by Amanda Elyot
By June 30, despite Sir William’s suggestion that they “keep smooth” with Ruffo, the king gave Nelson the authority to arrest the cardinal if he refused to recognize the canceling of his ill-conceived capitulation.
We soon had another crisis on our hands. To our collective disappointment and dismay, news of Admiral Caracciolo’s certain defection reached our ears. In an overt act of war, he had attacked the British fleet at Procida and fired upon the Minerva, a Neapolitan ship commanded by one of the king’s most trusted nobles, the Austrian-born Count Thurn. Caracciolo was ordered to be brought to the Foudroyant for trial, but an exhaustive search of the city was unsuccessful. After several days, a loyalist farmer discovered a bearded, bedraggled man, dressed in tatters, hiding in a barn on the estate belonging to Caracciolo. At knifepoint, the fugitive identified himself, whereupon he was dragged back to Naples in disgrace.
“I don’t understand it,” the king said, shaking his head in utter disbelief. “I trusted this man. There was no higher officer in my navy. Just half a year ago, he aided our flight to Palermo. Why would he do this?”
“I think, sir,” I replied, “ ’e was still smarting from what ’e perceived to be an insult to ’is honor and ’is ’eritage, being a proud Neapolitan. ’E took it very ’ard that you and ’Er Majesty was sailing away on an English ship instead of on one of your own.”
Ferdinand sighed heavily. “If he is a traitor, he must be hanged.”
“I think a proper court-martial would be in order,” Sir William insisted. “Let the man tell his side of the story before you condemn him.”
The king pounded his fist on the table. “Damn trials! I say hang the bastard from his own yardarm!”
“Your Majesty,” Nelson interposed smoothly. “That may very well be the verdict. But Sir William’s plan is well reasoned and appropriate under the circumstances. Besides, we wish to do everything ‘by the book,’ as we say in England, which will, of course, better facilitate your regaining your rightful place on the throne.”
I knew Caracciolo well. He had often been our guest at the Palazzo Sessa. He had supped more than once at my right hand and we had danced together. I wished with all my heart that the accusations of treason were naught but a dreadful mistake, that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for his flight to the countryside.
Late that evening I sat up with Nelson in his sleeping cabin long after the others had gone to bed. I had become his amanuensis, as I had been for the queen: indispensable for my ability to translate documents back and forth from Italian and French into English. And I was a wizard with ciphers. “I have enough correspondence for two arms,” he jested, sighing over the mountains of paperwork before him.
“I’ll stay up day and night, for as long as it takes,” I assured him, rubbing my tired eyes. “I may be fagged, but I find nothing more exhilarating than working side by side with you to restore Their Sicilian Majesties to their thrones. We are doing weighty work and saving millions.”
“Well,” said Nelson with finality, affixing his seal to a writ, “we shall soon learn whether Caragholillo, or whatever you call him, is a Jacobin dog after all.” I laughed. “I don’t see what the devil you find so amusing, Lady Hamilton. A man’s life might, quite literally, hang in the balance.”
“It’s not Caragholillo,” I said, bosting out even harder. Laughter eased the tensions in my heart, provided a tiny respite from the ugly business in which we were embroiled up to the neck. “Watch me, Nelson. It’s pronounced Ca’-rah-chee-oh’-lo. In Italian you caress each syllable with your mouth. You taste it. You make love to it. The A’s and O’s are big and round like a woman’s breasts. When you make the o sound, think of rounding and softening your lips as though you were about to kiss someone. Ca-rah-chee-o-lo.”
Leaning closer, Nelson smiled. “Do that again.”
“Ca-rah-chee-o—” His lips were on mine, meeting them softly at first, as though the tender skin sought first to test its purchase. And then his arm encircled me just above the waist and drew me to him. I cradled his face in my hands and kissed every feature—the scar on his forehead from the wound he had received at Aboukir, his good left eye, his poor damaged right one, his cheeks and chin—and once again I returned to his lips, where I thought to remain forever. “Nelson,” I breathed.
“Emma. Santa Emma. My beautiful Emma. My love.” He reached for the candlestick and with two fingers pinched the guttering flame dead.
We lay together all night, but we did not make love then, for we both knew the stakes, as well as the risk we would be taking. I did not wish to break my marriage vows, yet I could not bear to quit his side.
“I feel like Lancelot,” Nelson whispered as he held me, tickling my ear with the tip of his tongue. “History may remember us as one of many tria juncta in unos: Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. Menelaus, Helen, and Paris. Sir William Hamilton, Lady Hamilton, and the simple sailor who captured—”
“ ’Er ’eart and soul.”
“Ahh . . . I was about to say ‘thirteen French ships at Aboukir.’ Not to mention a number of privateers, a couple of Spanish firstraters, and—pray don’t tickle me in the ribs, Lady Hamilton, for you put me at a distinct disadvantage. I cannot hold you and defend my midsection at the same time.”
Caracciolo was taken aboard the Foudroyant in chains and courtmartialed by a jury composed entirely of fellow Neapolitans. The charge had been crimes against the crown, and not an Englishman was present during the proceedings. In fact it had not been a Royal Navy court-martial but a Neapolitan one. He was adjudged guilty, though the vote was not unanimous, and ordered to be hanged from the yardarm of the Minerva, the ship that he had fired upon. I did witness the hanging, though at the final moment I averted my eyes, for they were filled with tears. When I turned back, I saw the crew weight the corpse’s legs with stones and toss it overboard. Thus perished ignominiously an old friend and a once-great man who, like Nelson, bore the greatest love for his country.
The emptying of the forts then began apace. Two thousand Neapolitan Jacobins were evacuated to fourteen polaccas to await sentencing. The same number of rebels were reimprisoned onshore. All things considered, in the aftermath of the counterrevolution the restoration of order had been relatively bloodless. In fact, in an ultimate act of clemency, King Ferdinand permitted the cardinal to remain in Naples and retire in peace to private life.
One morning, a few weeks after the execution of Caracciolo, a shout went up on deck. One of Nelson’s midshipmen brought him the news. The king himself had spotted a bloated, sightless corpse bobbing alongside the Foudroyant’s anchored hull, floating with the current in the direction of Naples. The ever-superstitious Ferdinand was all atremble, for the body, though partially decomposed, left little guess as to its identity.
“Caracciolo,” blubbered the king, fumbling for his numerous talismans. “The stones would not sink him. It is an omen. Look how his feet point to the shore! He was my friend. He has returned to ask my forgiveness. His soul could not rest, nor his body, neither, for we did not permit him to be shriven.” At His Sicilian Majesty’s insistence, a team of sailors lowered a net and fished the corpse from the water. It was taken back to dry land, where it was given a proper Christian burial in the sand. God had seen fit to give Caracciolo a coda to his once-noble life. I wept for him anew.
Thirty-two
The Nelson Touch
All through the month of July we remained in the Bay of Naples, living aboard the Foudroyant, Nelson’s “darling child,” determined to make it seem as much like home as we could. Our days were taken up with hearing petitions and administering justice. While the officers and crew engaged in sword and sail drills, gunnery, and boarding practice, men disinfected the vessel by scrubbing it with vinegar, and holystoned and swabbed the warship’s decks. We broke at noon for dinner, and after the meal, I would sit on deck and play the harp, singing our favorite tunes. Nelson’s sailors loved it, for I knew all the old country ditties. Whilst they shed a
homesick tear or two, they were happy to be reminded of England, so far away, yet brought so close for a few hours with my music. We must have sung “Heart of Oak” a half dozen times a day. Boatloads of Neapolitan musicians came alongside us nearly every day as well, to serenade their most puissant sovereign and the courageous English who had been his deliverer as well as theirs.
I went ashore only once, to see what had become of our property. Sir William did not wish to accompany me. When I observed the looting and desecration that had taken place at the Palazzo Sessa, I turned back and headed for the mole in tears, too disconsolate to even consider hiring a hack to take me out to Villa Emma in Posillipo. I was relieved then that my husband had avoided the pain of seeing that which he had already been canny enough to surmise. I could not speak a word as Nelson’s sailors rowed me back to the Foudroyant, nor could I take my eyes from the shore.
I had no way of knowing at the time that Sir William and I would never see Naples again.
On August 2, the city was deemed secure enough for us to weigh anchor for Palermo. We had lain in the Bay of Naples for six weeks, and I had been the only one of our party to ever step upon dry land. The king never once ventured to visit his capital. In many ways I was glad to go back to Sicily, for I missed Mam something dreadful. Upon our return, even in the scorching heat she insisted on cooking me an Irish stew. “I know you’ve been eating naught but macaroni and marzipan and all them sweet cheesy desserts. You need a proper stew and a syllabub.” She gave me a hug. “There’s a bit more to squeeze than when you left me, gal. Not enough beef. That’s the problem.”
The queen was effusive in her welcome. The most grateful sovereign heaped honor upon honor on Sir William and me, rewarding us with presents of gowns and jewels and snuffboxes. But Ferdinand was even more generous, giving Baron Nelson of the Nile the dukedom of Bronte, a small estate on the lower slope of Mount Etna, named for the Cyclops who, as ancient legend had it, lived inside Etna, forging Jove’s thunder. “With only one eye on it, no wonder he couldn’t stop the volcano from erupting,” jested Nelson. Now my hero was formally “Nelson & Bronte” or “Bronte Nelson of the Nile,” resolving to use his new European title when he was in Italian waters. The dukedom was reputed to yield an annual income of three thousand pounds. Unlike many of his seafaring brethren, Nelson had never become rich through prize money, so the Bronte income would be exceptionally welcome.
On the third of September Their Sicilian Majesties hosted an enormous fete to honor our grand success in Naples, and to belatedly celebrate the first anniversary of Nelson’s Nile victory. And what a grand affair! Life-sized wax effigies of Sir William, Nelson, and me were displayed atop elaborate Roman columns, clothed in our own garments, jeweled and accoutered just as we ourselves would be on any gala night, the figures of Nelson and Sir William wearing copies of the Order of the Bath.
Nelson was lapping up the admiration. I, too, felt the same rush of heady excitement to be the honoree of a king and queen. Mam, in her simple housedress and cap, a ring of chatelaine’s keys at her waist, was positively beaming. I glanced at my husband. Sir William looked tired, his once-ramrod posture now stooped, his innate elegance faded as old damask. He looked like he would have much preferred to be home in bed. A pang of regret stabbed at my heart. He had once been so vital, an adventurer undaunted by the encroaching exigencies of age. In Palermo, antiquarian dealers visited him in droves, but he had neither the money—being fifteen thousand pounds in debt to his bankers—nor the enthusiasm for rebuilding his collections. His morale at low tide, no matter how much I tried to cheer him, my husband would not be roused from his melancholy.
So more and more I kept company with Nelson, whose passions in everything so closely matched my own. We promenaded every day in the Flora Reale and sat side by side each evening at dinner, so I could cut his meat. Aware that we were being observed, I was careful not to permit our bodies to touch, however harmlessly, though I was close enough to become intoxicated by his heat, from the scent of his skin and the powder in his hair. Our proximity, combined with the inability to act upon my urges and desires, was slowly turning me into a madwoman.
At night, Sir William retired early and Nelson would sit beside me at the gaming tables. He’d once won a small fortune of three hundred pounds several years earlier, an event he put down to beginner’s luck, but Nelson was not a gambler. “While I had won that night, I shuddered to think what might have happened had I lost such a fortune,” he told me. “The thought alone was enough to cure me before I caught the disease.”
But the fact that Nelson never quit my side every evening, regardless of whether or not he was placing wagers, did not stop tongues from wagging, particularly Troubridge’s. It was no secret to me that the admiral felt quite proprietary of Nelson’s companionship. They had fought together in the same actions, and they had been close friends for years before Nelson had ever heard of the Hamiltons. As it appeared to everyone in Palermo that there was no one Lord Nelson would rather spend his time with than Lady Hamilton, many of his acquaintance—and most especially Thomas Troubridge—behaved, to my mind, rather jealously. Confiding his distress to Nelson from his post at Messina, he wrote:I see by your lordship’s last letter your Eyes are bad. I beseech, I intreat you do not keep such horrid hours, you will destroy your constitution. Lady Hamilton is accustomed to it for years, but I saw the bad effects of it in her the other day, she could not keep her eyes open, yawning and uncomfortable all day; the multiplicity of business which your lordship has to perform must with the total want of rest destroy you, pardon me my Lord it is my sincerest esteem for you that makes me mention it: I know you can have no pleasure sitting up all night at Cards; why then sacrifice your health, comfort, purse, ease, everything, to the Customs of a Country where your stay cannot be long. I again beg pardon. If you knew my feelings you would I am sure not be displeased with me.
Pray keep good hours, if you knew what your Friends feel for you I am sure you would cut off all Nocturnal partys, the gambling of the people at Palermo is publickly talked of every where. I beseech your Lordship leave off. Lady H—Character will suffer, nothing can prevent people from talking, a gambling Woman in the Eye of an Englishman is lost; you will be surprized when I tell you I hear in all Companys the sums won and lost on a Card in Sir Wm’s house, it furnishes matter for a letter constantly, both to Minorca, Naples, Messina, &c, &c, and finally in England. I trust your Lordship will pardon me.
A glum Nelson handed me the letter to read.
“England?” I questioned. “By ‘England,’ does Troubridge mean the Admiralty?”
Nelson nodded. “And Fanny.”
“Gossip and malicious lies!” I fumed. “ ’Ow does someone in Messina or Naples know what was wagered on a single ’and—and by whom?” I lowered my voice. “Sir Willum is up to his arse in debt. Would I dare ’azard a fortune every night? And while you’ve staked me from time to time, I ’ave never borrowed more than a few quid. And if they knew that the real reason we stayed up into the wee hours at the gaming tables is because we can’t spend the night in each other’s embrace, their vicious tongues would really be set afire! We know the truth of the thing.”
“Yes, we do. Yet I fear, Emma, that Troubridge is not without reason. Whilst the card parties continue, so will the rumors.”
I could have gone on being defensive, flouting our detractors by continuing to flaunt our friendship. After all, we were being pegged as guilty, though we were in truth stainless. But I feared the ugly rumors would irreparably injure Sir William, destroying the respect he deserved as a distinguished gentleman and a servant of King George. “Well, then, the remedy is simple, ain’t it? No more card parties at the Palazzo Palagonia.” It was done that very night, something I was certain to share with Troubridge. But would it stop the wagging tongues of bored aristocrats? I had my doubts.
A few nights later, in the cavernous salon, now empty and still, I turned to Nelson. “Silent as a graveyard in ’ere, isn’t it?
I reckon we shall ’ave to find something else to do in the evenings.”
Those were bold words, but we still did not take bold actions. And yet I could not help but think on Nelson’s motto, “The boldest measures are the safest.” For our sanity, perhaps, but for our hearts? Summer gradually segued into autumn, which metamorphosed into a mild winter. Both Nelson and I knew he would eventually be given a new commission, for the Mediterranean was now relatively peaceful and free of French warships. Although neither of us ever broached the subject, I daresay we each believed that Time was our ally, and in the leisurely, indolent climate of sunny, sultry Palermo, like the air, It seemed to move more slowly.
The days bled one into the other then, but I do recall a particularly upsetting morning in late December. “Well, it seems I am being asked to give an account of myself,” Nelson said tightly. “George Elphinstone, now Lord Keith, has assumed St. Vincent’s post as commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet. St. Vincent was not the most courageous C-in-C, but he can make a decision in the heat of battle—however ill timed it might, on occasion, be—and he was a friend. Indeed, when I first heard the rumblings that he wished to return home, I urged him to stay on.”
“You don’t like Keith, then?”
Nelson gave me a sour look. “Lord Keith is one of those men who, rather than relying on experience and sound judgment, always checks with the Admiralty before doing a thing, no matter how impractical it is to wait for word from London. A man on active duty cannot look to a bunch of pencil pushers in Whitehall who barely remember the smell of bilgewater. We’ve had a dustup in the past. He refused my recommendation to promote Eshelby, the surgeon who amputated my arm in Tenerife. Damme, the memory still smarts! Eshelby saved my life so I could fight another day for king and country, and by not picking up the pen, Keith ruins the man’s chances for advancement. And he’s rather fierce when it comes to discipline—you know, fond of the lash. And petty: insists the men wear the queue rather than it being a matter of personal choice.” He tugged on his own pigtail for emphasis.