Tested by Fate (13 page)

“We shall stop in Paris, Sire.”

Farmer George shook his head. It wasn’t a happy prospect for a reigning monarch to look on, the events taking place in the French capital: King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette had been dragged from Versailles to be kept in the Palace of the Tuileries and denied the freedom to move. Mobs gathered in the
faubourgs
and orators on street corners incited the mob to violence. Would the contagion spread to Farmer George’s own realm? “Bad business there, Sir William, what, what?”

That raised a murmur of assent from the eavesdroppers.

“But interesting, Sire.”

The bulging Hanoverian eyes bulged a little more. “Interesting?”

“Of course, Sire. It will be instructive to observe how a king goes about his duties when his subjects are in a position to
command
his behaviour.”

Sir William bowed, turned on his heel, and left the audience chamber, which was buzzing with his carefully honed insult.

Emma thought they looked a sad pair, King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette, as they made their way through the gardens of the Tuileries to attend mass, an absolute precursor of their holding court, a sign of their continued belief that the office they occupied came from God, not man. The nation, or at least the National Assembly, didn’t agree, and was just days away from the ceremony that would inaugurate a new constitution.

Louis seemed vague, bereft of that regal air so necessary to
command
a nation like France. Dress like monarchs they might, but for both himself and his Austrian wife the appearance of their office had deserted them along with their power. After the mass, King Louis’s conversation with Sir William and Lady Hamilton was perfunctory. His wife, however, knowing that Emma was a confidante of her
sister
, was eager for their company.

Observing Marie Antoinette as she talked, Emma could see a family likeness to Maria Carolina in her face, but that was where it ended. The French Queen was taller than her sister, a more willowy creature, had clearly been a beauty, and those physical traits seemed
replicated in her behaviour. The eyes betrayed a weak, distracted
personality
, her conversation was floating and inconsequential, odd given her circumstances. The assurance that the prayers of Naples were with her and her family lifted her spirits somewhat, and she pressed on Emma a letter for delivery to Maria Carolina. The Hamiltons were also presented to her children, who showed punctilious
behaviour
in the way they greeted these visitors from England. Emma remarked after they left that the Dauphin was “quite the little man.”

“More so than his father, I hazard,” said Sir William. “If ever I saw a fellow defeated, then it is Louis.”

Two days later, Emma and Sir William made their way to the Champs Élysées on foot, all carriages having been banned from the city, to witness the celebrations of the new, constitutional France. A balloon, in the red, white, and blue of the new tricolour, was sent up to a huge clamour of emotion; strangers kissed and embraced as they toasted each other and freedom.

But it was not all bliss. Making their way back to their
residence
, after a wearying day, the Hamiltons came across a mob surging through the streets, grubby individuals, shoeless,
trouserless
, wild-eyed creatures egged on by fiery demagogues. When the rabble stopped to listen to the orators, Emma heard threats of death uttered that chilled her blood, threats not just against royalty and aristocrats, but against all men of property, including the most
rapacious
landowner of them all, the Church.

The scenes of riot continued into the night and Emma watched from the safety of her window. Clutching in her hand the letter from Marie Antoinette to her sister in Naples, she felt more
sympathy
for King Louis than that evinced by her husband: she had seen in the faces below her and in those they had observed on the way home that he truly had something to fear.

Taking possession of the letter turned out to have been easier than delivering it. The King and Queen of Naples were at Caserta when the Hamiltons returned to the Palazzo Sessa, which occasioned a
short stay, a hasty repacking, before they were once more in the coach on the way to the royal country palace. Sir William, as a returning ambassador, had a duty to present his credential, and the more pleasant task of finally presenting Emma at court. Powdered and dressed for the occasion, it was a blow to arrive at the palace only to be informed by the Court Chamberlain that, while Sir William Hamilton was welcome, he had no instructions regarding his wife.

Left outside while others passed through to be presented, for he had refused to enter without Emma, Sir William exploded. His voice, in a mixture of Italian and undiplomatic French, echoed off the high ceiling of the anteroom leading to the audience chamber. That was as nothing to the tirade he produced as, with the levee over, the Neapolitan courtiers departed while he and Emma still waited.

Emma tried to keep a brave face. She had been traduced many times and, even after a wedding that had been the stuff of
fairy-tales
, still had enough sense to know that her titular elevation left her exposed. She had kept from Sir William her hurt at not being presented at Windsor, laughing it off as the behaviour of people too stuffy to engage her interest anyway. Diminished as the French royal family were, presentation at their court had salved the wound. But she had expected that here, of all places, she would be fully
welcome
, and that, hard as she tried not to mind, engendered some tears.

Enraged, Sir William insisted he would leave the country, not just Caserta, and court officials were sent scurrying to seek a
solution
. In an establishment that moved slower than a wounded snail, a hurried compromise was arranged. The King was already gone, gun in hand to shoot any poor bird that flew over his head, but Maria Carolina agreed to return to the audience chamber and take her seat on the throne.

Sir William was tranquillity itself as he entered, Emma in court dress on his hand. He could feel her slight trembling as they made
their way up the carpet, which was decorated with the royal coat of arms. She had practised for this a hundred times, dreamt of it a thousand. And here she was at last.

“Your Majesty, I bring you greetings from my Sovereign Lord, George, by the Grace of God King of England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, Lord of the Isles, Duke of Hanover.” In a calm voice Sir William Hamilton reeled off the endless titles of his king. But the note changed to one of pride as he continued, “And may I, Your Majesty, present to you Lady Emma Hamilton, my wife.”

Maria Carolina stood up, came down from the dais, and kissed Emma on both cheeks. “We welcome you, Lady ’Amilton, and pray that you will grace our court often.”

Emma responded with a deep curtsy, her heart pounding with an excitement that far outweighed what she had felt at her wedding. Part of her dreams at least had come true.

S
CRAPING THE ICE
off the inside of the window-pane did little to increase the light. The sky was slate grey. Only by peering through the glass could Nelson see the stark outlines of the bare trees in the Parsonage garden, a line of gaunt sentinels that, in fanciful moments, stood like gravestones for his naval career. Halfway up the hill, All Saints Church, grey moss covered stone, stood barely defined against frosty fields. The sneeze, loud enough to penetrate the closed
parlour
door, reminded him that he was not alone, though it seemed like it at times.

In the grip of a Norfolk winter, it was hard to recall the
sublime
moment of his wedding: the hot sun, the gardens of Montpelier in the same full bloom as his bride-to-be, the grin on young Josiah’s face at the melting of his worries. Prince William Henry, now created Duke of Clarence, had behaved like a
grand
seigneur,
and John Herbert fussing as he deferred to a man whose social position
dazzled
him. Nelson frowned. Herbert would have been less enamoured if he had known the Prince’s true character, had had any inkling of the merry dance he had led the bridegroom on their travels round the Caribbean both before the ceremony and afterwards.

That association had done Nelson nothing but harm, which had been made plain to him since paying off
Boreas.
In four annual
visits
to Windsor to attend a levee, the King hadn’t chosen once to engage him in conversation. He was more inclined to scowl at the man who, according to the reports he had received from outraged husbands and dunned tavern keepers, had allowed his son to make an ass of himself and the institution he represented.

It seemed that nothing he had tried to do in the Caribbean had worked in his favour. Admiral Hughes had enough friends on the
Board of Admiralty to place a check on any career and he had not forgiven him, blackening his name at every opportunity, telling all that Nelson was a damned nuisance; that to employ him was to employ trouble. Instead of being grateful, the officials in the
departments
to which he had reported on the way the planters were bent on cheating the Exchequer were inclined to back up Hughes’s
opinion
, on the grounds that Nelson had done nothing but aggravate their workload and disturb their measured, peaceful existence.

Many spoke for him, William Locker foremost among them, but Nelson knew from his own experience that one negative voice in a situation where employment was scarce could outweigh ten in favour. For some reason, Hood, the senior sea lord, who should have aided him, had turned his face away. The years had gone by: five years on half-pay when his only accomplishment had been to turn the gardens around the Parsonage from his father’s untidy desert into something respectable. Five years of annual visits to his noble relation, Lord Walpole, where his wife could see in the broad acres and landscaped lakes what might have been hers had she
married
better.

Josiah, on his visits home from school, grew more morose and less joyful, the carefree infant rapidly turning into an adolescent
irritant
. Locally he had seen gawky girls turn from geese into swans, spotty boys grow to be men, and stalwart farmers and their wives shrink into their dotage. His calendar revolved around local feasts and markets, coursing for hares with his dogs, and shooting in the autumn. That was until he learnt that he was a deplorable shot; that his fellow hunters wished to steer clear of him from his habit of walking with his weapon cocked. Firing on sight, without proper aim, was no way to fill the larder.

Alarms and excursions abounded. Spanish bellicosity, revolution in France, even fleets gathered and sent to sea so that Britannia’s enemies should know that she was prepared for war. Hopes had been raised that he might stand for Parliament but they, too, had faded away. The list of correspondents to whom he sent pleading
letters had grown longer as time passed, but not one had been able to alter his prospects.

He breathed on the window, then traced an outline on the steamed up glass with his finger, a rough drawing of a frigate under bare poles, half a dozen strokes, one from bowsprit to sternpost, the second the deck and the poop. Three masts were added and stroke six was a wave-filled sea. He imagined her as
Boreas
with everything aloft, royals, studdingsails and kites, to see that line of waves below the hull as the deep blue they had been when he had sailed from Barbados for home. He couldn’t draw the vision of happiness that had filled his mind then any more than he could understand where it had disappeared.

Those unemployed years had felt like five decades, spent in the company of a wife who had good reason to be more miserable than he. Fanny hadn’t taken to England, let alone isolated and windswept Burnham Thorpe, shuddering even when the sun shone and the garden on which he had toiled so assiduously was in bloom. She hated it when it rained, which was frequent, or when the east wind froze her to the marrow even on a day when the sky was blue. Grey skies and icicles reduced her even more, so that she could barely be brought to exchange a civil word with anyone, his father when he called, her husband or the servants, especially Frank Lepée, who was often drunk and always boastful. Her blood was accustomed to the heat of the West Indies while her domestic appetites hankered for the ease and luxury of Montpelier. Often these complaints were vocal and general, but it was with her silences and her personal frigidity that she punished him.

Leaving the window and his drawing, Nelson went through to the parlour, a hurried opening and closing of the door earning him a glare from the figure hunched inside a shawl by the fire. He replaced the bolster laid to keep out the draughts, jamming it hard against the gap at the bottom of the door, then walked past his wife to poke the logs, causing them to flare up and light what he could see of the pallid face.

“I shall need to get Lepée to fetch more wood.”

“Is there enough wood to fend off this chill?”

“This weather will pass, my dear.”

“To what?” she snapped. “To rain, sleet, to a hint of warmth in the sun blasted to petrifaction by a North Sea gale, with you telling me of storms at sea and how you love a good blow.”

The words he wanted to say died on his lips, merely because he had used them before and failed to lift her spirits. For all his desire to secure employment, Nelson could extract some pleasure even from this ice-bound existence. It certainly suited his health. The fevers and agues, which had plagued him in warmer climes, were absent here in this bracing English air. Winter was a time to hunt for game and fowl, to skate upon frozen ponds with young Josiah when he was home from school. This part of Norfolk was blessed with hills, and snow allowed for the manufacture of ice slides, as well as providing the ammunition necessary to indulge in a
snowball
fight. The fantastic landscape afforded by a sudden thick frost, which covered the branches of the trees and made them into
hanging
sculptures, delighted him.

Society came from visiting neighbours, relatives, or friends, and a day spent in Burnham Market, where he could share the
newspaper
in a snug coffee-house. There was a degree of frustration in reading in the
Register
of events outside the borders of the
Burnham
parishes; of who was received at court, who led fashion, and how his nation stood in the councils of the greater world.
Commenting
on the news gave him a reason to correspond with people, allowing him a justification for putting his name before them.

He often accompanied his father as he visited his parishioners, all of whom never forgot to include Captain Nelson in their prayers. He would listen as the Rector ministered to their souls, seeing the other side of his parent’s doleful nature, the part that could
encourage
and uplift. Edmund Nelson’s sermons, delivered from his trio of pulpits, were stolid rather than inspiring, but they were designed to ease troubled souls, and to remind his flock of the dangers
inherent
in a lack of scrupulous observance to the teaching of their God.
It was pleasant to stop outside the church and talk to these people; to remember that, but for fate, he might have ended up a farmer himself, obsessed with flukes of wind that presaged a storm,
watchful
of birds as they migrated and returned, caring for livestock that suffered danger from pestilence, weather, and hunting animals.

And he studied and wrote about the lives of the lowest in the land, the farm labourers. It was no secret that the King was
interested
in the state in which they, his least blessed subjects, existed. Nelson could report that their lives were close to miserable, that what they ate would not and could not sustain them, and that recourse to the alehouse, their only relief, did naught but beggar them further. These reports were not sent directly to the King, but to Prince William, Duke of Clarence, for onward transmission to his father, as a way of alerting both to his continued existence. He longed to say more since the lives of these wretches depressed him. But tact was required, so the unpleasant truth had to be made
palatable
. At least he could openly tell their sovereign that they were loyal, that the sedition spreading from France had little influence in the hovels or alehouses of Norfolk.

He relished the feeling of frozen cheeks warmed by a
welcoming
interior and a blazing fire. The taste of spiced wine, mulled with a red-hot poker, was twice as pleasant outdoors than in. The sight of robins pecking the berries, hard because of deep frosts, could keep him still till his marrow froze. The moment when the weather broke, and the first green shoots of spring emerged through the morning mists, was a perfect joy, making him feel close to his Maker. Activity kept Nelson warm by day, and should have by night, but the lady he had married, in concealing certain things, had hidden most her fear of ardent desire.

Consummation, his wedding night, even after five years, was fresh in the memory, being so swift and dull, almost an agony to Fanny who had made it plain that, while her husband was entitled to his due, it was not to be freely and frequently offered. Nelson lacked the heart to press, to insist, nor was he good at signalling desire, either merely corporeal or his wish to father children, to
which out of duty Fanny might have responded. The merest hint of disinclination drove him away. He wanted warmth offered freely, not cold charity, so that aspect of his marriage had now faded to nothing.

“Post on the way,” shouted Lepée, who managed to make the passing on of such mundane information seem like an imposition.

“Post my dear,” said Nelson, searching his pockets for the means to pay, glad to suppress the disloyal thoughts he had been
harbouring
.

“Another letter of regret, no doubt, husband.” Her voice took on an arch, shrewish tone, meant to convey the heartless tone of officialdom. “‘Their Lordships regret to inform Captain Nelson that they cannot oblige him in the matter of a ship. We are sure Captain Nelson will appreciate that there are many deserving officers and a want of opportunities, with the country at peace, to employ them.’”

“We mustn’t lose hope, Fanny.”

Her voice was weary, her head sinking even deeper into the shawl than hitherto. “Your anticipation fatigues me so, husband. How many letters must you have before you see the truth? How many wasted trips to London and fruitless interviews can that
sanguine
nature of yours contend with?”

“I can’t lose expectation, Fanny. It is all I have to sustain me.”

“Half pay is what sustains us both, and in a degree of cold and misery I never thought to experience.”

“These are the worst months, January and February. It will soon be spring.”

“With you throwing open windows as if what comes through passes for warmth.”

“The postman,” Nelson said, to avoid having to answer.

Muffled against the wind, the post messenger slithered up the slippery path, between the empty flower-beds, past the white frosted lawn and the frozen pond. His hardest task seemed to consist of keeping his feet on the uneven paving, reminding his recipient that repairing it had been a task he had promised for last summer, but had failed to fulfil.

“Post for thee, your honour,” the voice said from under layers of scarves.

Nelson took it, examining the seal, his hope evaporating as he saw that it was not from any official source. There was no crown impressed into the red wax, nor anchors to denote the Admiralty. He paid the fellow his sixpence, bade him God speed, and hurried back indoors. He had to heat his hands by the fire before he could begin to open the letter.

“It’s from Davidson, my dear.”

“If he offers you a merchant vessel, you must take it.”

Nelson declined to reply to that. It was a long-running marital sore, the notion that he should take employment in a merchant ship and at least afford himself the chance of earning a decent stipend. Behind the insistence was the notion that Fanny would benefit too, perhaps to sail in his ship to some warmer shore or, failing that, being able to move to a less isolated spot, perhaps even to a house that might be said to be comfortable. He knew he could not oblige. It was one of the catch-all tenets of naval service: if you wanted advancement you must be available, even if there was scant
employment
. Taking service on a merchant deck meant no longer being on the active list. His naval career would be as good as over.

“Matters with France do not improve. Davidson maintains that despite the best efforts of the opposition war cannot long be avoided.”

“I recall he said the same last year and the year before that, when those
canailles
carried their king to Paris. Now they try him like a common criminal and what do we do? It was ever thus. Those cowards and placemen in Whitehall will do nothing.”