Too Great a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  I glanced about the table. The mood had shifted markedly. A number of our guests were quite demonstrably moved by Nelson’s vivid recitation. Many had visibly shuddered when he’d recalled the ferocity of the Orient’s obliteration.

  “The French did not go quietly into the night, even after the report from the dreadful explosion died on the wind,” he said. “They were stunned for some time, but after a lull, the ships in the rear resumed their fire. One of the frigates blew herself up rather than strike her colors. All told, ten ships surrendered to us, five were sunk, there was the one that destroyed herself, and three vessels—two ships of the line, and a single frigate—managed to escape. More than one-third of the enemy died that night, but not one of our squadron was irreparably damaged. God had surely been with us.” Nelson’s eyes welled with tears. “Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene.”

  Much affected, Sir William rose to his feet and lifted his glass. “To the hero of the Nile!”

  The company followed suit, Nelson, on my right, grasping my arm with his left hand to steady himself. “To the hero of the Nile!” we echoed.

  And then the hero of the Nile went pale and I realized that he had become incapable of supporting his own weight, frail as it was.

  “We wish you all a good night!” I declared suddenly, raising my voice above the plaudits. “Go to your beds and dream of the Glorious First of August and the extraordinary deeds of the brave Nelson!” Turning to our guest of honor, I smiled to cover my fearful anxiety and whispered, “ ’Old on to me as if we was entering a ballroom.”

  His weakened health thus undetected, I spirited Nelson from the room. But scarcely had I escorted him to the chamber we had prepared against his arrival, when he collapsed in utter exhaustion into my waiting arms.

  Twenty-eight

  Tender Ministrations

  “They will call you Cleopatra,” Nelson chuckled. He had refused to let me undress him the previous night, beyond the removal of his shoes, though it was breaking my heart to see him struggle so with his garments. His own valet was still on board the Vanguard and Nelson was evidently ill at ease about revealing his battered form to one of our servants.

  “I think Cleopatra was the one who took the asses’ milk baths, not administered ’em,” I said, reaching for the sea sponge. “But I’ll ask Sir Willum. ’E’s sure to know. Best way I know for your recovery—inside and out. Like me. I get rashes on my elbows and knees, and sea bathing is the only remedy; drinking the salt water as well as dipping in’t.”

  I feared he might detect the rapid beating of my heart. Never could I have imagined our friendship should become so intimate—that I should be a modern Magdalene and bathe the man who had bested Bonaparte. How was it possible that in his presence I was as nervous as I was calm, as bold as I was timid? I supposed it was the image of the hero that intimidated me, while the warm and approving gaze of the man had a way of stilling my turbulent soul, making me feel that all was right with the world.

  “I can’t imagine the benevolent Lady Hamilton being anything less than perfection. To me you are all rapture and rhapsody.”

  I turned away to hide a blush.

  “I fear this question may do me some little embarrassment, but . . . how did I get here?”

  “You don’t mean in the tub?”

  “No, no. In this room. My head wound must have affected me more than I knew.”

  “You was suffering from an awful fever last night. At the dinner party in your honor. I ’elped you ’ere before you collapsed face-down in your syllabub.”

  “Your voice, Lady Hamilton.” Nelson closed his eyes and leaned back in the bathing tub. His shirt, pregnant with asses’ milk, buoyed him up.

  “I—”

  “It reminds me of home,” he added softly. His voice was mild and gentle, despite the flat vowels.

  “Would you think me mad if I told you I’ve never received a greater compliment? Look at me! I’m about to cry. But you’re not from Flintshire. Leastways you don’t sound it.”

  “No, Norfolk. But it’s a country accent all the same. I’ve never lost mine despite all these years at sea amongst men of every possible stamp and stripe.”

  “You’re more like me than I’d dared to imagine. You must be as proud of your ’umble origins as I am of my own. They tell me I speak like a native in French and Italian. My German is getting quite tolerable, too. Sir Willum used to cringe a bit at my speech, and so did Gre—” I caught myself before I spoke of a now uncomfortable and embarrassing subject. “But my people are ’ardworking stock. Besides, ’ere, no one knows the difference whether I’m speaking like the King of England or not.”

  “May I be so bold as to state that I love your country speech, Lady Hamilton. It reminds me what we’re fighting like the very devil for. Like a lady’s favor a medieval knight wears into battle.”

  He let me gently sponge his forehead. “Now you’ve really gone and made me cry,” I murmured. A tear splashed into the hip bath and landed on his heart.

  “Now help me out of this blasted contraption. I must get back to my ship.”

  “You’re still burning up with fever. You ain’t going anywhere, excepting maybe back to bed.”

  “I know what it is.”

  “What what is?”

  “It’s malaria. I’ve had it for weeks. A relapse. To look at me, you might think it would have carried me off, but I’ve had any number of illnesses and always pulled through. Back in ’seventy-six I suffered a bout of it during a voyage south of the equator. I was all of eighteen then. Nearly died on the voyage home. After a long and gloomy reverie, in which I believed I should never make something of myself and discredit my family by ending up the most dismal of failures—I almost wished myself overboard—a sudden glow of patriotism was kindled within me, and presented my king and country as my patron. My mind exulted in the idea. ‘Well, then,’ I exclaimed, ‘I will be a hero and confiding in Providence I will brave every danger.’ And I pulled through the sickness! My captain couldn’t believe I’d survived it. He was tying himself in knots trying to figure out what to tell my father when he delivered him the corpse of his little Horace. You see, back when I was twelve, a pasty-faced little runt of a thing, I so yearned to go to sea that I urged my uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, to take me under his wing. He thought I was daft—thought the notion was my father’s, in fact—and accused the rector of sending me to my death!”

  “Well, you proved ’em all wrong, that’s for sure.”

  “I was near my uncle Suckling when he died. I owed him a tremendous debt of gratitude, for it was he who enabled me to begin my naval career, and I felt duty-bound to continue to do his legacy proud. ‘My boy,’ he said to me then, ‘I leave you to my country; serve her well and she’ll never desert, but will ultimately reward you.’ So you see, I am honor-bound to stay alive, as much for king and country as anything else.”

  “But you still ain’t leaving this ’ouse until you’re as ’ealthy as the day you was born. I don’t believe in ’alf-measures.”

  Nelson laughed full-throatedly. “Well, hang it, Lady Hamilton, nor do I! Not only that, the boldest measures are the safest, I always say. Nevertheless,” he added, climbing out of the tub, his chemise dripping the viscous asses’ milk on the red terrazzo. “I refuse to spend my fortieth birthday as an invalid.”

  “Your birthday! When?”

  “What day is today?”

  “September twenty-third.”

  “The twenty-ninth.”

  I clapped my hands like a little girl. “Then we shall ’ave a party! A birthday party the likes of which no one on earth ’as ever seen. I’ll see to all the plans myself!”

  Nelson smiled weakly and raised his hand. “Please, Lady Hamilton, no more parties. I appreciate the most generous hospitality that you and Sir William have shown me, but last night was enough celebration to do a man like me in. Enough to make me see in a single evening that Naples is no place for a simple sailor; it’s a cou
ntry of fiddlers, poets, whores, and scoundrels.”

  I winked at him. “Fiddlers and poets ain’t so bad.”

  “But you, Lady Hamilton, rise above them all. You are an honor to your sex. In fact, I should like the loan of some foolscap, quill, and ink, that I might write as much to Lady Nelson. She will be pleased to know that I am being so well cared for after the exigencies of so great a battle.”

  I swallowed hard and looked away, pretending to be fascinated by a little bird that had landed upon the windowsill and was peering in at us with the utmost curiosity. “ ’Ow long have you and Lady Nelson been married?”

  “Fanny and I were wed March eleventh, 1787. We’d met two years earlier on Nevis, where her uncle on her mother’s side was president. I had been sent to the Caribbean to enforce the Navigation Acts—though for doing my duty I was roundly despised—and rather soundly disciplined—by the islanders as well as the merchants.”

  “Is she beautiful?”

  “Fanny? I suppose she is tolerably attractive in that retiring English way.” It did not sound to me like the ringing endorsement of a man in love, and I found myself suppressing a smile. “She does not trumpet her looks with cosmetics and gemstones,” Nelson added. I wondered which of us—Fanny or me—was the lesser in his eyes because of it. “Dark-haired . . . a martyr to colds . . . never have I met a woman who seemed to suffer them with such alarming frequency. One would not characterize her appearance as displeasing. My brother William, a clergyman like our father, says Fanny has a faded prettiness, like a rose that never bloomed.” Nelson appeared to be searching for words. “She admires duty as much as I do. I have the utmost respect and esteem for her, and always have.”

  “But what about love?”

  Ruminating on this question for a moment or two, Nelson winced in pain when he tried to furrow his brow. “Not what it vulgarly—no, I won’t make use of that word commonly called love. . . . My love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can make love last.”

  “Sir Willum and I respect and esteem one another as well, though I don’t blush to admit that once there was a rather prodigious amount of passion between us. Sir Willum is the best ’usband, friend—I wish I could say father also, but”—I touched my belly—“I should be too happy if I ’ad the blessing of ’aving children, so I must be content.”

  Our conversation—so seemingly casual—was pregnant with the mutual awareness of what was not being said. The unspoken, the unshared, hung about us with formidable palpability. I endeavored not to tremble at its power. I feared I had already confessed too much, and so I changed the subject by rummaging through Nelson’s trunk. “Where’s your clean linen?”

  He emitted a grunt of disgust. “I am lost without my valet.”

  “Never you mind, then. Just sit your arse on that stool until I find it.”

  “Then you once desired motherhood?” A silence settled between us. “I have always wanted to be a father. But I must content myself with thinking of my sailors as sons, for I care for them with all the fervor any father could muster. And perhaps I was drawn to Fanny as much for her son as for herself. Josiah was a little scamp of five when I first met him, full of beans and mischief.” He sighed heavily. “I suppose I wasn’t as good a father to him as I had wanted to be, for the beans and mischief, to my immense consternation, remain. His mother wanted a career in the law for him, but we couldn’t afford to lay money by for it—after we married I was ‘on the beach’ for five years and didn’t receive another commission until 1793, when the French started making noise in the Mediterranean. So when he grew old enough, I took him to sea.”

  I found a clean shirt and draped it over the folding screen. “Would you like me to ’elp you dress?”

  “No, no, thank you, Lady Hamilton. You have already been goodness itself.” The answer came as something of a relief. “But if you can find my green eyeshade . . . a makeshift sort of affair . . . affixes to my hat . . . I will have to have some new ones made up . . . somewhere in that trunk. . . . Your bright Italian sunlight . . . I am ashamed to admit . . . causes my damaged eye no small degree of discomfort as well.”

  “But aren’t you blind in it? I thought—”

  “No, not entirely. Imagine a heavy milky film covering it. I can distinguish light from dark and make out shadows and silhouettes.”

  “ ’Ow did it ’appen—if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “It’s not a secret,” Nelson chuckled. “The siege of Calvi in ’ninety-four. We were under heavy fire from the San Francesco battery on the shore. I was hit when a ball struck a heap of stones very close to me, shattering them into a spurt of gravel. The surgeon told me that the blow damaged the optic nerve, causing permanent loss of sight, though by some miracle I suffered no structural damage to the eye itself. By all accounts I am told it looks normal, except for some minor enlargement of the pupil. I refuse to cover it with a patch because I have retained a bit of vision in it. Besides, I like to fool my men into thinking I’ve got both eyes on them all the time, you see! It’s still not altogether a pretty picture, for if you inspect more closely, you’ll notice that my right eyebrow was singed off during the whole messy business and never quite grew out again.” There was a rustle from behind the screen, followed by a muffled oath. “Lady Hamilton, I am afraid I must impose upon your kindness after all. I can’t seem to . . . might I trouble you to step over here for a moment?”

  It near broke my heart to see the hero of the Nile losing his battle with his chemise. His “fin” was flapping frantically about—something I would come to learn was an almost-involuntary physical reaction to anxiety and agitation—and he was completely tangled up in the voluminous shirt.

  From beneath the fabric came the plaintive, embarrassed, and horribly frustrated request: “Would you kindly help me hoist sail, Lady Hamilton?”

  “Shhh . . . husht thee naise,” I whispered. “As we say in Italian, pazienza. Non perda la pazienza.”

  I began to dislodge him from his linen prison and to help him properly dress. I confess I feared to touch the stump of his right arm and gingerly endeavored to avoid it. “Dare I ask ’ow you lost the arm?”

  “In ’ninety-seven, I was in command of the Theseus, sent to Tenerife to take possession of the town of Santa Cruz by vigorous assault. The true aim of the mission was to seize a fleet of treasure ships from Mexico that were supposed to be in harbor there. I was charged with destroying every vessel I encountered along the African coast unless a contribution from the inhabitants of the Canary Islands was forthcoming for their preservation.”

  “And this was a commission from ’Is Majesty? It sounds to me like you was being asked to be a corsair.”

  “Lady Hamilton, every crown seeks to enrich itself in whatever way it can, just as every sailor goes to sea hoping to capture prizes. Without the financial compensation that comes with a share of the spoils, including the head money and gun money for the men and arms captured, a man can scarce feed his family on navy pay. Do you know that there has not been a rise in pay for His Majesty’s seamen since Charles II was on the throne! And merchantmen pay a man even less!”

  “Heavens, what a dreadful injustice! Well, then, you was being a lawful pirate. Go on.”

  “I made the decision to attack Santa Cruz by night—not my finest hour, as it turned out, for the Spanish batteries were prepared for our onslaught, and our men, once we reached the mole, were trapped and gunned down by enemy grapeshot. Not only that, between the darkness and the heavy fire, we couldn’t see a blasted thing. The surf churned up, smashing our smaller boats against the rocks and drenching their ammunition. Men were tossed out and drowned before they had the chance to raise their swords. At eight p.m. on July twenty-fourth, I sent a message to my commander, Earl St. Vincent, informing him that after great effort, we had not been able to secure Santa Cruz. I closed my note with the words ‘I have only to recommend Josiah Nisbet to you and my country,’ for I was sure that night would be my last. I then elected, however
, to have at them a second time, for I could not accept defeat. In the still-dark hours the following morning, I was in a small boat just a few yards from shore. As I raised my arm to draw my ‘lucky sword,’ a gift from my uncle Suckling, I felt a tremendous burst of pain in my arm, and looked down to see that it had been shattered by grapeshot. ‘I am shot through the arm,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am a dead man.’ Josiah, close by, tore off the handkerchief that he wore about his neck and swiftly made a tourniquet. The flow of blood stanched, I felt much relieved, and when I spied some of our men floundering about in the water, having been blown out of the Fox cutter, I insisted that we divert our boat to rescue them. Josiah was adamant that I have my arm tended to as quickly as possible; but the closest ship at hand was the Seahorse, and with Captain Fremantle’s wife aboard it and I with no word to give her of her husband’s safety—besides which the Seahorse’s surgeon was a butcher—I demanded that I be taken back to the Theseus, where our surgeon, Thomas Eshelby, was a fine medico. Eshelby took one look at me and determined that the arm could not be saved and there was nothing I could do but submit my limb to the saw. I left the Theseus a right-handed hero and was returned to it a left-handed one.”

  “Does it ’urt?” I asked gently.

  “Sometimes the hand that’s no longer there feels as though someone was poking it with pins, or it feels like someone is wringing the missing lower half of my arm as though it were a wet rag. Eshelby called it a ‘phantom pain.’ He said it’s because the nerves in my right shoulder were damaged from the shot. But I believe, Lady Hamilton, that I felt the pain most acutely in my soul. Twice had I failed my men; I was not half the leader I aspired to be, nor was I any longer fully a man. ‘I am become a burden to my friends and useless to my country!’ I told them. Disconsolate, I wrote an exceptionally self-pitying letter to St. Vincent asking him to give me a frigate to convey the remains of my carcass back to England.”