Sir William had had a couple of bottles of claret in a St James’s establishment, and was tempted to blow this fiction out into the open. But he checked himself with the worrying thought that what would be out in the open was his old bones. Emma had rarely played the termagant with him in all their years together: but he knew she had a temper and had no wish to expose himself to it.
‘My wife must have been shocked, Mrs Cadogan.’
‘Quite bowled over your honour,’ Mary Cadogan replied, sailing mighty close to the truth.
‘It is enough to make anyone take to their bed,’ Sir William responded sarcastically.
‘Thank God Emma is made of sterner stuff.’
‘She is not abed?’ he asked, much surprised, since a confinement of several weeks was usual in the circumstances.
‘Why would she be?’ Mary Cadogan enquired mischievously.
Sir William knew he was being teased. Mary Cadogan might no longer be the beauty she once was, but she possessed a ready wit that had grown more pointed over the years. What he did not know was the ease with which Emma had delivered, her second child emerging as easily as her first. Far from being prostrate and weak, Emma was up and about in two days, if moving with caution. She was much occupied with sorting out pillows of a diminishing size that would, over the following weeks, help her bring her figure back to what it had been without anyone being aware of the delivery.
‘We have looked after the mite as best we could, but it will need to go to a wet nurse soon. Emma is certain that it must suffer from inattention if it is to stay in this house.’
‘And she will suffer from too much attention,’ thought Sir William angrily.
‘Besides,’ Mary Cadogan continued, ‘can’t have a little ’un in residence, howling the night away and keeping all and sundry awake.’
The first joy of fatherhood had settled in Nelson’s breast, mixed with concern that the child might not survive. There was much to worry about besides: whether to give way to Emma, after whom he wanted to name the baby, or agree to her choice, which was Horatia. Then there was the baptism, which must take place as soon as possible. Names would be demanded so he and Emma would have to pretend to stand as sponsors for the real parents: Thompson, the father at sea, with the mother too ill to attend, still suffering from the effects of childbirth.
The child’s future and that of her mother must be secured should anything happen to him in the Baltic. Any allowance he made for them would be administered by the ageing Sir William – but everything he owned would go to that rascal Greville upon his demise. The fate of Nelson’s daughter could not be left to such a scoundrel, a man who had claimed to love Emma and traded her off for that very inheritance.
When he heard that the Prince of Wales had expressed a desire to call on Emma Nelson flew into a rage. The man was a notorious rake with whom no woman was safe and he would not be calling on her for the elevation of her social position: he would visit Emma to take advantage of her lack of it, a chance to flit around a beauty who, when she lived with Greville, had caught his eye. It was rumoured he claimed to have bedded Emma, but he said that about every woman in London, so it was generally held that he lied.
Letters flew back and forth, full of loving sentiments and warnings, Sometimes he wrote as Thompson, at others, as himself when the bearer could be trusted. Edward Parker, a young, sprightly, merry captain to whom he had become attached, was one, and another was Alexander Davidson. The content of all this was similar: any child born to him and the most beautiful woman in the world must have been the work of some divine force, ordained in heaven if not in the married state. He knew his daughter was with a wet-nurse, that Emma in the speed of her recovery had allayed any suspicion that the infant might be hers. Yet still he fretted over discovery.
When Emma sent him a lock of the child’s hair he saw in it the fair colour of his own infancy. He felt fulfilled as a man in a way that he could describe to no one but Emma. All the ghosts and worries of his past, that he might not be the man he wanted to be, evaporated. Those who had transferred with him to HMS St George observed him to be in a state of contentment marred by the occasional deep frown. Those who guessed why, Giddings and Tom Allen, kept their own counsel. The rest thought of the Danes, Swedes, Prussians and Russians and felt sorry for them. When Nelson was happy, yet tussling with problems, somebody else was in trouble.
An ailing King George, in the grip of his old malady and a political crisis over Catholic emancipation that might bring down Pitt’s government, took even the most avid press attention off Horatio Nelson. And in Portsmouth there was a very discreet carriage company accustomed to taking officers to assignations they did not wish to be public. Setting off in early-morning darkness, with only Tom Allen for company, Nelson arrived behind drawn shades in an anonymous hack and, unannounced, rapped the knocker at number twenty-three Piccadilly. Emma’s mother spent no time in greetings on the doorstep, but ushered Nelson inside without ceremony.
‘Emma?’ he asked.
‘In such rude good health, sir, that you will faint to see her.’
And that was no lie. Nelson had visited the wives of fellow officers after the birth of a child often enough to know that it gave extra colour and radiance to a woman’s face. Emma was no exception. Even her hair seemed to have added lustre.
‘Nelson,’ she yelled, throwing out her arms, scattering a pile of letters that lay strewn across the coverlet, for he had burst into her room without warning. In his ear she whispered, ‘I dream of you and you appear.’ Then she said, ‘I have been re-reading all your letters,’ pointing to the sheaves of paper strewn everywhere, ‘and waiting for a knock that would herald a post.’
‘I knocked.’
‘And I sat here impatient, willing myself not to rush downstairs to see if a letter had arrived.’
‘I brought myself. I had to.’ Seeing the hint of alarm on her face he reassured her quickly. ‘No one knows I am here, and as long as we exercise due discretion they never will. Everyone thinks me aboard ship at Portsmouth and by the time they think me absent I shall be back again.’
‘How long?’
‘Three days, no more.’
Emma rubbed a hand across his brow. ‘You look weary.’
Nelson sighed. ‘I am caught between the Scylla of elation and the Charybdis of fear for both you and our daughter.’
It all tumbled out verbally then, the same concerns that were in the letters: worries about financial security, the child’s health, Emma’s well-being and reputation, the Prince of Wales and his attentions. As he talked Emma slipped off his unadorned uniform coat and loosened his stock. By the time he was talking of the Baltic, of the plans he had already formed and the difficulties he anticipated in taking orders from Sir Hyde Parker he was lying with his head on Emma’s shoulder. She spoke little, letting him ramble on, until he fell asleep.
They awoke after nightfall, and Emma asked that supper be prepared for them in the Nelson Room. Sir William, increasingly remote since the birth had removed himself to dine elsewhere, warned by Mrs Cadogan that Nelson’s visit was a secret and must be kept so. Thus only the two dined in the room Emma had set aside as a celebration of her lover and hero. Nelson had entrusted to her all the gifts and trophies that he did not wish to take to sea. A portrait of him executed in Vienna took pride of place above the mantel, surrounded by numerous miniatures and his swords, both gifted and surrendered.
There was a painting of the Nile battle and a copy of a more benign Gillray cartoon showing Nelson thrashing about in seawater clubbing crocodiles. Orders of chivalry, both ribbon and stars, were ensconced in a glass case, as well as copies of his medals, the originals of poems, odes and songs dedicated to his victories. The tattered flags of his defeated enemies hung limply in the light afforded by candles and a roaring winter fire.
The table in the middle of the room was set with the crockery given to him by King Ferdinand, made at his own royal pottery, the silver cutlery and accoutrements, cruets
, decanters, even the wine coasters, engraved with his coat of arms. The walls were that sea green that looks blue in certain lights, the fabric of the chairs the naval blue of the service embroidered with a golden N encased in triumphal laurel. In the presence of such display, Nelson felt a tinge of embarrassment, but the décor pleased Emma so much that he could not bring himself to ask for it to be toned down.
So they dined, at peace in each other’s company, cocooned from a cold winter night and a potentially hostile world. Once dinner was over, they retired to bed, like the married couple Nelson longed for them to be.
Next morning, another closed carriage was needed to get them to the nearby house of Mrs Roberts, the wet nurse. A recent widow, with a posthumously born child of her own, she was caring for the little girl who, from now on, was Horatia Thompson. If the woman recognised the one-armed man who billed and cooed over the infant, and made excessive claims for the regularity and beauty of her features, she felt it unwise to say so. Nor did she remark later to anyone on the look that had graced the face of the lady who had brought the child, the mixture of triumph and affection in a mother who has presented her man with a baby.
Dinner that evening was with Sir William, who, his usual urbane self, kept well hidden any resentment that had grown in his breast. Besides, he found it near impossible to be angry with Nelson present. It was only when he was away, and Sir William lost sight of their mutual regard, that irritation surfaced.
Nelson had his own reasons to be annoyed with Sir William, who had started to auction off his possessions, one of which was Nelson’s favourite portrait of Emma as St Cecilia. Alexander Davidson had had to be roped in to bid on Nelson’s behalf. Yet that too faded with their meeting. Nelson admired the older man too much to be annoyed with him for long. They talked of many things: the King’s health, the likelihood of a Regency, of a new government being formed under Addington, the prospects of peace with France, of Earl St Vincent becoming First Lord in place of Spencer, everything except the matter that filled Nelson’s mind.
Alone again in their shared bedchamber, Nelson talked of death. While he was keen to assure Emma that his demise in battle was unlikely he wanted her to know that all things were possible. He would never describe to her what it was like on the deck of a ship in the midst of a fight. The instrument of his destruction might be a cannon or musket ball, a block, a spar or a deadly splinter of wood. It might come from anywhere, to the left, the right, or from above his head.
As he spoke, Nelson was aware that at one time he had almost sought death in battle, seeing it as the ultimate apotheosis of the hero he so wanted to be. His own was General James Wolfe, who had died on the Plains of Abraham above Quebec in the Seven Years War, winning in that one victory the whole of French Canada for Britain. That was the kind of death he had desired.
He did not want that now. He wanted Emma as his wife, and a place where they could both live with Horatia, free from the constraints of his previous attachments. Divorce was out of the question, requiring an Act of Parliament to become legal. Fanny might try it as the wronged party but he doubted that: the shame would kill her. If he tried it he would be laughed out of the chamber of peers.
‘Brontë, perhaps,’ he whispered.
He had never seen the ducal lands that Ferdinand had given him after the rescue from Naples. He knew that they were on the slopes of Mount Etna: that they were in need of investment, that given such they might yield an income on which he could happily exist. But, more than that, they were in a land where he could live openly with Emma and his new-born daughter.
In his heart he knew it to be a pipe dream. He was a serving officer and, though comfortable, he was far from rich. His good friend Alexander Davidson chastised him constantly for his generosity to anyone with even the most distant claim on his purse, his family the greatest beneficiaries. He had an obligation to support Fanny, and to secure Emma and Horatia against future troubles required a great fortune, not a middling one: he could only thank his God that, as a fighting sailor and admiral, he was well placed to acquire one.
For a man on the edge of losing office William Pitt seemed remarkably relaxed. He had been Prime Minister for so long that no one could easily recall his predecessor, and had worked hard to make his nation fiscally sound only to see this threatened by endless war. He was a reluctant combatant, who would have had peace with France if only that nation had shown any inclination to consider it. But he hated their Revolution, and as long as the French made war to further it, his government would spend whatever sums necessary to contain it.
Millions of pounds had gone to other countries – Austria, Prussia, Naples, endless German principalities – to put in the field that which Britannia could not: a mass army to beat the French. All had failed abysmally. Pitt had watched his coalitions founder, the latest just over two weeks previously when the First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, had signed a treaty that virtually dismembered the Holy Roman Empire, a confederation which had stood since the days of Charlemagne. All the while Pitt had juggled the domestic issues of the home nations: unruly Ireland, a noisy Parliament, a tendentious sovereign so wedded to his Protestant faith that he would see the country in turmoil rather than surrender a single one of the Thirty-Nine Articles. And an opposition party that would sweep into power as soon as that fat poltroon the Prince of Wales secured his inheritance.
Nelson listened as Pitt talked on for a good ten minutes about all the areas of war policy: India, the expedition to finish off the French in Egypt, arguments regarding Malta, and support for Naples and stability in the Italian peninsula, the weakness of the Sultan, an expedition to seize the Swedish and Danish islands in the Caribbean, and other minor operations in various far-flung places.
‘The King caught a cold in chapel,’ he said, almost wearily, ‘which I fear has triggered a reaction.’ Then he poured himself another generous glass of claret, although it was well before noon.
Nelson had yet to touch the one he had been given earlier and wondered, given Pitt’s consumption, how he managed his duties. He was known as a man who, though he ate sparsely, drank three to four bottles a day, and often turned up for an evening sitting in the House of Commons in a high state of inebriation with his last bottle still in his hand.
‘So we seem to have a return of his old malady, Lord Nelson, and as a consequence the wolves hover.’
The King’s madness, his talking to trees and uncontrolled behaviour had nearly brought down the government before. Pitt had more trouble than that now, but clearly he had no desire to discuss with this visitor the Union of Ireland Bill.
‘But good governance cannot rely on a King’s health,’ Pitt said, then added with force, ‘or his whims.’
‘The Baltic, sir?’ said Nelson, finally sipping from his glass.
Pitt ruminated for a moment, his curious young-old face in deep study. Not yet forty, he had the smooth skin of youth and the aged cast of long experience. There was a puffiness about the eyes, hardly surprising given his drinking, but Nelson thought him a handsome man, though his thin chest and spindly legs suggested he had somewhat gone to seed.
‘Tsar Paul is mad and the Danish and Swedish royals are not much better – too much inbreeding I shouldn’t wonder. But it is the superior madness that has brought about the need to send a fleet.’
The Russians’ seizure of every British vessel and trader in their waters, then their insistence that the lesser Baltic powers combine against the perceived enemy, had precipitated the crisis.
‘Our sources tell us the tsar is quite besotted with Bonaparte, of course,’ Pitt said dispassionately. ‘Sees him as a modern Alexander. It is an attraction that has cost us dear. But,’ he added, sitting forward and at last showing some spirit, ‘cut off the head and the rest will tumble, Lord Nelson. Catch and destroy the Russian fleet and the others will fold.’
‘I will do my best, sir,’ said Nelson, raising his glass to drain it.
Pitt stood up, to indicate that the inte
rview was over, and Nelson did likewise, but before he was out of the door, Pitt stopped him with a question. ‘Lord Nelson, what are your opinions on the emancipation of the Catholics?’
‘That it should be done, and swiftly, sir. I have served with too many good men of that faith, seen them mutilated and die in the cause of our country, to wish to debar them from any rights.’
Pitt smiled. ‘Odd that. Before he fell ill, the King asked St Vincent for an opinion and your old commander said much the same.’
13
Everyone in Portsmouth had been working double tides to get the fleet ready for Baltic service, not least Nelson’s flag captain, Thomas Hardy. Yet it was a telling indication of the effect of Nelson’s presence that the work rate rose sharply on his return from London. Colonel the Honourable William Stewart, the bored and frustrated commander of the troops in the tented encampment on Southsea Common exhibited the usual soldier’s arrogance when it came to the officers of the Navy. When he was told to get his men aboard their transports at once, he anticipated it would take at least two days. Yet the boats to carry his men arrived half an hour behind the orders, camp was struck and the troops loaded in two hours. He was to say ever after that he had never met the like of Lord Nelson when it came to making things happen.
They were happening aboard the warships as well. Everyone from the ship’s captain to the lowliest caulker was admonished to waste not a moment, because, fully finished or not, Nelson intended to weigh within forty-eight hours. Many scoffed at this – it was the mere bravado of a man playing up vainly to his reputation – but were forced to eat their words as the order came two days later to get their anchors up. Every ship was still a mass of unfinished tasks: ropes hung loose, bales and barrels littered the decks while the animals had not yet been transported to the manger.
Land based contractors employed to speed up the work were not put ashore, instead they risked being carried to sea. Nelson’s response to their complaints was to tell them to be about their tasks, or they would be obliged to practise gunnery and fight alongside him. He was less amazed than some by how much they achieved within twenty-four hours: before the fleet had cleared the Isle of Wight the work was finished, the contractors in boats, heading for home.
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