A Call To Arms (9 page)

‘How close would you have to come to breach the parapet wall?’

Peto peered again through his telescope. ‘I can’t judge their thickness. It’s not as if they were ship’s timbers. I shouldn’t trust to more than five hundred yards, playing on the same point with a whole gun deck. But how would you overcome the outer ramparts, and the moat?’

Hervey nodded, acknowledging the problem was no little one. ‘I’ve been considering that a while, since first seeing them indeed.I don’t believe they could be overcome in any direct assault. Every angle is covered too well.’

‘Then how?’

‘The weaker flank is the river. I think a storming party could get under those embanked walls and then scale them while sharpshooters kept the tops clear. I could see Henry Locke going at it, couldn’t you?’

Peto agreed. Lieutenant Locke and his marines had never been concerned with tactics, only with audacious frontal assault, though he had paid dear for it – first with his fine looks and then with his life. ‘Do we suppose the bridge is no longer standing?’

‘I think we must, though even if it were I think it would be given the most severe raking by the defenders. The other weak point is what they call the Passetto, running through the Borgo.’

‘A tunnel?’

‘No. It looks rather like an aqueduct. It runs from the Pope’s palace right into the north-west bastion.’

‘For sorties?’

‘The opposite: a bolt route.’

‘Then it would surely be blown as soon as they were safe in the bastion?’

Elizabeth Hervey, standing behind them a little way, smiled. ‘You see, Mr Shelley, my brother is restored to his former spirits. I do not know if he truly loves fighting, but he is wholly absorbed by the study of it. He cannot traverse a piece of country, no matter how pretty, without observing on its aptness to defend or attack. There is a farmer in our parts in Wiltshire who used to be a general’s trumpeter many years ago, and he and Matthew will ride all day on the downs spying out the land.’

Shelley had observed the deeper change too, having had heed of it at the first meeting with Peto. ‘I own to very great pleasure in your brother’s company, Miss Hervey, but his true heart is always elsewhere. And I do not mean that it grieves the while for his lost love. Does that seem cruel?’

Elizabeth sighed. ‘I do not think that any of us can say what is his heart or his mind, nor Matthew himself even, for there is such a confusion of sentiment. But painful though it is to say it, I am
of the opinion that Matthew could only be free of his slough of despond if he were to put on uniform again.’

‘Yes. I do agree. If a man quits the circumstances of his pain he only ever leaves the pain distant. Your brother, I judge, is hero enough to fight the demons on their own ground.’

Before their first meeting, every evangelical instinct in Elizabeth had tended to being appalled by Shelley. Yet now she considered him a true friend. Indeed, at their first meeting his very appearance and air had captivated her. She wondered how it might have been had they all met in Wiltshire, and then concluded that since such a thing was unthinkable, it was also pointless to imagine. ‘He has received two letters, you know, asking that he would return to his regiment. But he will not entertain it. They are for India; that is half of the problem, I’m sure.’

‘Then why cannot he go to another regiment that is not for the Indies? There are plenty about the shires alarming honest folk.’

‘But that would not be the same at all, Mr Shelley,’ replied Elizabeth, ignoring his barb. ‘His attachment is to his regiment, not to
any
uniform. He would feel it a betrayal in any circumstances, let alone these.’

‘Then I very much fear, Miss Hervey, that your brother will cease to be a pilgrim, in any sense. And I am very sorry for him.’

At Signora Dionigi’s that evening they dined formally,
à la russe
, on account, said Shelley beforehand, of the presence of an English duchess. They were twenty at table, and Hervey was pleased to be seated at the furthest end from the lady (they did not sit promiscuously), for she seemed to eye him with a look that might have been disapproval. She had arrived late, after the signora had given up hope of her attending and they had taken their places, and there had been no introductions. Hervey could not imagine what offence he might have given her, and had first supposed that she mistook him for Shelley, except that the latter had then begun to speak of her in terms that indicated they were congenially acquainted.

‘Do you not know the family?’ asked Shelley when Hervey had confided his discomfort.

‘Not really. I know the present duke, whom I suppose this lady must be stepmother to, but I only knew him after he had succeeded to the title.’ In truth he would rather speak of other things, for the
Devonshire acquaintance, distant though it was, brought only painful thoughts.

‘She married the late duke only a little time before he died. She is a very generous patroness of letters. You should be kind to her.’ Shelley smiled, as if suggesting something faintly disreputable.

Conversation then became difficult because of a noisy troupe of mandolin-players, gaudily dressed and exuberant, in curious contrast to the formality hitherto. They put Hervey in mind of the feast at Chintalpore, when the
hijdas
had brought the dignity of the palace banquet to a raucous end.

‘
Napolitani
,’ boomed Peto from across the table. ‘We had ’em aboard my ship a week or so past. Not these, but dressed the same. Hands mocked them something terrible to begin with, then they played so well they wouldn’t let ’em leave.’

A sudden fermata left the commodore’s words exposed, and heads turned his way. Hervey smiled, for Peto seemed not to notice. ‘I recall your being fond enough of music to engage an orchestra for the
Nisus
.’

Shelley looked interested. ‘Music calms the seaman’s savage breast, does it, Commodore?’

Peto saw no irony in the proposition. Nor in truth did Shelley intend any. ‘You should come and see for yourself, sir. A squadron of frigates in Naples Bay is a sight to stir any heart, let alone a poet’s.’

Shelley looked tempted, but there was an objection. ‘I have affairs overdue in the north, I’m afraid, else I should very much like to see them. We passed some months in Naples last year, and the bay was empty the while.’

‘I should
certainly
like to see them,’ said Hervey, the mandolins’ crescendo forcing him to raise his voice a little. ‘How long shall you be there?’

Peto consciously lowered his voice. ‘A month, probably. We are waiting on some American frigates, and then together we shall make a sortie against the Barbary pirates.’

Hervey was all attention. When last they had spoken, Peto had despaired of ever getting command of a seventy-four, let alone of a squadron of frigates with their guns run out. ‘Do they offend us?’

‘It seems they do very much, especially the Americans. The Barbary states have made grave depredations on their merchantmen
these past few years. Did you know we bombarded Algiers together while you and I were in India?’

Hervey did not. ‘Shall you do so again?’

‘We shall stand ready to, but our actions will be directed on the ships themselves. I hope to cut out a good many.’

And that would bring a further small fortune for Commodore Peto, mused Hervey. ‘I half wish I were coming with you!’

Peto frowned. ‘
Half
wishing’s no good to me, Hervey!’

Hervey was cut, and could make no reply for the moment. It was made all the worse by the mandolins’ unexpected finale. But he was saved by the signora, who stood and invited the duchess to take coffee on the balcony of her drawing room.

The little procession of ladies left the men to their cigars, although Hervey himself declined his, disheartened still by Peto’s reproof: was Peto – unconsciously at least – impatient of him now that his life was no longer mortgaged in the King’s service? Hervey was, as Shelley would have put it, very dull in the ensuing conversation.

When they rejoined their hostess, it was for her to present each of them to her principal guest. She was a handsome woman, the Duchess of Devonshire: not yet sixty, Hervey supposed, and time had not been at all unkind to her.

‘And this is Captain Hervey, Duchess,’ said the signora, in English, ‘although I regret that he prefers to be called plain “mister”. I tell him that here in Italy it will not do, that every man has rank or title, or both. But he will not oblige me.’

The signora’s happy prating did not induce the duchess to smile. She continued as at dinner to eye Hervey in an altogether unnerving manner. ‘Hervey?’ She pronounced the ‘e’ as if it were an ‘a’. ‘Are you family?’

Dull though his spirits may have been, Hervey was quick enough to make the connection, and he rallied. ‘So distantly, ma’am, that you had never known of mine.’

The duchess looked at him quizzically. ‘I did hear tell of a Hervey who married a Lindsay – Thynne’s ward. Indeed, I once met her, at my sister’s in Bath. That would not be you?’

A sick feeling came on him. Only his mind seemed to remain whole. ‘Henrietta Lindsay was my late wife, ma’am. She died but a year ago.’

The duchess’s expression changed to one of dismay. ‘My dear, dear boy: how perfectly dreadful. Had I but known … ’

‘Mr Hervey, had I known too …’ added the signora.

But Hervey stayed both their protestations. ‘I have not been inclined to speak of it. There is no reason for your distress.’

The duchess took his arm and led him a little to one side. ‘Was there issue, my dear?’

Hervey told her. ‘She is called Georgiana.’

The duchess smiled. ‘A good Devonshire name.’

‘Just so,’ he nodded, managing a little of a smile, but not seeing Shelley’s more knowing one. ‘Indeed, a godmother is Lady Camilla Cavendish.’

The duchess nodded. ‘We were not close, I’m afraid. The duke died but three years after we were married. Not as cruel a severing as yours, Mr Hervey, and at our time of life these things are to be expected. But …’

Hervey put his hand to hers. There was no saying that the pain of such things was any the less with the years.

The duchess seemed to know his thoughts. ‘Yes, my dear, but I would not have had it any other way, even had I known what was to be its outcome.’

It was a simple truth, and Hervey saw that it applied to him in equal measure. His own surprise silenced him for the moment.

‘So I give thanks daily to the Almighty for those few years, my dear,’ continued the duchess, now placing her hand on his. ‘For they might never have been.’

When it came for them to leave, Shelley told Hervey he would not be able to join them the following morning, for there were lodgings by the Spanish Steps that he wished to look at. The two friends exchanged a few words on the suitability of the location, before bowing and bidding each other goodnight. When Hervey had retrieved his hat, he found he had fallen behind his sister in their farewells, and so he hurried past one or two dawdlers on the staircase to see Elizabeth at the door with Peto. The commodore had evidently said something amusing, for Elizabeth threw her head back and smiled broadly – laughed a little indeed. Hervey checked, an instinct saying he should not intrude. It was the first time he had seen Elizabeth smile quite like that, and the first he
had seen Peto looking anything other than a man of the quarterdeck. Truly, it took him by surprise. And how foolish he would think himself, later that evening, when he turned the thought over in his mind. For of what property did he imagine Elizabeth and Peto to be beneath what they were obliged to show to the world? Peto was not married to the sea, for all the poetic attraction in that saying, and indeed for all Peto’s own protestations of it. And neither was Elizabeth his sister alone.

Despite these notions, however, and the thoughts which the duchess had planted in his mind, Hervey slept uncommonly well that night. He rose at seven-thirty next morning and went with Elizabeth to morning prayer at the Reverend Mr Hue’s new meeting rooms in Piazza Colonna Traiana. It was the second anniversary of his marriage, a union that had brought him unimaginable happiness and fulfilment, and he intended to give unequivocal thanks to the Almighty. It was a holy day too, the feast of Saints Philip and James, and there was an infectious exuberance about the people in the Corso even at this early hour.

Hervey and his sister were the only congregation as Mr Hue began to read the Sentences. ‘Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful …’

The rush-seat chairs held their backs erect, and the high ceiling was a sounding board for the minister, whose voice made full use of it. It was so far from the hushed ease of his father’s chancel, and yet the words of Cranmer spoke to them both, in the Pope’s very capital, as if they had been in Horningsham itself. Hervey was content, as if he were somehow awaiting the arrival of his bride. Indeed, he turned half-expectantly when he heard the scrape of feet as two more brethren joined them at the General Confession. At the Venite two sightseers joined them, curious. They all remained standing as the minister, in stark white surplice, began the Old Testament reading. ‘The spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted … to comfort all that mourn … to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning.’