Tested by Fate by David Donachie

Author:David Donachie [David Donachie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780749015442
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2013-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

EMMA HAMILTON read Nelson’s letter for the third time that morning, trying to imagine the battle that had taken place a month before, not helped by the way her correspondent played down what must have been a bloody affair. The Spaniards had been soundly trounced, those not taken forced to run for the shelter of Cadiz.

Both she and Sir William had had other letters, from London, that told of how the news of the victory had been greeted. The bells had rung, gold medals had been struck, and every civic body in the land vied to give one of the heroes the freedom of their city. Sir John Jervis had been raised to the peerage, and was now Earl St Vincent. Nelson had become both a rear admiral and a Knight of the Bath. And those letters also told of that new raree-show that was enacted in all the pleasure gardens and playhouses: Nelson’s Patent Bridge for the Taking of First Rates, in which the feat of crossing one ship to take another, never before achieved, was played endlessly to an adoring, patriotic audience.

Sir William had been right all those years ago, when he had introduced Horatio Nelson as a man of exceptional ability. Emma began a reply couched in warm terms that would, of course, include a fond wish that a British fleet should once more come to Naples, and that Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson would lead it.

Fanny Nelson, staying in Bath with her husband’s father, couldn’t deal with the letters she received. They were too numerous. Everyone who knew Admiral Nelson wanted to write with praise of his actions. But so did many who had never made an acquaintance: people from all over the country who had read of his exploits in the newspapers, eager to tell her that her husband, by his actions and his application, had saved the nation.

She had letters from him, too, in which she knew he had played down the blood and danger, more eager to tell her that her son had behaved well, that money would flow from the battle: head money for the enemy sailors captured, gun money for the guns, as well as prize money for the ships themselves.

With Captain a near wreck he had shifted his flag to HMS Theseus and hoisted his blue pennant at the mizzen, the flag of his new rank. It worried her that the acclaim he had garnered didn’t seem to satisfy him, and that he was already talking of a new adventure which, if it succeeded, would eclipse the fame he had already acquired. Together with the Reverend Edmund Nelson she pored over maps to locate an island somewhere off the coast of Africa she had never heard of: Tenerife.

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