Tested by Fate (20 page)

It was a weak left hand that lifted his great uncle’s sword. “I still have my weapon.”

“Your arm is shattered, sir.”

“I saw, Josiah.” He let go of the sword to clutch his stepson’s hand. “I thank you. You have shown great ability tonight. Your mother would be proud of you. I know I am.”

“It would be better to rest, sir,” said Josiah, taking off Nelson’s
hat to put it behind his head. “You will need all your strength for what is to come.”

“An amputation, at the very least.”

“The surgeon may be able to save it.”

The shake of the head was firm. “I have witnessed more of wounds than you, and I have looked at this one. Can you raise me a bit, so that I can see?”

Hands got him to an upright position, so that he could look back to the shore, a place of flame and fire, sound and fury. He had only been upright a minute when a great flash lit the sky to the right of the boat. Nelson saw the silhouette of the decked cutter
Fox
, heard the flimsy timbers tear under the sudden weight of the salvo that struck her hull. Her masts, lit by the flares from the shore, immediately tilted over towards the sea.

“
Fox
going down, your honour,” called one of the men. “Her larboard bulwark is shipping water already.”

The shouts floated across the water, the cries of men, ghost-like apparitions in the blue lights, screaming for salvation as they jumped into the sea.

“Survivors!” cried Nelson. “Steer for survivors!”

“Your—”

Josiah never got a chance to finish his plea. Nelson might be gasping, but there was no doubting what he said. “That, sir, is an order.”

Josiah changed course to set the boat in among the flailing
figures
in the water, his men shipping oars each time they got a chance to haul some poor near drowning soul inboard. The need to save seamen seemed to revive Nelson, so that he could sit up without assistance to ensure that the search was thorough. He took no account of his wound. There were other boats, which depressed him, since they could only be returning from the shore, where the firing was dying away. Men were calling out for those still in the water to alert the rescuers to their presence, but all response had ceased so they began to row again for the fleet.

“Ship ahead, your honour,” said the shirtless Lovell, after about forty minutes. “I think it be the
Seahorse
.”

“Steer for her and call for a seat from the yard,” said Josiah.

The left-hand grip became like a vice, the voice like a whip. “No!”

There was no sound of firing now from the shore, and no
feu
de
joie
to indicate a British triumph.

“You must have the attentions of a surgeon,” Josiah insisted.

“Not the
Seahorse
. The man is a butcher and a drunk. Besides, Freemantle’s wife is aboard, barely wed six months and too young to witness this. I could not face her without news of her husband. Get me to
Theseus
.”

“Time is not on your side, sir.”

“Do as I say, Josiah,” Nelson said softly. “Let me be the judge, and if I do expire, take no blame upon yourself.”

Midshipman Hoste heard the shout, the hail
Theseus
a strong one, and he recognised the voice as that of his mentor and admiral. Within two minutes he saw Nelson, arm still in a sling, jump for the side, haul himself aboard with one hand to stand on the deck, his eyes bright.

“Tell the surgeon to get his instruments ready, Mr Hoste, for I know I must lose my arm, and the sooner it is whipped off the better.”

“Bowen’s dead, sir,” said Ralph Millar, reading from the list he had in his hand. Nelson was sitting in a chair, one sleeve empty and pinned to his coat, his eyes showing the grief he felt for a lost friend, as well as the pain from his wound.
Theseus
was engaged in a
bombardment
, beating to and fro in front of the town. “Captain Freemantle is under the care of his surgeon with a wound that may well carry him off.”

“Not that, Millar, not with Betsy so newly wed to him.”

“She is tending to him as well, sir. If anyone can provoke his vital spirit to pull him back to health, it is she.”

“Boat coming off, sir,” said Hoste, popping his head round the door. “Captain Troubridge in the thwarts.”

When he stood up, Nelson felt weak, grateful that he was in Millar’s cabin, which led straight on to the quarterdeck, rather than his own, one deck below. Tom Allen tried to assist him, and was shooed away like a foolish cat. As he emerged, he was aware of the eyes of the crew upon him. Giddings, his coxswain, was close, his gaze full of concern.

“I’m no use for fishing now, Giddings,” he said. “I fear if I am shipwrecked like Crusoe you will have to come with me or I shall starve.”

“’Twould be an honour to serve you wherever, sir.”

Nelson had to turn away then, and it was not the pain he felt that nearly made him cry.

“Captain Troubridge had no choice but to surrender, sir. He was outnumbered a hundred to one.”

The Earl of St Vincent managed a grim smile on that pug-like face of his. “No blame attaches to any one of your officers, and I have nothing but praise for your actions.”

“The losses, sir.”

“We cannot make war without them, Admiral Nelson.”

Nelson knew his commander to be a more callous man than he. St Vincent never showed much in the way of emotion, gruff
kindness
being the best Nelson could expect.

“I have written out orders for
Seahorse
to take both you and Captain Freemantle home.”

“Thank you, sir, but I would say to you that, my affliction notwithstanding, I am fit for duty.”

“I hope you are, Admiral Nelson. I want you back under my command as soon as you feel up to a return. And I would suggest that the sooner you are gone, the sooner that will be.”

R
ETURN
N
ELSON DID
, to the blockade off Cadiz six months later, with his rear admiral’s flag flying above HMS
Vanguard
. St Vincent was delighted to see him, matters in the Mediterranean
having
gone from bad to worse. News had come of a fleet of twelve French ships-of-the-line ready to depart from Toulon; infantry and cavalry being loaded into four hundred transports that this fleet would escort. Bonaparte, who had done so much to save the Revolution from collapse, was on the move, destination unknown. Nelson’s task was to take a detached squadron back into the
Mediterranean
, find Bonaparte, his warships and transports, and sink them, an assignment that had caused a furore at home, where several senior admirals were incandescent with rage that such a task should be given to so junior an officer. St Vincent was happy. He wanted
ability
, not seniority.

“I am obliged to ask if you are fully recovered, Admiral Nelson.”

Nelson could never get over the way he was treated by his beagle-eyed commander-in-chief. It was common knowledge that St Vincent was at the mercy of constant headaches, which partly explained his normal behaviour: orders barked, insults heaped, and professional reputations traduced in this very cabin. Suggested courses of action from his junior admirals or captains were generally met with withering sarcasm, any failure of his exacting standards brutally excoriated.

There were things this 63-year-old bachelor believed with all his heart: that the best way to clap a stopper on mutiny was a swift hanging; that any officer who showed slackness in the way he
handled
his ship should be sent home; that a man once married was lost
to the service and near to useless as a commander; that one
Englishman
in a ship was worth ten of any enemy. Yet Nelson was shown nothing but kindness, which had preceded the loss of his arm, and he had even heard Josiah, who stayed on the station and now had his own ship, praised for the way he emulated his illustrious
stepfather
. As a member of the inshore squadron blockading Cadiz he had distinguished himself in three separate small-arms actions.

St Vincent showed a hard carapace to the world, but was more emotional than his visitor knew. He loved Nelson for his zeal, for his determination to fight whenever the opportunity to strike
presented
itself, for his ship handling which was of the highest, and not least for his own earldom, which would have gone begging had not Nelson risked all at the battle from which St Vincent’s title came.

“I am, sir, in better health now than when I left for Tenerife.”

“Then the bosom of your family has done you the power of good.”

“It has, sir.”

“You may have
Alexander
and
Orion
, Captains Ball and Saumarez,” St Vincent continued breezily. “They and a squadron of frigates will see you into the Mediterranean, and I will reinforce you as my situation permits.”

Nelson pondered those names. Saumarez he knew of old, a good-looking Guernseyman, a fine seaman whose main problem was his own awareness of his appearance. He was always immaculately attired and had a reputation as a man who could paint the whole ship without a speck of it marring his dress uniform. Ball, he was disposed to dislike. He had met him in St Omer all those years before, and bridled for the man’s unwarranted attentions to the lovely object of Nelson’s affections, Kate Andrews.

“Send me fighters, sir,” insisted Nelson, “for I intend to find the enemy and send both Bonaparte and his Italian army to the
bottom
of the sea.”

“Do that, Nelson, and we’ll take our seats in the Lords together.”

They discussed plans to co-ordinate if it turned out that
Bonaparte
was heading for the West Indies. With cavalry aboard that was
unlikely. But, then, he was unpredictable by reputation, and
successful
to an astonishing degree. Never one to waste time, Nelson’s squadron fired their salutes, formed line, and set their course for the Straits of Gibraltar. With a fine topgallant breeze they entered Rosas Bay under the towering rock, to anchor, replenish their stores before proceeding into the Mediterranean.

In Nelson’s heightened imagination, exiting one sea to enter another was like cutting a chord. He was leaving behind one set of doubts to be replaced by another. He knew—despite all the efforts he made to convince himself that it was otherwise, despite all his protestations to anyone close enough to hear him that she was the object of his deepest regard—his relations with Fanny had not been resolved.

The homecoming, or rather his journey to Bath to meet wife and family, had been muted. Nothing Nelson had written to tell Fanny of his wound would have had the same effect as the writing itself, a left-handed indecipherable scrawl that Fanny openly
admitted
had reduced her to tears. Her husband could not confess that the loss bothered him too, or that the wound hadn’t healed
properly
. He still, mentally, reached for the quill with the missing right arm, was surprised to look and see that, although his brain had issued the command, and he could feel his right arm moving,
nothing
was there. That and his constant pain had to be hidden from Fanny to avoid another bout of weeping.

Right handed or left, in four years away, none of his letters home ever intimated that his regard for Fanny had wavered, neither from Naples, in that silly infatuation with Lady Hamilton, nor even from Genoa when he had gone further and transgressed his marriage vows. He had always written to her as his loyal wife, bosom companion, and lifelong partner. The simple truth was that he didn’t know his own mind, and since he was disinclined to discuss it with anyone he was unaware of how common such a notion could be. He wasn’t even sure if the doubts still existed, the mere act of homecoming lending deep sentiments to his feelings. The dread he had had at seeing her again when he had set out four years ago had faded.

Their meeting had been marked by a gentle touch of lips on cheek. Yet that had satisfied him in a way he found hard to define, making him realise that there was more than one strand to his
personality
. The part that craved action and excitement found Fanny trying: the part that loved domesticity, a blazing hearth, gun dogs, and the idea of rubicund children conjured up an image of her as the perfect companion.

Davidson had done a sterling job as his prize agent, and while he wasn’t rich he certainly had enough money to live in comfort. His old friend had also done a sterling job for himself, marrying a very pretty and vivacious lady, who had promptly presented him with golden-haired twins, something to make the father
manqué
in Nelson truly envious.

One worry had been laid to rest: the failure at Tenerife was seen as folly, except by those who actively disliked him. Most people he had met, and all of the press, while they had harped on about the loss of the
Fox
and some hundred members of the crew, had
concluded
that it stood as a heroic failure, a defeat caused more by poor intelligence on enemy strength and the Admiral in command
having
been asked to do too much with too little.

He was Nelson of the patent bridge, the man who had captured the public imagination. So his credit stood high, and his fellow countrymen demanded the right to place his image upon their walls. This he knew from Locker, to whom he had given, some fifteen years previously, a portrait of himself by John Rigaud. His old
mentor
had been approached with a request to make prints from it, for sale to the public. How good it was to be praised instead of damned, to have his knighthood conferred by the King in person, and not just sent to him on some foreign station.

King George, no longer irascible in the face of a man now a hero, had asked for a written history of his Mediterranean service, and Nelson knew that that which he had returned was impressive: four single-ship actions, six engagements on land commanding
batteries
, the cutting-out expeditions numbered ten, and he had
captured a couple of towns. That, and his wounds, won him a
welcome
annual pension of a thousand pounds.

The best day had been when his doctors, reaching for the string that held the ligature inside his wounded stump, had pulled, and instead of acute pain, the whole affair had come away, taking with it all the poisons that had kept it from healing. That was the day he went to the Admiralty to say he was again ready for service.

So he had said goodbye to Fanny in the same gentle way he had greeted her, a dry peck on a dry cheek, still uncertain of his
feelings
. But for all that, when he thought of her as he penned his near daily letter, it was with kindness and warmth.

A red-coated band played them away from Gibraltar, the God-speed of an Army garrison who had entertained them royally, soldiers who never felt quite safe unless a British fleet was in the
Mediterranean
. Having raised his hat to the island, and waited till
Orion
and
Alexander
, with four frigates and a sloop in attendance, had cleared the bay, Nelson turned to his new flag captain, Edward Berry.

“My lucky sea, Captain Berry. Set us a course for Toulon. Let’s find this Corsican menace and destroy him.”

Berry grinned. “What a contest, you and Bonaparte.”

“I long to try him on a wind, Berry, for landsman or no, I wager that the Corsican will ignore his admirals and try to control the battle.”

“I take leave, sir, to differ,” Berry replied. “I would wager that whatever battle we have will be controlled by you.”

Nelson was not one to be haunted by words, but that expression of confidence made by Berry and wholly endorsed by him produced a sickening sensation when he recalled them. His return to the Mediterranean had not been the success he had craved, quite the opposite. Between Toulon and Corsica HMS
Vanguard
, caught in a violent storm, had lost every one of her masts, and had been left to roll so heavily on a menacing swell that Berry had been forced
to flood the lower decks just to gain some stability. Lacking
steerage
way the heavy seas of a week-long storm had nearly driven her on to the rocks of several dangerous shores, only saved by the
application
of Captain Alexander Ball, who used his vessel to tow the flagship out of danger.

At the subsequent interview, which took place in a placid bay resounding to the clatter of shipwright’s hammers, Nelson faced Ball with some trepidation. Having been brusque with the man on the few meetings he had attended, he now had to thank him for his ship and probably his life. If Ball knew that his admiral disliked him, it didn’t show, and as they talked Nelson felt his aversion evaporate in the face of the man’s modesty. He refused to acknowledge that his exceptional behaviour and courage had been anything but the action any other captain would have taken.

What was intended to be brief extended itself to an invitation to dine, and as the meal progressed Nelson found his feelings
growing
warmer by the course. Ball was a man after his own heart, a fighter, a sailor, and modest with it. Nelson couldn’t understand his previous animosity. How could he have so misjudged Ball? It was an indication to him to be more cautious in future, never to let his heart rule over every emotion. When they parted, he was sure that he was saying goodbye to a friend.

They got HMS
Vanguard
back to sea in an astonishing four days, and resumed the hunt for Bonaparte. Nelson’s hopes were lifted off Cape Corse by the sight of Thomas Troubridge in HMS
Culloden
, sailing to join him at the head often sail-of-the-line. Now a battle fleet, they sailed north to close Cape Sicié, only to discover from a Marseilles merchantman that the Corsican’s armada had already departed Toulon. But there was no information as to where he was headed. At least he could call his captains to meet him, so that they could have no doubt about their commander’s intentions.

It was a gathering of old friends as well as new faces: Ralph Millar, Troubridge, of course, dark of countenance and doleful by nature. Tom Foley was there, his friend from his first ever ship, now
in command of HMS
Goliath
, tall Sam Hood, the son and nephew of admirals, who had been with him at Tenerife. There was also the round-faced and cheerful Louis, his second-in-command, and Galwey, who was mad, Irish and looked it, with his protruding eyes and unkempt ginger hair, and Darby, another Irishman of a more sober disposition. These were good men, the best St Vincent could send him, fighters all.

“Gentlemen,” he had begun, “we will, as a fleet, pay not one jot of attention to the Fighting Instructions.”

The faces of his captains betrayed no hint of the import of those words. The Fighting Instructions, as rules of engagement, were not designed to confer outright success on a battle fleet: they were designed to avoid complete failure. A maritime nation like Britain couldn’t afford to entrust its fleet to the mere whim of an admiral, especially since the appointment of a commander-in-chief might often have more to do with politics than ability.

It was the bane of the service that a captain became an admiral by mere seniority, filling a dead man’s shoes. A promising
midshipman
did not always pass for lieutenant; a good premier did not always rise to be a competent captain. Nor did a man who could command and manoeuvre one ship necessarily have the ability to manage a fleet. To take a fleet into battle, risking death and
destruction
and win, required skills granted to few.

So the Admiralty had evolved a set of rules tying the hands of individual commanders. A battle was considered a victory if the enemy withdrew. A stalemate, in which no side could claim an
advantage
, was seen as a positive result; defeat was unthinkable. Failure had dire consequences. Admiral Byng, after a farce of a trial, had been shot on his quarterdeck for failure at Minorca thirty years
previously
, as Voltaire, the French sage, had put it, “
pour
encourager
les
autres
.”