Ramage At Trafalgar (5 page)

“Be fair, be fair,” the earl chided. “I know you have no very high opinion of Lord St Vincent after the battle which gained him the earldom, but at Copenhagen he knew Nelson as second-in-command would twist Hyde Parker round his little finger, if necessary – as indeed he did, and won a fantastic victory.”

“Then why not have the courage to put Nelson in complete command from the start? Hyde Parker wasted days fiddling about off Elsinore when he should have been down to the south at Copenhagen. After all those luxurious years of West Indian sun and blue seas, the dark nights and cold green seas of the Cattegat frightened him.”

The old admiral laughed and started to fill his pipe. “You’re not going to get me into that argument again. Anyway, now St Vincent is out and Middleton is in as First Lord, created Lord Barham for the purpose, perhaps things will he different. I’ve known him for most of my life as Charles Middleton, and it’s difficult to remember he was recently ennobled.”

“What sort of man is he?”

The earl shrugged. “About fourteenth on the list of admirals of the white, just below Duncan and just above St Vincent. In his eighties now, but a very good organizer and clear-headed: apparently he has shaken up the Admiralty Office – it needed it. Everyone’s precise task is now written down; clerks have to be at their desks by ten o’clock; even sea lords arrive earlier. Barham himself is usually at work by daybreak.”

“Sounds a welcome change,” Ramage commented. “Those clerks for the most part are a crowd of insolent time-servers – sons of creditors, tailors’ nephews, friends of cousins, and so on.”

“Ah, Lord Nelson,” the earl exclaimed, “I nearly forgot. He’s in town from Merton for only three or four days, staying at Lady Hamilton’s place in Clarges Street, and he asks that you call on him. Seeing him at Clarges Street will save you from going all the way down to Merton.”

“Did he give you any idea what he wants to see me about?” Ramage asked cautiously. “From what the newspapers say, I should think that now he’s back everyone in London wants to shake his hand and give him dinner…”

“That’s exactly why, if I were you, I’d send Raven round to Clarges Street at once to suggest a day and time.”

Sarah came into the room at that moment. “Who lives in Clarges Street?” she asked. “Oh yes, that wretched man Charles James Fox, if I remember rightly. I went to his house one day with father and mother, And doesn’t Lord Nelson’s friend have a house at the other end?”

“It’s all right, you can say Lady Hamilton’s name out loud – father is very broad-minded,” Ramage said teasingly.

“Who are we going to see, then, Fox or the famous lady?”

“I don’t know that ‘we’ are going to see anyone,” Ramage said. “Apparently Lord Nelson has asked me to call on him. Told me, through father,” Ramage corrected himself.

“Then it’s ‘we’,” Sarah said blithely. “I’ve always wanted to meet His Lordship, and who can resist meeting the famous lady? I wonder if their child is with them. Horatia.”

“She is usually referred to as His Lordship’s god-daughter,” Ramage said stiffly.

Sarah waved a hand airly. “Unless you’re a servant, legitimacy only matters if you’re inheriting property or a title. If Lady Hamilton inspires Nelson – and clearly she does – then hurrah for England if she has a dozen such children, particularly if it produces a dozen great victories. We need a few more at this moment!”

The earl sighed and was about to chide Sarah when she sat down on a sofa and wagged a finger at him. “Before you start disapproving of Lady Hamilton (who after all is a widow now, although admittedly she wasn’t when Horatia was born), let me tell you this. If Nicholas had been unhappily married when we first met, then
you
might have had a Nichola in
your
family, with people gossiping about ‘the notorious Lady Sarah’!”

The earl sighed again, and then smiled. “Yes, I believe you, and Nichola would have been just as welcome in the family,” he admitted, “as ‘the notorious Lady Sarah’.”

“That’s easy enough to say now,” Sarah said reflectively, “but supposing…”

The earl looked at her squarely. “You forget Gianna, my dear. Nicholas couldn’t have married her because she is a Catholic – or, to be more exact, she wouldn’t have married him because he is a Protestant, and anyway she could never return to rule Volterra with a Protestant husband. But believe me, the countess and I were quite prepared for an eventuality such as you mention!”

A startled Ramage blurted: “
Were
you, father?”

“Of course! For the first two or three years, anyway; then we realized that your feelings for her were changing.”

“I should hope so,” Sarah said mildly, and then asked curiously: “But you really were quite ready for a grandchild born the wrong side of the blanket?”

“Quite ready? Well, to be perfectly honest the countess was readier than I: Nicholas can do no wrong in her eyes. But had Gianna had such child, yes, I would have accepted it. We were very fond of her, you know.
Are
fond of her,” he corrected himself, and all of them thought of the young Marchesa di Volterra, the lively and lovely Gianna, whose fate was still a mystery: had she been assassinated by Napoleon’s men, or imprisoned?

“Well, you’ve no grandchildren yet,” Ramage said hastily, “and I must write a note to Lord Nelson. How long has he been back in London?”

“Only a few days. We were all very worried when he seemed to vanish.”

Ramage nodded. “Yes, he took a risk making for the West Indies after leaving the Mediterranean, instead of coming north – but he was right! Villeneuve
had
fled across the Atlantic, not made for Brest or Coruña.”

The earl lit his pipe, and as soon as it was drawing satisfactorily, asked Ramage: “Would
you
have risked it?”

“I might. After all, once he sailed through the Strait from the Mediterranean, Villeneuve could only go north, to join the Spanish in Cadiz or Coruña, or to Brest, where he’d risk being blockaded, or to the West Indies. What a prize Jamaica would have been, and all those convoys captured…Bonaparte would have kissed him on both cheeks!”

“Well, I was talking to Radnor in the House the other day, and his son is a midshipman in Nelson’s flagship. That doesn’t make the lad an authority on the chase across the Atlantic and back, but he knew Nelson’s feelings on board the
Victory
and reported them to his father, the earl.”

“And so the Earl of Radnor approves?” Sarah asked.

“He does now, though he was pretty windy at the time. As we all were.”

“Nelson’s young, outspoken, just a parson’s son, and he wants Society to accept his mistress. The fact is none of you are comfortable with him; you don’t really trust him,” Ramage commented bitterly. “Had that old fool Hyde Parker been in command of that fleet, you’d have all said: ‘Well, Hyde Parker knows what he is doing: he spent four years in Jamaica.’ But all he learned in those four years was how to get rich from prize money: Copenhagen showed that a young man with an agile mind was needed for the fighting part.”

“You seem particularly vindictive towards the worthy Sir Hyde,” the earl protested.

“I should think so!” Ramage exclaimed. “He started off badly at Copenhagen. Given command, he stays abed with his new young wife in Great Yarmouth instead of sailing at once for Denmark with the fleet. When he gets there, he hovers off Elsinore, giving the Danes all that time to prepare the defences of Copenhagen…how many hundreds of seamen’s lives – British and Danish – did those two delays cost?”

“You favour young admirals with young mistresses, then,” the earl observed teasingly.

“Young admirals, yes. If such a man can only have the woman he loves by defying convention and making her his mistress, well and good. Then there’s a hope that when it comes to fighting battles he’ll defy convention and throw those dam’ Fighting Instructions overboard. As Nelson did at the Nile! Parker would never have dared to do what Nelson did at Aboukir Bay. Nor would Parker dare do at Copenhagen what Nelson did, even though it was for all intents and purposes a repeat of Nelson’s tactics at the Nile. So give me a man who defies convention when necessary: he’s more likely to win the battle.”

“Do
you
defy convention?” the earl inquired mischievously and then almost immediately waved his pipe to dismiss the remark. “No, that’s unfair: no conventions so far have governed the sort of things you’ve done; you–” he grinned, “–favour the bizarre rather than the unconventional!”

“Which heading do I come under – bizarre or unconventional?” Sarah inquired sweetly.

“Oh, bizarre; definitely bizarre. After all, didn’t Nicholas find you in mysterious circumstances off some island near Brazil?”

“At least my father-in-law is more unconventional than Nicholas’; I’m afraid my father is rectitude personified.”

“We need a stable marquis in the family,” the earl said, eyes twinkling. “It adds respectability to what would otherwise be a rout.”

As Raven drove the carriage along Piccadilly, Sarah turned to Ramage and said: “I haven’t felt so nervous for a long time!”

Ramage looked at her pale-blue dress, bonnet of slightly darker blue, and her face, which still had some Mediterranean sun-tan. He reached across and put a wisp of the tawny hair back in place. “I don’t know why you worry. I’ll be very jealous if Lord Nelson looks at you for more than five seconds at a time!”

“I’m not worrying about His Lordship,” Sarah said, “it’s Lady Hamilton. I haven’t the faintest idea how to talk to her!”

Ramage thought for a moment, watching coaches clatter along in the opposite direction. “Think of her as the widow of Sir William Hamilton. She was a good deal younger than Sir William when they married, but he became a good friend of Lord Nelson’s and the – er, well, the relationship developed from there.”

“The fact is,” she admitted with a smile, “I haven’t much experience dealing with famous men’s mistresses!”

“You’d have been one if I’d been married – you told father that yesterday,” Ramage said, smiling. “I like thinking of you as my mistress: much more stimulating than regarding you as my wife.”

Sarah pouted at the left-handed compliment. “I’ll never hear the last of that. Anyway, you’re not as famous as Nelson yet.”

“Give me time – he has fifteen years or so advantage on me! Ah, this is Clarges Street.”

Just then, Raven stopped the carriage, asked a passer-by for directions, and called to Ramage: “We’re almost there, sir. The house is this end.”

The houses were small but well proportioned. As he reached for his hat and gloves and hitched at his sword, Ramage tried to recall the last time he had seen the admiral. He had been only a commodore then. Yes, Bastia, in Corsica, when Commodore Nelson had given him his first command, the
Kathleen
cutter. After that he had seen him only in the distance, striding his quarterdeck (a minuscule figure recognizable in the telescope lens only because of his stance) in the brief minutes at the battle of Cape St Vincent before the
Kathleen
cutter was sunk by a Spanish three-decker.

That battle had brought Nelson a baronetcy. It had also brought Sir John Jervis the earldom (of St Vincent) that he did not deserve but, as father had said, St Vincent had done his best to make it up to Nelson ever since.

The carriage came to a stop. Ramage heard Raven pulling on the brake; then the folding steps clattered down, the door was flung open and a grinning Raven stood waiting to help Sarah down. Grinning, Ramage knew, because Raven, long accustomed to rural life and more used to setting snares than opening carriage doors, was enjoying the sudden change (quite apart from being proud of his new livery of dark blue edged with gold) and delighting in the gold griffin now painted on the door of the carriage Ramage had also inherited from his uncle.

Ramage followed Sarah, then took her arm and led her to the front door, which was suddenly and unexpectedly opened by a small figure in plain uniform, one empty sleeve pinned across his breast, a green shade over his left eye.

“Welcome, Ramages! I heard the carriage and guessed it was you,” he explained to Sarah, taking her parasol and putting it in the stand just inside the door. “Follow me, I am the major domo and butler. Lady Hamilton is waiting upstairs with Horatia.”

It was the same rather high-pitched and nasal voice with the flat Norfolk accent: the curly hair was greyer. The face was tanned and thinner, too – no doubt about that, but it only emphasized the strong bone structure. The single good eye sharp, the small body (he was shorter than Sarah) as erect as ever, the single hand gesticulating. In a moment, in a brief phrase, he had both welcomed them and set the tone of the meeting with Lady Hamilton and his young daughter: now there would be no uncomfortable pauses, searching for the right word or phrase: here was the same Nelson he had met years ago: a coiled spring. One knew it was under control, but at the same time had no doubts about its latent power.

The drawing room upstairs was large, high-ceilinged and furnished with considerable taste. Sarah, at first not seeing Lady Hamilton, paused at the doorway, intrigued by a pair of urns – urns? No, they were amphorae, and surely that was coral growing on them? Recovered from the sea?

Nelson stopped when he noticed her interest. “Some of the late Sir William’s treasures, which he left to me. We have the finest ones down at Merton: perhaps we can lure you and your husband there one day and show them off. Ah, there is Lady Hamilton!”

Sarah saw a small, beautiful and graceful woman rising from a chair in an alcove. Brown and curling hair, a body perhaps now a little plump, a friendly face also now plump, but with the fullness of happiness and contentment.

Nelson introduced them and she said with unfeigned pleasure: “At last, Captain Ramage! Horatio did not tell me you were so handsome. And you have a lovely wife!”

Before Ramage could answer, Lady Hamilton looked down. A vivacious little girl was tugging shyly at her skirt. “Yes, yes. This is the Captain Ramage who wrote all those exciting letters in the
Gazette
, and this lady is his beautiful wife. May I introduce Horatia?”