Bride of Dreams, page 8
"And his cousin?" Amanda, who had liked what she had seen of the young countess, could not help asking.
Lady Hamilton shrugged. "Oh, as to her, who can tell?" And went on to explain that Julia Vespucci's mother had been cut off by her English family for marrying Count Vespucci and had died of grief when he was killed in a hunting accident. Still a child, Julia had succeeded to the title and to extensive estates near Syracuse in Sicily, but had never, Lady Hamilton said, been recognized by her mother's family. To Amanda's relief, she then announced that it was time to be thinking of going home and offered to take her up in her own carriage. "Your husband and mine are gone, who knows where, with His Majesty. We had best not look for them till morning."
In fact, Lord Meynel did not get home until Amanda was eating a late breakfast of coffee and rolls on the balcony of her room. She had been afraid he might be angry with her for leaving him and going home with Lady Hamilton, and was relieved to find him in high good humour. He had been, he said, on an early morning fishing expedition with His Majesty. "I have spoiled my brocade, but who cares?" And he proceeded to hold forth at length in enthusiastic description of his adventures with his new – and royal – friend. Not only had Ferdinand spent the early hours of the morning in fishing and swearing oath for oath with his illiterate companions, he had then taken his catch to market and sold it to the highest bidder. "He's a card, this King of Naples, I can tell you," concluded Lord Meynel, before reporting with unfeigned glee that His Majesty had invited him to go pheasant shooting with him on the island of Procida next day.
From then on, hunting monarch and hunting lord were constant companions, and as a result Amanda was left delightfully to her own devices. It was she who found them a handsome suite of apartments on the Chiaia, with balconies giving on her favourite view of the bay, hired servants and generally organized their establishement. Her husband, returning to eat and sleep, complimented her on her arrangements with unflattering surprise. He had not, he said, expected to have her turn out so capital a housewife.
The ladies of the English colony, who lost no time in following the Hamiltons' lead and calling on her, equally exclaimed at such competence in one so young. For they were all established matrons and seemed incapable of talking about anything except the weather, their servants and, if they had any, their children. Amanda soon despaired of finding a friend among them and was therefore delighted when Julia Vespucci called some weeks after they had moved into their apartment, explaining that she had been away visiting her estates in Syracuse. Here at last was someone she could question about all that she found strange in Neapolitan society. In answer to her eager questions, Julia Vespucci explained that the pleasure-loving King ruled in name only. Behind him, an infinitely more formidable figure, stood his wife, Queen Maria Carolina, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa and sister of the unhappy Marie Antoinette. While the King hunted and fished, she and her minister, the English Lord Acton, really ran the country. "And of course," concluded Julia, "since they have imprisoned her sister and her husband, she hates the French and, because of them, all radical ideas. My cousin says it is but a matter of time before we are at war with France."
"And what does he think of that?" asked Amanda, who had already noticed how frequently Julia referred to this obviously adored cousin of hers.
"Oh, he and his friends pretend to lament it," said Julia. "They like to talk equality and fraternity, you know. But there's no harm in them. It is but play, like their freemasonry."
Remembering Lady Hamilton's warning, Amanda wondered if her new friend was right. It was all too evident that, for Julia, her cousin could do no wrong.
She wondered still more about young Vespucci and his friends when the gay round of Neapolitan social life was rudely interrupted by the arrival, in the beautiful bay, of a French fleet, equipped for war. With his guns trained on the Castle dell'Ovo the commander, Admiral Latouche, sent ashore for an instant apology for various slights the new French Republic considered itself to have received from the Neapolitan Court. A day of panic followed in the city which lay helplessly exposed to French fire. In the evening, even Amanda, who had kept her head better than most, was relieved to learn that the court had given way to all the French demands. There would be no bombardment of the defenceless city. Characteristically, the lighthearted Neapolitans celebrated the departure of the hostile fleet with as much enthusiasm as if they had just won a signal victory instead of being publicly humiliated.
A few days later they had more cause for celebration. The French fleet, which had sailed away in triumph, was scattered by one of the Mediterranean's fierce, sudden storms and came limping back to ask leave to refit in Naples harbour. This permission was reluctantly granted and soon the swaggering revolutionary sailors with their shiny black hats and tricolour striped trousers became a common sight in the streets of Naples. Amanda had never been able to dislike the French as people, but was sorry to see Julia looking increasingly anxious. She soon learned the reason. Lord Meynel, who had come home for the celebrations of the King's birthday on 12 January, returned big with news from a courtesy visit to the Hamiltons. He began by taking Amanda roundly to task for not having accompanied him. Since he had not thought fit to mention to her that he was going there, she let this pass in accustomed silence.
"Yes, yes," he said, "that's always your way. You sit there looking injured innocence when you know as well as I do you are going roundly about to disgrace me."
"I? Disgrace you? What can you mean?"
"Why, by avoiding our Ambassador and his wife, who have gone out of their way to show you kindness, and associating, instead, with a parcel of revolutionary riff-raff. I tell you, miss, this is the end of it. You are not to see those Vespuccis again."
"Not see Julia? But why not?"
"Because that cousin of hers is a revolutionary – a traitor – worse, if worse is possible. What do you think of him and his friends dining, last night, on their king's birthday, with Admiral Latouche on the La Flotte. And as if this in itself was not bad enough they must, forsooth, wear the red cap and make speeches about the beauty of republican principles. I tell you, if King Ferdinand were not the most long-suffering of monarchs, they would all be in prison today, as they richly deserve. And as for you, I have sat, this morning, through a long lecture from Lady Hamilton (who speaks, as you must know, almost as the mouthpiece of her friend, the Queen) about your association with Julia Vespucci. And I tell you," he struck his fist on the desk at which she was writing so that the inkwell overset, "once and for all; it must stop."
"Julia is my friend." Amanda made a great business of cleaning up the ink. "As for her cousin, if you desire it, I will take means not to encounter him. But," she had made up her mind now, "Julia is my friend, and, if this story is true, will be badly in need of a friend herself. I will not abandon her."
The appalling scene that followed ended with Lord Meynel slamming his way out of the house. Amanda had suspected for some time that he had found himself a Neapolitan mistress and this suspicion was confirmed by his prolonged absence on this occasion, when the king, she knew, was actually attending to affairs of state at his palace of Caserta. Somewhat to her relief – for despite her firm stand, she felt she needed time to think – Julia too was absent. She and her cousin had left on the day after the disastrous banquet for her estates at Syracuse, where, she wrote to Amanda, she intended to remain for some time.
Amanda thought her wise. The town was tense; the news went from bad to worse. The usual carnival gaiety that preceded the beginning of Lent was quenched overnight by the news that Louis XVI had been guillotined. It was lucky for the French Admiral, Latouche, that he and his fleet had already left Naples when this black news plunged the whole town into mourning. It was soon followed by the report that France had declared war on England. For Amanda, this had its cheering aspect. She remembered – how could she forget – John Purvis and his hope for war and the chances it must bring for a naval officer. Now he had them . . . And, if the alliance that was talked of between Naples and England should become a fact, surely, one day, her dream might come true and a British warship, instead of a French one, might sail, as a friend, into Naples harbour – with John on board.
Her other hope, that the news of war might drive her husband home and end her exile, was quickly shattered. Lord Meynel's reaction to the news was instant and decided. It was impossible now to go home by land without risking capture in Northern Italy, and at the very least of it making an enormous detour through Germany. And as for going all the way by sea, that was out of the question; it would kill him. Remembering their previous sea voyages, Amanda had to admit that it very well might, but could not bring herself to think this a matter for great regret. But Lord Meynel's mind was made up. "We are very well here, my love." In words, he was more affectionate to her than ever these days. "What say you that we stay out this damned inconvenient war here, where we are well off?"
Chapter Five
With the outbreak of war, the exchange of news from home became almost a mania with the now sadly-shrunken English colony in Naples. They met, more assiduously than ever, at the daily promenade along the shore, or in Lady Hamilton's box at the San Carlo Opera, to compare rumour with rumour, or try and piece together some idea of the real state of things at home from the scanty information at their disposal. Amanda was as bad – her husband said – as the rest of them. He, frankly, did not care. The French were a dead bore, of course, and the war a lot of nonsense which only affected him when one of his hunting expeditions with King Ferdinand was interrupted by a summons from his masterful Queen. For Queen Maria Carolina and her minister, Lord Acton, were bent on joining the fight – which the Queen at least looked on as in the nature of a crusade – against the French. An attempt to unite the various states of Italy against the common enemy had failed, now the Queen's hope lay in England.
At first, the news from England was uniformly good. The country had plunged with enthusiasm into this new war against the old enemy, France. Regiments were being raised; ships recommissioned, even Manchester was reported to have voted bounty money for 3,000 sailers. For Amanda, of course, news of the Navy was of paramount importance. She longed to know what had happened to John Purvis, but his aunt's last letter, written before the declaration of war, had been maddeningly allusive. She had mentioned, in passing, that John had spent Christmas with her: 'Poor boy, he chafes so at inactivity.' Now, reading eagerly the names of the ships that were being returned to active service, and gathering what information she could about their captains and crews, Amanda tormented herself with wondering whether John would be lucky and secure a position, perhaps even promotion, on one of them.
But the news did not continue good for long. There was dissension, it seemed, at home. Fox had put forward a motion in the House of Commons against the war with France, and though this was defeated, Amanda found it a discouraging portent. And the expedition under the Duke of York that had sailed so gaily for Flanders seemed to have run into difficulties there. Worse still, from Amanda's point of view, was the news that trickled through about naval disorganisation. Manned by pressed, reluctant and half-trained crews, the ships put to sea in no state to cover themselves with glory. The Bellerephon collided with another man-of-war on a fine day in the channel for no reason whatever and had to limp back into Plymouth with foremast and bowsprit gone. The pro-French party in Naples rubbed their hands at this news, cut their hair shorter than ever and dared to appear at the opera in the trousers that were republican anathema to the Queen.
Although she missed Julia Vespucci increasingly these anxious days, Amanda could not help thinking it wise of her to stay at Syracuse, and, more important, to keep her cousin with her. This was no time to be talking revolution in Naples. The streets of the city bred rumours as they did flies, these sultry summer days, and even the jovial lazzaroni seemed to Amanda dangerously near to riot. Anything might touch it off. Julia and her explosive cousin were much better out of the city.
For Amanda, it was a surprisingly peaceful summer. As before, in London, Lord Meynel had tired of trying to wring a reaction out of her and was carrying on an outrageously public affair with a buxom, notorious Signora Grassi, one of the singers of the San Carlo Opera Company. When the married women of her acquaintance made it their painfully pleasant duty to tell Amanda about the complaisant Grassi, they found her reaction disappointing. She did not scream, or go white, or faint. She did not even pay homage to the conventions by pretending surprise. Shocked by her very refusal to be shocked, they told each other that Lady Meynel was being infected by the low tone of Neapolitan society, and told their husbands that she was a dangerous young woman.
As a result, Amanda found herself pestered with propositions by the more personable of the married Englishmen, who soon, however, admitted to themselves, and to each other, that the new beauty was cold as ice, caring, it seemed, more for the books she was always reading than for masculine admiration. They were not to know that the image of John Purvis stood always between them and the light.
But Amanda's summer holiday was not to last for long. The Grassi became extortionate and Lord Meynel's friends began to tease him about the ice-maiden he had married. Worse still, the King, whose wife, as usual, was pregnant, had taken to twitting his friends Lord Meynel and Sir William Hamilton about their childlessness. Sir William took this with his usual worldly courtesy, but Lord Meynel found Ferdinand's succession of coarse jests increasingly hard to bear. Besides, a cousin of his had recently died in England leaving him next heir, after an old man and an ailing child to the senior title of the family . . . and to an enormous, but entailed estate. He returned home in September with one fixed idea. He must have an heir. Explaining this in terms of brutal frankness to Amanda, he announced that the King had offered him the loan of a small hunting lodge near Torre del Greco. "We go there tomorrow, and stay till you have news for me."
He had convinced himself that the passivity with which Amanda now yielded to him was to blame for her failure to conceive. At whatever cost, he had decided, he must make her react to him. The cost, for Amanda, was great. Since she had married him – however insanely – she admitted it to be her duty to yield to her husband when he wished it. But, lacking the broad training of someone like Emma Hamilton, she did not recognize that it was equally necessary to pretend pleasure, or at least satisfaction. Fresh from the dinner-time teasing of his cronies, and the enthusiastic groans of his mistress, Lord Meynel found her cold and inadequate. And he was beginning to feel his age now, and the results of years of dissipation. Chilled by the coldness he himself had induced in her, he found it increasingly necessary to hurt her in order to obtain a reaction even in himself. Naples had always been the home of every variety of love-making and he did not lack for hints at expedients. The result, for Amanda, was misery indeed. She thought she had been wretched before, but in these lonely weeks at Torre del Greco she plumbed depths of which she should not even have been aware. If she had been in England, she would have run away. If Julia had been in Naples, she would have gone to her. As it was, she hit finally, on a desperate expedient and told her husband the news he wanted to hear.
The result was all she had hoped. He left, at once, for Naples, to boast, she had no doubt, of his approaching fatherhood to the King and his friends. Suspecting this, she felt almost sorry for her deluded husband – and frightened for herself. When she was forced, at length, to tell him that she had been mistaken, he would be more than ever the butt of his 'friends'. Of what would happen to her then, it was best not to think. For the moment, it was enough to be alone, untouched, to let bruised body and bruised spirit make a start at healing.
It was September now and when her husband visited her, briefly, a few days later it was with stirring news. A British man-of-war had sailed into Naples harbour. The Agamemnon, Captain Horatio Nelson, had come with a request from Lord Hood for Neapolitan reinforcements to help in the defence of Toulon which had recently surrendered to the British fleet.
"An English ship at last?" Amanda jumped up from her embroidery frame. "Were there letters for us? What is the news from home?" And then, greatly daring. "There is not, I suppose, anyone we know on board?"
"Anyone we know?" He raised heavy eyebrows. "I should hardly think it probable, since our acquaintance among the Navy is of the slightest. And Captain Nelson, I understand, is the veriest nobody; the jumped-up son of a Norfolk parson, and proud as the devil with it all. Still, I owe it him, I collect, to give him the meeting at Sir William's today, and will bring you the latest news from England when I return tonight."
"When you return? But surely I shall come with you? Lady Hamilton, I am sure, will expect me to be present."
"Nonsense," he said roundly. "I have already presented your compliments to Lady Hamilton and explained to her why you think it best to remain here, quietly, for the moment. She sends her kindest congratulations on the expected event, and urges that you take every care of yourself. And as for these rumours about Vesuvius," he looked up for a moment at the lowering sky, "pay no attention to them. They are nothing but servants' gossip and should be treated as such."
"I would still feel safer in Naples," she said, "rather than here, under the very shadow of the volcano. And, besides, you know how I have longed for news from home; you cannot seriously be suggesting that I should stay here when it is to be had, fresh from England."
"Nothing of the kind. What a scatterbrain you are, to be sure. Did you not hear me tell you that Captain Nelson is come from Toulon? News of those madmen in Frnace he might bring you – if you cared to hear it – but as for England, he knows no more about matters there than I do. Less, no doubt, since Sir William keeps me regularly informed. No, no, my mind is made up. You are to remain here, free of the heat and bustle of Naples."
