The Major was right, of course. He knew, as Nelson did not, that there was a method of siege that had about it all the elements of a formal dance. First, cut off your enemy from resupply, then search his defences for the weakest points. Having identified those, all the artillery that can be mustered must be brought to bear on that at maximum range. Then move forward as the soldiers sap closer to the enemy, digging trenches across the slope and throwing up earthworks to protect themselves from enfilading fire. Once a new position had been established the guns could be brought forward, an emplacement constructed, and supplied through those same trenches with powder and shot, the cannon could play on the weak points at a shorter range.
That was the theory, and surely it would have been the practice too if it had not been for two factors. The tenacity of the Spanish commander was one. He made sapping difficult in what was shallow soil by the direction of his own defence, cleverly using the elevations afforded by his fort to delay those digging. But he had a greater ally in disease and natural hazards than he ever had in musket or cannon ball.
The soldier first bitten by a snake had suffered while standing upright carrying a barrel towards the forward camp. The creature, apparently hanging in a tree, had struck at him without warning, inflicting a bite on his upper cheek. His screams owed as much to internal demons as fear, not aided by the shaking heads of the natives who had killed it.
But Polson had no illusions as to how acute the supply problem was, how difficult the terrain made it to transport even the smallest item from the beach down below to supply the forward operations. Time did not allow him to put one man’s well-being before that of the assault parties. The doctor made the soldier comfortable, while Polson tried to ignore the black swelling that already afflicted his face, ordering his men to move on.
What caused alarm among the other soldiers was not the fact that the man died, but that within two hours of being bitten his body had already begun to rot. Faced with death so swift and unpleasant, not one of the sappers could be brought to wield a spade until they were sure no reptile lurked in the undergrowth waiting the opportunity to do the same to them.
Matters moved slowly but inexorably. A small, tented encampment was set up, with latrines well away from the sleeping quarters and a tiny hospital to care for the increasing number of sick. As the first two weeks went by the forest echoed to the sound of cannons, spades in deep earth and the groans of the infirm.
Nelson and Giddings had set up a battery, moving it forward twice as the soldiers sapped to create new positions. Nelson knew it was a situation where rate of fire was less important than accuracy. The powder charges were carefully measured, the balls chipped with a sharp eye to ensure they were round and smooth. The battery commander, in this case the Captain of HMS Hinchingbrooke, stripped to the waist and wearing a bandanna to keep the sweat from his eyes, took personal charge of aiming the piece.
He saw both Polson and the doctor approach and wait in the stifling heat till Nelson had fired, eyes more concerned with the heavy banks of cloud in the sky than the fall of the shot.
‘Six more men have fallen foul of the Yellow Jack in the last hour,’ said the doctor, gloomily. ‘That brings the total number to over two hundred. I have recommended to Major Polson that we must suspend operations for a period and construct some kind of shelter that will keep them clear of the elements. Otherwise we will require no more than an expanded burial plot.’
Nelson looked at Polson, seeing before him a recurrence of indecision rather than the spirit that would bring them success. He had to remind himself that command was not his, so carping was easy. But they all knew that the rains, which in being late had aided their cause, were now about to begin. One look at the leaden sky, an ear cocked for the rolls of thunder getting ever closer, was enough to establish that fact. They had to act.
The first spot of rain struck an outstretched leaf like a bullet, quickly followed by several others. Nelson was too preoccupied by the needs of his battery to respond. He began yelling at his men to cover the touchhole of the cannon, to get the slow-match under some protection, and to ensure that the tarpaulin he had rigged in anticipation was still in place to keep dry his powder barrels. By the time these had been instituted the rain had turned into a deluge so heavy they had to shout to each other to be heard.
‘The sick will have to fend for themselves, Doctor,’ Polson yelled, rain cascading off his face. ‘I must get what troops there are digging out of harm’s way. This downpour will wash away any earthworks they have constructed and leave them exposed to gunfire from the fortress.’
‘Major,’ Nelson yelled back, his face likewise running with rain, ‘we must protect the battery positions or they will likewise suffer.’
‘Make it so, Captain Nelson,’ Polson roared, as he rushed away, his red coat turning to a deep soaked burgundy before he had gone ten yards. The sailors leapt out from the battery position and started to carve deep channels that would take any rainwater coursing down the hillside past their position. Eventually Nelson made his way back to the small hospital by the main command position, passing the cemetery that already contained, in two weeks, forty crosses of men who had died from fever.
Sapping in such wet conditions was impossible. Firing off cannon wasn’t much better, only undertaken when the rains eased enough to observe the fall of shot. Different tactics had to be employed, which did not appeal to Polson, frontal attacks by small parties to disrupt whatever repairs the Dons tried to make to the breaches the gunners had made in the walls. Day by day this had to be undertaken with fewer and fewer men, as the continual damp, added to the other miseries of the jungle, decimated their strength.
Nelson felt the first signs of his own recurring affliction two days after that first noisy raindrop, a weakness in all his limbs, aching in his back and thighs, plus a general lassitude that made any activity a struggle. But struggle he did, helped along by Giddings and an amazingly tender Lepée. His servant clapped a stopper on his moaning while the coxswain took charge of the construction of new gun emplacements, using rocky outcrops with natural protection from cascading water, and revetted breastworks to protect them from enemy gunfire. When not engaged in that activity, with both Giddings and Lepée by his side, Nelson led forward groups of his sailors under the walls. Edging along they tried to catch the enemy by surprise, often succeeding, sometimes failing and suffering the casualties that such failure entailed.
The cemetery grew in direct correlation to the falling spirits of the attackers, not from death by action but from the effects of Yellow Jack. Funerals took place each evening, as the light faded in a sky the colour of filthy flannel. Those saying prayers for the departed could barely stand themselves and many knew that they were witnessing what might befall them in a matter of days.
After a day of loading and aiming ordnance Nelson often had to be supported by two of his own men, openly weeping as he counted the number of Hinchingbrookes that had been laid to rest. And then the reinforcements arrived, not many but enough to raise the spirits of those still upright. Brought from Port Royal by the sloop Victor they carried the news of Nelson’s appointment to a new command.
‘You are to be congratulated, sir,’ said Midshipman Beevor, who had been detailed to deliver the news. ‘You have been given a fine ship, a forty-four-gun frigate and near new.’
The man before him was too weak to respond with any enthusiasm, and Beevor thought him more scarecrow than Post Captain, a sallow-faced individual, all skin and bone, who would scarce make it back to the coast. The military commander Polson was not in a much better state, and the news he had received was bound to lower his spirits.
‘I am superseded, Nelson,’ Polson said, wearily, rubbing a hand over his lined forehead. ‘I have Colonel Kemble coming to take over the siege.’
Nelson replied, with pursed lips. ‘I am sorry to hear it, Polson, and I know you will not take credence to it but I will be sorry, too, to depart this place.’
Frank Lep�
�e shook his head, the first sign of open dissent for weeks.
‘You feel it too?’ Polson asked, his now gaunt face eager.
‘I do,’ Nelson insisted, a smile on his wan face. ‘Our Spanish friend yonder is closer to collapse than we. Were you not on the verge of a success I’d ignore my orders and stay.’
‘In the name of Christ, Capt’n,’ hissed Lepée, and for once Giddings supported him, though only with a look.
Nelson heard his servant’s words, and wondered that Lepée didn’t understand. This was his first independent command. He wanted to be there when success was achieved and Fort Nicaragua compelled to surrender. That would justify the faith that people like Locker, Admiral Parker and his uncle Maurice had shown in him, as well as his own certainty that he was destined for greatness. It would also elevate him in the firmament of his family. His exploits would be the stuff of dinner-table recollection, not those of the raft of ancestors who had preceded him.
‘Which would force me to command you to depart,’ Polson continued, ignoring the servant’s intervention. ‘Your health alone demands it. I have no desire to attend your funeral as well as all the others we have witnessed.’
Nelson hit Polson weakly on the shoulder. ‘Finish it, man, before Kemble gets here.’
A hand came out, to be grasped firmly. ‘God speed, Nelson.’
The trip downriver was very different from that experienced on the way up, taxing all Giddings’s skill at boat handling. The San Juan was now close to a torrent. The sandbars they had rested on were submerged and hazardous rather than havens of calm. The banks no longer showed the mud that had sent up such foul air: that, too, was under water.
Action alone had kept the malaria from downing Nelson. That removed he lay in the thwarts like a man close to death, white of face, shivering uncontrollably, muttering to himself the names of the hundred of his men he had left in that waterlogged cemetery. Over and over again he recalled them, a toll of death to which Lepée, watching him, fully expected to add the name of Captain Horatio Nelson.
CHAPTER 26
1780
Race day at Uppark brought le tout monde to the Sussex countryside, some with horses they wished to run, others just to eat, drink and make merry. It was always held when Harry’s mother was away for her annual summer sojourn in Bath, to give her son the run of the great house. It also gave his closest guests a guarantee that the revels wouldn’t cease when the sun went down. Emma had received several hints, and knew Harry well enough to be sure that they were in for a wild night.
Kathleen Kelly must have closed Arlington Street for the day. The Abbess was present with all of her nuns, who greeted Emma like a long-lost sister, though a few could not hide their envy at her situation. Most of Mrs Kelly’s customers seemed to be in attendance too, one or two of whom knew Emma sufficiently well from her past existence to essay the odd familiarity. These she took in good part, secure in her station for this day at least, as mistress of the house.
‘Sure, it’s always like that with men, my girl,’ Kathleen Kelly said, when Emma alluded to such attentions being unwelcome. ‘They can never let a girl forget that they’ve enjoyed her favours, nor pass up a chance to inform their companions. They’ll even make it up to impress. They’re sad creatures in the main, our menfolk, led by the breech into all sorts of foolishness.’
The Abbess had never treated Emma as an equal before, and it was a pleasant sensation. Letters passed back and forth to Arlington Street, as well as hints from Harry and his friends, told her that her tenure at Uppark had lasted a good deal longer than most. Her man was held to be notoriously fickle, a rake in every sense of the word. But since her arrival on the scene he had cut a more sober figure. If Kathleen Kelly behaved towards her as a person of some consequence that only coincided with Emma’s view.
They were promenading under parasols across close-cut lawns towards the marquee Harry had set up to serve refreshments. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and everyone, conscious of the gaiety of the occasion, had elected to wear as much colour as possible. Horses were being paraded and admired, wagers placed and odds discussed, in a babble of noise and laughter that caused a swelling of pride in Emma’s breast. She felt this was as much her race day as it was that of the heir to Uppark.
‘Harry tells me you’re engaged to take part in the ladies’ race.’
Lessons in riding side-saddle had followed her excursion on Montenegro, with a specially purchased and expensive habit to go with it, and she was accomplished now in both methods of riding. It had become her chief pleasure, since she had the run of the stables when Harry was absent from the estate.
‘I am under instructions to win, on pain of a thorough lashing.’
Said humorously, it wasn’t taken that way. ‘He is known as a beater.’
‘Kathleen,’ Emma replied, ‘he is an over-indulged child. But it is my fond wish that he can be tamed.’
Head bent, she didn’t see the look on Kathleen Kelly’s face, the mixed expression of doubt and surprise that a slip of a girl like Emma should be talking in such a vein. The beating Harry had given her was no secret, just as it was fully expected that at some time in the future it would recur. The Abbess had been a girl once. She could have recounted Emma’s dreams of bliss with her lover, as easily as she could tell how misguided they were. They were a commonplace in immature minds, just as the dashing of them was a near certainty. True, she had seen one or two of her nuns catch a man well above their station, but it was rare, and she would bet a guinea to a clipped farthing that Harry Featherstonehaugh wouldn’t be one of them.
‘I must have a wager,’ the Abbess said, to change the subject.
‘Charles Greville has opened a book, I believe.’
‘Then I shall keep an eye on him, Emma. If he’s successful he can pay some of his outstanding debts to me. Not that I won’t have to stand in line.’
‘The queue, according to Harry, is a long one.’
Friends they might be, but Uppark Harry was as prone to pillow gossip as the next man, prepared to traduce the reputation and behaviour of his companions with the same passion he employed to castigate the actions of his perceived enemies. Few, regardless of how close they were as bosom friends, were spared a critique. Greville, he insisted, was a schemer, and generally an unsuccessful one. Emma, forewarned early of the trait, had observed the look that lay behind the eyes rather than in them, an impression of secret inner thoughts that gave the Honourable Charles the air of a conspirator.
But she had observed something else: a gentility of manner that contrasted sharply with that of her lover. It was hard to accept that Harry could be jealous of Greville, but he was and it emerged when he spoke of his friend. Not of his life or his conquests, but of his social standing as the second son of the Earl of Warwick, while on his mother’s side he was allied to a raft of Hamiltons, a family awash with dukes, earls and influence. For all his wealth, Uppark Harry was perceived as frivolous. For all his endless speculations, debts, pursuit of rich heiresses and failures in business ventures, the Honourable Charles Greville was treated as serious.
He was a Member of Parliament; a passionate collector of virtu, mostly of the mineral variety, and a keen horticulturist, an expert on Italian art, paintings, sculpture and ancient artefacts, who acted as an agent for some of the wealthiest people in the country. But, more than that, he showed Emma a rare politeness, treating her as he would a lady. In the interregnum, while Harry had been absent, Greville had made no secret of his admiration for her, but had never so much as hinted at impropriety. And he had ceased his barbs. In sharp contrast to the absent host, Greville was wont to praise his friend and forgive his faults. The way he commended Harry, flying in the face of what Emma already knew, blunted her initial resentment. In fact, she had grown quite fond of him, a consequence of his almost permanent presence and exposure to his gentle demeanour.
‘Mrs Kelly, Emma,’ said Greville, bowing. He stood beside an easel, on which he had pinned a l
ist of horses and riders, each with a set of odds against their name.
‘I require your advice, sir,’ said Kathleen Kelly, peering at the list. ‘What should I back?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What? Are you not running a book?’
Greville threw her a sideways glance, in the way Emma had come to know so well, eyes hinting that the import of his thoughts was far removed from his words.
‘My dear lady, you must differentiate between my advice and the occupation I have chosen for the day. In the latter guise I would point you towards the odds, but as a man who has attended many a race meeting I know that all the advantage lies with me. I am more likely to be left in possession of your coin rather than you in mine.’
‘Then little could be said to have changed, Mr Greville,’ Kathleen Kelly responded tartly. She had seen the look he had thrown Emma, understood the significance, and was still woman enough to be jealous, even if she cared little for him. ‘I have often had cause to notice that you leave my house with a full belly while my purse is somewhat light.’
‘True. And I cannot thank you enough for the way you indulge me.’
A hand was thrown out to the list of runners, but still accompanied by that slightly mocking grin. ‘But fate has presented you with an opportunity to reverse that. Place a wager on any beast of your choice, Mrs Kelly, but gift me with no money. Should you win I will accept it.’
‘And if I lose?’
‘You may set that loss against my bill at Arlington Street.’
‘You owe me in excess of fifty guineas, sir.’
‘Fifty guineas it is, though if you are to profit from it you must be quick. The runners are coming under the orders of the starter. Which horse?’
People were drifting past, heading for the growing clamour at the start line. Horses were snorting and swinging their heads, voices were raised to encourage or denigrate, and grooms and riders struggled to calm their excited charges. Marquees had been erected around the start line with brightly coloured heraldic pennants fluttering in the light breeze, like some archaic jousting contest. The course itself ran circular on the rolling downland, marked by flags.
On a Making Tide Page 33
