H. M. S. Cockerel (21 page)

“Your Excellencies will excuse me, I trust, but I must return to our ship. There are matters to arrange, and duties in my captain's stead which I must see to, first.”

“You have a competent wardroom, sir?” Acton inquired.

“Aye, sir.”

Well, damn his eyes, Lieutenant Braxton
was
good at his job. Can't be faulted professionally. Just personally. Scott to keep an eye on him, and Dimmock, Bosun Fairclough . . .

“An hour or so? I quite understand, Lieutenant Lewrie,” Acton nodded, and gave him a shrug of nautical cameraderie. “We both know, and appreciate, how so akin are the demands of a beautiful ship, such as your frigate, and the demands of a beautiful woman,
n'est-ce pas?
”

“Quite, Your Excellency,” Lewrie smiled in return.

“Uhm,” Sir William frowned, peering at a distant clock of impressive dimensions and baroque gilding. “It is now half-past nine or so. Do you return to Palazzo Sessa by . . . half-past eleven? Will that be time enough, sir? Good. You are turned out reasonably well. Your current uniform and toilette will suffice. I do not believe there is need for anything more formal, not today at any rate. From here, we may all coach together. Do you concur, Your Excellency?”

“Absolutely, Sir William,” Acton agreed.

“My physician will be along presently. You may coach together to the quays,” Hamilton decided, getting to his feet, creaking in the effort; for all his urbane grace and patrician leanness, he was an old man. He put his hands in the small of his back and leaned backward.

“Aye, Sir William, and thankee again. I cannot express how much I am indebted to you. One thing before I go, however. Uhm . . . exactly where will we be coaching
to?
”

“Why, to introduce you to Neapolitan cuisine, Lieutenant,” Sir John Acton smirked, sharing another of those maddening conspiratorial grins with the ambassador. “You may try some fried fish. And be presented to His Majesty, King Ferdinand the Fourth. The King of Naples.”

C H A P T E R 4

N
ow,
he'll not stand on much ceremony or formality, beyond a natural courtesy, d'ye see, sir,” Sir William Hamilton tutored on the short carriage ride from Palazzo Sessa. “The King of Naples is . . . uh . . . you've never been presented at Court back home, sir?”

“No, Sir William,” Lewrie had to admit.

“He does carry himself well, though, Hamilton, does he not? And you told me not half an hour ago that his deportment toward you and Sir John lacked for nothing,” Lady Emma Hamilton teased.

Informal or not, Lewrie had scrubbed himself as clean as could be expected aboard a ship, donned his best uniform, and was now perched on tenterhooks on a plush-velvet coach bench, facing rearward toward Sir William and his wife. His very much younger and hellish-fetching wife. At the moment he felt, diplomacy be-damned!

“Uhm . . .” Sir William allowed. “True. True, my dear.”

“Neapolitans call him Il Re Lazzarone, sir,” Lady Hamilton went on. “That means king of the commoners. He's adored by the common folk. By all, but . . . by all but the very rich and most pretentious. Those with titles who were born expecting more respect for their dignity.”

She snorted like a short-changed shopkeeper's wife.

“You have no Italian, sir?” Sir William inquired hopefully.

“None, I fear, Sir William,” Lewrie had to say. “Some doggerel Don. A smattering of French, o' course.”

“That would
hardly
be the language to use around ‘Old Nosey,' sir!” Lady Hamilton laughed again, a deeper-in-the-gut, full-voiced guffaw, her merry light blue eyes sparkling with mirth.

“‘Old Nosey,' Lady Hamilton?” Lewrie flummoxed, trying hard to retain all he'd so quickly been tutored on, in the short time allowed.

“Il Vecchio Nasone
,
his subjects also call him. Try it. Il Vecchio Nasone. Eel Ve-keeoh Nah-sohnee. Give me half a day, Hamilton, and we'll have him so fluent in Italian, he'll be waving his hands and slapping his forehead!” she boasted.

“I should not dare speak French to him, no matter it's called
la langue diplomatique,
since his queen, Maria Carolina, was sister to Marie Antoinette. I see.”

“Quite right, sir,” Sir William gloomed, though he had bestowed upon his wife the beamish smile of a typical, love-stricken old colt's tooth. “And as for
don,
well . . . ! One cannot hope, I suppose, that a sea officer may be
master
of the art of diplomacy, or by the very . . . uhm, detached nature of his calling, have much use for it, in truth. But His Majesty King Ferdinand is of royal Spanish Bourbon blood. He has been King of Naples and the Two Sicilies since his boyhood, yet he is, at bottom, Spanish. It would be . . .”

“Oh, Hamilton, you know how suspicious Old Nosey is about his relations!” Lady Hamilton interrupted. “All the years he's spent here, monarch in his own right, no matter
how
indebted he originally was, he has no love for Spain. For his family, perhaps, but not for Spain, or their ambitions. Any more than he felt for French Bourbons, and
their
ambitions. He's fiercely protective of his kingdom, Leftenant Lewrie.”

Handsome or not, she talks too bloody much, and man's business, too, Lewrie thought; politics, so please you! Must have the old dolt wrapped round her least finger, to get away with such . . . boldness. It's desexing, that's what it is! Immoderate! Promising poonts, though . . .

“Even so, my dear, it would be a mistake for the leftenant to become, in the excitement of the moment, perhaps . . .
too
informal. And I would most strenuously conjure you, Leftenant Lewrie, to attempt to eschew such animadversions or colloquialisms—”

“Hamilton, dearest,” Lady Hamilton interrupted again, touching her husband on his knee with her fan. “Not possessing a word of Italian, and dependent upon a translator, I'm sure he will not shame us.”

“Indeed
not,
Lady Hamilton,” Alan nodded to her with gratitude. He was sure that he'd have had a considerable strip torn off his hide, had it not been for her presence, which hampered Sir William from delivering a harsher reproof.

“He'll be good,” she added, giving him a taunting smile behind her husband's view as she leaned back in the coach seat they shared.

“Cross my heart and hope to die, Lady Hamilton,” Lewrie smiled.

“Emma,
do!
”
she insisted suddenly, taking her husband's veined old hand for a squeeze. “May Leftenant Lewrie be familiar with us, my dear? After all, he will be doing us an immense service. Already has, hasn't he, coming from Admiral Hood with his news. And showing Ferdinand what real British sailors are like. Why, this may be the very act which firms Neapolitan resolve to join the coalition!”

“Uhm, Emma . . .” Sir William dithered in warning.

“Oh, pish!” Lady Hamilton snorted once again, this time in vexation. “What is needed by Lords Dundas and Grenville in London is the help of the Sardinians and the Neapolitans. Austria is in, Prussia is in, but they're off to the north and east. All Royalist Europe must be in. Surely, Hamilton, he must be told enough, so that he will not make a mistake, out of ignorance?”

“Leftenant Lewrie . . . His Majesty's Government desires, and shall pay handsomely for, any military or naval assistance against Republican France. Matters are in hand . . . ” Sir William said cautiously. “Sardinia, for example, will be recompensed upwards of £200,000 to raise an army of 50,000 men, and subordinate her fleet to Lord Hood's orders. I have been discussing a similar arrangement for a fiscal subsidy with Sir John Acton, anent Naples, pending certain steps which His Majesty's forces would take in the Mediterranean.”

“What Sir John referred to as
une flotte respectable?
” Alan said with quick understanding and a sly look. “The presence of our fleet is the precondition toward Naples joining the coalition. And what would their contribution be, Sir William? And how good are they?”

“We, uhm . . .” Sir William stalled, loathe to reveal all his cards to a stranger, grown used to a life of secrecy in his king's service. “A force of 5,000 to 6,000 troops. Three or four ships of the line and the requisite numbers of transports. Perhaps six or eight lesser ships. It is no secret that King Ferdinand has always been suspicious of France's territorial ambitions. Now so, more than ever. No matter the government in power in Paris; their appetites are constant.”

“And with France gaining Corsica rather recently, he fears their further expansion overseas. If they can threaten and gain Corsica, what else might they take from the weaker Italian states by force,” Alan surmised. “Once they consolidate their political power, eliminate their last internal foes . . . and get their army and navy sorted out.”

“Capital!” Lady Hamilton hooted in triumph. “Oh, Hamilton, did I not tell you he'd be good?”

“Yet Corsica's not quite in the bag, I understand,” Lewrie went on, leaning forward over his sword hilt, which rested between his knees. “There's Italian resistance to their occupation. So I would assume we will be invading Corsica, once we've dealt with the French fleet? That is why Admiral Hood is blockading Toulon, their main naval base?”

It made imminent sense, Lewrie thought smugly, secretly glad he was showing so astute, and enjoying the alarmed expression on William Hamilton's face. But any fool could read a map, any fool could follow events in the papers! What all these Foreign Office, Privy Council, or diplomatic types never seemed to realise was that an hour in a coffeehouse or an idle afternoon in a workingman's tavern would reveal that what they treated as utterly covert, was general gossip!

Too, it made imminent sense that England would provide the navy to allow the lesser Italian kingdoms to invade Corsica, marshal armies on France's eastern frontier near Genoa and Leghorn, backed by Austria and her magnificent troops . . . best in Europe, Prussian pride notwithstanding! Liberation from revolutionary tyranny, a cheque to French dreams of expansion . . . can't do it without a fleet! . . . and provide the first measure in cooperation, and a victory, so the combined armies of the coalition would be inspirited when they marched into France herself!

“We . . . rather, our superiors in London, dream a tad bit larger than merely occupying Corsica, Leftenant Lewrie,” Sir William grudgingly admitted, leaning forward himself to whisper more confidentially. “I grant you, all you say is true. Yet, there is also resistance to Paris and the revolutionaries in France, as well. The Midi . . . Var, Provence . . . along the Biscay coast in Vendee, there are many adherents to the royal family. Regions openly in rebellion versus the Republicans. What you are told now is to be held in the
strictest
confidence, sir, but . . . Admiral Hood
may
be able to exploit Royalist sentiment in Southern France. He is charged by Henry Dundas to attack Marseilles, if at all possible, blockade Southern France, bottle up or destroy the French fleet, and in the last instance, exploiting Royalist sentiments, lay siege to, thence capture the naval port and fortifications of Toulon. So you see, Leftenant Lewrie, Corsica would be a poor second. A sideshow.
That
is the aim of the coalition in the Mediterranean. And
that
is why I have courted the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies so ardently.”

“Good God!” Lewrie exclaimed in a covert mutter, leaning back in amazement. “Yes, I
see,
Sir William. So your hoped-for treaty is just about completed.”

“Hamilton
has
it, Leftenant Lewrie,” Emma Hamilton boasted, giving her old stick of a husband a supportive grin. “It's a pat hand already, really. Naples isn't powerful enough to resist France alone, in the long run, so they
must
side with us. He is
too
modest about his accomplishments.”

“I'm not to know that, I presume, nor anything about the treaty,” Alan spelled out aloud, partly for his own use. “But, asked my opinion, I should express the belief that France should be crushed quickly. And that the Royal Navy is more than able to defeat or blockade the French. I just have to avoid saying or doing anything stupid.”

“Heavenly! Aptly put!” Lady Hamilton cheered, rewarding him with another encouraging smile. “One
might
allude to Toulon and Marseilles . . . as hotbeds of Royalist sentiment, though, sir. Without belabouring the subject.”

Good
God,
Lewrie thought, a bit shocked; who exactly
is
the ambassador to Naples? She's the nutmegs of a Grenadier Guard—and when excited, as she was at that moment, could lapse into most unladylike speech; a trifle too loud, too. She was a forward piece, no error, Alan thought.

Emma Hamilton was not the typical batter-pudding most men of the age preferred, the sort who could snuggle under a fellow's chin on her tiptoes. Nor was she fubsy, either, though she was more of a pillowy kind than he usually liked. A dimpled chin, nicely dimpled cheeks when she smiled. Bright, pale blue eyes, huge 'uns! A good brow, and her eyebrows and hair were almost raven, dago-dark. A somewhat coarse complexion, though free of smallpox scars. Her teeth, as she displayed them in a pleased grin, were a little irregular. But then, what person
didn't
have a few missing by her age, or erose teeth to begin with, he realised! How old
was
she, he wondered?

There was an intriguing cast, a tiny brown mote, in her left eye, he noted, as she continued to lecture in a very vivacious, hurried way: damn' charmin', he thought suddenly; no, not a bit fubsy. Just the tad bit stout . . . or would be later in life, like a country girl. And, when excited, she
sounded
a bit country, too! Midlands, Alan decided; Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire or Cheshire, by her accent, which surfaced, in spite of obvious coaching, in a more genteel London style.

In her thirties, he asked himself? No, late twenties, at best. And with this old colt's tooth
how
long? Hmmm?

“ . . . Il Re Lazzarone,” she was saying, lifting her hands to talk dago-fashion to stress her syllables, twiddling short, commonish fingers on hands a tad too rough for a woman born to the idle aristocracy. “Do try it, sir. Lots-ah-roan-ay!” she giggled.

“Eel Ray Lots-ah-roan-ay,” Alan parroted, warming to her infectious vivacity. “And . . . uhm . . . Eel Vekee-oh Nah-sohn-ay.”

“Oh,
very
good, sir!” she laughed. “
Buon giorgno
. . . that's good morning . . .
buona notte
is goodnight.
Scusi,
that's excuse me. And one
can't
go wrong with
grazie.
Thank you.
Grazie,
signore . . . grazie, signorina,
or
signora,
if she's married, d'ye see. You are a . . .
tenente,
so if you hear someone say
tenente,
you may be sure it's you they're speaking to. King Ferdinand would
adore
a few choice Italian phrases. He speaks Italian better than
ever
he did his native Spanish. Though they are similar.”