Helen picked up the letter. “I did not think to look. Oh—merely, ‘At sea.’ ”
“Fool of a girl. Something about where they’ve been?”
“Well, not much.” Helen was glad to be able to say it. “She seems more concerned with her own happiness. Oh, there’s something here about ‘such a chase as we have had’ but that’s all.”
“No word of the French?”
“Not one. If they had been in action, I am sure she would have mentioned it.”
“Idiotic. Visiting Lady Hamilton?”
“Yes. She asks me to take her Charlotte’s letter. They have heard from Nelson.”
“Then what’s keeping you?” said her husband. “Ambassadress sends for you and you sit around gossiping. Just like you.”
It was a relief to get away from his clumsy questioning, but she wished she had more time in which to decide whether to show Lady Hamilton Charlotte’s letter or merely quote from it to her. Helen and Miss Tillingdon had always disliked the showing of letters, and in this case Helen was particularly reluctant. She found it hard to face the thought of Emma Hamilton’s possible questions about Charles Scroope. Thinking about him was bad enough. Could she possibly speak of him without breaking down?
As so often, she had fretted herself unnecessarily. Lady Hamilton was too full of their own news to be much interested in Helen’s. “Writes all about herself, does she?” She laughed indulgently. “Understandable enough. I was like that once, thinking only of dress and parties. Now it’s quite other with me. Now I am a politician despite myself.” She fell unconsciously into her pose as Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom.
“Charlotte—Mrs. Forbes—refers me to you for news of Captain Nelson.” Helen brought the conversation back to the matter in hand.
“She sends you to the right person.” She was the Ambassadress now. “Sir William and I both had letters this time. But it’s bad news, I’m afraid. Not a sign of the French. The Devil’s children have the Devil’s own luck, says our poor Nelson. Only think of his having been all the way to Egypt and back, and still not a sign of them. It’s driving him frantic with worry, and no wonder.”
“Where is he?” asked Helen.
“Off Sicily. He dates from Syracuse and speaks of taking a look in at Cyprus. If only his supplies hold out . . .”
Two days later, a furious letter from Nelson to Sir William proved that Emma knew what she was talking about. The Governor of Syracuse had had the temerity to refuse the British ships the supplies they needed, claiming that General Acton had sent no orders. “I have come straight from my beloved Queen,” said Emma. “We’ll soon see whose orders carry weight in this country. But,” finger on lip, “not a word to a soul, as you love me.”
By now, everyone knew that the British fleet was off Sicily, and Helen felt safe enough in telling her husband this, and also about the fleet’s difficulty over provisions and water.
“Both sides against the middle,” said Lord Merritt. “Neapolitan game, if you ask me. Best start practising your French.”
“Do you think so?” If only she could find out what Price knew, but she dared not rouse his suspicions by cross-questioning her husband.
A few days later came the news that the British squadron had sailed from Syracuse, where, Nelson now wrote to Sir William, their wants had been most amply supplied and every attention had been paid to them. “You see.” Lady Hamilton was triumphant. “We all know whose doing that is! But mum’s the word.”
“Yes, indeed. Though I suppose it will be public knowledge that they have been supplied.”
Lady Hamilton laughed. “Bound to be. And the Court will probably give the Governor of Syracuse a public rebuke and a private reward. Only see how cleverly our friend Nelson has worded his letter. See where he writes that he has ‘been tormented by no private orders being given to the Governor.’ That’s put in to save everyone’s face, do you see? He’s no fool, our friend Nelson.”
“No, indeed.” Helen knew now what she would say at home. But Lady Hamilton had one more quotation from Nelson. “Be assured,” he wrote, “I shall return either crowned with laurel or covered with cypress.”
Chapter 18
THE long wait began again. Nelson had sailed from Syracuse on July twenty-fourth, but it was not until September third that Naples learned how fully he had carried out his orders to “burn, sink, or destroy” the enemy. All August, eyes and glasses had been fixed on the bay, where any day a sail might appear with news of a battle that would settle the balance of power in the Mediterranean. Citizen Garat had left Naples in disgust by now, discovering at last that “the infamous behaviour of the Court was not due to barbarity but to ingrained hostility.” His secretary, Lacheze, was left in charge of the embassy, but Lacheze had little to do but complain.
September third gave him something to complain about. The sloop Mutine sailed into the bay, and Captain Hoste and Captain Capel hurried ashore with dispatches for Sir William and for England. But before they so much as landed, the triumphant pantomime of the sailors who rowed them had told its tale. Miss Cornelia Knight and her mother, who had been watching through a telescope, hurried to tell the news to their next-door neighbour, General di Pietra, and soon champagne glasses were being smashed in honour of British victory.
At the Palazzo Trevi, Helen actually heard the news from her husband, who had been dining with General di Pietra, but hurried home to tell her (and Price?) the news, and to urge that she go up to the Palazzo Sessa without delay.
For once, there was no need to edit what she learned there. This was victory, unqualified and glorious, and the more Price knew about it, the better. Captain Nelson would indeed return crowned with laurel, and, if he did not, Lady Hamilton was all ready to crown him. She was in a dramatic seventh heaven, weeping, exclaiming, threatening to faint (which she already had), and describing over and over again how the news had been received at the palace. The Queen, too, had “fainted, cried, kissed her husband, her children, walked frantic with pleasure about the room” and then “cried, kissed and embraced every person near her exclaiming, ‘Oh brave Nelson, oh God bless and protect our brave deliverer.’ ” As for the French, “Not a French dog dare show his face,” said Emma Hamilton.
The Battle of the Nile had been dramatic enough to satisfy even her. Nelson had found Admiral de Brueys anchored, in the safety (as he thought) of Aboukir Bay, and had sailed in at dusk to fight a bloody night-long action, from which only two French ships escaped. Bonaparte and his army were marooned in Egypt, and the English all powerful in the Mediterranean. But the victory had been bought high. When the two surviving French ships slipped their cables in the morning and ran for it, there was not a British one in a state to give chase. And Nelson had been wounded, at first, he thought, fatally, and though the wound in fact proved superficial he was suffering from the strain of the long chase. He and his battered ships were on their way to Naples to refit and recuperate. Emma was preparing apartments for him in the Palazzo Sessa, and though he began by saying he would rather stay in a hotel, he was soon overruled by the enthusiastic Ambassadress, who was, she wrote him, dressed all over à la Nelson.
She looked, in Helen’s view, sufficiently ridiculous, with her blue shawl covered in geld anchors, and more gold anchors for earrings, and her reports of Queen Maria Carolina’s rejoicings also began, at fourth or fifth repetition, to have a faintly absurd flavour. Had the daughter of Austria really fainted and cried hip hip hurrah? Helen had to suspect that she very likely had. The Queen and Emma tended to encourage each other in this kind of extravagance. But then, extravagance was the order of the day. There was no talk of neutrality now. All Naples was illuminated for three nights in celebration. “There were three thousand lamps,” said Emma, “and there should have been three millions if we had time.”
“It was magnificent.” Helen said it mechanically. She was finding her role of confidante to the ecstatic beauty increasingly trying, and was grateful to Miss Cornelia Knight for sharing it
with her.
“Magnificent indeed!” Emma Hamilton had a sharp look for Helen. She had not lost her disconcerting gift for reading one’s thoughts. “You’re anxious, love, about Miss Standish—Mrs. Forbes. But you’ll see, she’ll be all right. Naturally, the private news takes longer. And we know the Cormorant was only hit a few times between wind and water.”
“Only” seemed hardly the word to Helen, but Lady Hamilton’s quick sympathy shamed her out of her critical mood. The trouble was that she had another cause of anxiety, one she could discuss with no one. The Gannet was on her way to Naples under tow, and Captain Scroope was reported seriously wounded. It was little comfort to Helen that he was also said to have behaved with the utmost gallantry, joining Foley of the Goliath in boldly turning the enemy’s line. She wanted to know what his wounds were, and, in the hot discomfort of a crippled ship, what his chances.
Nothing for it, as always, but to wait. A letter from Charlotte painted a gloomy picture. The Cormorant, too, was on her slow way to Naples, with a terrible list of dead and wounded. Charlotte mentioned this almost in passing. Her main concern was that her husband was unhurt and that she had had the fright of her life. “Never again!” she wrote in that large, schoolgirl hand. “My dear John says he will not allow me to be so frightened again, and, besides, I begin to think there are reasons why I would be better on shore. So, dear Helen, may I come back to you? It will break my heart to part with John, but he too thinks it for the best. His anxiety for me, he says, was the worst part of the action to him.” And then, one of her sideways postscripts. “Only think of poor Captain Scroope’s being so bad! John says he and Foley took a terrible chance. We must just hope the poor man survives.” Characteristically, she did not mention what Scroope’s injuries were.
On the eighteenth, Troubridge and Ball brought the Culloden and the Alexander into the Bay of Naples, to a heroes’ welcome. Hurrying up to the Palazzo Sessa, Helen found Ball sitting with Lady Hamilton and delighting her by calling her “the patroness of the navy.”
“We can expect our dear friend Nelson any day now,” Emma told Helen. “But just think, he has lost his foremast, and the Vanguard will come in under tow of the Thalia.”
“What other ships are in tow?” Helen seized the chance to ask Ball this.
“Oh, several. It was a bloody business, Lady Merritt, make no mistake about that. The French defended themselves like tigers, to give them their due. Think of Admiral De Brueys, his legs shot away, having himself tied in a chair and staying on the deck of his flagship until he was killed by a cannon shot. L’Orient blew up later, but we heard the story from a survivor. No, it was a bad night, Lady Merritt.”
“But a glorious one,” said Emma Hamilton.
“I am so glad to hear that my friend Mrs. Forbes is none the worse,” Helen tried again. “She writes me that poor Captain Scroope is hurt. We knew him, she and I, a little. He brought us here, in the Gannet.”
“She’s under tow,” said Captain Ball, and won Helen a quick look from Lady Hamilton. “She should get here about the same time as Nelson. I only hope with her captain still alive. He sustained a wound in the right leg and refused to have it amputated. Well, you can understand that. It would end his career. But, in this climate . . . It’s a terrible chance to take.”
“Madness,” said Lady Hamilton. “It would take the nursing of an angel to save him, and where will he get that? Thank God, our gallant and victorious friend had more sense when his arm was hurt. Oh, how I long for the day when I crown him with the laurel he has earned.”
Ball laughed. “Do you know what he said the night before the battle? ‘A peerage or Westminster Abbey.’ ”
“And it will be a peerage,” cried Emma Hamilton. “Oh, how well it sounds, Earl Nelson of the Nile. Was not that what they gave Jervis?”
“Yes.” Helen thought Ball looked uncomfortable. “But of course he was in over-all command, where Admiral Nelson was not.”
“Fudge,” said Emma Hamilton. “What difference does that make?”
Word soon got around that Nelson would arrive on September twenty-second, the anniversary of King Ferdinand’s coronation. “Tactful, ain’t it,” said Emma Hamilton with one of the rather touching grammatical lapses that happened only when she spoke English. “Sir William’s idea, of course. Would you like to come out in our barge to greet him?”
“No, thank you very much. My husband has arranged to hire a barge for the occasion.” No need to say how much the decision had surprised her. Had Price decided to change sides, or was this merely another of his tricks? He had certainly worked doggedly to make sure that the Palazzo Trevi was as well illuminated even as the Palazzo Sessa.
On the morning of the twenty-second, the crowds began to gather early. The mole and quays were thick with people, and the great bay crowded with boats of every kind. The only trouble, Helen was to find, about having their own barge was that inevitably they had to keep back among the gaily bedecked craft of the Neapolitan nobles and gentry. Since there were some five hundred of these, including whole boatloads of musicians, Helen had only a distant and limited view of the Hamiltons’ barge, with Emma in white muslin for its figurehead, as it pulled alongside the Vanguard. A tiny figure on the quarter-deck must be Admiral Nelson, but they were on the wrong side to see the buxom Ambassadress swayed up in the bosun’s chair. The Ambassador’s barge was closely followed by the royal one, with King Ferdinand on board. Music played, “Rule Britannia” from one side and “See the Conquering Hero” from another—the ships fired a twenty-one-gun salute in honour of the King, and the barges of the nobles began the slow business of getting their passengers on board the Vanguard.
“Take us hours at this rate,” said Lord Merritt. “Much better go fishing. Lot of nonsense anyway. Bet the King would rather. Put you on shore first?”
“Yes, if you please.” Helen did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She had hoped that perhaps someone on board the Vanguard would be able to give her news of Captain Scroope, but the sight of the crowds who were thronging on board made this seem unlikely. “What are the other ships that came in with the Vanguard?” she asked in Italian.
One of the rowers shouted the question across to a friend and obliged with a list of ships, hardly recognisable in his peasant Italian. But Helen caught the Gannet’s name and asked where she was. “Over there—” The man pointed. “Her captain’s dying, they say. They’re taking him to hospital. That will kill him quick enough.”
Helen kept a calm face with an effort and made a quick decision. “My dear,” she turned to her husband, “since Lady Hamilton invites the Admiral to stay and be nursed, do you think it would be well taken if we were to invite Captain Scroope? After all, we are under considerable obligations to him, as everyone knows.”
“Lot of nursing,” said Lord Merritt. “Lot of nonsense. Dead bore of a fellow. Always shoving his nose in.” And then, after a pause. “Think it over.” He looked down at the embroidered satin of his best suit. “Forgot about my clothes. Not quite the thing for fishing. Go home and change first.”
“An excellent idea,” said Helen. So he was going to consult Price. Impossible to imagine what view the latter would take, but surely there was a chance that he would think two people to spy on better than one.
Apparently he did. Helen had hardly had time to take off her broad-brimmed straw hat and change the muslin gown that had been splashed with the filthy water of the bay, when her husband joined her, still in his satin. “About that fellow, Scroope—”
“Yes?” She made herself go on calmly brushing her hair.
“Not a good account of him. Dying by the sound of it. Lot of trouble. But might look well—hey?”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But—your trouble.” He made his position clear.
“Of course. I count on Angelina. If she can’t help him, no one can.”
“Old hag,” said her husband.
“Shall I invite him?” asked Hele
n. “Or will you?”
“No need to stand on ceremony. Drive to the hospital. See what’s going on. Doctors very likely bleeding him to death right now.” Lord Merritt rather enjoyed the idea. “I’m going fishing.”
That seemed to settle it. Helen gave a few brief instructions to Angelina and ordered out the big, old-fashioned carriage they had bought for taking baggage to and from the country. With a little judicious arrangement, it was possible to lay a mattress across the seats. She would not let herself wonder whether they would find Charles Scroope alive. If she got permission, she must be able to move him at once.
And all the time, as the servants worked willingly under her orders, her grinding anxiety for Charles was compounded by a more mundane fear that before she could get away, Charlotte might arrive to claim her hospitality and her time. But Charlotte was doubtless at the party that still seemed to be raging on board the Vanguard. There was no word from her, and Helen got into the carriage with a silent sigh of relief.
At the hospital, all was chaos, and Helen was afraid for a while that her mission might fail simply because it was impossible to get anyone’s attention.
But at last she caught a harassed young doctor and put her question to him. “Captain Scroope? Yes, down there,” he pointed. “With the officers. Not much hope for him, I’m afraid.” And, when she put her proposition, “Can’t make much difference, I’d say, one way or the other. But if you want him—one off our hands. Got enough as it is, No objection that I can see.” He was longing to get back to work.
She held him with one last question. “So, if Captain Scroope does not object?”
“Object? Captain Scroope? He’s been unconscious since they brought him ashore. Just as well, poor man. No, I don’t think the drive will make much difference.” All too obviously he thought nothing would. “Must lay him out flat, of course.”
“I’ve made arrangements,” said Helen coolly, wishing he had used any other phrase.
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