Shadow of a Lady

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. Clever woman.” It was grudging. “Should do. Can’t take it amiss. Either way.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. And then, quickly: “There’s something else. Quite by the way. But I thought you might care to know. Now I’m a rich woman, I have responsibilities—to you, to the child . . . I’ve written,” she paused, “and sent a letter to Sir William, to be opened in case of my death, and the child’s.” She watched him closely as she said this, and the look of instant understanding on his face told her all and more than she wanted to know.

  “Lot of nonsense,” he said. “Thank God. Price and coffee. Leave the letter. Add my hand and fist. Hope it brings the old curmudgeon into better tune.”

  “Let us indeed hope so.” She drank her coffee at a lukewarm draught and stood up. “Oh, by the way. I have sent for Angelina. You were saying, the other day, that I spent too much time in the nursery. I have thought about it and believe you to be right. Angelina will free me, and care for the child. I trust I have your approval in this?”

  “Not much use asking; already sent for the old bitch,” said her husband. But returning shakily to her own rooms, she knew that he had taken her point. All her points. What she could do to safeguard herself and the child, she had done. And—she had thought this before—how strange that she would go through fire and water for Trenche’s child. The child who had wrecked her life.

  Not Trenche’s child. Hers. She got up again and went to the nursery.

  Chapter 15

  HENRY was worth it all, but soon stopped being Henry. Neither Angelina, now in full command in the nursery, nor the other servants, could get their tongues round the name. He became first Henrici, and then, as he began early to feel for words of his own, Ricky. It sometimes seemed to Helen that his nursery was the only sane place in a world where threatening shadows grew always darker and must never be mentioned.

  There had been fresh rumours of Jacobin plots, and at last Medici had been disgraced, imprisoned in the fortress at Gaeta, and replaced by a fiercely royalist Council of State. But still the Queen was writing home to Austria that, “I go nowhere without wondering if I shall return alive,” and arranging to have her own and her husband’s bedrooms constantly changed for fear of assassination. In the end, it was the English minister, Acton, who again took command of the government, and appointed an equally Anglophile Minister of Foreign Affairs, Castelcicala. A new wave of arrests followed, and even the royal bodyguard had to be re-formed, since it was said to be riddled with revolutionary ideas. The French were over the border into northern Italy by now, and disaffected young Neapolitans who could cross the border were making their way north to join them, or to settle at the Court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had actually recognised the French Republic.

  There were rumours that King Ferdinand wanted to do likewise, “But the Queen will be too strong for him as usual,” said Charlotte, safe in the privacy of Helen’s bedroom.

  “Yes, for the moment,” Helen agreed. “She hates the French too bitterly to compromise with them, and it is doubtless due to her that a detachment of Neapolitan cavalry is actually being sent to help the Austrians against the French in northern Italy.”

  “And ships to join Admiral Hotham.” Something in Charlotte’s tone made Helen give her a quick look.

  “Would you like to ask for a passage on the Tancredi?” she asked. “I’m sure Commodore Caracciolo would take good care of you, and when they join the blockading fleet you could transfer to a British ship and so get home.”

  “Home!” said Charlotte. “Oh, Helen . . .” And then, “But could you not come too?”

  “Lord Merritt would never allow it.” This was not something that could be discussed. “And, besides, can you imagine Ricky in a battleship?”

  “Easily,” Charlotte laughed. “Adored by everyone. You know what the Italians are like.”

  “Yes, bless them. But I couldn’t ask it, and, anyway, Lord Merritt is fixed here, I think, for the duration of the war.”

  “But must you stay with him?” Helen and Charlotte had tacitly abandoned the pretence that Helen’s was a marriage in anything but name.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will stay too. Don’t look so serious, Helen. After all,” her face lit up suddenly, “if Neapolitan ships are joining the British fleet, who knows but we may have British ones coming here again.”

  “Oh, how I wish they would. But things don’t seem to go so well with our fleet now Lord Hood’s been replaced by Hotham. Only think of having two brushes with the French, and letting them get away each time.”

  “Shameful.” Charlotte, like Helen, was an eager follower of naval news. “But that little captain we met at Toulon—do you remember—Nelson? He distinguished himself both times.”

  “Yes, Lady Hamilton mentioned him the other day. He seems to have made a great impression on her and Sir William when he was here at the time of Toulon.”

  “And they on him.” Charlotte laughed. “Do you remember how angry he was when someone said something slighting about Lady Hamilton?”

  “Yes: he stood up for her gallantly. I remember it well. Poor man. Think of having lost an eye in the service and now having to chafe under Admiral Hotham. Perhaps it’s as well Captain Forbes is on the Channel Station. Inactivity would not suit him either.” Captain Scroope was on the Channel Station, too, but she did not choose to mention him.

  “I wonder how your father bears it.”

  “Philosophically, I have no doubt.” Helen had actually had a letter from her father six months or so after the birth of her child, and knew he was still serving under Hotham in the exhausting, unprofitable attempt to support the Austrian army in northern Italy against the steady pressure of the French. “Who knows,” she went on more hopefully, “their need for reinforcements in the Mediterranean may bring Captain Forbes down here.”

  Charlotte coloured. “I admit I can’t help hoping for it. He never writes, of course, about naval affairs, but anything is possible these days. Just think what a fool I’d feel if I took a passage home and then he came here looking for me. And he will come, Helen, when he can. I know that.”

  “I’m glad.” Helen had wondered whether she was right in permitting Charlotte’s correspondence with Captain Forbes. It was all too easy to imagine what Mrs. Standish would say if she knew. And here, in fact, was a powerful argument for Charlotte’s staying.

  She had hit on it herself. “Just think what M . . . m . . .” She took a deep breath. “You see, Helen, even thinking of her brings back my stammer. No. I won’t go home, if you’ll keep me, until I can go as Mrs. Forbes.”

  “Of course I‘ll keep you, love. I can’t imagine how I would manage without you.” But Helen wondered if she had been right that summer when the news broke that Spain had signed a peace treaty with France. There had been rumours of this for some time, and Lady Hamilton had gone about, visibly big with important news, but just the same Helen could hardly believe it when she paid a morning call to announce that the alliance was a fact. “And one of which I have taken good care the British government shall have early information,” she told Helen. “My darling Queen fought it to the last, and even let me see the letters from Spain, which I copied for our Foreign Office, but it was all no use. That idiot King Charles IV of Spain has given way to his wife and her ‘friend’ Godoy. Only think, they have created him ‘Prince of the Peace.’ I only hope it is not a peace that the Neapolitans intend to join.”

  “Do you think there is a chance?”

  “Not while my darling Queen lives, and Sir William and I to give her good counsel. No need to look anxious, Lady Merritt. You and little Ricky are as safe here as you would be in London. You will see; now the French campaign in northern Italy is beginning in good earnest, we shall have all the British tourists corning down upon us, like rats from a sinking ship.”

  “You think it will sink—the rest of Italy?”

  “Sir William is not h
opeful. There’s a man with a barbarous name—a Corsican, but serving the French. He out-generals everyone. The rumour is that he may be put in command of the army of Italy, and then, Sir William says, heaven help the states that have not made their preparations. Thank God, we are ready here. Sir John Acton has seen to that, with my husband’s help, of course. But this is all in the deepest confidence.” She rose to take her leave, and Helen wondered in how many other drawing rooms she would impart the same news, “in the deepest confidence.”

  “But that is unfair, I believe.” She had said something to Charlotte about this. “I truly think that she is careful in her dealings with the Italians.”

  “I think she really loves her Queen,” said Charlotte.

  “Yes. And for her, love is everything.” It brought back, strangely, a memory long since suppressed, of the angel in that sunlit garden in Hampshire. They had come a long way, both of them, since the angel had come between her and Sir Harry, had said, “Scoot, luv,” and little Helen had scooted. “I wonder which she loves best,” she said now, thoughtfully, “the Queen or Sir William?”

  “Who could help loving Sir William?” It was not quite an answer, and they both knew it, though Helen agreed, wholeheartedly. She would always owe Sir William an imponderable debt of gratitude for the way he had handled the matter of her letter. She had contrived to give it to him in person one day when she was calling on Lady Hamilton, and had asked him quickly, in a private moment, not even to acknowledge it. He had weighed it for a moment in his hand, then looked at her very straight with his wise old eyes. “I will read it when I am alone, Lady Merritt,” he had said. “Believe me your servant in anything I can do for you.”

  She had believed him and had slept more soundly since, though, by her order, Angelina saw to it that little Ricky was never for a moment alone. Angelina had been quick too. “Children’s lives are like candles,” she had said. “They snuff so easily. But not our Henrici. I, Angelina, have said it. You may trust me, signora.”

  “I do,” Helen had told her.

  So Ricky grew from crawling to walking, from odd monosyllables to a stream of childish babble, and learned, among many other things, that when Lord Merritt was at home (which was not often), it was better not to play truant from the nursery. Helen was accidental audience to one of the stages of this discovery. She had come out of her own rooms at the head of the wide marble stairway of the Palazzo Trevi in time to witness a surprise confrontation between Lord Merritt and his “son.” Her husband had just arrived unexpectedly, his boots still bloodstained from the hunt, and the slaughterhouse aftermath in which he now joined the King. Ricky, who would not have been loose in the house if Angelina had had any idea of this, had come in from the terraced garden where he must have been busy working in his own patch of ground. His hands and face were black with earth, his dark hair tousled, and his petticoats filthy. He looked every inch a happy little boy.

  Lord Merritt stared down at him while Helen caught her breath to speak, then paused despite herself to listen. “Dirty,” said Lord Merritt. “Disgusting.”

  “So are you,” said his “son,” eyeing those bloodstained boots askance.

  One of them was aimed at him viciously. He dodged, was hit, squealed momentarily, then bit his lip. “I don’t like you.”

  “My dear,” Helen, leaning over the balustrade, kept her voice even, “how pleasant, and what a surprise to see you.” At her voice, the child gave one quick, grateful upward glance and vanished through the servants’ door.

  “Your child?” asked Lord Merritt.

  “Ours,” said Helen.

  “Filthy.”

  “A child.” She looked, with intent, at his boots.

  “Pah. That.” But he was disconcerted. “Came in a hurry to warn you. Bad news at Court.”

  “Oh?” It must be bad, she thought, if it had brought him home.

  “That devil Bonaparte’s taken Nice and Savoy. Lombardy’s next. Talk of throwing the British out of Italy.”

  “And what does the King say?” or the Queen, she might have added.

  “There’s to be a service in the Cathedral. Came to tell you. Must go. All of us. Something . . . Acton said . . . United front, that’s it.”

  “Then don’t kick our child,” she said.

  “Your child.” She must remember not to provoke him on this.

  The lazzaroni turned out in force to cheer the King and Queen on their way to the Cathedral, but many of the nobility’s pews were empty. And the news went from bad to worse. Bonaparte had forced the Dukes of Parma and Modena to buy peace for exorbitant sums and had then turned his attention against the Austrian army, which was soon in headlong retreat. Even Queen Maria Carolina had to admit that with the Austrians in flight, Naples could not stand alone. A Neapolitan emissary, Prince Belmonte, was sent to sue for terms from the victorious Bonaparte, but found it difficult to catch up with him in his swift pursuit of the enemy. All that summer, negotiations continued, varying with the fortunes of war. And in the autumn, Helen had another letter from her father. It was dated, “At sea, off Elba,” and urged her in no uncertain terms to take any opportunity that might offer to get back to England. “I can say no more,” wrote Captain Telfair, “but you and your husband will be fools if you do not take the first chance that presents itself. Show him this letter, with my kind regards.”

  “Fools!” said Lord Merritt predictably. “Kind of him to say so! Hope I’ve more sense than to take to the sea at this time of year. Lot of nonsense anyway. Everyone coming here for safety. Prince Augustus . . . those old French princesses . . . Good enough for them; good enough for us. Write your father so.”

  “He gave me no direction.”

  “Mediterranean fleet, stupid.”

  It was not, Helen was to learn, so stupid as all that. With the New Year of 1797 came the crushing news that the British fleet was evacuating the Mediterranean. Corsica, whose conquest had cost Captain Nelson his eye, was evacuated by Nelson himself. And soon Elba, on which he had looked as a last Mediterranean base, had to be abandoned too. In January, Captain Fremantle of the Inconstant paid a flying visit to Naples to pick up the ex-viceroy of Corsica, Sir Gilbert Elliott, who had been doing his best to encourage a spirit of resistance both in Naples and at Rome, but without any significant success.

  Fremantle had messages for Helen from her father, and offered her and her family a safe voyage home with the retiring fleet. He himself was marrying a girl called Betsy Wynne, whose family he had rescued when Leghorn was overrun by the French, and taking her with him.

  “Her family stay behind,” said Lord Merritt.

  “I believe her father likes the French,” Helen said.

  “Oh well,” her husband shrugged. “Probably not so black as they are painted. Anyway; not coming here. Peace signed. All right and tight. Lot of nonsense that Fremantle talks. Might think it the end of the world the British fleet’s leaving the Mediterranean. High time, if you ask me. Just stir up trouble. That Captain Nelson; always taking ships; making people angry; disobeying orders. I don’t know what the Hamiltons see in him. Nelson this; Nelson that; a letter from dear Nelson. Pah.”

  “He writes most interesting letters.” Helen had been privileged to hear them read aloud by Lady Hamilton herself.

  “Full of blood and battles. Think I’m going to trust myself to one of his young fire-eaters? Lot of nonsense.”

  At that fatal phrase, Helen gave up. And, in fact, she consoled herself that many other members of the English colony seemed perfectly happy to remain in Naples. Prince Augustus was still exercising his three-octave voice in his apartment at the Hotel Britannia. They French royal ladies, aunts of the dead king, were still infuriating Queen Carolina by insisting on every iota of their vanished dignities. Perhaps this time Lord Merritt was right, and it would be better to stay where they were than to risk the hazards of a winter voyage.

  But it was a bleak morning when the Inconstant’s white sails vanished from the bay, and Helen an
d Charlotte both had to school themselves to ignore sneering references to the British fleet, “with a fine set of sails for running away.” It proved a surprising bond with Lady Hamilton, whose imagination had been caught by that small, plain Captain Nelson who had visited Naples years before and who wrote such vigorous letters.

  “He will distinguish himself one of these days,” she told them. “You see if he doesn’t. Sir William says so. He said it the first time he met him. ‘Give him the apartments you had made ready for Prince Augustus,’ he said. ‘That’s a man who will go far.’ You just wait and see.”

  They did not have to wait long. In February, Sir John Jervis, commanding the fleet that had evacuated the Mediterranean, had the luck to encounter the Spanish fleet, now allied to France. Jervis had fifteen sail of the line, against the Spanish twenty-seven. “If there are fifty sail,” he said, “I will go through them. England badly needs a victory at present.”

  Just the same, he would have failed to achieve the complete victory he wanted, if Nelson, in the Captain, had not brilliantly disobeyed orders and swung his ship out of the line to risk it and his life against a superior force of Spaniards. His friends, Troubridge and Collingwood followed him with the Culloden and the Excellent, and the result was an overwhelming British victory, with Nelson capturing not one but two Spanish ships, one of them the Sanctissima Trinidad, the largest fighting ship in the world.

  “I told you he was a hero.” Lady Hamilton had paid a special visit to Helen and Charlotte to read them Nelson’s letter on the occasion. “Now what will that nasty French Monsieur Canclaux say, and that naked wife of his.” She thought for a moment. “But Sir William says I am not to speak of it. We diplomats have our problems, my dears. And you had best be careful too, with your naval connections. It is not everyone in Naples who is as delighted as we are over this victory of Cape St. Vincent.”