Sir William

by David Stacton

  Sir William appealed to reputation. “Fall in, save honor, and you may safely leave revenge to the King,” he said. It was a toss-up whether the Cardinal would be arrested or not, but the coin came down a medal, new minted, with Nelson’s head on one side and the Goddess of Clemency on the other, Britannia cowering behind her shield.

  “Nelson is resolved to do nothing to break the armistice,” wrote Sir William.

  The Cardinal sighed with relief and went off to the Church of the Carmine, to give thanks. “Different characters express themselves in different ways,” he said in his thank-you note, repeating what Sir William had just written to him. And then, thinking over the singular perfection of this trite apothegm, and adding it to his own knowledge of the King and Queen, he prudently resigned, and so kept his honor intact.

  With honor intact, they might now do as they pleased.

  The King disavowed the capitulation.

  “Finally, my dear Milady, I recommend Lord Nelson to treat Naples as if it were a rebellious city in Ireland which had behaved in such a manner,” wrote the Queen, thus raising a purely British but inexorable ghost, and apparently ignorant that the Hydra grows new heads.

  Caracciolo’s must fall first.

  Nothing loath, Nelson intercepted the fleeing rebels and clapped them in close confinement on polaccas, where they could await the King’s pleasure like animals rounded up for a grand battu. It was a simple alternative of surrender and be hanged, or hang out and be shot, as far as he was concerned.

  Caracciolo was not so much betrayed as sold by one of his own servants, who though loyal, had needed the money, and was brought aboard the Foudroyant at nine in the morning. He had disguised himself as a peasant, an unwise choice, for though a uniform stays violence, a peasant provokes it. There could be no question of his guilt. He had changed sides and chosen the losing one; what else is guilt? It was a clear-cut case in a most indistinct country.

  The court-martial sat at ten, and the man had been condemned by noon and was to be executed the next day, which, since the naval day began at noon, gave him five hours to live.

  “But you cannot hang him,” said Emma. “We know him.”

  “It is out of my hands,” said Nelson, which was true enough, for he had just signed and dispatched the death warrant.

  The female mind does not believe that any act is ever final. That is what makes Christians of them; they believe in reprieve. She begged again.

  “He has had his trial, and has been a trial to many,” said Nelson.

  “There is mercy.”

  “His death will no doubt be a mercy, and is in itself merciful,” said Sir William.

  “He is a Catholic. Cannot he at least have a priest? He will want the comfort of Confession.”

  “Why bother to confess what cannot be denied?” asked Nelson, who had found the Cardinal quite enough priest for one day.

  “Emma,” said Sir William, “I think you had best go to your cabin. These things must be done, therefore they cannot be undone.”

  Emma went. She did not understand men.

  “It is a bad business, all the same,” said Sir William.

  “He was a bad man,” said Nelson, pulling out his watch.

  Caracciolo was transferred to his former flagship, La Minerva, and hanged at five for his unwisdom; the body was weighted and cut down to fall in the sea.

  *

  Nelson and the Hamiltons were entertaining Lord Northwick to dinner. At the foot of the table was a roast pig. As the head was cut off they heard the cannon boom from the Minerva. Emma fainted.

  “Ah women,” said Nelson, “they are such delicate creatures,” though this one was uncommonly heavy to lift. Sir William helped him. This opinion, and for that matter this woman, they held in common.

  She revived. Now it was over it was not so bad. She ate.

  Once Caracciolo was out of the way, the King was to arrive, but the Queen was not.

  “Nobody wants me there,” she said, and sent her black lists along. She recommended that the women be treated as were the men. She proposed to enlarge the scope of war. She wished to have Eleonora Pimentel’s head.

  *

  To give the sailors diversion, Emma had installed a harp on the deck of the Foudroyant and gave concerts in the evening.

  She sang odes to Nelson mostly, which went down very well. She helped abolish the silence, and among them, only Sir William had the reserve to find nothing objectionable in the voices of silence, which can be heard across that bay, although the dead are dumb.

  “The King arrived on the tenth, so now we have nothing political to think of,” said Sir William. His Britannic Majesty’s government was forced to entertain royalty, not always an easy thing to do, since there is so little, on the whole, that entertains it. Ferdinand, however, was easily amused by being allowed to shoot seabirds from the deck when not busy ordering executions and rewarding the faithful. He was stern, he was the father of his people, and the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, as he never tired of saying.

  He was quite himself again. He had not learned a thing. Nor, in his opinion, had he a thing to learn. He was quite jaunty. But he would not go ashore. Since the Hamiltons and Nelson did all the work, he had nothing to do but nothing, which not only took up most of his time, but suited him.

  The last group of rebels surrendered on the 3rd of Messidor.

  “What day is that?” asked Nelson.

  “The ninth of August.”

  If we cannot be sure of the calendar, what can we believe?

  Since he had disobeyed orders in order to stay at Naples, there was a good deal of talk. He did not listen. We cannot do the world’s work and listen to its chatter as well. He had not the time.

  *

  A fisherman came aboard to say that Caracciolo was swimming toward Naples. Man not the guns only, but also the churches. He had risen from the dead.

  From the King’s cabin came something between a bellow and a scream. When they burst in, they found him down on his knees, blubbering for a priest, beating his scapular against the floor and pointing out the window.

  It had sounded like a yarn. It was not. There was Caracciolo, sure enough, walking across the water rapidly, but bobbling like a buoy.

  “You had better not look,” said Nelson, but of course Emma looked. The entire fleet looked.

  His body had become sufficiently inflated by gas to counterbalance the weights which had been tied to his feet, but the weights kept him erect, so that, borne on a small surface current, he was indeed rapidly approaching, his arms flapping dissynchronously, his head tolling like a bell. Where not bloated, the body had gone slimy, and of course the eyes were gone. He made the worst possible kind of fetch.

  The King crossed himself into a corner. “We must flee! We must flee!” he yelled. He called on St. Ferdinand. He called on both St. Anthonies. He called on St. Januarius. He called on the Blessed Virgin. He had a long list.

  “I am damned!” he screamed. “Damned!”

  They sent for the chaplain.

  The body bumped against the hull, as though knocking to come in.

  “They come back,” yowled the King. “They come back!” Poor soul, he was in torment.

  Sir William looked at Nelson. Nelson looked at Emma. Emma looked at Sir William. They could none of them look at the King, who was hunching himself up toward an invisible altar, in a most unregal manner, and would next demand the Pope.

  “He has only come to ask a pardon and a Christian burial,” said Sir William.

  “Yes,” said the priest, who had not been able to think of anything himself.

  The improvement was immediate. “You think so?” asked the King.

  They thought so.

  Ferdinand scrambled to his feet, dried his tears, and looked about him joyously. “Very well,” he said. “I pardon him. Have the body towed to Santa Lucia, to the church there. But I pardon nobody else. And see the others are buried properly!” And glaring at them like a boar from a
thicket, he turned and went snuffling off, leaning on the priest’s arm.

  *

  “Probably some ships will soon be sent home from Palermo, and Emma and I shall profit of one. Every captain wishes to serve us, and no one is, I believe, more popular in the navy at this moment than Emma and I,” wrote Sir William. Except for Josiah Nisbet of course, who had come back to disapprove. “We have had the glory of stepping between the King and his subjects, to the utility of both.”

  “I am going ashore,” said Emma. “Will you not come?”

  “No, my dear, I think not.”

  “It would do you good.”

  “No, it would only do me harm,” said Sir William. “But go if you must.”

  She did not understand why not, so she went.

  *

  Though it had not burned, the city was still smoking. It had a cordite smell. People did not seem to wish to stir about, and though shutters were open at most windows, they were not folded back.

  In an empty street she came most unexpectedly across Mr. Lock, the British Consul, sitting on a cart piled high with furniture. When she spoke to him, he did not answer very civilly.

  As why should he? He had come to Naples to buy up furniture cheap from the Jacobin plunder, but had been denied first passage by Sir William and Nelson, and so had missed the best bargains, and all because of this superficial, grasping and vulgar-minded woman.

  And what was the furniture for?

  “If one is underpaid and denied the proper privileges of one’s office, one cannot sleep on a bed of one’s own choosing,” he snapped.

  “Still, you seem to have chosen a good variety,” she said, peering into the cart, and went on.

  She did not go far. She could see that the Palazzo Sesso had been despoiled, the Villa Emma plundered, and Sir William’s private apartment bombed. She had no heart to see more.

  “Of course it was,” said Sir William. “It was because I was so popular. One can always depend upon the goodwill of the populace, for they do as they like, and then afterward they make amends. But only if they have done you some damage first; after all, they are only human.”

  Alas, a war kills not so much the living as the world they lived in. Sir William had been right. She should not have gone ashore. To have seen it swept away utterly would have been one thing; to see it in ruins, was worse.

  “I saw little Mr. Lock, too. He was quite rude. I don’t know why. He was buying up furniture.”

  “He is cousin by marriage to Charles James Fox, who looms large. We must have him to dinner, I suppose.”

  But he could not come to dinner. He was writing a letter to certain persons about certain persons, whom he would not name, but his father could be counted upon to show the letter around.

  *

  “I have settled matters between the nobility and Her Majesty. She is not to see on her arrival any of her former evil counsellors, nor the women of fashion, alltho’ Ladies of the Bed-Chamber, formerly her friends and companions, who did her dishonour by their disolute life. All, all is changed. She has been very unfortunate; but she is a good woman, and has sense enough to profit by her past unhappiness, and will make for the future amende honorable for the past,” wrote Emma, sending to Greville practically the letter he had once sent Sir William about her, and with much the same attitude. She could not know that, for her own attitudes had changed. She felt secure.

  “It would be charity to send me some things, for in saving all for my royal & dear friend I lost my little all,” she added. “Never mind.”

  *

  The 1st of August was the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile. The centerpiece of the celebration was to be a barge fitted up as a Roman galley.

  “And the sailors want me to sit in it, what shall I be?” asked Emma.

  Sir William considered. Cleopatra would be inappropriate; Dido, for the same reasons, seemed far from wise; no one knew the name of Pompey’s wife; and Bellona seemed uncalled-for, Britannia an anachronism. “I am afraid there is not much left but Calypso. You must do the best you can.”

  “What did she feel?”

  “The barge will be forty yards away at least. Feel what you like, it will not be visible,” said Sir William kindly, following the myth, and so encountering Penelope, a prudish young woman with a taste for tapestry. She came from Nevis. “Be something classical. It does not matter.”

  She was something classical. It did not matter.

  There was a twenty-one-gun salute from all the ships at anchor, a general illumination, and the barge went by with lamps fixed on the oars, a rostral column, and two angels at the stern to hold Nelson’s portrait up. Looking through his telescope, Nelson saw dear Emma; he had wondered where she was.

  Feeling the eyes of the world upon her, Emma impudently waved. An orchestra sang his praises.

  “I relate this more from gratitude than vanity,” he said, writing to his wife, which was only the truth. Vanity was assuaged. It was now only gratitude that ached. In his second draft, he thought it wiser not to mention Emma. “The beauty of the whole,” he added, “was beyond description.”

  *

  Having condemned 105 to death, 200 to life imprisonment, 322 to shorter terms, 288 to deportation and 67 to exile, the King made ready to depart. He was constitutionally timid. Confront him with a fait accompli, and he merely looked around for the accomplices. He would be glad to get back to Palermo.

  Conditions were still savage in the streets. You could see the glitter of eyes just beyond the clearing made by torchlight. The tyranny of the minority will always perish; the tyranny of the mob survives.

  *

  In the Cathedral, the Cardinal was up to the end of his oration:

  … as though one brought back from the past the thing itself, all bloody, fresh killed and steaming, and held it up to the present and said, see what you have done. If you have not done it, you will come to it soon enough. And then the harpy throws the human rag away, and laughs.

  Oh God, in past time, when life was pleasant, they saw their past and future pleasant, and all history was one continuous meadow. But now, because of the way we live now, all the traps are opened up, the gunwales are awash, the slaves are chained to the anchor, for there must be no evidence, and we have bloodied all history with what we have done, and left the meadow reeking. There is no place where we can go, and as for the future, we shall not live to see it. Pray that it be not furnished forth our way. And let us die.

  “The King is in great spirits, and he calls me his grande maitresse,” said Emma. “Mais il est bonne d’être chez le Roi, mais mieux d’être chez soit.”

  So off they sailed, with everything done and nothing settled, back to Palermo again, for Naples, like Ireland, was now no place for pleasure or recreation.

  “The wind,” said Nelson, “is rising.”

  But justice was done; that left only injustice, surely, to be dealt with.

  *

  In Weimar, Goethe, who upon his return from Italy, emboldened by the looser morals of warmer climes, had taken a woman of the people as his mistress, was drawing up a will in favor of Christiane Vulpius, so she should be provided for in case the French came. She was no Emma. She was a Kinder, Küche, and Kirche sort of woman. But she satisfied him and presented no fewer social problems than did Sir William’s excellent living gallery of sculptures. If the French came too close, he was even prepared to marry her, as the banker Récamier had married his illegitimate daughter to provide for her and then, since he had not been guillotined, had been forced to live with her rather than acknowledge her irregular birth, get an annulment, and so besmirch his name.

  He was not, however, prepared to marry her just yet.

  VIII

  IT SEEMED TO THEM ODD—they had always thought to go home to Naples, their stay in Palermo had been temporary, but now they had seen their houses in ruins, they had that home-coming feeling about Palermo instead. Once they reached Palermo, everything would be all right. It could certainly not
be all wrong. The King, who in Naples had stayed in his cabin as much as possible, here walked about quite confidently on deck.

  The ships processed into warmer air, scented with limes and oranges. It was siesta. Sir William gave himself up to a happy contemplation of melons, peaches, grapes, prosciutto con fighi, and other emblems of maturity. Nelson wrote letters. Emma, admirably posed, admired the view.

  “I’ve told Lady Nelson all about you,” said Nelson, startling her. He seemed these days to approach her each time from a different direction and always rapidly.

  “All?” she asked blankly, with an inner thump. “But you do not know all.”

  “I mean I sang your praises.”

  “Oh those,” said Emma, who knew all of them, for when nervous she sometimes sang them to herself. She was relieved.

  Platonic as ever, he gave her hand a grateful squeeze. He was incorrigible.

  “The Queen has prepared a fete in our honor,” she told him.

  *

  At noon they dropped anchor in Palermo Harbor and the Queen came aboard, embraced Emma and clapped a necklace around her neck—the royal portrait surrounded by diamonds, suspended by a chain—stepped back to admire the effect, trod in the scupper and went wet-soled to dinner. Sir William received a similarly mounted portrait of the King. The Queen, who was sentimental about everything, gushed.

  “It is a false bottom,” said Sir William. “Take it out, and you can see the solid bedrock of indifference underneath,” but only to Nelson. He was polite as other men are skeptical—that is, from habit rather than from any lack of conviction. He did not wish to spoil Emma’s triumph.