The Rising Storm

by Dennis Wheatley

  “I pray that events may enable you to do so, sir,” Roger said, smiling.

  Sir William stood up, beckoned him across to the big window, and waved a well-manicured hand towards the magnificent panorama of the bay.

  “Let your eyes dwell there, Mr. Brook,” he said with sudden seriousness. “As mine have done for twenty-five long years. You can forget John Acton’s army and navy. In creating them he has served his mistress to the best of his ability; but the army is a rabble that would run at the very sight of my old regiment of Foot Guards, and it needs more than fisherfolk dressed as tars to make a navy. But the bay’s the thing.”

  The elderly dilettante laid a friendly hand on Roger’s shoulder, and went on: “You are too young to have played a part in the wars that near destroyed us in the ’70s, and you were still in your cradle when Clive won Plassey and Wolfe Quebec. But for fourteen of the best years of my life we have been at war with the French, and I’ve not a doubt that we’ve yet to fight them again. Malmesbury, Ewart, Murray Keith, Eden, Dorset, Elliot, all my colleagues who have had the luck to represent their King in more important capitals than myself, think the same. And when it comes Britain must stand or fall, as she has always done, by sea-power. If war broke out next week Naples would become a French fleet-base. Just look at it. ’Tis the finest harbour in the Mediterranean—nay, ’tis the finest harbour in the world. But if we could stymie the French! If we could break their hold by a piece of skilful diplomacy, eh? Think of an English squadron lying there! It would dominate the whole of the western Mediterranean. Britain needs that bay. God grant me a fw years yet to conclude the task that my heart has so long been set upon. Britain has got to have that bay.”

  For a moment they stood there in silence, looking down on the vast lagoon. In four more years, almost to the day, Sir William Hamilton—the man whom Whitehall had forgotten for so long—was to see his heart’s desire realised. He was to stand at that very window, with a promising young Captain named Nelson beside him, gazing with pride and joy at a British squadron being revictualled by the ally he had won for his country.

  But his triumph was still part of the unknown future, and with a sudden return to his light, affable manner, he said: “I trust you’ll join me in a glass of wine, Mr. Brook, and tell me the latest news of the terrible disturbances that now convulse France.”

  Roger spent a further hour with him, then as he rose to take his leave Sir William said: “It is my loss that you have friends in Naples to whom you have already engaged yourself to dine; but I must insist that you have your things sent round from Crocielles and make the Palazzo Sessa your home during your stay in Naples.”

  The very last thing that Roger wanted was to tie himself up as a guest in a private house; so as he stammered his thanks he sought desperately for some way to excuse himself, and went on to murmur that, while he would be most happy to dine one evening, he could not dream of imposing further on Sir William’s kindness.

  Catching the note of perturbation in his voice the diplomat replied with a twinkle in his eye: “Please have no fear that I will seek to keep you from your other friends, Mr. Brook. Besides, at your age you will naturally wish to see something of the gaieties of the town. I have long nicknamed my home ’The Royal Arms’, as I encourage my guests to treat it as an hotel. There is a night porter on the gate who will let you in at any hour you wish, and I will only add that when you have no other engagements we shall be delighted to have you with us.”

  To such true hospitality there could be only one answer. Having thanked Sir William again Roger returned to Crocielles, settled his bill and had his valise sent along to the Palazzo Sessa.

  At Crocielles he found a note awaiting him from the Princess Francavilla. It requested his company at her town house at one o’clock, to join a party for a drive out to her villa at Posilipo, where they would spend the afternoon. As it was still only a little after twelve he had ample leeway to get there at the time for which he was asked, so decided to walk and see something more of the city.

  Naples, he found, could not approach Florence for the grandeur of its buildings; neither had it the cleanliness that the reforming Grand Duke had imposed upon the Tuscan capital. Its beauty lay in its marvellous setting, and a distant view was needed to savour its full enchantment. The streets were narrow, their smells noisome and the swarms of people in them, for the most part, indescribably ill-clad and dirty. Yet they seemed far from unhappy, and the beneficent climate they enjoyed for so many months of the year was clearly a great offset to their poverty.

  They were going about their work as though it did not matter in the least if it got done that day or next week, and half of them were gossiping idly or playing games of chance in the gutters. The rags they wore were the only visible sign of hardship, for their bronzed faces were healthy, their black hair lustrous and curly and their dark eyes sparkling with vitality. In the better part of the town there were many black-coated abbés, brown-robed friars, and nuns wearing various types of headdress. Every street had its quota of mendicants, who often displayed repulsive deformities while calling on the passers-by for alms; and Roger noted with interest that, poor as the crowd appeared, they gave freely of little copper coins.

  At the Francavilla mansion, on the Chiaia, he was shown up to a salon on the first floor, where he found both the Princess and Isabella awaiting him. Dorina Francavilla was a Spaniard, her grandfather having been one of Don Carlos’ captains at the time of the conquest of Naples; but she had fair hair and grey eyes. She spoke French fluently and told Roger that having heard so much about him she was enchanted to meet him. As Isabella’s confidante her pleasure was unbounded at this unforeseen resumption of her friend’s broken romance. She said that he was lucky indeed to love such a pearl among women, as all her efforts to persuade Isabella to console herself for his loss by taking a lover had proved in vain; so that after five months in Naples she was near acquiring the horrid reputation of a prude; and that now they were together again she meant to see to it that they made up for lost time, by not losing an hour of one another’s company.

  Roger thanked her with a grace that came naturally to him, and she gaily declared that she liked him so well that if Isabella did not look to her laurels she would snatch him for herself. Soon afterwards her husband came in, a portly middle-aged man of jovial countenance, who gave Roger an equally pleasant welcome. While they were taking a glass of wine the other guests arrived: two cavaliers, a handsome young abbé, and three ladies. When they were all assembled they went downstairs to a line of waiting carriages, and were driven for three miles west, along the waterfront, to Posilipo.

  The Francavillas’ country-house was situated on the point looking due south across twenty miles of water to the isthmus of Sorrento. Below the great cone of Vesuvius it looked as if Naples stretched as far as the eye could see, but actually the distant clusters of buildings fringing the shore were those of towns and villages linked by country villas in an almost continuous chain. In the gardens of the villa there were palm-trees, cypresses, magnolias, camellias and oleanders, making shady walks, each terminating in arbours, stone seats, or fine pieces of ancient statuary.

  It was, as Roger soon found after an excellent repast, a paradise for lovers. Without the least suggestion of indecorum the five couples paired off and strolled at their leisure through the green alleyways, to settle themselves for the rest of the afternoon in some of the many retreats where there was no likelihood whatever of their being disturbed.

  At five o’clock they reassembled on the terrace, and shortly afterwards drove back to Naples. Before they separated the Marchesa di Santa Marco asked Roger to join a party for a visit to her villa at Résina the following afternoon, and at a flutter of the eyelid from Isabella he readily accepted.

  Soon after six he was back at the Palazzo Sessa. There, a middle-aged lady with a quiet, self-effacing manner introduced herself to him as Mrs. Cadogan, Sir William’s housekeeper. She showed him up to his room, summoned a footman t
o act as his valet and told him that Sir William had a small company coming that evening for whom supper would be served at nine. As Roger was now having difficulty in suppressing his yawns, he asked that the footman should call him at eight-thirty; then, after one of the happiest twenty hours he had spent in his life, he enjoyed two hours’ refreshing sleep.

  At a little before nine he presented himself in his host’s fine range of reception-rooms, where he was introduced to some three dozen guests, among them the beautiful Emma. His first impression was that she was a little overwhelming, as the robust health she enjoyed manifested itself in her almost unnaturally brilliant colouring and extraordinary vivacity, added to which her magnificently proportioned figure was so large that Sir William, although a man of medium height, looked quite small beside her. But Roger quickly fell under her spell, and later he realised that it was her genuine interest in everyone she met and her inexhaustible kindness, far more than her decorative effect, which made her so universally popular.

  Mainly for the benefit of Roger as a newcomer to Naples, after they had partaken of a buffet supper, Emma was persuaded to give an exhibition of her “attitudes”; and for this unusual entertainment the whole company adjourned to one of the smaller salons at one end of which there was a little curtained stage. Emma went behind the scenes while Sir William busied himself arranging the lighting effects; after which the curtains were withdrawn every few moments to display the ex-artist’s model posing to represent various Emotions or Mythological characters. Had Roger been forced to sit through a similar performance by a hostess less well-endowed with charms, he might have found it distinctly wearisome; but as Emma was then twenty-four, and at the height of her Junoesque beauty, he derived genuine artistic enjoyment from it.

  When she had exhausted her repertoire some tables for cards were made up and such guests as did not wish to play settled themselves for a conversazione; so at half-past eleven it was easy for Roger to excuse himself on the plea of having had a long day, and by midnight he was again climbing over the wall of Isabella’s villa.

  He got home only a little before dawn, then slept late; but on getting up he found he had an hour to kill before he was due to wait upon the Marchesa di Santa Marco, so he set about exploring the ground floor of the Palazzo Sessa. To his surprise the whole of the south frontage and both wings consisted of one great suite of lofty chambers housing Sir William’s collection of antiquities. The place was a veritable Aladdin’s cave, and he determined that he must ask his host if he could spare the time to tell him about some of the treasures it contained.

  The Santa Marco villa, where he spent the afternoon, was on the slope immediately below the western side of Vesuvius, and within a stone’s throw of Herculaneum. Forty years earlier the systematic excavation of the buried Roman town had been begun by Don Carlos, and Roger would greatly have liked to see the remains; but his hostess, a large, lazy sloe-eyed woman in her early thirties, was evidently looking forward to spending the next couple of hours with her cavalier in the garden, as she quickly turned the conversation, and, even in this tolerant society, it would have looked too pointed had Roger and Isabella left her grounds on their own.

  Nevertheless he saw Herculaneum, and also as much as had been excavated of Pompeii, later in the week under the most favourable circumstances. Sir William had willingly agreed to show him what he called “his lumber” and they spent the following morning together admiring bronze statuettes, graceful painted vases, curious amulets, mosaics, cameos and fragments of frescoes depicting life as it had been lived under the sway of Imperial Rome. It was while they were in the room that the Brothers Adam had specially designed to contain some of Sir William’s most precious treasures that he said:

  “In view of your interest, Mr. Brook, in this gracious civilisation which so far surpasses anything that Christian nations have yet achieved, you must certainly devote a day to allowing me to show you the buried cities.”

  For Roger it was an awful moment; as he was torn between a longing not to miss such a chance, added to the difficulty of refusing Sir William’s offer without rudeness and the appalling thought that acceptance would mean the loss of one of his few precious days with Isabella. But to such an old hand as Sir William the workings of Roger’s young mind were transparent as glass, and while fingering some long gold pins that had once held up a Roman lady’s hair, he went on casually:

  “No doubt you have made some friends in Naples to whom you would like to return hospitality. Allow me to do so on your behalf. We will make up a party and I leave it to you to invite anyone you wish.”

  “You are too good to me, sir,” Roger exclaimed with heart-felt gratitude. “The Prince and Princess Francavilla have shown me much kindness, and there is the Condesa Sidonia y Ulloa, with whom I was acquainted at the Court of France.…”

  Sir William nodded. “So you met the dark-browed daughter of Conde d’Aranda there, eh? It increases my esteem for you, Mr. Brook, that you prefer the companionship of intelligent women. Pray ask her, then, and those charming Fancavillas, and anyone else to whom you have a mind. Emma, I am sure, will be delighted to have their company.”

  Then, to this delightful invitation, Sir William added what was to Roger a magnificent bonus. “A sloop arrived from Palermo late last night, bringing the news that instead of Their Majesties getting back here on Saturday, as was expected, they have decided to stay on over the weekend, so they will not now reach Naples until Tuesday. In view of the extra time this gives you, if your friends are agreeable, we might make our visit to Herculaneum and Pompeii on Sunday.”

  So on the Sunday a party of eight made an early start in two carriages with well-filled picnic baskets and the erudite Sir William as their cicerone. In vivid phrases he made live for them again the terrified inhabitants of the cities of the bay on the night of August 23rd, A.D. 79. Vesuvius had then been known as Mount La Somma and was less than half its present height. There had been earthquakes in the neighbourhood before, and a severe one sixteen years earlier which had thrown down some of the buildings in Pompeii; but they had since been rebuilt with greater beauty, and the 22,000 people who lived in the busy port had almost forgotten the occurrence.

  At two o’clock in the morning everyone in the towns for miles along the coast had been alarmed by a terrible growling sound coming from underground. The sky was serene and sea calm, but by dawn it was seen that an enormous column of watery vapour was steaming up like a vast pine tree from the top of the mountain. As the morning advanced it grew and spread, assuming the form of a huge mushroom. For some time it remained suspended motionless in the air, a strange and terrifying sight, but endangering no one. Suddenly it burst and descended on the mountain sides in torrents of boiling rain. Gathering the soil in its progress it rushed down the slope towards the sea in the form of scalding mud and totally engulfed Herculaneum.

  In a few hours the town had not only disappeared from the face of the earth, but was buried sixty feet below it. Such of the inhabitants as got away in time fled either to the little town of Neapolis, as Naples was then called, or to Pompeii. The former were inspired by the gods, as Neapolis sustained little damage, and up to eight o’clock in the evening it was thought that Pompeii would also be spared. But at that hour the eruption redoubled in violence, and the volcano began to throw up masses of molten stones. They struck against each other as they were vomited into the air with the roar of continuous thunder, and breaking into small fragments descended on the doomed city.

  By two hours after midnight a mineral rain of red-hot stones, each no bigger than a pea, but in effect like a fiery hailstorm, was descending steadily on Pompeii, burning and blistering everything it touched. Then after it, for hours on end, there fell hundreds of thousands of tons of calcined earth in the form of dust, and a black snow composed of ashes. The clouds laden with these suffocating components had spread far and wide, so that the whole terror occurred in pitch darkness. There now seemed no greater hope of safety in taking one way rather t
han another.

  In wild confusion, patricians and plebeians, freedmen and slaves, priests, foreign traders, gladiators and courtesans ran backwards and forwards in frantic efforts to save themselves. Blindly they rushed into one another and into the walls of the houses they could no longer see. The heat was so stifling they could not get their breath. The sulphur fumes got into their eyes and lungs; the falling dust suffocated them, and thousands of them choked out their lives in agony.

  The air for many hundreds of feet up was so thick with particles that the night seemed eternal. On the day that followed, the distraught people who had escaped with their lives did not even know that the sun had risen, and thought that it had been blotted out for ever. Even as far away as Rome day was turned into night, and the crowds wailed to the gods in panic, believing that the end of the world had come.

  “That,” Sir William told his guests, “is no figment of my own imagination, but almost the words in which this appalling catastrophe was described by cultured Roman men of letters, such as Pliny the Younger, who were actual eye-witnesses to these ghastly scenes.”

  Then he took them to the Forum, the Temples, the Theatre, the Baths, the houses and the shops, showing them the amenities the Romans had enjoyed. And as they ate their picnic lunch he smilingly apologised that he could give them only Lachrima Christi to wash it down, instead of Falernian, as he did not doubt that just as the Roman way of life had reached a peak of civilisation still unrealised by themselves, so had the wines of those times been proportionately better drinking.