It seemed like an eternity before Emma emerged. She left behind her a woman racked with guilt that her own afflictions had taken precedence over that of her child, that another had comforted him through his illness.
“Tom, I leave it to you to tend to the body,” said Nelson.
“Your honour,” Tom replied, sobbing.
Nelson patted him on the back, and went to Emma, who was still leaning against the door to the sleeping cabin. He took her hand and let the motion of the ship press him against her. “I have no words, Emma, to tell you how sorry I am, nor to tell you how much I admire you.”
Her response was to lay her head on his shoulder. Then she began to sob, but even through her tears she could not forget her responsibilities. When she collected herself, she said, “Someone must tell the King.”
“I will do that.”
The shake of the head was violent. “No. I will.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” Nelson replied. He turned to see Tom Allen glance surreptitiously at him and Emma, with a knowing expression that held a good measure of concern. “I shall go back on deck.”
The first face Emma saw on entering the wardroom was her mother’s. It bore the faraway expression of someone under the influence of drink. She sat in a chair set tight against the wardroom table, clasping a goblet, and gave Emma a lopsided smile. That disappeared when Emma told her of Prince Alberto’s death, to be replaced by a shocked expression. By the time she had spoken to the King, and seen him drop his head in his hands, Mary Cadogan was crying. The boy had been an imp, but a charming one, a visitor to the Palazzo Sessa as often as his mother would allow. Ferdinand did not lift his head, and did not seem to mind when Emma took his hand in hers to comfort him: for once the king was completely immobile, stunned by his loss.
“Sir William,” Emma asked her mother.
“Gone,” Mary Cadogan slurred. “Went out an age ago, never saying where to. Had something with him under his greatcoat.”
“What?”
“Couldn’t see.” Mary Cadogan nodded to the screened off cabin. “Happen Prince Hazy will know.”
Emma called softly, then pulled back the canvas screen. Prince Esterhazy, normally the most fastidious creature, was dishevelled. He had jammed himself into a corner, and was sitting fiddling with a sparkling object. Emma was close enough to see it was a jewel-encrusted snuffbox. Esterhazy held it up to show her the miniature painting on the top, a nude study of his beautiful Neapolitan mistress, the Princess Pigniatelli.
“Do you think if I offer this to the gods of the sea it will appease them?”
“My husband?” Emma asked.
“He took his pistols from his chest and went out.”
“You didn’t think to stop him?” Emma said, trying to hide her alarm.
“No gentleman can require an explanation from someone unwilling to volunteer it.”
Before he finished the sentence Emma was gone, cursing him for a courtly fool. A look at her mother produced no more than a shrug, so she went out on to the lower deck to look for Sir William. In a crowded ship, no one could move anywhere unseen, so Emma found him quickly enough. He was in another screened-off cubicle on the orlop deck, sitting on a tiny cask, his coat wrapped round him for warmth, the two pistols held ready for use.
“The motion is more tolerable below sea level,” he said, with a slight scowl to show that he was displeased at being disturbed.
“Those?” asked Emma, gesturing towards the highly polished and decorated pistols.
“For me, my dear,” he replied. “I have no intention of dying with the guggle-guggle of seawater in my throat. It is something I have always feared. Should we founder I will blow my brains out to avoid it.”
“Would I be allowed to observe, husband, that you are being very foolish?”
“Am I, Emma? Perhaps I will just take this route to perdition anyway.”
Emma had never seen Sir William behave like a chastised child before, but now that was what he looked like. His lips were pursed together with the kind of determined look a stubborn youngster might adopt. She felt that if Sir William had looked in a mirror now he would be shocked at his aged appearance. But what she was seeing was the face that greeted him every morning before his toilet: the wispy grey hair, the lined and thin face that needed to be dabbed with powder to be made presentable.
It had rarely occurred to Emma that her husband suffered black moods, perhaps because he was so careful of his demeanour, always the diplomat, able to cover a gaff with a witticism, an insult with professional deafness, and a didactic statement with just the right measure of levity. He would hide his moods from her, of course, that was his nature, but she guessed he had been in one since the night he had spent at Posillipo after the Nile ball.
“Admiral Nelson assured me that we have no cause for real concern.”
“Our dear friend obviously feels he can vouchsafe to you things he will tell no one else.” That remark was uncharacteristic of him, but instead of regret Sir William was suffused with a feeling of contentment that his pique was out in the open: he might not like to feel jealous—he might do everything he could to disguise it—but he did and it was uncomfortable. Nelson could say what he liked, and try to reassure his nervous passengers. But Sir William knew that the ship was in extremis, and so the chance of drowning was high. To dissemble in such circumstances was absurd.
“I would not hurt you for anything,” Emma said softly, stretching out a hand to push back her husband’s wayward hair.
“For Nelson?” Sir William croaked.
It was as if the words had stuck in his gullet, so reluctant was he to use them: to pose the question was to invite an answer he dreaded to hear. Had Emma shown any signs of dalliance in the past, perhaps the present situation would be easier to bear, but it was her own fidelity that made what had happened so momentous. It was Nelson’s singularity that made his attentions a threat.
“You admire him as much as I do.”
Sir William could hardly deny that. The day he had introduced Nelson to his wife, five years before, he had told her that Nelson was a remarkable fellow who would go far. Quite why he had been so enthusiastic seemed odd now, although he had been proved right. Until then he had always had a jaundiced view of sailors, never ever offering visiting captains hospitality under his roof. But he had accommodated Nelson in rooms set aside as royal apartments. The man had impressed him from that first day, and still did. Old enough to be the Admiral’s father, Sir William wondered if he saw in him the son he had never had.
“Yes, I admire him, but not quite as much as you do, my dear.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
EMMA KNELT in front of her husband and removed the pistols from his hands, releasing the hammers to render them safe. She laid them on the floor and took her husband’s cold hands in hers.
How to say to him that the pleasures they had shared were now so diminished as to have almost ceased; no man wants to hear such a thing, that the companion of his bedchamber is rarely present, and then only through a sense of duty not anticipation. How to tell him that she didn’t admire Nelson, she was in love with him: madly, passionately, uncontrollably, totally. That would be even more unwelcome to a man who had craved that very emotion, only to never have it granted.
“Tell me the truth, Emma.”
They locked eyes, she wondering if somehow she had communicated her confusion through touch, the fact that whatever she said would cause him pain and that in turn would make her feel dreadful. Sir William, looking into those green, confused eyes, was reminded of the first day he had clapped eyes on her. There, in Greville’s Edgeware Road hideaway, he had seen the beauty his nephew had acquired, a veritable Venus, so alluring that, as a fifty-five-year-old, Sir William was forced to recall his age, which was enough on its own to dampen any fantasies he might harbour about the girl.
Emma was older now, the face a little more full than that of the stunning beauty he
had so admired. Yet that recollection produced another memory: of a young woman who had lacked guile, who was so natural and open in her behaviour it was often mistaken by other men for that of a practised coquette. If Emma had lacked one thing it was certainty, being a person who had always seemed to need guidance. Perhaps that was what she needed now.
“Do not fear that what you say will shock me,” Sir William added. “Remember, I have been your intimate companion for a dozen years.”
Emma stroked his lined, unshaven cheek. “I never thought I could shock you.”
Nor had he. When they had become lovers Sir William had revealed himself to be a proper disciple of the two-faced god Janus: urbane, witty, and formal outside the bedchamber; but a true vulgarian behind closed doors. He was an avid reader of lewd French books, a lover of ribald conversation, a man who relished a robust fart just as much as he enjoyed the private performances Emma kept for his eyes only.
“You have made me happy.” He squeezed her hands reassuringly and continued. “Do you believe, Emma, that your happiness is of paramount importance to me?”
She nodded.
“You know, then, that you have made me jealous?”
“Yes.” She indicated the pistols. “But I thought not enough for you to see those as a solution.”
“I confess, my dear, that I contemplated such an exit when I had them in my hand, and not because of the fear of seawater. But I have always held that those who take their own life for something as paltry as being cuckolded are at best fools and at worst cowards.”
“You are neither.”
“I am a coward when faced with drowning,” Sir William insisted, before adding, “There is some similarity, I suspect, between drowning and jealousy, the one a physical manifestation, the other a submerging of the spirit. I speak as someone new to the emotion. The night I saw you enter Nelson’s bedchamber …”
“You saw me?” Emma interrupted.
Sir William laughed. “I came to ensure our guest was comfortable. I knew him to be fatigued, and still suffering from his head wound. I arrived at his door just as you entered, and I thought to wait till you came out.” He cocked his head then, as if unsure. “Or did I? Was I anticipating what might occur, hoping to beat you to his apartments and so deflect you? I watched you at the banquet, saw how often you laughed and touched our hero. I suspected, even then, a greater attachment to him than to all those other suitors who have pursued you over the years.”
“You are making yourself unhappy, husband.”
“No, Emma. It does me good to question myself, for I must tell you that jealousy is not a feeling I ever imagined I would experience, and having done so I can also tell you that for a man like me it is damned uncomfortable. I spend all my time watching you and Nelson for signs of your mutual regard, which is foolish, since any I see wound me, and I am convinced and made uncomfortable by the thought that I may have missed more. Have I missed anything, Emma?”
The import of that question was plain: had she and Nelson made love more than once? “No.”
“But I sense a craving not wholly satisfied.”
“Would it hurt you more,” Emma whispered, “if I was to tell you that I cannot help myself.”
“The pain, my dear, is acute enough to be beyond augmentation. But tell me, how does he feel?”
“I know he loves me, for he has said so.” Sir William’s arched eyebrow made her add quickly. “It is not just words. It is in his eyes, his whole being. Yet I think he fears it. He is, as you know, more God-fearing than either you or I.”
Sir William, excluding paganism, hated all things religious, and responded sharply. “I should think, then, he anticipates eternal damnation.”
“I think he fears more to lose me,” replied Emma, with equal force.
“Touché,” said Sir William.
“Yet I think he would rather offend his God than you.” Sir William’s humourless laugh made Emma continue. “It is true husband! I doubt any other man could have caused him a second’s doubt.”
“The morning after your assignation, while bathing at Posillipo, I was forced to review my life.” Emma made to speak but Sir William pressed a finger to her lips. “I have always been concerned about what would happen to you after I am gone. You are so much younger than I, and I have accustomed you to a degree of extravagance that what I will leave behind me cannot sustain.”
Having promised his estates and the income from them to his nephew, there would be no comfortable inheritance for Emma. Having used up the best years of her life, he had taken her to a point where she might struggle to find another benefactor, and she would have only a small annuity plus the money left after the settlement of her husband’s debts. The style in which she was now wont to live—with three homes, carriages, servants, dressmakers, milliners, and never a thought for the cost—would cease on Sir William’s death.
“I must confess,” Sir William continued, “that in idle moments I had thought on this before, the possibility that another man should come into your life, who would be able to maintain you after …”
“You have many years left, husband.”
“Have I, Emma? I am nearing seventy, the allotted biblical span. My bones ache even on the warmest morning. My ardour, which I hold sustains a man against all manner of ailments, has cooled to the point of … Well I need hardly tell you that. In conclusion, faithful as you have been to me all these years, I was contemplating the notion of advising you that such behaviour was no longer wise.”
Emma smiled. “Yet you did not.”
“The diplomat in me, my dear,” Sir William responded wryly. “Nothing precipitous has always been my motto. And I must own how different the intellectual pursuit of an idea is from the reality. Is it because Nelson is a hero? Is that why?”
The suddenness of those questions jolted Emma, so that her reply was unconsidered. “No.”
“When?”
“The first day I met him.”
There was a flash of pain in his eyes, quickly masked. “And you carried your torch for five years.”
“I never thought to see him again. We exchanged letters, as did you and he, but nothing in his correspondence or mine touched on anything other than mutual regard.”
“And then the Nile.”
Emma raised herself up, crouching over Sir William’s head, using his shoulders to steady herself against the motion of the ship. “I must go back to the Queen. She is distraught.” The look her husband gave her then made Emma realise that she had not told him of Prince Alberto’s death. She told him now, ending in a whisper, “I think the King would benefit from your company in the wardroom.”
The torn topsails had been replaced with fresh canvas, and although the storm wasn’t over, it had eased enough for everyone on deck to feel more sanguine about the ability of ship and crew to ride it out. Their actual position was unknown, but the island of Sicily was too big to miss, and Nelson knew that as soon as they sighted land they would be able to steer for Palermo.
As the night wore on the weather eased steadily, allowing those unused to the sea to sleep. The motion was still greater than they would have wished, but it was no longer violent enough to toss them from hammock or bed, or send them tumbling down a companionway as they made their passage from one part of the ship to the other. Nelson went once more into the chart room and dozed off, half-aware of what was happening on the quarterdeck. His eye would flicker as the bells of the watches tolled, and as he sensed each change of course.
The comatose interludes were punctuated by snatches of vivid dreams: of old faces and strange ones, real battles and imagined encounters, until he heard, “It be coming up dawn, your honour.” Tom Allen was shaking Nelson’s shoulder. “Time for your shave.”
Nelson smiled before he opened his eyes. Routine made the Royal Navy what it was. No matter that the ship was still tossing about on a troubled sea, that his cabin was all ahoo and occupied by others. Tom Allen shaved him at the same time every naval day, and
this morning was not going to be any different.
“And may I be the first, your honour,” Tom added, “to wish you good cheer on Christmas Day.”
“It is that, Tom,” Nelson replied, and closed his eyes again. “I had quite let it slip my mind.”
What would they be doing in England? Would the family have gathered at Burnham Thorpe for a special Christmas service and a celebration meal? Would his eldest brother, Maurice, with his indifferent health, have been dragged from London and the Navy Office to see in a New Year in Norfolk? His father would be there and Susanna, his favourite sister—now Mrs Bolton—with her seven children; and brother William, now the Reverend, the closest companion of his youth.
There were deaths to mourn: his sister Anne and brothers Edmund and George; but the baby of the brood, Catherine, had married George Matcham, and the couple were steadily producing children. His other brother, Suckling, he had never cared for, and he checked himself for that unchristian thought. But the face that drew his inner gaze was the one he wanted least to imagine—that of his wife, Fanny.
She would play consort to his father and gently scold Susanna’s litter as though she was the matriarch of the household, a position she assumed, much to the annoyance of Nelson’s eldest sister. Her face filled his mind now: gentle, refined, and smiling as he had first seen it on Nevis; pinched and frozen with chapped lips as she had been in Norfolk, during those five years he had spent without employment.
He fought to keep the comparison from surfacing, Emma’s gaiety and abandon with Fanny’s reserve and physical coldness. She was his wife before God, and deserved his devotion. But he could not force out the lovelier, livelier face or the memory of the freely offered passion that contrasted so sharply with Fanny’s restrained emotions.
His eyes snapped open. It was the best way to blot out dreams. “A Happy Christmas to you too, Tom.”
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