Tested by Fate (26 page)

But then he had returned a hero. Instead of the bright-eyed man she remembered, Emma had encountered a wounded, weary one in need of comfort. At the sight of him her repressed feelings
had burst out, multiplied tenfold by tenderness. Every time she touched Nelson she felt an electric charge run through her. She could not tell her mother that what had happened between them last night was no mere fancy. It had been inevitable, and right now she would rather be back in Nelson’s suite of rooms than here.

“Then you don’t fear that Sir William will be agitated?” Mary asked.

“Why should he be?” Emma replied with an assurance she did not feel. “My husband has hinted often enough that he considers it impolite to enquire into such matters.”

“Then why alert him to it?”

“How can you say that, Mother?” Emma snapped. “It was you who told me last night that he …”

“Knew you bedded the Admiral? Well, that’s as maybe, Emma, but I can’t see what good it will do to go rubbing it in. From what I know of Sir William you’re right. He won’t say a peep. Nor will you know by his face what he’s thinking. Being deep is what he’s good at. Let him be I say.”

She was tempted to add that Nelson would sail off soon, as all sailors did, ending something that her daughter should never have started, and that once that happened, provided a discreet silence was observed by all, life could return to normal.

Naked and without his wig, Sir William Hamilton lay in the warm shallow waters of the Bay of Naples, one hand gently fondling the loose wrinkled skin of his scrotum, ruminating on past scrapes. Like any young aristocrat he had whored his way around London and Europe in the company of like minded individuals, including the present King George, a riotous prince then, a dull-as-ditchwater prude now. Hamilton’s first marriage, a sensible match, had been made more to secure his wife’s income than for any notions of love—as a younger son of a ducal family he had had little in the way of an inheritance.

He could hardly say that the same sentiments applied to Emma.
He had been smitten by her the first time he had seen her at his nephew’s house in London: her beauty, her vivacity, her innate
kindness
and natural wit. As the past lover of many women he had seen every facet of their behaviour: false affection, outrageous infatuation that could not last, naked greed for a man who had a good post, a reasonable unearned income, a palazzo, servants, carriages, and access to the highest society. Emma loved these things, as any
sensible
woman would, but her enthusiasm was based on innocent enjoyment not calculation.

It was enlightening to compare his first marriage to his second, his Lady Charlotte to his Lady Emma. The former had been refined, reserved, dutiful, the very epitome of the English rose abroad, a companion of the mind more than the body. The latter, over thirty years his junior, was more Italian than the Italians, high spirited, often gauche, intelligent, instinctive, and an unrestrained delight in the bedchamber.

It was hard to recall the
ingénue
who had arrived here all those years ago, with her comparative lack of refinement. Yet even then Emma had charmed Naples: the peasants hailed her as the living embodiment of the Madonna, while the aristocracy admired her as akin to a Greek goddess, more so when she learned, in four years, to speak Italian, French, and German. Emma sang with gusto if not refinement, while her beauty and theatricality attracted the
admiration
of every visitor who called upon Sir William at the Palazzo Sessa. An invitation to watch her perform her “Attitudes” was much sought after: her renderings of classical poses were sensual and greeted with much applause. But in the privacy of the bedchamber, he was girted with attitudes that owed much to pagan rites. And yet, for all the abandon of which Emma was capable, she had been faithful.

Greville, the nephew who had exchanged Emma for a promise of being made Sir William’s heir, had on occasion complained about her spirited behaviour. He had also shown an unattractive
possessiveness
whenever some gallant flattered her, even though Emma
had never once caused him to feel he might be cuckolded. At least Sir William could pride himself on never showing jealousy, though he could not deny that now he felt it.

“Why Nelson?” he asked himself, softly. Looking down at his bony chest he knew that his age was a factor; that he was no longer potent enough to keep satisfied a creature like Emma. For some time he had considered it inevitable that Emma would succumb to the blandishments of the kind of man she would have rejected in the past.

The Admiral was a hero, and for Emma that would outweigh wit, wealth, or any common accomplishment. She considered
herself
part of his victory at the Nile, which had seen, for Britain, an enemy fleet destroyed for the first time since the Spanish Armada. Had it not been her efforts and close connection with the Queen of Naples that had kept the British fleet at sea? Her intercession had ensured that supplies had been forthcoming from a kingdom that was nominally at peace with France, a nation that should, for
neutrality
’s sake, have turned Nelson away. Without Emma, would Nelson have won his battle?

“Once a conqueror, how easy it is to be a seducer.”

Sir William tried to imagine the scene. Nelson would not have forced matters, he was sure. For someone so at home in his
professional
milieu, the man was a sad case in a social setting. Quick to blush, more forthright than was polite, and utterly lacking in that ready wit and
sang
froid
required in the circles in which the Hamiltons moved, Nelson seemed always to hover on the edge of embarrassment.

Yet Sir William liked and admired him for many things: his
honesty
, ironic in the present circumstances, his zealous attention to the needs of his sailors, and that he was prepared to offend anyone, kings, princes, dukes, and sea lords, if he felt it necessary. Sir William had seen him in different guises: the timid social creature who seemed to be a battleground of all the available medical disorders, and the outspoken advocate of any policy he held to be right, which gave a hint of the man he must be in a fight. According to his officers,
when danger threatened, afflictions dropped away to reveal an
enfant
terrible
. Sir William knew those officers adored Nelson, just as he knew that Nelson doubted he was fit to lead them.

Nelson had been famous and a hero to his profession since his actions at the battle of Cape St Vincent, where, disobeying
standing
orders, he had accomplished a previously unheard of feat in capturing one Spanish ship from the deck of another already taken. Even his failure at Tenerife, where he had lost both a battle and his arm, had enhanced rather than damaged his reputation. His
appointment
to the Mediterranean command, with the express task of stopping Bonaparte had caused, according to Sir William’s
correspondence
, much disquiet in the breasts of more senior admirals who felt the duty should have fallen to them. Sir William could
easily
imagine that while many were anxious about Nelson’s failure to beard the Corsican menace, those same senior admirals would have been crowing about how right they had been.

They wouldn’t be crowing when news of the Nile reached
London
. Nelson had done the impossible: he had not only destroyed a French fleet and French ambitions in that region. He had saved the Turkish Sultan, the route to India, secured a breathing space for Italy, and imposed the first check on the insidious Revolution that had made every European nation tremble for fear of France. And then he had come back to Naples and bedded Sir William’s wife.

Closing his eyes, Sir William placed himself once more in the dimly lit corridor outside Nelson’s rooms. That he had gone to see to the well-being of his guest forced a reluctant smile to his lips. But then there had been the sight of his wife slipping into Nelson’s room, and minutes later the grating sound of the key turning in the lock. He had pictured what was taking place behind those double doors: his wife, her hero, both naked and writhing.

Still fondling his groin, Sir William was aware of an increasing and now rare tumescence as the thoughts he harboured flitted through his mind. He knew how unrestrained his wife was: she knew how to arouse a man, and how to tease that arousal until passion could no longer be contained.

He signalled and his valet stepped forward, first to pour fresh water over him to wash off the sea salt, then to wrap a towel round him as he stood up, a trifle unsteady on legs that had grown thin with the onset of age.

“My carriage in twenty minutes,” Sir William said. “I shall be returning to the Palazzo Sessa.”

“Maestro,” his valet replied.

T
OM
A
LLEN
knew he was not the brightest of men, nor the best of sailor servants. He hung on to his job because he was quiet and unassuming and his master was benign. This morning, though, as he helped his admiral to wash, dress, and comb his hair, he had the sense to realise that something was not quite as it should be.

First, his master had not asked where Tom had been the night before, or why he had been left to undress himself. All the excuses Tom had rehearsed to cover the truth: that he had drunk too much wine, then spent the night with one of Sir William’s female servants had remained unspoken.

From fearful silence, Tom graduated slowly to talking about the ball and the banquet, how splendid they had been, a fitting tribute to such a justly famous man. None of this had produced a smile or even a nod. But when he had told him that Sir William was not at home, that he had departed an hour after the last of the guests to spend the night at his seaside villa, Nelson shuddered.

As he cut up Nelson’s breakfast Tom watched him closely,
seeing
the frown on his master’s brow. The Admiral was troubled, and Tom didn’t know why. He had beaten the French wholesale, so he could not be fretting about that, especially with the praise he so loved being heaped on him by the bucket load ever since. Happen it was that head wound he’d got at the Nile, still paining him, though he hadn’t said anything when Tom combed his hair over it to hide the ferocious red scar. Tom felt it was his duty to know what was upsetting his master. It was also a way of protecting his position: Old Nellie might be kind and gentle, but he had got shot of one servant, and Tom had no desire that the same fate should befall him.

In his mind Nelson was running over a dozen scenarios, none of which brought on a sense of happy anticipation. First he would
have to face Lady Hamilton; that in itself would be not be easy—it never had been, given that he could never act rationally in her
presence
—but now there was the added complication of what had happened between them. A worse prospect was Sir William. That he had left the palazzo to sleep elsewhere might have an innocent
explanation
, but only a fool would think so. He must have found out, either through his own observations or from his servants, where Lady Hamilton had spent the night.

Thinking back to the banquet Nelson realised that he must have been wrong. He had assumed at the time that Sir William had not noticed the attention his wife was paying him as the principal guest. With the Austrian born Queen on one side of him, Lady Hamilton on the other had been called upon to translate their exchanges. As she had leaned across him to hear the Queen over the buzz of three hundred other guests, the physical contact between her and Nelson had been constant, intense, and for him physically uncomfortable.

That, of course, had been the precursor of what had followed. Could he have stopped it? The fact that he should have done was not in question; he was married and so was she. Looking at his image now in the glass he was torn between knowledge of the sin he had committed and the pleasure he had taken from it. To a man who believed in an all-seeing God it was troubling that he could not decide how much his Maker would have observed. Would He have perceived the depth of the impulse that had led to their coupling? Would He weigh that in the balance against the offence?

The real horror was that he would probably have to face
husband
and wife together, in a three-sided exchange in which Sir William would be wounded, Lady Hamilton possibly remorseful, and himself unable to be open. This would compound his sin for he would have to add lies to the other broken commandments. Even less attractive was a scene of mutual recrimination in which he would be branded a poltroon, a man who could smile at his host one minute and cuckold him the next. What Sir William would say to his wife scarcely mattered, since Nelson would be obliged for her sake to take upon himself entire responsibility for what had occurred.

That there could be no repetition of last night went without saying. His marriage to Fanny might have withered in the face of a cold English climate, but she was still his wife. He felt another stab of guilt when he recalled the nights he had spent two years before in the amorous embrace of a Genoese opera singer. Yet that had been brought about by loneliness added to the desire, after many comfortless years with his wife, to once more prove himself a man.

Carla d’Ambrosio had been a rather overblown and foolish
creature
, heavily powdered, plump and given to giggling. He was well known in the states bordering the Ligurian Sea for the way in which he had harassed the French armies invading northern Italy. As the senior officer of a fast-sailing squadron of romantic heroes he was feted whenever he entered port, and it was inevitable that ladies of a certain type had set their caps at him.

Carla had been just one, and if Nelson had been taxed to admit why he succumbed to her charms when he had refused so many others, he would have been hard put to give an honest answer. He had drunk more than normal, so that her foolishness melted, glass by glass, into attraction. But he could also remember a feeling of stubbornness: in his mind’s eye he could see again the faces of his officers as he dined the lady aboard his ship, HMS
Agamemnon
. They would never know how their disapproval had driven him on where he might naturally have stopped. He didn’t want to be the paragon they supposed him to be: he just wanted to be a man like any other, with red blood in his veins, salacious thoughts in his head, and the comfort of a hot-blooded creature in his cot. And Carla had been warm and eager, where his wife Fanny was obliging but cold. For a week he had behaved as he supposed a normal man would when separated by a thousand miles from fear of discovery. Whatever remorse he had felt then at the breaking of his marriage vows had been assuaged by the certain knowledge that time and
distance
would erase the affair. That would happen here too: he had told everyone when he arrived of his intention to sail on to Cadiz within two weeks to report to his commander-in-chief, Earl St Vincent. Yet that thought brought with it a stab of regret.

“This ’ere victuals’ll have to go back to the kitchens to be warmed if’n you don’t set to ’em,” said Tom.

Nelson shook himself and glanced at the food on the table, a beefsteak, quails, and a glass of red wine. For someone who
normally
took a light repast with the rising of the sun, this was a late and hearty breakfast indeed, yet he could not contemplate eating it. His stomach rebelled and he jerked his head to indicate that Tom might take it away.

That earned Nelson a frown. “It’s not for me to tell the man I serve that he’s wrong, your honour.”

“But you’re going to tell me anyway, Tom,” Nelson replied wearily.

Frank Lepée, Tom’s predecessor, had been just as bad, with the added burden that he drank like a fish and in his drunken ramblings could not hold his tongue. At least Tom was sober. Clearly this was a morning for unwelcome memories. Carla d’Ambrosio had done for Lepée, who could never stop referring to it, in private and before others, as if he was his master’s conscience. Nelson had pensioned him off, making it clear that his stipend was dependent upon silence.

“I am that, sir,” Tom insisted, “since you need to be telt. I knows you fret, ’cause I’ve seen you at it, and I do say that it does no good. What’s going to happen will happen, and starving
yourself
won’t aid matters one whit.”

Nelson could have told him to be quiet, and he knew that most men given unwanted advice by a servant would have done just that. Instead he stood up, tugged at his dress coat, smiled weakly at Tom, and left the room.

Nelson had spent no more than a few nights at the Palazzo Sessa, several years previously, so the layout of Sir William’s abode was still a mystery to him. It was a warren of corridors, staircases, and
passages
, some sunlit, others in near Stygian gloom even in the middle of the day. The building had that air of decay which seemed to go with warm climates, as if the elements combined with the lassitude of the inhabitants to render frayed what should have been noble. In
places the marble floors were cracked, as were the walls, and in every corner damp or mould had taken hold, only to dry out and flake, leaving behind a musty odour.

But there was much to admire, not least the wide variety of Sir William’s virtu—statues, vases, mosaics, coins—all extracted from the nearby ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. There were the
stunning
views that would suddenly manifest themselves through a window or embrasure: the Bay of Naples, an arc of off-white
buildings
backed by a smoking Vesuvius or, to the west, purple islands shimmering out to sea. There were ships, too, the few of his own victorious fleet that he had kept here for communications and repair. His own flagship, HMS
Vanguard
, bereft of masts, was hove down in the royal dockyard at Castellamare, next to Thomas Troubridge’s ship,
Culloden
, in dry dock with a damaged bottom and stern from running aground at the Nile.

That turned Nelson’s mind to the problems of his command, which were many, varied, and worrying, not least because they fell squarely on his shoulders. Advice or approval on what action to take was, at best, two weeks away with Earl St Vincent at Cadiz. At worst, six weeks stood between him and his political masters in
London
, the people who had the final say of whether he had acted correctly or not.

The Nile victory had bottled up Bonaparte, and left him
landlocked
in Egypt with his army: hopefully the forces of the Sultan would bury him in the desert sands. But the legacy of his previous victories remained: Captain Ball was at this very moment off Malta, his task to ascertain if the island so recently captured and plundered by the French could be retaken. But Nelson would be expected to take responsibility for progress on land, as well—it was the lot of admirals on detached service to be accountable for things over which they had little actual control.

The northern Italian states, those that had succumbed to the French menace and those that still had cause to be fearful, must renew the struggle. Surely the Nile victory would give hope to the conquered and cheer the free, and encourage those who cared for
their liberty to once more take up arms against the invader.

Yet in this, Nelson was only too aware of the limitations on his own ability to effect the outcome. British sea power had created the opening but it would be land armies that would decide the fate of Italy. News of his victory would not suffice—if he was to press home the advantage his fleet had provided, he must get powerful
warships
, of which he had too few, into the Italian ports to demonstrate to the populace that they had real support. He must overcome in the Italian mind the memory of defeat, occupation, and
expropriation
and lift their eyes to what was possible.

The crux of that lay here in Naples, a country that was a byword for national lethargy. Nelson needed to persuade the Neapolitan court that the time was right to strike north towards Rome and the Papal States, and hopefully, in concert with the forces of Austria, to take on the French and throw them back over their own borders. Each freed tract of occupied land would add men and passion to France’s enemies. There was enough latent power waiting to be unleashed—could he, from the sea and by persuasion, act as the
catalyst
to harness that strength.

“You are in a brown study, sir.”

It was Mary Cadogan, and Nelson’s mind leaped immediately from professional to personal matters. Before him was an individual of some importance in the household. The dowdy dress and the heavy bunch of keys identified her as a housekeeper, and even her face, square, snub-nosed, and common under a mob cap, marked her as a servant. Yet the expression in her dark brown eyes was far from submissive.

Mary Cadogan, as mother of the lady of the house, was clearly more than a servant. That Sir William esteemed her was obvious in that he unfailingly included her in any conversation at which she was present, and paid clear attention to her opinions. She gave the impression that she, and she alone, knew everything that was going on in the house. There were questions Nelson longed to ask her—the same questions that had troubled him as he lay in bed not an hour before.

It was never easy to separate rumour from fact, but he had heard that Emma’s mother had been both a kept woman and a high-class trollop and that her daughter had followed in her footsteps. It had to be admitted that when it came to the daughter the gossip mill tended to completely race out of control. Messalina and Lucretia Borgia combined could not have committed half the sins with which Emma Hamilton was credited.

“I have much to ponder, madam.”

“I daresay you have, sir.”

What was in the flat tone of that voice? Irony perhaps, or an acknowledgement of the thought process she had interrupted—that he was the fulcrum on which events five hundred miles in radius would turn. Or was it closer to her home and attachments. His next comment was impulsive, and one he regretted immediately it emerged.

“I am informed that Sir William left the Palazzo Sessa after the ball.”

“He did that,” Mary Cadogan replied. “He often retires there, thinking as he does that waters are restorative.”

“You do not believe them so?”

“Depends what you’re trying to mend.” There was enough light coming through the window to allow her to see the reddening of Nelson’s cheeks, so she added hastily, “He claims it is a help to old bones. I reckon a bit of good flannel next to the skin serves just as well.”

Mary Cadogan was thinking that this little admiral was a strange one. She had known hundreds of men in her life and was happy to have no further intimate connection with any of them—but none like Nelson, though there had been sailors aplenty. This fellow had probably never seen the inside of a house of pleasure. He was more the Norfolk squire: God-fearing, church-going, forthright on
morality
, and drear company. There was a wife, she knew, and Mary Cadogan tried to picture what she might be like. Dry skinned and dry of passion was her supposition, the type to induce guilt, which made this fellow’s coupling with her Emma doubly dangerous. This
little blusher was likely to confess to Sir William and beg
forgiveness
, which would never do.