying unmistakable attention to Charlotte, so that during Orfeo’s first great lament for his lost Euridice Helen was moved to turn round and hush him angrily.

  “Everyone else is talking.” There was a new note in his tone when he spoke to Helen, and she saw Charlotte’s quick look of surprise.

  This was a horrible evening. Trenche did, in fact, keep quiet after that, but Helen was aware of him edging his chair nearer and nearer to Charlotte’s, and of the latter’s instinctive recoil. It was positively a relief when the first interval brought the usual group of callers. Or it should have been. But, freed by their presence from the fear that Trenche would say or do something disastrous, she had time to be aware of a feeling of tension in the great auditorium. Or was she imagining things because of the turmoil of her own feelings? But surely more of the royal guard than usual were present tonight? Because the King and Queen were just back, no doubt. She had not been long enough in Naples to be sure about a point like this, but it certainly seemed logical.

  And her feeling that her own guests were in a state of suppressed excitement was doubtless simply a transference of her own nervous state. Were they drinking rather more than usual of the excellent light wine she provided? Were their voices sometimes higher, sometimes a little lower than politeness indicated? She found herself actually glad when her husband and Sir William Hamilton entered the box and inevitably changed the course of what had seemed to her a curiously fragmentary conversation, with odd pauses and strangely exchanged glances. Lord Merritt could be relied on to lower the intellectual tone of any conversation, and, if Sir William looked momentarily taken aback at sight of the company she was entertaining, he was soon his usual urbane self, complimenting her on what he called a marked improvement in her looks since he had seen her last.

  Thanking him, she thought bitterly how surprised he would be if she gave him a straight answer. Naturally, she looked better now that she had stopped being sick in the mornings. Instead, she enquired after the success of the latest royal hunting party, and the health of the royal children. The conversation found its usual safe if not very interesting channel for a few minutes, until it was suddenly interrupted by Charlotte pushing her way almost rudely across the crowded box from the corner where, Helen saw, she had left Trenche white with fury.

  “Helen!” Charlotte curtsied almost automatically to Sir William. “I don’t feel well. May we, please, go home?”

  Sir William looked as nearly shocked as he would ever let himself. The bells were ringing for the end of the interval; the royal party were settling back in their sumptuous chairs; it was absolutely impossible to leave.

  “Nonsense,” said Lord Merritt, as their own guests began to take their leave. “Going to stay myself, though I’ll hate every minute of it.”

  In fact, he rather enjoyed the ballet of the Elysian spirits, and as he had absentmindedly taken the chair by Charlotte that Trenche had previously occupied, Helen began to hope that they would get through the rest of the evening without actual disaster. In the final interval, their box was emptier than usual, and Helen, seeing her usual crowd of young men in Eleanora Pimentel’s box on the other side of the house, felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. Did they find her husband’s company as tedious as that?

  But when the last curtain fell to a roar of well-earned applause, they all came back to see her and Charlotte to their carriage, and she was delighted to see Trenche relegated to the background where he belonged, when a young Neapolitan aristocrat took Charlotte’s arm to help her through the crowd. Lord Merritt was doing the same for her, with the rest of the group following along behind, Trenche in their midst. They were outside now, in the mild southern darkness, and Helen was standing with her foot on the carriage step, wondering whether their cavaliers were hoping to be invited back to the Villa Trevi, when it happened.

  The crowd around them, a moment before cheerfully talking and shouting for carriages, was suddenly silent, shrinking into itself. A small group of dark-clad men making their way purposefully through it seemed to have a basilisk effect as they passed. Helen saw one extraordinarily significant exchange of glances between Vitaliani and de Deo, and then the dark, silent men were upon them.

  Lord Merritt, showing unexpected presence of mind, pushed her up into the carriage and jumped in after her. Charlotte screamed. There was a scuffle, out there in the curiously patchy darkness, illuminated here and there by light from the opera house, or a carriage lamp. Outside the scene of action, Helen was aware of the other members of the audience, forming, as it were, a circle of lookers-on, silent, doing nothing. “Charlotte’s out there,” she told her husband. “Do something!”

  “What can I do?” He peered out anxiously into the darkness, his ineffective face illuminated by the carriage lamps.

  Charlotte screamed again, and then, miraculously, appeared at the carriage step, her face showing white and her eyes huge in the uncertain light.

  “Thank God!” Helen reached down a hand to help her up, and heard, as she did so, a voice from the middle of the silently, horribly struggling crowd below the carriage steps. “I’m English!” shouted Trenche. “Lord Merritt, Helen, tell them I’m English!”

  “Lord Merritt!” One of the black-clad men appeared at the carriage door and spoke in surprisingly good English. “You will take the ladies home. At once. This is no place for strangers.” He gave a quick order to the servants, who began to take up the carriage steps.

  “But,” as Helen began her protest, she looked out into the struggling crowd, saw a truncheon rise and come down, with a crunch, in the face of one of the young men who had been drinking her wine half an hour before. He fell silently under the blow. The world began to whirl around her. Once again, she heard Trenche’s voice, agonised now with fear, “Tell them I’m English!”

  “We must do something,” but as she spoke, she swayed where she sat, and Charlotte was just in time to catch her as she fell. For the second time in her life, Helen had fainted.

  Chapter 11

  “WELL,” said Lord Merritt reasonably next morning, sitting on his wife’s bed and sipping chocolate, “what could we do? You perhaps dying? Nothing for it. Brought you home fast as we could. As for Trenche; chose his company; must take the consequences. No one knows where any of them are,” he went on with a certain relish. “The earth might have opened and swallowed them. And no one asks.”

  “But we must do something,” said Helen.

  “Foolish.”

  “It’s not a question of being wise, or foolish, it’s doing what one must. Ring for Rose, would you? If you will do nothing, I must go and see Lady Hamilton.” She knew it for a mistake the moment she had said it. She should have gone, but without making a challenge of it like this. His face closed obstinately against her.

  “Expect you’ll do what you want, as usual.” He left her to her dressing.

  Lady Hamilton received her with a preoccupied air, but, as she had hoped, Helen found her alone, and lost no time in telling her story, fearing that at any moment they might be interrupted.

  Lady Hamilton listened in uneasy silence, the beautiful face unusally grave, the deep violet eyes, with that strange, dark fleck in them, serious. At last, “Oh, the poor man,” she said. “I feel it all my fault. I have
been meaning for ever so long to warn you about the company you’ve been keeping. But my position with the dear Queen makes me extra careful what I say.”

  “I wish you had spoken,” said Helen. “I have been wanting advice. But, now that it’s happened, what can we do?” She did not, granted Lady Harnilton’s tone, say, “What will you do?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid,” said Emma Hamilton. “I have never seen my adorable Queen so angry. It was a plot against their very lives. If de Medici had not acted last night, we might find ourselves living in the Neapolitan Republic this morning.”

  “I doubt that,” said Helen. “The lazzaroni are devoted to the King.”

  “And the aristocrats hate the Queen. Just think of those young men you’ve been entertaining actually plotting her death. No, Lady Merritt, I am sorry to disappoint you, but this is no moment for me to go to her with a request that has anything to do with your household. I had it in mind, already—in fact, Sir William had suggested it to me that it might be wise for you to retire for a while to that house your husband took at Torre del Greco.”

  “Oh!” Helen had, in fact, been longing to get out of town to the country villa her husband had rented, but she could not leave it like this. “That poor Mr. Trenche,” she tried again. “He was only with the conspirators by accident. Surely something could be done for him?”

  “Not by me,” said Emma Hamilton.

  This was horrible. Helen had been so certain that she had only to tell her story to get help, and the worst of it was that just because it would be such an extraordinary relief to her to have Trenche safely out of the way, silenced, perhaps forever, in one of those horrible dungeons, she felt it all the more incumbent on her to do her utmost to get him released. “Lady Hamilton,” this was an appeal she had hardly even considered making. “You have never remembered me.”

  “Remembered you?” Emma Hamilton looked discreetly at the gold-and-glass clock on the chimneypiece.

  “From long ago,” Helen plunged into it. “Do you remember, once, at Uppark, a child who fell out of the rhododendrons?”

  “Me peeping Tom!” said Emma Hamilton, human for a moment. But the moment passed, and Helen knew that for the second time this unlucky morning she had made a mistake. How extraordinary that for the sake of Trenche, whom she loathed and feared, she should have alienated both her husband and Lady Hamilton.

  Lady Hamilton was looking at her now with frank dislike. “I suppose it would make a good story,” she said in a tone Helen had never heard before.

  “Good God! You must know I’d never tell it.” Horrible to be suspected of the very blackmail Trenche himself had used on her.

  “No?” asked Emma Hamilton. “Then what are we talking about? Oh—” as if inspiration had suddenly dawned, “I owe you a gold crucifix. You shall have it, Lady Merritt. It was most useful to me at the time, and I am grateful.” Her tone was still icy, and Helen spared a moment to think how extraordinarily well she could act the great lady when she chose.

  “No,” she said. “Please. You must know that’s not what I meant at all. I just meant—” What had she meant? She plunged on doubtful whether she could save the situation, but desperately trying. “I meant,” she started again, “that you felt—well, kindly towards me when I was a child, and I’ve never forgotten you.” This was easier. “I always thought of you as my angel,” she said. “Won’t you be my angel now?”

  “I can’t,” said Emma Hamilton. “There’s my angelic Queen to be considered. The only way I could do anything would be through her, and, frankly, she wouldn’t listen. Not today.” At last her tone was kinder. “But give it time,” she said, “and maybe I can manage something. When the first shock of it has worn off. You see, what you’re forgetting is that coming as he does from your household, Trenche is automatically suspect.”

  “Dear God,” said Helen.

  “I said you’d be better at Torre del Greco. And take that stammering child with you. She makes the Queen nervous. As for Mr. Trenche, leave it to me. If I can do anything, for old times’ sake I will.” The beautiful eyes were kind at last. “That gold crucifix saw me through a bad time,” she said. “You were a proper poppet, weren’t you, love?”

  “I thought you an angel,” said Helen again. “You were so lovely.” Another mistake; she knew it the moment the words were out.

  “I’m reckoned quite a beauty now,” said Lady Hamilton.

  Lord Merritt was delighted when Helen suggested that she and Charlotte go to the Villa Rosa at Torre del Greco for a while. “Sound notion,” he said. “Funny thing. The King said something about it just the other day. Said he thought the country air would do you good. Kind man.”

  “I wish you’d speak to him about poor Mr. Trenche,” said Helen.

  “Not a bit of use,” said her husband. “The King don’t run affairs; you know it as well as I do. The Queen and Acton see to everything. No use talking to the King. How did you get on with Lady Hamilton?”

  “Not well.” Helen hoped that the admission would mollify him, for she had felt a disturbing change in his attitude to her since that scene about Trenche. He no longer asked her advice about things, turning instead to Price, who showed every sign of taking Trenche’s place. Since she disliked and distrusted Price, she could only deplore his increasing influence over her husband. She had a pretty fair idea, by now, of the kind of scandal that had driven Lord Merritt into marriage, and intensely disliked the idea of leaving him alone with Price.

  But it was too late now for such doubts. “Capital notion; Torre del Greco,” said her husband. “Why not go today?”

  Helen had not seen the Villa Rosa before, having been unwell the day her husband rode out to look at it, and she was taken aback to find the village nestling quite so close under Vesuvius. It seemed a poor enough place, with pigs, chickens, and peasants scratching a lazy living from the rich volcanic soil, and Helen was relieved when the carriage drove straight through the village. But it was disconcerting to reach the villa at last and find it isolated on its own small promontory, with no other human habitation in sight.

  Charlotte jumped down from the carriage and stood for a moment thoughtfully surveying the charming miniature classical front of the villa. Then she turned back to hold up a hand for Helen to descend. “One thing’s certain,” she said. “We must be sure to be in Naples when the baby is due. But of course that won’t be till well on in the winter. Plenty of time to think about the arrangements.”

  If only there were. But there was a good deal just the same, and Helen, who hated lying to Charlotte, even tacitly like this, turned the subject by suggesting that they explore the house. “I know what we’ll find,” said Charlotte. “Dirt.”

  In fact, Rose, who had come on ahead with a detachment of servants, had done wonders in getting the place aired and ready, and the two girls were soon sitting in the sun on their own little terrace overlooking a quiet inlet.

  “This is restful,” said Charlotte. “This is just what we both needed. Peace, quiet, and safety.”

  Helen felt a queer little pang of anxiety, but kept her voice light as she said, “Yes, it certainly seems quiet enough. But I confess I wish the village was nearer.”

  “And the volcano farther off.” Charlotte looked up to where the usual plume of smoke rose from Vesuvius.

  It looked larger from here, Helen thought. Or was it larger? This was no way to be thinking. Anxiety, she knew, was bad for the child she was carrying, the child that had changed her life. For a moment, Helen felt a fierce pang, almost of hatred, for the unborn infant. Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Trenche. “I wonder if there is anything else I can do for him,” she said.

  “Him? Oh, Trenche. Helen, I really think you’d best not try. Sir William undoubtedly knows all about it by now. He will do what he can. After all, it’s his job.” Charlotte spoke with the comfortable certainty of someone who has grown up in circles where the right people only had to be approached for the right results to follow.

 
; “I suppose so,” Helen sighed. “I actually find myself hoping that Lord Merritt will miss him, now we are away, and be moved to speak to the King.” But she had a horrid feeling that Price would prevent this.

  “Personally,” said Charlotte roundly, “I think prison’s the best place for Trenche, and I don’t care how long he stays.”

  “Oh, Charlotte!”

  “You don’t know what a plague he’s been to me since he decided I was the best match he was likely to m . . . m . . . m . . .” It was significant that Charlotte should be stopped by one of her increasingly rare bouts of stammering.

  “He never told you that?”

  “He didn’t need to. But I see he told you. Wanted you to help bring me round his thumb, I suppose. I hope you sent him away with a flea in his ear.”

  “I did my best.” Not much use denying that she and Trenche had had some conversation about this, but the less said about it the better. She changed the subject. “I wonder how Father is.”

  “And where,” said Charlotte, who knew that Helen had not heard a word from Captain Telfair since they parted. They knew from the newspapers that arrived, weeks old from England, that the Trojan was still attached to the Mediterranean Fleet, but that was all they knew. “I’m sure no news is good news,” Charlotte hurried to say.

  “Yes, I think so too.” Helen laughed. “I promise you, I won’t worry about him. Really, what hard work this childbearing is, and how tedious.”

  Sir William and Lord Merritt surprised them with a visit, a few days later, on their way to join the royal hunting party, and to Helen’s delight Sir William produced a whole packet of newspapers recently arrived from London with which he insisted he was finished. “We mustn’t let you find life too tedious out here,” he said kindly in his nearest reference to their exile. “I’m glad to see that you both look the better for the country air already.”

  “Not missing much in Naples either,” said Lord Merritt, unusually civil in Sir William’s company. “Everyone looking over their shoulders and saying nothing. No pleasure. Glad to get away myself.”