The Emperor (76 page)

On the seventh day, late in the evening, Docwra left Lucy
alone with the patient for half an hour, and returned with
the priest from the nearest church. Lucy met her eyes across
the bed, and then stepped back without a word to let the
priest perform his task. When he had gone, Lucy said to the
other two. 'You had better rest. I'll watch him. Yes, go on.
There's nothing for you to do here. I'll call for you if I need
you.’

Left alone, she sat beside the bed and watched her
husband's face. The flesh had been stripped away by the
consuming fever, the lines smoothed out, and he looked
oddly boyish, with the flush across the cheekbones and the
ears suddenly prominent. He was Chetwyn, her brother's
friend, whom she had known all her life, and loved as a brother. They should not have married, she thought, for
other things had got in the way of that pure and natural
feeling, and made it impossible for them to be either man
and wife, or brother and sister.

She realized suddenly, that she knew nothing of how he felt about things. Did he mind about her and Weston? And
if so, in what way? Why had he moved to Ryder Street?
Was he unhappy, or merely indifferent? She pushed his hair
back from his forehead – conker-coloured hair, cut in a fashionable crop – and found that there were threads of
silver in the crown, and suddenly she was crying. She didn't
want him to die. She leaned over him, and her tears
dropped on his cheek, and he was so hot she half expected
them to sizzle. He was forty-three, too young to die; but
then, Charles had been very little older.

The candles burned low, and guttered; the church bell
struck quarters indefatigably; the household slept heavily
and uneasily. Lucy sat beside the bed, alone with her
thoughts and memories, until the darkness outside was
suddenly shot through with the thrilling silver of the first
birdsong. Dawn was coming, she thought gladly. She left the
bedside and went to the window to look at the sky.

She smelled the dawn before she saw it, smelled it
through the London perfume of horse-manure and wood-
smoke like the cold clarity of a high hill-stream. The sky was
suffused with a silvery greyness, shading to aquamarine in
the west, primrose in the east, and as the birdsong reached a
crescendo the sun rose, still hidden from her by the houses,
but revealing its presence in the suddenly gilded edges of the
small clouds above the rooftops.

Behind her, in the shadowed bedroom, there was silence.
Lucy stiffened, listening for the sound she had grown so
accustomed to she had ceased to notice it – the harsh, rapid
labouring of Chetwyn's breathing – but the silence was
absolute. A stillness came over her. It was all over then. He
was dead. She tried to feel, tried to move, but she could do
nothing, only stand at the window in the cool dawn air and
watch the transparent colours of morning deepen into day. Some time later – she did not know how long – she heard
the door of the bedchamber open.

‘
My lady?' said Docwra's voice tentatively. She sounded as though she had only just woken up. Lucy heard her draw
a small, quick breath, heard the rustling of her clothes as she
hurried to the bed, and then another drawn breath, longer,
like a sigh.

And then her voice, lilting with gladness, making Lucy
turn from the window at last. 'Our Blessed Lady be praised!
The fever's broken! The crisis is over, my lady. He's going
to get well!’

*

The convalescence was long, marked with the lassitude
characteristic of the illness. He was very weak, and had no
appetite, but not all his fretfulness and indifference could
wear the patience of the three women. They had brought
him through the sickness which had killed Charles, and
would have run up and down stairs twice as often, and have spent all day in the kitchen if need be, concocting trifles to
tempt his weary appetite.

By the end of November he was up and about again,
though going no farther than the garden on warm days, and
spending a good deal of time on the sopha. Lucy brought
Chetwyn tidbits of news to tempt his curiosity. All London
was buzzing with the scandal of Lord Nelson and the
Hamiltons. They had landed at Yarmouth on the 6th of
November, and had been greeted rapturously by the
crowds, who made nothing of the sailor-hero's private
peccadillos, and unhitched the horses from his carriage to
draw it themselves through the streets to the first tavern,
whose landlord begged permission to rename his house
The
Nelson Arms.

This adulation continued all the way to London, where
Lady Nelson had came up from Norfolk to join her
husband, and to meet for the first time her notorious rival.
The Hamiltons had a house in Grosvenor Square, and
Lucy's servants buzzed every day with fresh details of the
meetings between the two families. Lord Nelson and Lady
Hamilton evidently laboured under the delusion that they
were invisible, a delusion which Sir William seemed only too
glad to foster, but Society was quick to shew its disapproval.
Lady Hamilton was received nowhere, and when Sir
William went to Court, he had to go alone, for the Royal
Family had made it very plain they would not admit her to
their presence.

December brought other, graver news. On the third, the
Austrians suffered a crushing defeat at Hohenlinden on the
Danube at the hands of the French general Moreau, and at
once began to negotiate peace with the French. On the sixteenth the Russian Tsar Paul revived the old Armed
Neutrality with Denmark, Sweden and Prussia against
England, and seized all the English vessels in Russian
waters. England once more stood alone, and the closure of the Baltic to English ships meant that the supply of pitch,
hemp and timber vital to ship-building was cut off, particu
larly the supply of tall trees for replacement masts, always problematical since the loss of the American colonies.

December also brought the
Triumph
into port, and
Harry to Upper Grosvenor Street.

‘
There doesn't seem any point in going home to Morland
Place, now Mother's not there,' he said to Lucy. 'Shall you
mind if I stay here? Apart from anything else, Admiral
Collingwood says he'll present me at court. He really is a
trump card, you know, Luce: absolutely top of the trees!
He's the kindest man in the world. The jacks all love him –
we hadn't the cat out once this last voyage! And what a
sailor – !'

‘
Perhaps we ought to have this paragon to dinner. What do you say, Lucy?' Chetwyn suggested, amused. 'Someone
ought to play host to our sailor heroes when they are
ashore.'

‘Of course,' said Lucy, pleased. 'We've known Admiral
Collingwood for ever, Harry – he was a great favourite of
Flora's and we used to meet him at her dinners.'

‘
We won't ask Admiral Nelson, however,' Chetwyn said,
keeping a straight face, 'for it would be difficult to know
which of his wives to invite with him.’

Harry blushed at this, for like most young sailors, he
worshipped the Hero of the Nile, and found it hard to
reconcile his private weakness with his professional prowess.
Lucy took pity on him and said evenly, 'We'll ask Admiral
Scorton, though, for he has influence at the Admiralty,
which might be of use to you, Harry.'

‘
It's very good of you, Lucy – and you, sir. I hope it
won't be too much for you, however. You're looking horrid
pulled after your illness. Are you quite well again?'

‘
Well enough to withstand a naval dinner,' Chetwyn said
gravely, and added with a glance at Lucy, 'I had excellent
nursing, you know. I have almost come to feel there are
compensations to being ill.’

Admiral Collingwood presented Harry at the first avail
able levee, and a few days later, Lucy and Chetwyn met up with him at a Court reception, the first public function they
attended together in more than a year. Cuthbert Collingw
ood was fifty, a tall, slender, extremely handsome man,
white-haired now and brown-faced, as were so many sailors,
but with a charm and magnetism which made him as
likeable to men as he was attractive to women. His eyes
were remarkably beautiful beneath fine brows, his nose
straight, his chin firm, his lips both sensitive and sensual. He
was intelligent, an individual thinker, kindly, humane, and a
fine sailor.

He had been at sea since he was eleven, with the
exception of six years on half-pay during the gap between the American war and the outbreak of the French war, but
he had never lost the traces of a lilting Northumberland
accent. He and Hannibal Harvey were old friends, and he
was also godfather to Lord Tonbridge who had been one of
Mary Haworth's most constant suitors.

The first thing Lucy asked him was for news of Captain
Haworth.

‘
I made sure he would send his little daughter home at
the end of the summer, for winter in the Channel is not what
I would expose a child to,' she said.

‘
And Lady Aylesbury is not notoriously a fussy parent,'
Chetwyn added drily.

Collingwood smiled at the sally. 'I have no idea that he
means to part with the child in the near future,' he said. 'All
I can tell you is that she seems to thrive. I see him tolerably
often when we are on station. We all try to dine together as often as possible, to relieve the monotony of blockade, you
know, and Miss Africa is a great favourite with everyone. Of
course, we've had an exceptionally tranquil autumn. If we
had had storms Haworth might have changed his mind
about keeping her on board, or her nurse might have
changed it for him.'

‘
Pray tell him when you return that I will be glad to have
the child if he wants to send her ashore,' Lucy said.

‘
Of course, you have care of his other daughter,' Colling
wood remembered.

‘
My wife collects children,' Chetwyn put in. 'She has
young Bobbie Chelmsford too. If you know of any other
youngsters in need of succour, do send them along!’

Just then, Admiral Nelson arrived, and an incident
occurred which, though distressing, was ultimately of use to
the Morland interest. A muted buzz followed Nelson's
progress towards the King, and all eyes were on him as he
made his bow, for it was well-known that the King shared
the rest of the Royal Family's view about his affair with
Emma Hamilton.

Nelson straightened up. The King, his bulging eyes
hostile, said, 'You are well, I trust, my lord?' and before
Nelson could answer, the King had turned pointedly away
to enter into conversation with the person standing nearest
to him on the other side, which by chance happened to be
Harry.

Lucy saw Harry's naturally bright cheeks redden further,
and he bent his brown-locked head deferentially to the King
and answered what was evidently a professional enquiry.
The buzz of comment rose at Nelson's discomfiture, and
Collingwood excused himself with a bow to Lucy, and
hastened away to his friend's rescue. Half an hour later
when he joined Lucy and Chetwyn again, the King was still apparently in rapt conversation with Harry.

‘
What on earth can they be finding to talk about?' Lucy
wondered, and Collingwood smiled rather wickedly.

‘
Well they can't be discussing his naval successes!' Then
he looked across at Nelson, now talking to St Vincent, and
frowned. 'Poor fellow, he has done himself great harm with his indiscretion! But it's like him, you know – he can never
feel anything by halves. He is all passion, all heart. It cuts
him up terribly.'

‘
Hmm,' said Chetwyn coolly. 'He might shew a little
more heart towards Lady Nelson, don't you think?’