by Dudley Pope
“I don’t know that ‘we’ are going to see anyone,” Ramage said. “Apparently Lord Nelson has asked me to call on him. Told me, through father,” Ramage corrected himself.
“Then it’s ‘we’,” Sarah said blithely. “I’ve always wanted to meet His Lordship, and who can resist meeting the famous lady? I wonder if their child is with them. Horatia.”
“She is usually referred to as His Lordship’s god-daughter,” Ramage said stiffly.
Sarah waved a hand airly. “Unless you’re a servant, legitimacy only matters if you’re inheriting property or a title. If Lady Hamilton inspires Nelson – and clearly she does – then hurrah for England if she has a dozen such children, particularly if it produces a dozen great victories. We need a few more at this moment!”
The earl sighed and was about to chide Sarah when she sat down on a sofa and wagged a finger at him. “Before you start disapproving of Lady Hamilton (who after all is a widow now, although admittedly she wasn’t when Horatia was born), let me tell you this. If Nicholas had been unhappily married when we first met, then you might have had a Nichola in your family, with people gossiping about ‘the notorious Lady Sarah’!”
The earl sighed again, and then smiled. “Yes, I believe you, and Nichola would have been just as welcome in the family,” he admitted, “as ‘the notorious Lady Sarah’.”
“That’s easy enough to say now,” Sarah said reflectively, “but supposing…”
The earl looked at her squarely. “You forget Gianna, my dear. Nicholas couldn’t have married her because she is a Catholic – or, to be more exact, she wouldn’t have married him because he is a Protestant, and anyway she could never return to rule Volterra with a Protestant husband. But believe me, the countess and I were quite prepared for an eventuality such as you mention!”
A startled Ramage blurted: “Were you, father?”
“Of course! For the first two or three years, anyway; then we realized that your feelings for her were changing.”
“I should hope so,” Sarah said mildly, and then asked curiously: “But you really were quite ready for a grandchild born the wrong side of the blanket?”
“Quite ready? Well, to be perfectly honest the countess was readier than I: Nicholas can do no wrong in her eyes. But had Gianna had such child, yes, I would have accepted it. We were very fond of her, you know. Are fond of her,” he corrected himself, and all of them thought of the young Marchesa di Volterra, the lively and lovely Gianna, whose fate was still a mystery: had she been assassinated by Napoleon’s men, or imprisoned?
“Well, you’ve no grandchildren yet,” Ramage said hastily, “and I must write a note to Lord Nelson. How long has he been back in London?”
“Only a few days. We were all very worried when he seemed to vanish.”
Ramage nodded. “Yes, he took a risk making for the West Indies after leaving the Mediterranean, instead of coming north – but he was right! Villeneuve had fled across the Atlantic, not made for Brest or Coruña.”
The earl lit his pipe, and as soon as it was drawing satisfactorily, asked Ramage: “Would you have risked it?”
“I might. After all, once he sailed through the Strait from the Mediterranean, Villeneuve could only go north, to join the Spanish in Cadiz or Coruña, or to Brest, where he’d risk being blockaded, or to the West Indies. What a prize Jamaica would have been, and all those convoys captured…Bonaparte would have kissed him on both cheeks!”
“Well, I was talking to Radnor in the House the other day, and his son is a midshipman in Nelson’s flagship. That doesn’t make the lad an authority on the chase across the Atlantic and back, but he knew Nelson’s feelings on board the Victory and reported them to his father, the earl.”
“And so the Earl of Radnor approves?” Sarah asked.
“He does now, though he was pretty windy at the time. As we all were.”
“Nelson’s young, outspoken, just a parson’s son, and he wants Society to accept his mistress. The fact is none of you are comfortable with him; you don’t really trust him,” Ramage commented bitterly. “Had that old fool Hyde Parker been in command of that fleet, you’d have all said: ‘Well, Hyde Parker knows what he is doing: he spent four years in Jamaica.’ But all he learned in those four years was how to get rich from prize money: Copenhagen showed that a young man with an agile mind was needed for the fighting part.”
“You seem particularly vindictive towards the worthy Sir Hyde,” the earl protested.
“I should think so!” Ramage exclaimed. “He started off badly at Copenhagen. Given command, he stays abed with his new young wife in Great Yarmouth instead of sailing at once for Denmark with the fleet. When he gets there, he hovers off Elsinore, giving the Danes all that time to prepare the defences of Copenhagen…how many hundreds of seamen’s lives – British and Danish – did those two delays cost?”
“You favour young admirals with young mistresses, then,” the earl observed teasingly.
“Young admirals, yes. If such a man can only have the woman he loves by defying convention and making her his mistress, well and good. Then there’s a hope that when it comes to fighting battles he’ll defy convention and throw those dam’ Fighting Instructions overboard. As Nelson did at the Nile! Parker would never have dared to do what Nelson did at Aboukir Bay. Nor would Parker dare do at Copenhagen what Nelson did, even though it was for all intents and purposes a repeat of Nelson’s tactics at the Nile. So give me a man who defies convention when necessary: he’s more likely to win the battle.”
“Do you defy convention?” the earl inquired mischievously and then almost immediately waved his pipe to dismiss the remark. “No, that’s unfair: no conventions so far have governed the sort of things you’ve done; you–” he grinned, “–favour the bizarre rather than the unconventional!”
“Which heading do I come under – bizarre or unconventional?” Sarah inquired sweetly.
“Oh, bizarre; definitely bizarre. After all, didn’t Nicholas find you in mysterious circumstances off some island near Brazil?”
“At least my father-in-law is more unconventional than Nicholas’; I’m afraid my father is rectitude personified.”
“We need a stable marquis in the family,” the earl said, eyes twinkling. “It adds respectability to what would otherwise be a rout.”
Chapter Three
As Raven drove the carriage along Piccadilly, Sarah turned to Ramage and said: “I haven’t felt so nervous for a long time!”
Ramage looked at her pale-blue dress, bonnet of slightly darker blue, and her face, which still had some Mediterranean sun-tan. He reached across and put a wisp of the tawny hair back in place. “I don’t know why you worry. I’ll be very jealous if Lord Nelson looks at you for more than five seconds at a time!”
“I’m not worrying about His Lordship,” Sarah said, “it’s Lady Hamilton. I haven’t the faintest idea how to talk to her!”
Ramage thought for a moment, watching coaches clatter along in the opposite direction. “Think of her as the widow of Sir William Hamilton. She was a good deal younger than Sir William when they married, but he became a good friend of Lord Nelson’s and the – er, well, the relationship developed from there.”
“The fact is,” she admitted with a smile, “I haven’t much experience dealing with famous men’s mistresses!”
“You’d have been one if I’d been married – you told father that yesterday,” Ramage said, smiling. “I like thinking of you as my mistress: much more stimulating than regarding you as my wife.”
Sarah pouted at the left-handed compliment. “I’ll never hear the last of that. Anyway, you’re not as famous as Nelson yet.”
“Give me time – he has fifteen years or so advantage on me! Ah, this is Clarges Street.”
Just then, Raven stopped the carriage, asked a passer-by for directions, and called to Ramage: “We’re almost there, sir. The house is this end.”
The houses were small but well proportioned. As he reached for his hat and
gloves and hitched at his sword, Ramage tried to recall the last time he had seen the admiral. He had been only a commodore then. Yes, Bastia, in Corsica, when Commodore Nelson had given him his first command, the Kathleen cutter. After that he had seen him only in the distance, striding his quarterdeck (a minuscule figure recognizable in the telescope lens only because of his stance) in the brief minutes at the battle of Cape St Vincent before the Kathleen cutter was sunk by a Spanish three-decker.
That battle had brought Nelson a baronetcy. It had also brought Sir John Jervis the earldom (of St Vincent) that he did not deserve but, as father had said, St Vincent had done his best to make it up to Nelson ever since.
The carriage came to a stop. Ramage heard Raven pulling on the brake; then the folding steps clattered down, the door was flung open and a grinning Raven stood waiting to help Sarah down. Grinning, Ramage knew, because Raven, long accustomed to rural life and more used to setting snares than opening carriage doors, was enjoying the sudden change (quite apart from being proud of his new livery of dark blue edged with gold) and delighting in the gold griffin now painted on the door of the carriage Ramage had also inherited from his uncle.
Ramage followed Sarah, then took her arm and led her to the front door, which was suddenly and unexpectedly opened by a small figure in plain uniform, one empty sleeve pinned across his breast, a green shade over his left eye.
“Welcome, Ramages! I heard the carriage and guessed it was you,” he explained to Sarah, taking her parasol and putting it in the stand just inside the door. “Follow me, I am the major domo and butler. Lady Hamilton is waiting upstairs with Horatia.”
It was the same rather high-pitched and nasal voice with the flat Norfolk accent: the curly hair was greyer. The face was tanned and thinner, too – no doubt about that, but it only emphasized the strong bone structure. The single good eye sharp, the small body (he was shorter than Sarah) as erect as ever, the single hand gesticulating. In a moment, in a brief phrase, he had both welcomed them and set the tone of the meeting with Lady Hamilton and his young daughter: now there would be no uncomfortable pauses, searching for the right word or phrase: here was the same Nelson he had met years ago: a coiled spring. One knew it was under control, but at the same time had no doubts about its latent power.
The drawing room upstairs was large, high-ceilinged and furnished with considerable taste. Sarah, at first not seeing Lady Hamilton, paused at the doorway, intrigued by a pair of urns – urns? No, they were amphorae, and surely that was coral growing on them? Recovered from the sea?
Nelson stopped when he noticed her interest. “Some of the late Sir William’s treasures, which he left to me. We have the finest ones down at Merton: perhaps we can lure you and your husband there one day and show them off. Ah, there is Lady Hamilton!”
Sarah saw a small, beautiful and graceful woman rising from a chair in an alcove. Brown and curling hair, a body perhaps now a little plump, a friendly face also now plump, but with the fullness of happiness and contentment.
Nelson introduced them and she said with unfeigned pleasure: “At last, Captain Ramage! Horatio did not tell me you were so handsome. And you have a lovely wife!”
Before Ramage could answer, Lady Hamilton looked down. A vivacious little girl was tugging shyly at her skirt. “Yes, yes. This is the Captain Ramage who wrote all those exciting letters in the Gazette, and this lady is his beautiful wife. May I introduce Horatia?”
It was all done so naturally that Sarah took an instant liking to the woman. Warm, doting on Nelson and their child, well informed apparently, taking an interest in everything that went on round her and – if this room was anything to go by, and it was her house – a woman of refined tastes.
Oh yes, there were stories about Emma Hart (passed on to Sir William by his nephew) who became Nelson’s mistress, but Sarah could understand and forgive Nelson’s infatuation.
Sarah had twice met his wife, Lady Nelson, and the former Mrs Nesbit (widowed in the West Indies when her Army major husband died of one of those vile tropical diseases) was by comparison a cold and shrivelled person: Sarah could imagine that the warm and spontaneous Nelson would find her chilly, not unresponsive but instead – well, just plain and dull.
He should never have married her, Sarah thought; but from what Nicholas said the young Nelson had fallen in love with a married woman in Antigua – wife of the commissioner at English Harbour, she remembered – and when the couple were sent back to England, a broken-hearted Nelson had then met the young widow Fanny Nesbit on one of the nearby islands. Wasn’t she staying with her uncle, who owned a large plantation on Nevis? Sarah had a picture of interfering female cousins plotting to marry Fanny off to the young frigate captain…and this was how it all ended up.
Nelson made her comfortable in a chair close to Lady Hamilton, and Sarah found herself talking to an excited Horatia, anxious to display her new pink dress and shoes. Nelson waited until Horatia stopped for a moment (she was explaining that she now had piano lessons and was nearly five years old) and then said apologetically to Sarah: “I am taking your husband to the next room for a few minutes’ chat: once we’ve got that out of the way we can enjoy ourselves!”
What had Nicholas done? Yet the admiral seemed friendly enough. Nicholas had not served under Nelson for several years. She shrugged and then was embarrassed to find that Lady Hamilton had noticed. Would she misinterpret it?
As Ramage turned to follow Nelson from the room, Lady Hamilton said: “The life I lead! My late husband Sir William, when we were at the Embassy in Naples, was forever breaking up conversations by taking away husbands for discreet talks…His Lordship, by the way, thinks highly of your husband.”
“I’m very glad,” Sarah said, “but Nicholas has not served with him for several years.”
“Ah, no, but His Lordship has read all the Gazette letters: he has them among his papers. In fact he was reading the one about how your husband rescued all the hostages – and you! – in Italy, and concluded by reading it aloud to Horatia and me. It was enthralling! Fancy finding you, when he thought you were dead! Dead,” she repeated, the word obviously reminding her of some incident. “I worry about His Lordship. Do you know, he has been wounded more than twenty times? He lost the arm at Tenerife, the eye in Corsica. At the Nile a splinter nearly knocked his head off and cut his forehead. I think that last battle, Copenhagen, was a miracle: all those dead, and Horatio for once not even scratched!”
Nelson had taken Ramage to the next room, which he obviously used as a study. He gestured to Ramage to sit in a leather-covered armchair beside the unlit fire, and sat in the opposite one. He adjusted his eyeshade – Ramage noticed he had chosen the chair with its back to the window, so that he did not face the light – and said: “Well, you’ve had a busy few years since I last saw you!”
“And you, sir,” Ramage said with a grin. “I am jealous that I was not with you at Aboukir Bay and Copenhagen.”
“Ah yes, interesting actions. Hard pounding, against the Danes. It was touch and go. The Danes and the Dutch – we need parity when we fight ’em, unless we use better tactics.”
“Tell me, sir,” Ramage asked, “did the success of your tactics at the Nile influence you at Copenhagen?”
Nelson laughed and slapped his knee. “You know, young Ramage, it’s a strange thing: few people have ever noticed that. The Danes had their ships drawn up outside their capital city just as the French had their fleet anchored in Aboukir Bay – so close to the shore they were sure no ship could get inside them. But the French were wrong, so I won.
“Still, I was sure the Danes would have studied that battle, so when I saw their ships drawn up in a long line outside Copenhagen, I wondered. Had they, I asked myself, really anchored so there was no room between them and the shore or – and this was my sharpest worry – had they found some answer, in case I did intend to use similar tactics, and had set a trap for me?”
“But,” Ramage said, “the Danes didn’t seem to have learned any
lessons from the Battle of the Nile!”
“No. I talked later to the Danish Crown Prince and to their admiral, Olfert Fischer, and I had the impression they regarded the Nile as a far distant place… They didn’t seem to understand that tactics apply anywhere, from the Equator to the Arctic. Still, I am more interested in you. That must have been a pleasant shock when you found you had rescued your wife! Tell me, did you think she was already dead?”
Ramage paused, briefly, reliving those long months of not knowing whether the ship taking Sarah to England had been sunk in a storm or captured by French privateers – or even a French national ship. “Yes, sir, I must admit that secretly I thought she was dead. I don’t believe in miracles, and it seemed only a miracle could have kept her alive…”
Nelson nodded understandingly. “It’s the not knowing…but anyway, she is safe. And a beautiful woman. You’re a lucky fellow. And I hear from your father you’ve just inherited a fine estate down in Kent. What more can you want, eh?”
“Oh, nothing sir. I have everything.”
Nelson smiled knowingly. “Except, of course, that the Calypso frigate is always at the back of your mind, and you wonder what action you are missing at sea…”
This man can see through a thick plank, Ramage thought. “Well, yes sir, in a way. I’m happy enough at the moment, but I know the feeling will creep in.”
“Like mist rising at the foot of those chalky Kentish Downs, eh? Well now, what’s wrong with the Calypso?”
“Oh, nothing actually wrong with her, sir: too many months’ service in the West Indies and the Mediterranean without shipwrights having a chance to set a few things to rights. Anyway, now she’s at Chatham and they are busy with her.”
“Doing what exactly?”
“Replacing a sprung bowsprit and jib-boom, two topsail yards and all three topgallants; putting in new wood at the taffrail – they found some rot. Some new deck planking in way of the guns – where it had been badly scored by the trucks. New copper sheeting in the hanging magazine; replacing some woodwork in the bread-room… Replacing all the copper sheathing forward of the foremast – you know how it becomes paper-thin along the waterline at the stem… That’s about all, sir. New sails, and replacing some of the guns…”