Tested by Fate (16 page)

Nelson nearly groaned when he recalled the first dinner he had thrown for his admiral and fellow captains. He knew he was no drinker, yet he had allowed his normal abstemiousness a night off due to the joy of being at sea and the pleasure he took in the
company
of men who matched his rank. Naturally at an all-male table, with ample drink, an element of ribaldry had entered the
conversation
. Instead of diverting it, his responsibility as host, he had actively encouraged his guests.

Admiral Hotham had served with Captain the Honourable Augustus Hervey, famous throughout the fleet for his amatory
adventures
, twenty years before, in the Mediterranean. It was claimed he had seduced more than two hundred women, English, Italian,
Austrian
, and French, in a two-year commission, fathering enough bastards to man a frigate. Those who approved of Hervey’s record were matched by the number who thought it a disgrace to the
service
. Nelson had embarrassed several of his guests, including his good friend Troubridge, by the crass remark, “Every man is a
bachelor
east of Gibraltar.”

“Am I that?” he asked himself aloud, before thumping his
pillow
and throwing himself on to his other side, determined to get to sleep.

Emma left Sir William with a light kiss of his forehead, his eyes closed and face relaxed. Drink affected him badly and tonight’s
coupling
had taken time and effort, with her in the role of a supplicant wife seeking clemency for a condemned husband, Sir William fully committed to his performance as the tyrant who would accede only if granted certain favours.

Her husband made no secret of his need to conjure up images in his lovemaking, yet for all his knowledge and lack of hypocrisy it never seemed to occur to him that Emma might require the same. Every movement she had made tonight, every seemingly enforced submission had been carried out with eyes closed, the vision in her mind a jumble of places: Harry and the cottage, Greville at Uppark and Edgware Road, Nelson and the great cabin of a ship, all three faces blending into each other.

As usual, her mother was waiting for her, dozing in a chair, head lolling forward, jaw slack. When she awoke and helped her daughter to prepare for sleep, Emma was required to recount the events of the night’s entertainment.

“So what’s he like, this Captain Nelson?” Mary Cadogan asked, removing the ties with which earlier she’d dressed Emma’s hair.

“A nice man, but too gentle for the task, I shouldn’t wonder. He has none of the brash quality we associate with seafarers.”

“The Chevalier seems to rate him high enough. He dislikes seafolk as a breed, I know, for he has told me so more’n once. I could scarce credit it when I was told to prepare the royal
apartments
for this one.”

“Sir William has taken a liking to him,” Emma replied,
yawning
. She was tempted to say that she had, too, but with a mother as nosy as hers it was best to stay silent. “He advises me that
Captain
Nelson is a fellow to watch, though how he can know this on one day’s acquaintance escapes me.”

“Happen his servant, Lepée, has been a-tattling to him. God knows, I had my fill of the fellow, as much as he had fill of the Chevalier’s claret. When it comes to his charge paragon ain’t in it. There’s not a virtue going that Captain Nelson don’t have in spades from care of his men, the way he sails his ship, to being a terror in a scrap. It’s a wonder he ain’t the Lord High Admiral of England.”

Emma yawned again as her mother began to count off the brushstrokes on her hair. “I can’t imagine him fighting anyone. He looks too gentle by far.”

“
A
N AWNING WILL BE ESSENTIAL
, Mr Berry, for us, if not for our guests.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Berry replied, wearily. If his captain had been busy, the premier had outdone him, not only obliged to attend the social events ashore but also to oversee the revictualling of the ship: wood, water, flour, fresh biscuit, greens, anti-scorbutics, and meat, both butchered and on the hoof.

“The hen coop will have to be struck into the boats,” Nelson continued. “Clear the manger of animals and douse the deck with vinegar.”

“Are we clearing for action, sir?”

Nelson smiled. “Worse than that. We’re receiving royalty, Berry. I want a special effort below deck, everything shipshape, with every man in his Sunday best, shot chipped and blacked, every rope from the sheets to the gun carriage tackle flemished and snow white.”

“Vittels is arrived from the Palazzo,” growled Lepée,
interrupting
without even a pretence at a cough. “Who’s to detail hands to get them aboard?”

Nelson looked up at him, the bloodshot eyes and grey face of a man who had spent the last three days drinking and boasting,
taking
full advantage of his stay at the Palazzo Sessa, a place with ample servants to do what he knew to be his duty and a cellar that was full to bursting with the means to get drunk. Lady Hamilton’s mother had mentioned it when they had met, making no secret of the fact that she thought Lepée a poor servant, more concerned for his own comfort than that of his master. The good lady, who had struck Nelson as eminently sensible, didn’t know the half of it. Liverish himself from three huge feasts in three days, he wondered how Lepée managed it.

“Should you not see to that, Lepée?”

His servant held out a hand, as proof of how unsteady it was. “Got the marthrambles, don’t know how, your honour. Like to drop most of it.”

“I hazard that wine and rum might have something to answer for.”

Lepée closed one eye, as if to confide in his captain. “I reckon it be the stinking air and the heat. They be a filthy crew these ’
politans
. Shit where they like and don’t wipe their arse, papist heathens that they are.”

“Ask Mr Andrews to detail some hands,” his master replied, wearily.

“I’ll oversee to it, of course, your honour,” Lepée insisted. “Sir William’s steward promised to send us the finest from his larders and his cellars.”

“It will all make it to the storeroom, I trust?”

“What a thing to say, your honour,” Lepée replied, his protest so forceful he sent a blast of bad breath in Nelson’s direction before staggering away.

“We may have to strike that one into the bilges, Mr Berry,” Nelson said as Lepée reached the doorway. “His breath is enough to clear out the rats.”

“Be better off there than here,” Lepée growled, overhearing the remark. “Slaving like a Barbary capture when it’s not appreciated.”

Berry was looking at him and Nelson knew why, since there was hardly a member of the ship’s crew who could understand why he put up with Frank Lepée. “He can be a sore trial, Mr Berry, I know, but my needs in the servant line are modest.”

“With respect, sir, we have the King and Queen of Naples, their family, and most of the local nobility coming aboard in two hours’ time, not to mention Sir William and Lady Hamilton and every important visitor who happens to be here from England. And your servant, one of those charged with attending to them, is drunk. I suggest that the wardroom servants be left alone to look to our guests.”

“Lepée would be most offended.”

“You don’t fear to offend a king?”

“You do not know this king as I do,” Nelson replied, with a wicked grin. “He and Lepée will probably get on famously.”

Berry knew he would have to resolve that problem himself, since his captain, a man universally held to be one of the most competent officers in the service, could not bring himself to chastise the man. The premier was no martinet; he could not serve with Captain Horatio Nelson and be that kind of officer. He shared his
commander’s
notions of training and responsibility, openly admired a quality of seamanship that he could never match.

He hoped and prayed that when he had his own ship the ease of manner Nelson had with everyone aboard would be gifted to him. The Captain knew the name of every man on the muster roll, where they came from, if they had a wife and children, which ships they had served in and what ailments they were prone to. He liked to talk with them, more to listen to them, his feel for the mood so acute that he could smell a reason for discontent before it had time to manifest itself.

Berry knew how the need to maintain a captain’s dignity
constrained
Nelson. He had seen him itching to go aloft and show the upper-yardsmen, nimble boys all, that he could still set topgallants. When he talked to the gunner about his flintlocks, powder, and guns, the conversation was one of knowledge on both sides, weight of shot, quality of powder, which gun fired best in length and power.

He and the boatswain spent hours discussing the crew, seeking to extract the best from them, to gain them skills that might see them raised to a better station on another ship. Likewise, Nelson spent extra time with the sailmaker, the carpenter, the master-
at-arms
, and the ship’s corporal. His coxswain, Giddings, as familiar as he’d been from their first meeting, acted as an extra conduit of information to a Captain always prepared to listen and learn. After five months at sea,
Agamemnon
was a crack ship, better than most frigates when it came to tacking, wearing, or coming about.
Clearing
for action, practised every day, was down from twenty-five to seven minutes.

Even the purser, usually the most hated man on any ship, was popular aboard this vessel. Hand-picked by his captain he was allowed to make his profits, but only if it was fair. The provision of double hammocks had done for half a year of potential gain. Once past Gibraltar, Nelson insisted that, in the Mediterranean heat, a single hammock and fourteen inches per man to sleep in was a recipe for sickness. Each man must have two hammocks, one to be used, one to be washed clean each make-and-mend day. It was a fine notion, much appreciated by the crew, and the cause of mixed mirth and fury when, in a sudden squall, all the drying hammocks festooned around the rigging had suddenly been blown into the sea.

Gazing at them floating away, many already sinking below the waves, with no boats in the water to go after them, Nelson had remarked, “The fish will sleep better than us this night, lads, and we’ll rest better than the purser.”

They had laughed and cheered him for that calm response, their affection open, their faith in Horatio Nelson as their commander, judge and jury for offences, and in some cases father figure of the ship, quite obvious. And yet this man feared to tell his servant that he was a useless drunk.

“The King will want to see the great guns fired, so detail four of our best gun crews to oblige him,” Nelson said. “I shall have to turn my cabin into a refuge for those ladies who will be affrighted by that.”

“Might I suggest, sir, that since it’s royalty, your cabin should be set aside for the Queen’s retinue, while the wardroom is cleared for the rest.”

“A capital notion, Mr Berry. Make it so.”

As the boats set out from the shore, the royal barge commanded the most attention. But Nelson found himself searching the flotilla for the craft bearing Sir William and Lady Hamilton. He had had only limited contact in the previous three days, his duties
precluding
any form of relaxation: attendance on a monarch who wanted to hog his presence; meetings with General Acton, the Queen, and her council regarding the despatch of troops to Toulon. At the same
time he had to look to the welfare of seamen, both sick and well, make sure his ship was victualled, write letters both official and
personal
, and issue orders to send out to sea a pair of boats. They were to take station in the approaches north and south of the Bay of Naples to ensure that
Agamemnon
would not be caught unprepared should an enemy appear on the horizon.

Fleeting glimpses, a hasty exchange of pleasantries, a view across a dinner table or an audience chamber was all he had been gifted. Josiah had enjoyed the bulk of Lady Hamilton’s attention, a match that had benefited his stepson no end. She had brought the boy out of his morose shell and captivated him. No strictures were needed now to stop him traducing her reputation. Josiah was all praise and was given to extolling her numerous accomplishments in a way that made Nelson jealous.

He had spent almost all of the three days with Sir William, who had roused himself in the most admirable way to ensure that what could be done to aid Nelson was carried out with despatch. For a man who termed himself a lazy dog Sir William had great energy. He also had a deep and impressive sagacity, outstanding patience, and a huge knowledge of who was for the British alliance in Naples, and who, fearing French reprisals, was against.

Nelson’s initial approval had turned into a deep regard for the Ambassador. He had eased Nelson’s burdens not only with his
presence
and his courteous way of deflecting the King’s wilder flights of fancy, but also with his wit and conversation, his consideration, and his open way of letting the naval officer know that he esteemed him personally as well as professionally. It was therefore uncomfortable to be with Sir William, enjoying his company, asking his advice, sharing plans and proposals while simultaneously being unable to get out of his mind the man’s stunningly beautiful wife.

He spotted them under an awning, in a decorated
felucca
that was being propelled by a gaily dressed crew. Lady Hamilton, her mother, and her maid all seated, Sir William, with his valet in
attendance
, standing behind them, hands clasped on the awning poles. Joy and anxiety were mixed in Nelson’s breast: the pleasure to be
had from seeing her again and in circumstances where, as the host, he could command some of her time, but against that was his desire to impress, and he feared he had tailed in that. It might be his ship they were visiting, but it was Sir William’s provender they would eat, his wine they would consume, the impression created that the Captain of the
Agamemnon
could not afford to provide such a feast himself.

“The salute, Mr Berry, if you please.”

The guns, armed with powder only, blasted out 21 times,
wreathing
the ship in white smoke, leaving in the air that delicious odour of saltpetre. Eleven guns, the salute due to the ship, blasted out immediately afterwards from the battlements of the Fort St Elmo, which stood on the highest peak overlooking the city. And, in the background, Vesuvius billowed forth an extra puff of sulphurous smoke, as if determined not be left out of this occasion of mutual appreciation.

“Man the yards,” was Nelson’s second command.

Berry bellowed the order and two hundred men raced for the shrouds—fore, main, and mizzen—going aloft in controlled
fashion
, the less able at the rear. The older topmen fanned out on the main yards, the more nimble occupying the space between the caps and the tip of the upper yards, while the youngsters, small of build and feet, raced to the upper yards, some to stand in a death
defying
pose on the twelve-inch circumference of the topgallant poles.

“Three cheers, lads,” yelled Nelson, his voice loud enough to carry all the way to the tip of the topmast, where one sailor, with only a finger and toe-hold, had taken his place at the highest point on the ship. The huzzahs roared out, three on three, with every man on the deck, including the Captain, raising their hats as they cheered.

Nelson and his officers left the upper deck and made their way to the maindeck to take station by the entry port. The marines, red coats brushed, belts pipeclayed a startling white, and boots polished, came to attention as the royal barge slid alongside the gangway, the bosun’s pipe timed to begin the ceremony of welcome as soon as
the first royal foot touched the platform. Two of the most reliable members of the afterguard, the oldest and most experienced
seamen
, hooked on to the barge, hauling it in tight to steady it. Another pair were on hand to assist the King.

Ferdinand had dressed for the occasion in a Neapolitan naval uniform. Out of his customary black food-stained garments and properly clad like an officer, he was an imposing figure, a man with whom it was a pleasure to exchange salutes. He also had the
courtesy
to tip his hat in the direction of the quarterdeck, a signal mark of honour from royalty.

It took nearly half an hour to get the entire visiting party on to the upper deck, to where wine and food were laid out under the awning on the wardroom tables: smoked hams, fowls by the dozen, oysters, crustaceans, pastries, and fruits. The wardroom stewards, in brand new duck trousers and wearing their best kerseymere striped jerseys and stockings, moved smoothly through the throng serving wine to nobles English and Italian, women who looked more like courtesans than wives.

“Milady,” said Nelson, taking Lady Hamilton’s hand to kiss. “You do me great honour by consenting to be my guest.”

He had observed her taking the breeze on the windward
bulwark
, close to the master’s day cabin. They were just far enough away from others to have a private conversation.

“I would look a fool, Captain, to ignore an invitation accepted by
tout
Naples.”

He looked at her then: his unblinking eyes, which could so unsettle the insincere, fixed on hers. Having rehearsed this meeting he had a whole string of polite conversation all ready to employ, every word sifted through his imagination a hundred times. It all deserted him now, to be replaced by that fearlessness of manner that had caused him so much trouble in the matters of the heart.

“Is that why you came, just because everyone else did?”

Allied to his stare, as well as the expression on his face, it was a bold remark, and she knew it. Her face reddened and she spoke as if she was short of breath. “Why else, Captain Nelson?”