Breaking the Line (33 page)

That, too, required to be repeated, so Hardy got very close to Nelson as he replied. ‘No, no sir. There is no fear of that.’

‘Pray ensure Lady Hamilton has everything belonging to me.’

The bustle of people shifting made Hardy look. Beatty, the surgeon-general of the fleet moved closer and he crouched to examine the patient. Nelson heard the Ghost insist that something could be done, and thought, ‘Poor Hardy, who will he look to now?’

The pain in his upper body was intense, but he could feel nothing below his waist; no pain, no feeling at all. Around him he could hear voices, though they were not making much sense. As Nelson
contemplated
death, he felt the need to add up the sum of his life because he suspected expiry was going to be a slow affair – although, thank God, not the kind of lingering demise that might go on for days.

Mentally he addressed his Maker in the knowledge that he had been no saint but neither had his sins been great. If Emma was a sin he was not prepared to repent, because he could not bring himself to believe that his God would ever condemn such a true affection as he felt for her.

‘There must be some chance, surely,’ Hardy moaned, in a cracking voice.

‘Oh, no. Has not Mister Beatty told you, Hardy? My back is quite shot through. It will not be long now.’

Nelson’s mind was wandering: faces of those he had loved or perhaps wronged swam in and out of focus behind closed eyelids. He did not know that Hardy had gone back to the deck to fight the ship. Beatty’s low drone, as he talked to those holding Nelson’s body, brought him back to full wakefulness and he spoke, only to find that he was repeating himself, telling the surgeon he was paralysed, which was annoying. ‘I feel something rising in my breast. I think it is a sign to tell me that I am going.’

‘I must confess, milord, that I can do nothing more for you. If the pain is too great we have laudanum to relieve it.’

‘It is so great, Beatty, that I wish I were already dead.’

That caused a mental prayer, a plea for forgiveness. No man had the right to interfere with the good Lord’s prerogatives. ‘Yet I would live a little longer if I can. God be praised, I have done my duty.’

Would that count in his judgement? Would his actions in the face of the blasphemous tyranny of the Revolution be laid in the credit column of his celestial account? God must be on his side. He could not be with men who had denied him, committed regicide, pillaged France and made her a pariah among nations.

‘It is good that dear Emma cannot see me now.’

The whole ship shook and rumbled as Hardy fired off a broadside. Coming through the timbers on which he lay, the shock passed through his body, bringing renewed agony, and Nelson whispered. ‘Oh,
Victory.
Even you cause me pain.’

That was the last shot Hardy fired in the battle, because the last two ships in Nelson’s column had steered to engage the leading French vessel. Soon he was downstairs again, holding his chief’s hand and congratulating him on a great victory, leaning close to hear the dying man’s low voice.

‘How many?’

‘I can only swear to fourteen or fifteen taken, but there may be more.’

‘I had hoped for twenty.’

Suddenly Nelson was above deck again, whole and back in command, and he recalled his signal before the battle and the swell that had prompted it. The way Nelson cried for Hardy to anchor sounded like a twice-repeated howl.

‘I can trust Admiral Collingwood to do that, milord.’

That produced a sudden burst of strength, and an assurance that went with command. ‘Not while I live. Anchor, Hardy!’

‘Milord.’

Nelson clutched the Ghost’s arm. ‘You won’t throw me overboard, Hardy?’

Having moved his head away, that had to be repeated, and Hardy understood it well. Nelson had had a dread of such a fate ever since he had seen his first burial at sea. It was a fear that he had voiced many times, and one that he had been reassured about just as often, but Hardy repeated the promise to him nonetheless.

‘Then take care of poor Lady Hamilton.’ The voice came with a renewal of strength, as he added, ‘You know what to do.’

The pain increased in intensity, and Nelson, who nearly passed out, found his vision had become blurred. Hardy’s face so close to his, lost focus and so did his hold on reality. There was a murmuring voice that sounded low and sweet like Emma’s. Her smiling face, her laughing green eyes, filled his mind, like a vision.

‘Kiss me Emma.’

He felt a cool pair of lips on his forehead and asked, ‘Who is that?’

The strong voice of the Ghost broke his reverie. It is me, milord.’

‘God bless you, Hardy.’

He sank into a dream, and it was as if his whole life floated before him: the flotsam filled Thames that had delivered him to the sea as a boy, the face of John Judd, the man who had taught him seamanship, midshipmen, lieutenants, captains, admirals, his father, brothers and sisters, living and dead, and Fanny. But they all lost out to the faces he loved most, first Horatia, and then Emma.

His supporters saw his lips move but the words were too faint to hear, as Nelson told his wife that he held her in great affection, but he
LOVED
Emma. The last words anyone heard were, ‘Thank God I have done my duty.’

They laid him out and covered his face, for even an admiral would have to wait till all was secure before he was taken to his cabin. The sheet that he had been wound in to bring him below was used to cover his face and, after a last look, Surgeon Beatty went back to the cockpit, to the hell of the other wounded. He stopped beneath a lantern and looked at the cribbed notes he had been taking. Beatty knew that he had witnessed history being made as he watched the death of Nelson. He examined what he had written, and went to a shelf on which rested a quill and ink. Ignoring the cries of the men being operated on by his assistants he looked at the words, ‘Kiss me, Emma.’

With a bold stroke he cut through Emma, and put in its place, ‘Hardy’.

William Nelson called every member of his family to his house near Canterbury two weeks after the great funeral at which, it seemed, the entire nation had mourned. Every serving admiral in the country had attended and there was not a single one who did not want to assure him that his brother had been the best of men, and that they had been, in the face of the mistrust of others, his strongest supporter.

The Prince of Wales had claimed Horatio as an extra brother, so close had they been, and did William know that the scheme for defeating the French at Trafalgar had come from an idea he
proposed when supping with the Admiral? Why they had even planned the battle on his table, with the great sailor astounded by the prince’s perspicacity.

He was also under instructions to say that even through the confusion of his affliction the King was distraught at the loss of his favourite sailor. Mr Pitt, the Prime Minister, had offered deep
condolences
, and mentioned the conversation regarding a pension for Emma, inviting William Nelson to come and see him about it.

The family obeyed the summons because William was now its head. He was Reverend the Earl Nelson now, with a grant of ten thousand pounds from a grateful government to help him buy an estate, and an annual pension for him and his heirs of five thousand per annum. Fanny had a pension too, as the lawful wife of the nation’s greatest hero.

‘It falls to us to protect our dear brother’s memory,’ said William, having struck, standing before them, what he thought was a suitably noble pose.

This earned him a hearty nod from his plump wife Sarah. Several of the others were thinking that he had grown even more pompous, if that was possible.

‘It falls to a family connected to a peerage to behave in a certain way. With this in mind I have written to Lady Nelson to ask her why she sees a breach between her and ourselves, and to request that steps be taken to overcome what can only be called a
misunderstanding
.’

‘Quite,’ said Lady Sarah Nelson. ‘Everyone knows we have always held her in the highest regard.’

‘It may also have come to your attention that I was obliged to take on and diminish the pretensions of Lady Hamilton in the matter of our dear brother’s untimely demise. She lays certain claims to inherit parts of his estate that I cannot find it within myself to entertain.’

What William really meant was that he and Emma had had a flaming row, with much cat calling, more accurate from her, that he was a snake in the grass, than from him, who was too pious to utter the word whore.

‘It is my intention, while visiting upon the lady no unkindness, to detach the name of my brother and the title he bequeathed me from that association. I would take it very amiss if any one in the family sought to thwart that aim.’

The warning was plain; take sides by all means, but if you want to share the largesse of Trafalgar, ensure that you choose with care. And they also knew that if William, Earl Nelson, was not going to mention
Horatia, was not going to acknowledge what they all knew in their hearts, that she was their late brother’s true daughter, then they would be wise to follow his course.

Emma heard the words and recalled enough Italian to suspect they were Latin. Outside the grubby window the good people of Calais were going about their business, with no thought to the woman who had a strong suspicion that she was dying in the alcove bed in which she lay.

Her world had collapsed in the ten years since Trafalgar: Merton, too expensive, had been sold; Sir William’s annuity was too slight to support her tastes; the Nelson family were either actively hostile or too afraid to help; and William Pitt, who had almost promised an admiral going on service a pension for her, had died.

She had never been good with money, and her choice of friends had not been of the best. But as she lay there she could reflect on a life that had had more excitement and pleasure than most.

Horatia was a good child, dutiful, and to Emma dull for that reason. She had inherited the dour ecclesiastical side of the Nelson bloodline, but Emma had kept her by her side through thick and thin, even through the darkest days spent in debtor’s gaol. Horatia was her link to Nelson, and for all the airs and graces of the earl, there was only one.

She could see his face now, the half smile which wrapped everyone exposed to it in some kind of magic spell. Perhaps disapproving that the only person who would care for her was a papist priest. But no, Nelson had not been like that. He could love a scoundrel as well as a prince. Who could ever live up to his example? Not she.

The priest droned on as Emma slipped away. The face of the man she loved seeming to beckon her to a brighter place, a land of sunshine and warmth, of tarantellas and songs. She was hardly aware that his daughter was holding her hand

James Perry, editor and owner of the paper, read the obituary he had written, saying to himself, ‘you have gone under your last bridge now, fair Emma.’

This book, like the previous two volumes,
On a Making Tide
and
Tested by Fate
is fiction based on the facts surrounding two remarkable people. While it is historical it is not meant to be a history. There are hundreds, if not thousands of books on Nelson and Emma Hamilton. Nothing would please me more than that the reader should become so enamoured of the subject as to take a deep interest in the mass of biographical information available.

Allied to the reading of original sources, I too, have consumed numerous books. The best biography of Horatio Nelson is still
Nelson
by Carola Oman, first published in 1947. Someone should reissue that for the 200
^th
anniversary of Trafalgar in 2005. Likewise
Beloved
Emma,
by Flora Fraser, ranks equally when it comes to the life, loves and tribulations of Emma Hamilton. For the battle of Copenhagen, Dudley Pope’s
The
Great
Gamble,
just reissued, is unsurpassed.

If Emma is less an actor in this drama than Nelson, it is not because of the part she had in his life. It may displease those so partisan of Nelson that they often dismiss her from his story, but she was the centre of his life, more to him than fame and even naval success. And of those who gathered to mourn Nelson at his funeral, a goodly number were outright hypocrites. Nelson was a hero to the nation before Trafalgar. He only became a hero to the court and to society after his death. It is sad to reflect that some of that same hypocrisy is still around two hundred years after Nelson’s death.

If there is a certain indication of the truth of their feelings, it lies in society’s treatment of Emma, and even more, of their child, Horatia, who was not wholly acknowledged as her father’s child until fifty years after his death. She resided with both the Matcham and Bolton branches of the family and eventually married a clergyman.

The title, given to his worthless brother, was passed to Thomas Bolton when William Nelson died, his own children having predeceased him. Thus, one of the greatest warrior titles of British history and all the benefits that flowed from it: money, social position and until very recently an automatic seat in the House of Lords, passed down through the heirs of Nelson’s sister, not through that of his own child.

It is true that Emma behaved unwisely in the years between 1802 and her death, but she was forced to live on her wits and the little she had from the memory of the man she loved. But she was not the ogre she has been portrayed. She was warm, gifted, beautiful when young and touched something in Nelson that no other woman could. Perhaps, as well as a Nelson Society dedicated to his memory, we should have an Emma Hamilton Society to celebrate the life of the woman who captured the heart of Britain’s greatest naval hero.

David
Donachie

Deal, Kent, 2001