Tone as well as formal words convinced her, painfully, that though their strange conversation when he was delirious might have helped in his recovery, he remembered none of it. To him, she was still the woman who had forgotten him, carried on that horrible affair with Trenche by her mother’s sickbed, and ended by making an outrageous marriage for money.
And there was nothing she could do about it, except keep away so as not to remind him, and urge Forbes, when he visited him, to persuade him to stay.
“I’ll do my best,” Forbes promised. “You’re quite right. The hospital’s no place for him, and nor’s the Gannet. Her refit has taken longer than it should, with no captain to press things on.” Taking his leave of her, before he sailed with Nelson to support Mack’s army, he had been encouraging about his last interview with Scroope. “I think he recognises, Lady Merritt, that the good of the service must come first, and that means staying with you for a quick recovery.”
It might be painful that it had taken this argument to make Charles stay, but it was reassuring just the same, and Helen was relieved to have Angelina report steady progress and an increasing interest in the news from the Gannet. And if Helen strong-mindedly kept her visits to the barest minimum that courtesy required, Charles had a faithful companion in Ricky. Angelina had begun by trying to turn the child away, arguing that he would tire her patient, but Charles had sat up in bed, she told Helen, and insisted that he stay. Ricky brought his toys to his new friend’s bedside, and Helen, paying her brief evening call, would find the two of them hard at it in a precarious game of spillikins on the sheets or, somehow more touching still, would hear Charles’s voice in the steady rumble that meant he was telling Ricky a story. He always stopped short when she appeared, and no persuasion of Ricky’s would make him go on.
“Tell Mamma about the king who lost his voice,” Ricky begged, one windy evening when Helen had returned from the Palazzo Sessa with the news that the date for the march on Rome had been settled at last.
“Mamma has other things to think of.” Charles’s dry voice hurt Helen almost beyond bearing. “Now, off with you to bed, Ricky. Scoot.”
If anyone else had given the order, Ricky would have protested, but Charles’s will was law. The child picked up the bag Helen had embroidered for his spillikins, said good night, and left them.
“I’m more grateful to you than I can say for your kindness to him,” said Helen. “You’ve done him so much good.”
“It’s been a pleasure,” he said formally. “He needed some attention.”
“Yes, I am ashamed to feel that I have neglected him.” Helen would rather have died than point out that in fact the neglect had arisen from the fact that she was nursing Charles himself.
“You ought to take him back to England,” Charles said. “This is no place for a child to grow up.”
“I know.”
“Then why don’t you go? You’re a free woman, and a rich one. There’s nothing to stop you.”
“My husband won’t hear of it.”
“Lord Merritt!” His tone was glacial. “You can’t expect me to believe that you aren’t able to talk him round. If you put your mind on it.”
“It’s the’truth.”
“I still find it hard to believe.” While giving her what was tantamount to the lie, he maintained a kind of steely courtesy, and Angelina, sitting sewing on the far side of the bed, had a quick glance for his tone. “Lady Merritt,” he went on now, with an obvious effort, “surely, you can’t be hoping that Trenche will come back?”
“Hoping!” She could hardly believe her ears. “You are insulting me, Mr. Scroope.” It was a relief to forget unhappiness in anger. “I do not know—I do not wish to know what lies Trenche told you about me, but surely, if there was ever anything like friendship between us, you should have given me the benefit of the doubt. And now, I will say good night.”
“Helen!” She heard it as she closed the door, and made herself ignore it.
She also made herself keep away altogether from the sickroom, where, Angelina reported, Charles was growing increasingly restless. The elderly first lieutenant of the Gannet brought gloomy reports of the progress, or lack of it, in her refit, and Charles was doggedly making himself use his leg a little more every day. Helen had found a new-doctor, prepared to take over a patient who had received such unorthodox treatment in the first place, and he and Angelina were now in agreement that fairly soon Charles would have to go back to the Gannet, even if be went on a stretcher.
“I think he’ll make himself better,” Helen told Lady Hamilton, who had returned from seeing the Neapolitan, army march from San Germano.
“It would be like one of our hero’s captains,” said Lady Hamilton, and then, returning to a familiar theme: “Only think of the government insulting him with a mere baronship! ‘Baron Nelson of Burnham Thorpe’ forsooth. I wonder that wife of his, and his family, did not protest on the spot.”
It had been a bitter disappointment, and, Helen suspected, had combined with Josiah Nisbet’s continued bad behaviour to make a subtle change in Lady Hamilton’s feelings about Nelson’s wife. Helen sometimes even wondered whether it might not also have changed Nelson’s own, but had seen little of him since that tremendous birthday party.
“But, look!” Lady Hamilton had something to show her. “Some people appreciate our hero. See the diamond aigrette and plume that the Sultan of Turkey has sent him! And this fur pelisse.” She put it on and struck a heroic attitude. “The Sultan knows who is the saviour of Europe.”
“Yes,” said Helen. “But what is the news from the army?”
“The best of course.” She looked, just for a moment, doubtful, then took up her Boadicea stance. “A pity, mind you, that it rained so when those poor soldiers marched, and that they had to ford the river Melfa, which, I understand, was most inconveniently in flood.”
“But surely,” said Helen, “one must expect rain and floods in November? Why did not General Mack have a bridge built all that time when he was waiting to start?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Lady Hamilton. “Between you and me, our friend drinks him something of a fair-weather general. I do hope that for once he is proved wrong.”
“So do I.” Helen knew that for the moment there was only one “friend” in Emma Hamilton’s life.
At home, she found her husband, who had decided against accompanying King Ferdinand to Rome, and was on a flying visit between hunting parties. “There you are,” he greeted her with his usual lack of ceremony. “Been at Sir William’s?”
“Yes.”
“And the news?”
“Lady Hamilton had just returned from seeing the army march.” She fought a brief battle between her duty to her son and to her country. But she had failed Ricky before. “My dear,” she said now. “I am not quite happy about Lady Hamilton’s reports of the army.” After all, she told herself, Price would be bound to learn of the army’s difficulties soon enough.
“Oh?” At least she had caught his attention.
“Lady Hamilton does not seem to think very highly of General Mack.” She would not quote Lord Nelson.
“Yes.” It did not seem to surprise him. “Captain Scroope said so too. Gone by the way.”
“Gone?” She could not believe her ears.
“Yes. Heard some story about the army marching; told Angelina to pack his things; gone to his ship. Quite right too. Oh, regards and thanks. All that.”
“Very civil of him.” She had not thought it could hurt like this.
Next day, a formal note of thanks from Charles rubbed salt into the wound. He was sorry not to have seen her to thank her in person . . . He owed her his life . . . He was hers to command, Charles Scroope. And then, a scribbled postscript, “Give my love to Ricky.” Safe in the privacy of her room, Helen let go at last, and cried as if she would never stop.
Chapter 21
A WEEK later, Helen and Lady Hamilton stood at the window of the Palazzo Sessa and watched the Gan
net sail out of the bay. “That young man will go far,” said Emma Hamilton. “Sir William tells me he has achieved as much in a week as his first lieutenant did in the three months since the Battle of the Nile was fought.”
“If he doesn’t kill himself in the process,” said Helen.
“He won’t. Our hero’s captains are made of stronger stuff than that.” Lady Hamilton’s mind was elsewhere. “I wish we’d hear from the King.”
“There’s still no news?”
“Not since we heard of that brash with the French. I wish I knew what General Championnet means to do. It seems strange that he should just withdraw before our troops.”
“Yes.” Helen had not liked the sound of this either.
But the next day all the church bells in Naples rang out in celebration of a triumph all the more splendid, according to Lady Hamilton, in that it had been bloodless. The French general, Championnet, had withdrawn; the Neapolitan troops had entered Rome unopposed, and King Ferdinand had ridden through the city to shouts of “Ev-viva il Re di Napoli.” All over Rome, trees of liberty had been torn down, and Neapolitan and Papal standards dusted off and raised instead. King Ferdinand, comfortably ensconced in his own Farnese Palace, had entertained the nobility and clergy of Rome, and the Pope had been invited to return.
“It’s the beginning of the end for Bonaparte.” The news had sent Lady Hamilton into a fever of joy. “And there is good news from our friend Nelson too. He has received the unconditional surrender of Leghorn, and is returning to join us in our celebrations.”
But by December the fifth, when Nelson sailed back into the bay, the news had changed. There was something wrong with the Neapolitan army in Rome. That six days’ march through the pouring rain had taken as much toll as a major battle, and General Mack had neither the wits to recognise his army’s deplorable state, nor the capacity to rectify it. When the news came that Championnet’s withdrawal had been merely a ruse, and that he was preparing to march back on Rome, panic struck. King Ferdinand escaped ignominiously from the city two days before the French entered it. The Neapolitan troops, learning of Ferdinand’s flight, felt, with some cause, that they had been betrayed. Some of their officers were French sympathisers or even in French pay. Some, like General de Damas, led their troops brilliantly but unavailingly into small rear-guard actions; others were content to put up merely a token resistance.
In Naples, the triumphant carillons were hushed, and the lazzaroni massed in the great square outside the palace, stirred this way and that by every new piece of bad news. Two weeks to the day from starting on his triumphant march to Rome, King Ferdinand was back, boasting of the terrors he had undergone, but quite prepared to forget all about it and start hunting again.
The Queen and Lady Hamilton had fallen from triumph to despair. A French attack on Naples seemed inevitable now, and what hope of defence had they, with only Mack for general? The King signed an appeal to his people to rise in defence of their freedom, and the lazzaroni terrified everyone by their response. The mob in the great palace square was armed now with sticks and stones and cudgels. An unfortunate royal messenger, Ferreri, taken for a spy, was torn to pieces under the palace windows, and held up, like a slaughtered stag, for the King to see.
Only Nelson was calm, but it was the calm of despair. “If Mack is defeated,” he said, “this country is lost,” and he and the Hamiltons set to work frantically at plans for the evacuation of the Court to their other capital city, Palermo in Sicily. Calling, as usual, daily at the palace, Lady Hamilton came away with her carriage full to bursting with royal treasure and royal possessions. Other chests came to her secretly at night. Back at the Palazzo Sessa, her mother, Mrs. Cadogan, Cornelia Knight, and Helen helped her pack these miscellaneous treasures into containers sent up from the bay by Lord Nelson. Innocently stamped as “Salt pork” or “Biscuit,” they were ready to be taken on board ship when the time came.
And in the evening, tired out with handling heavy gold bars, or priceless jewels, they put on then own court clothes and jewellery and made the public appearances that must keep up the pretence that all was well.
“If the lazzaroni learn the King is planning to leave,” Emma Hamilton said, “God knows what they might not do. Who knows, we might even share the fate of that wretched messenger, Ferreri. The mob’s capable of anything.”
“But they love the King.” For once, Helen was not sure that the Admiral’s plan was wise. “Surely if he were to stay and lead them, the French would not have a chance.”
“The love of the mob!” Lady Hamilton was undoubtedly echoing her “beloved Queen.” “We know what that is worth, since Varennes and the Temple. And, besides, we are betrayed on all sides. Aquila has been taken, that coward Vanni has killed himself, and Mack writes that all is lost.”
Back at the Palazzo Trevi, Helen found her husband waiting for her, shaking with fright. He, too, had heard of Ferreri’s murder. “Time to be packing,” he said. “French one thing. Mob another. Price says so. Lot of wild beasts out there. Tear us to pieces.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Helen with a certainty she was far from feeling. “It will be time for us to pack up when Lady Hamilton does so.”
“She hasn’t?”
“Not a thing.” It was true enough. Emma Hamilton had been far too busy with the Queen’s affairs. “But . . .” She had been thinking quickly. “If Price is anxious, he could make a start It’s true enough that Sir William has shipped out the best of his collection.” This, she knew, was common knowledge. Let Price make what he would of it. Her one comfort, those desperate days, was the thought that soon the long, silent struggle with Price would be over. Surely he would stay behind to welcome his French masters and claim his reward?
Lord Merritt was still unhappy. “Wish that captain of yours would come back. Fire-eater. Scroope. Owes us a favour. Know where he is?”
“No.” If only she did, but on this point at least she had no need to lie. There had been no word from Charles Scroope since he had sailed away. Why should there be? She would probably never see or hear from him again. And, almost worst of all, Ricky kept asking for him. Ricky had felt the general tension in the house, clung either to her or to Angelina, and asked, over and over again, when “his captain” would come back. It was all Helen could do not to lose her temper with him.
Two days later, the Prince Royal returned from the front with news of fresh disaster. “It’s only a question now of which day,” said Emma Hamilton. “And me with nothing packed. I shall have to flee in my shift.” She rather liked the dramatic prospect, and fell unconsciously into the attitude of Niobe, weeping for her children. Then, briskly: “No need to look so anxious, love. Whatever happens, you shall come with us and the royal family on Nelson’s Vanguard. It’s a promise, but tell no one. I can’t even take poor Miss Knight, but you and your Angelina will help us, I know, with the royal children, poor suffering babies, and we cannot leave your Ricky to the uncertain chances of a Neapolitan ship.”
Thanking her, Helen wondered how Prince Caracciolo, commander of the Neapolitan navy, would feel when he learned that the royal family had sailed on a British ship. She was also horribly sorry for Miss Knight, who had recently lost her mother, but this was no time for such feelings. Ricky must come first. She thanked Lady Hamilton warmly and promised to have all ready so that they could join the royal party at a moment’s notice.
It came on December twenty-first, with the news that Mack could no longer hold Capua. Helen, like the other English residents, received a scribbled note of warning from Lady Hamilton. The royal treasure was all safely embarked; that night the royal family would follow it. But in the meantime the tragicomedy must be played out to the end. Kelirn Effendi, the Turkish emissary who had brought the Sultan’s gifts for Lord Nelson, was giving a reception. “You and Lord Merritt must meet us there,” Lady Hamilton told Helen that afternoon. “Our hero accompanies us. We will dismiss our carriages as usual and then walk straight to the quay.”
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br /> “Without even going in?”
“Yes.” Lady Hamilton laughed for once. “Poor Kelim, how surprised he will be. But, you see, the mob must not know we are gone until the royal party are safe on board.”
“And when will that be?” Helen was wondering what possible arrangements she could make for Ricky and Angelina that would not alert Price.
“Not till nine o’clock. When he has seen us safe on board, Lord Nelson returns for my angelic Queen and her family.”
“What shall I do about Ricky?”
“Oh.” Lady Hamilton had not thought of this problem, nor did she know of the threat Price represented. “Have that old witch of yours bring him down to the Molesiglio at nine. They can come off with the royal attendants.”
“But she can’t possibly bring Ricky through town alone, tonight of all nights.”
“You’ve servants, haven’t you? That man of your husband’s can go with them. No doubt he can make himself useful on board. God knows we’re going to have such a shipload of royalty we’ll need some extra servants.” Again, Emma Hamilton was enjoying the adventurous prospect.
Helen was not. “I think I had best stay home with Ricky myself,” she said.
“No.” It was final. “Lord Nelson’s orders are that everything must seem as usual. If you are not with me, it will be bound to cause comment.” And then, seeing Helen still look doubtful, she produced a clincher. “I had trouble enough persuading our friend to make room on the Vanguard for you and your family. If you find you cannot do as I ask, you will just have to fend for yourselves. Poor Miss Knight will have trouble enough getting passage, I’m afraid. Maybe you could join forces with her?”
“No.” Helen was beaten and knew it. “Naturally, if you wish it, Lord Merritt and I will meet you at Kelim Effendi’s.” She was still racking her brain about Ricky and Angelina wheu Captain Scroope was announced.
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