Shadow of a Lady

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  A quick kiss, and it was over. Charlotte was gone, and Helen thought she had never felt so lonely in her life. Sir William had disappeared too, and Lady Hamilton took her hand. “Sit down, love, and have a glass of something. You look all to pieces.”

  “I feel it,” Helen confessed.

  “Better to feel than not,” said Emma Hamilton.

  Chapter 17

  LADY Hamilton kept Helen with her all that long Sunday, and Helen was glad to stay. Ricky was safe with Angelina, and she was in no hurry to face the Palazzo Trevi alone. Sir William had gone back to General Acton’s house as soon as Troubridge had left. “To have another try, I have no doubt,” said his wife.

  “Another try?”

  “For a better reception for our fleet.” Emma Hamilton had a ravishing, mischievous smile for Helen. “You can keep a secret, love, can you not?”

  “Yes, I think so.” God knew she had had practice enough.

  “We English must hang together, now the rats have fled. And good riddance to them, I say. That Prince Augustus with his morganatic marriage and his terrible voice . . . What an embarrassment for Sir William.” She laughed. “Poor Sir William. I wish I had had a chance to tell him.”

  “To tell him what?” Helen was not sure that she should ask it, but certain that Emma wanted her to, and curious enough on her own account.

  “Why, that my dear Queen has done what that coward Acton would not. He’s been shilly-shally all morning with Sir William and poor Troubridge, and it’s a glum enough message the captain has to take back to our friend Nelson. Nothing would budge Acton, Sir William says. He sticks to the letter of his treaty with France. No aid for the British; no hostility to the French. It would serve him right if the French armada sailed in here tomorrow and sacked the place. At the best of it they are likely to take Malta and Sicily. Only think of General Acton’s actually letting the French minister, Garat, send dispatches with details of Nelson’s position. It’s enough to make you mad.”

  “I suppose it is according to the letter of the treaty,” said Helen doubtfully.

  “Yes, no doubt. Which they’d break soon enough if it suited them. But no need to look so downhearted, love. Things are not quite so bad as they seem. Sir William has seen to it that our dear Nelson has full details of everything we know about the movements of the French. Not much, I’m afraid, but something. And the best of all is that letter I was writing when you and Miss Standish came. That’s the cream of it. While Sir William and Captain Troubridge were practically on their knees to General Acton, where was I but with my darling Queen? And not wasting my time either. She’s a woman in a million, and hates the French as much as any of us. And no wonder . . . So while King Ferdinand hunts, and General Acton shuffles and palters, what does she do but sit down and write a note for the port authorities, here and in Sicily, telling them to give all the aid they can to the British. That’s what I was sending Captain Nelson in such a hurry.” She looked at the chiming clock on the chimney-piece. “I hope he obeys my orders and sends it back, for I am bound not to give any of her letters.”

  “You mean you expect to hear again from the fleet today?”

  “I am positive of it. Sir William must be answered, and so must I. Captain Bowen is to come back this evening. Very likely he will have word for you from Miss Standish. And I am sure there will be a letter for me from my dear Nelson. You must wait and see the event.”

  “I should be glad to, if you are sure I’ll not be in the way.”

  “Never, love. Not you. There’s not many here in Naples that I trust, and nor should you. But you and I have been friends for longer than I care to think of.”

  Helen laughed. “Nor I.”

  Lady Hamilton turned to one of the large gold-framed looking glasses with which the room was so well equipped. “But we’ve worn well, that’s one comfort.”

  “Yes, indeed.” Had the beauty managed to persuade herself that they were more or less the same age? It was not the first time that Helen had noticed her quite extraordinary capacity for self-deception in a good cause. Was she, just possibly, deceiving herself also about the importance of that letter of the Queen’s? Could the Queen give such an authorisation in the face of General Acton’s stand?

  Captain Nelson seemed to think so. His answer was brought up from the harbour when the shadows were beginning to lengthen across the bay. Lady Hamilton tore it open eagerly, tucked the enclosure in a secret compartment of her desk, and turned to read the crabbed, difficult, left-handed script. “I told you so.” Her face glowed with enthusiasm. “He has done everything I bade him. He has kissed the Queen’s letter and returned it. Soon he hopes to kiss her hand when no fears intervene . . . Fear not the event, he says, for God is with us.” She smiled as she refolded the letter. “No time to write poor Sir William. So much for your official dispatches.”

  “Does he say what he will do next?” Helen wondered whether she should ask it.

  “No, but he has no need to. We know his orders. They are to seek out, sink, burn, and destroy the French fleet. That is what he will do, and presently will return to us crowned with laurels. Oh, I can hardly wait to see that day.” Emma Hamilton struck an attitude, and Helen decided that it was time to go home. She thought it would be best to be gone before Sir William returned and found that Captain Nelson had time to answer his wife’s letters, but not his own.

  “Been out long enough.” Lord Merritt was awaiting her in her own parlour. “What’s this about Miss Standish?”

  “She’s left us,” said Helen. “She’s gone with Captain Troubridge to marry Captain Forbes.”

  “Good God! Crazy woman. Well, no doing of mine. Mind you tell Mrs. Standish when you write her.”

  “I suppose I must,” said Helen doubtfully. “Charlotte said she would herself.” It was so surprising to find her husband in her rooms that she found herself slipping back into the freer communication of the early days of their marriage.

  “Certainly must,” said Lord Merritt. “In your charge, after all. Least you can do to explain. Soften the pill with a bit of news, maybe? What’s gone on up at the embassy all day?”

  So that was it. He was curious. And yet it was unlike her husband to show more than routine interest in the news of the day. He had finally convinced himself (or been convinced by Price?) that French or English domination of Naples was all one to him, and nothing would shake him in this belief. Why did he feel so safe? A small worm of suspicion began to crawl at the back of Helen’s mind. Price. Everything came back to Price. Just suppose that as well as being her enemy, Price was England’s—in the pay of the French? He would be able to promise his master immunity if they landed, and he would be eager, unlike his master, for firsthand news.

  But Lord Merritt was growing impatient for her reply. “Ships to and fro all day,” he said. “Must have been something going on.”

  “Of course there was.” Helen came to a quick decision. “Captain Troubridge came to ask for help for the British fleet, and General Acton would not give it to him. He’s sticking to the letter of the treaty with France.” No harm in telling him this, even if he was going to take it straight to Price. And, suddenly, through this new danger, she thought she saw her way to a kind of safety. If Price thought her a valuable source of information, it would be in his interest to keep her alive. “I spent a charming afternoon with Lady Hamilton,” she went on now. “She was kindness itself and says we must be friends, now Charlotte is gone. You will not mind, if I spend some time at the Palazzo Sessa?”

  “Don’t see why not, if you like to. Dead bore of a woman, but that’s your affair. Those attitudes . . . Oh, well, time to be getting along.” Was he returning to Price for fresh instructions?

  She was proved right next morning, when he called on her after breakfast to urge the propriety of her accepting Lady Hamilton’s open invitation. He spoke so nearly in sentences that she thought Price must have coached him, and congratulated herself that Price must think her negligible as an adversar
y. There were, after all, some advantages about being a woman. Men tended to dismiss you as a fool.

  She found Emma Hamilton pacing up and down her room in splendidly dramatised fury. “The very person,” she kissed Helen warmly, “to share my bad news. Only think of its arriving today, one day too late for Captain Nelson. Oh, it’s enough to make one mad. And to make one wonder if by any chance it was held up on purpose. If we had only known!”

  “What is it?” Impossible to tell, granted the beauty’s habitual self-dramatisation, whether this was a great or a trivial mishap.

  “The French have taken Malta. The Knights of St. John capitulated without so much as a shot fired. Oh, it’s a bad day for England. Soon we will have no friends left in the Mediterranean.”

  “But is it known where the French are now?”

  “Nothing but rumours. Some say they will take Sicily next; others that they are bound for Alexandria.”

  “Alexandria?” Helen was amazed.

  “Yes, to take Egypt and so by way of the Red Sea to join Tippoo Sahib in a revolt against the British in India.”

  “Good God,” said Helen. “It sounds fantastic.”

  “I’m sure it is,” agreed Lady Hamilton. “They’ll come here, of course. I’ve felt it in my bones all along. We must just pray that Nelson has had news of the fall of Malta by now, and comes to our rescue.”

  Driving home, Helen debated with herself what she should tell her husband. Tell him something, she must, but what? It turned out that he had already learned of the fall of Malta, news of which was all over town by now. “Where will they go next?” he asked her. “Lady Hamilton. What does she think?”

  Helen had made up her mind. “She would not say in so many words, of course. But I got the impression that she has some fantastic idea of an attack on Egypt. It sounds like madness to me.”

  “Egypt, eh? Odd come-out, I’d have thought. Why Egypt?”

  “As a means to attack India, Lady Hamilton thought. It seems unlikely enough. Even that daredevil Bonaparte would hardly go half round the world to attack us, when he could do it so much more easily at home.”

  “Can he?” asked Lord Merritt.

  She thought about it afterwards and wondered, in increasing anxiety, whether she had not perhaps picked the wrong bit of information to pass on. How frightful if, intending to mislead, she had actually provided a useful clue. Her husband had left her after that one significant question, which made her think that perhaps the business of passing on information might work two ways. Price inevitably would have to explain a little of his own thinking to his master in order to get him to ask the right questions. It sounded to her as if Price might actually believe the chance of an attack on Egypt.

  As the days passed by without a sign of either fleet, the Egyptian venture began to seem more and more of a possibility. Calling regularly at the Palazzo Sessa, Helen learned a week or so later that Sir William had finally received an answer to his letter to Nelson.

  “Our friend’s not at all pleased with the Court here,” said Emma Hamilton. “Who could expect him to be?” She laughed. “He complains in good set terms of the lethargy of Naples—no assistance for him, no hostility to the French.”

  “But the Queen’s letter?” asked Helen.

  “Ah ha, he does not mention that,” said Emma. “And nor must you. But only to think of his still not knowing that Malta has fallen to the French. He writes urging that Naples make a push to take it. Too late, alas . . .”

  “But does he say where he is going next? Or where he thinks the French are?”

  “Why, no.” She sounded surprised. “Now I come to think of it, he does not.” She brightened. “Very likely he had not made up his mind.”

  Helen wondered. Had Troubridge perhaps warned Captain Nelson of the gossip-ridden state of Naples? Perhaps even warned him against the charming Ambassadress? After all, it was common knowledge that everything she learned went straight to the Queen, and then, no doubt, from the Queen to the Court of Austria. There were all too many possibilities, on the way, of its falling into the wrong hands.

  Meanwhile, they were back at the old, anxious waiting. Helen told Lord Merritt about Nelson’s letter, and made a point of telling him that Lady Hamilton had commented on Nelson’s failure to describe his own plans. “She thinks he had probably not made up his mind.”

  “Shilly-shally.” It was a phrase Lord Merritt liked. “That Charlotte,” he went on. “News of her?”

  News of Charlotte would be news of the fleet. “Not a word.” Helen wished it did not happen to be true. Charlotte had presumably had no chance to send a letter back by Captain Bowen that Sunday when she had left in such haste. Helen had hardly expected it, but as June warmed up into the heavy heat of July she became increasingly anxious for news of Charlotte as well as of the fleet.

  The silence was absolute. “Really,” said Lady Hamilton, “one might think the sea had opened and swallowed both fleets. You’ve heard nothing from Miss Standish?”

  “Not a word. I do hope she is Mrs. Forbes by now.”

  “Yes, indeed, or her reputation’s gone, poor girl.” Extraordinary to have Lady Hamilton speak in this tone about the loss of reputation. She must indeed feel confident that she had recovered her own. Her next words confirmed this. “A pity there’s no news of her. I need news beyond anything, now I am got against my will into the diplomatic line for my beloved Queen. You would not believe how she relies on me. I make my friend Greville write me long letters full of politics from England for her sake. She loves everything that is English, just as she hates the French. So be sure and let me know at once if you should hear anything from Miss Standish. You never can tell, she might find some private means of communication safer than the official ones. Did you know that the first letter Sir William sent to our friend Nelson, about the French armament, never reached him?”

  “No!”

  “Sent on a Maltese boat, love. The moral is, trust no one. Except each other, of course.” A warm, sweet-scented kiss. “And now I must be off to my darling Queen who tells me she quite counts the minutes until I come. We sit together, like mother and daughter, all afternoon, and then, when I meet her at the opera at night, I treat her with such deference you’d think I was still a girl on my probation. It was Sir William’s idea. I don’t know where I would be without Sir William.”

  “How is he?”

  “Tired. And can you wonder, the burden that he bears. I wish his leave of absence would come—and yet I do not. How could we leave my angel Queen at this moment of crisis? No, Sir William must nurse himself, and keep going, as we all do, for the Cause.”

  Rising to take her leave, Helen was not quite sure what the Cause was, but very certain that Lady Hamilton did not want to leave Naples, whatever signs of strain her husband might be showing. Interesting that it was on his suggestion that his wife treated Queen Maria Carolina with that pretty, formal deference in public, despite the terms of intimacy on which they lived in private. He was a very clever man, Helen thought. She only wished he was a younger and stronger one.

  As usual, July brought heat, flies and stench to the streets of Naples, but to Helen’s surprise her husband stayed in town. It was, she was afraid, a sign of the completeness of Price’s domination. Town was where news could be had. In town they would stay. It had become a matter of custom, now, for Lord Merritt to call on her, casually, in her rooms after her daily visit to the Palazzo Sessa, and ask, even more casually, if there was any news.

  And, daily, she could reply, with a clear conscience, if a heavy heart, that there was none. Anything could have happened. Suppose that mast of Captain Nelson’s that had been so quickly re-rigged off St. Pietro had failed to stand up to one of the quick Mediterranean storms that could blow up out of a clear sky? Without him, she was sure, the British squadron would head for safety, leaving the Mediterranean clear for the French. Lady Hamilton agreed with her. “Without him,” she said, “they are nothing. I pray for him nightly.” She raised h
er eyes in her Madonna pose.

  It irritated Helen into contradiction. “I’m not so sure. That Captain Troubridge seemed like a man of action. And think of Captain Ball risking his own ship to save Nelson’s!”

  “I should hope so too,” said Emma Hamilton. Quick to recognise Helen’s moment of revolt, she sent her home early on the pretext that she must get ready to visit the Queen.

  At the end of July news came at last from Nelson’s squadron. Sir William and Lady Hamilton, and Helen, all had letters, the Hamiltons’ from Nelson and Helen’s from Charlotte. Lady Hamilton sent this down to the Palazzo Trevi, enclosed in a note urging Helen to come up at once and share the news.

  Helen took the precaution of reading Charlotte’s letter first, and was glad she had done so when she came to one passage in it. Charlotte was indeed Mrs. Forbes now, and wrote in glowing terms of her happiness. In fact, she spent so much time describing her marriage, her wonderfully convenient little apartments on board ship, and all the comforts her husband had arranged for her, that she had to end by referring Helen to Lady Hamilton for news of their wanderings. A postscript, scrawled down the margin, hit Helen hard. “I met an old friend on my wedding day,” Charlotte wrote in her large, free hand. “Charles Scroope has joined the squadron, but, Helen, what have you done to make him so out of temper with you? He positively scowled when I spoke of you, and turned the subject as fast as he could. I thought you two were friends.”

  “Friends.” Helen stared at the letter, her eyes blurring with tears, and wondered, as she had so often in the lonely watches of the night, just what horrible lies Trenche had told Charles Scroope about her. She would never know, and, equally, would never be able to justify herself to Charles Scroope. It was terrible to mind so much.

  “Letters, hey?” News travelled fast in the Palazzo Trevi, and Lord Merritt had come to pay his morning call. “From Miss Standish?”

  “Mrs. Forbes. She’s married.”

  “Good thing. Where does she write from?”