H.M.S. COCKEREL

Chapter 6

Had a hole in me, I think; hollow leg, or something. But, Lord! It was all so bloody good! So grand!

Minestrone, the plebeian vegetable and pasta soup-even that was head and shoulders above Navy fare. Meat-stuffed pastas, layered with a tomato sauce, dripping with melted cheeses! Veal marinara, game fowl jugged in a wine sauce, domestic chicken breasts done in a cream sauce with wide egg noodles. More fried fish, more grilled goodies. God knew how they'd done it, but there'd been ices with the fruit for a last course, tart and sweet sorbets, and creamy-what'd they call 'ems?-gelatil And for the levee preceding the actual promised stuffing-antipasti. Lovely cheeses, thin-shaved prosciutto; and, of course, the sybaritic pleasures of fresh-baked bread, piping hot, crusty and white milled flour, with dollops of churned butter!

Wines, too. Sweet Marsalas and sweetish, sparkling spumantes. Then butter-smooth, aged reds that rivalled the best Cabernets France could boast. Thank God for the food, he thought; I've taken a barrel aboard, feels like. I'm well and truly foxed!

A minor kingdom, in the greater scheme of things, Naples might be, but King Ferdinand's palazzo was a bejeweled, begilt faeryland of high, ornate baroque ceilings, well-figured marble walls awash with statuary and gigantic tapestries, over-scale paintings (dead relations, mostly-or hunting scenes), shiny with Chinese wallpapers, glittering with crystal sconces, chandeliers, glowing amber with a shipload worth of real bee's-wax candles, festooned with silver and gold, niello or cloisonne, strewn with furniture too precious to sit upon. It was so grand, so showy, after half a year of those wooden walls of his, so different from his bleak daily vistas of rolling sea. And the music!

A chamber orchestra still sawed away in an upper gallery, just as they had through the levee and the supper. Light, airy, delightful stuff-sonatas by Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni Bat-tista Fontana and Marco Buccolina. Or so he'd been informed.

If Naples was not indeed Heaven, it was very close to it, Alan determined. With a traitorous snifter of French Armagnac in his hand, he let go a more than gentle burp of contentment.

The supper was over, the ecarte and music was winding down, and it was too late for the last guests to stay and dance. Sir William and the prime minister were gone somewhere. King Ferdinand had spoken some brief last words to him and had plodded off, too.

Have their three heads together over the treaty, I expect, Alan thought; thankee, my boy, but we'll take it from here. Oh, well.

"Scusi, signore tenente Lor… L… Liri," a white-wigged footman announced by his side. He was holding a six-armed candelabra.

"Lewrie," he muttered, barely glancing at him, searching for Emma Hamilton, who had also scampered off somewhere.

"Si, signore tenente Liri," the servitor persisted, "you ple-seah toa follah me, signore tenente? I lighta you… up… toa bed, signore."

Well, shit, he sighed to himself. Right, then… I should have known better.

His chambers were magnificent. The night was warm and fragrant; the two pairs of doors which led to a wide, fret-stoned balcony were open. The suite was as large as an admiral's great-cabins. There were side tables bearing cloisonne, gilt and silver gewgaws, a writing desk of tortoise-shell mottled wood, heavily inlaid with ivory, urns filled with fresh-cut flowers everywhere he looked, an expansive wine cabinet big as a duke's sideboard, an intricately carved armoire big enough to hold a corporal's guard, and a bedstead as wide as a quarterdeck, with silk sheets and satin coverlet already turned down, the two pair of pillows plumped up invitingly.

"Willa they bea anythin' elsea youa wan', signore tenente?" the footman intoned, sounding both hesitant and grim. Lewrie glanced at him and noted his lips moving after his statement; probably in rote rehearsal of his little English over the most probable statement he might next make.

"Anything else?" Lewrie grinned.

"Si, signore tenente Liri," the man answered, then repeated with effort: "Willa-they-bea-anythin'-elsea-youa-wan', signore?"

"Dancing girls," Lewrie bade, tongue in cheek, just to see how the poor fellow might handle the unexpected. "A string quartet. Some courtesans. And magic. I insist on magic."

"Uh, scusi, signore tenente…" Sweat popped on his upper lip as he flummoxed. "Willa-they-bea-anythin'-elsea, signore tenente?" he reiterated, sounding a bit desperate.

"No, nothing else," Lewrie relented. "Thank you. Goodnight. Or how you say…? Uhm. No, grazie. Buona notte."

"Ah, si, tenente!" the man bobbed with relief, bowing himself out quickly. "Si, grazie. Buona notte, signore. Buona notte!"

"Call me at first light," Lewrie insisted. " Sunrise. Giorgno? First sparrow fart? Bloody…" He pointed at an ormolu clock, struck his hands in his armpits, and crowed like a rooster. The footman came back, pointed to the Roman numeral V and shrugged quizzically. Alan pointed to the VI, mimed shaving and washing.

"Ah, si, signore. Awakea you… 'ota wat'r. Buona notte!"

"Damme, another bloody foreign language I have to learn," he groused softly as he stripped off his own coat and waistcoat, ripped his laced stock from his throat and unbuttoned his shirt collar. A peek into the various chambers of the suite revealed that his kit was already stored in the armoire. He hung his things up, found the necessary closet and, much eased, padded in bare feet to the wine cabinet. It may have been French, but there was Armagnac, sweeter and mellower than any brandy or cognac. With his snifter topped up he went out onto the balcony, not feeling treasonous at all to drink it.

Heaven, Naples might seem, but it reeked, as did any city with a large population. Night soil dumped out chamber windows, animal ordure, rotting garbage, and too many people who bathed too infrequently crammed into too small an area. But the palace's flower gardens atoned for all.

There was something else, too, as if antiquity had a scent, dusty and sere, as if a thousand years of living, breathing history, and aeons of Mediterranean sunshine could have a mellow, dry-old-wine aroma. Alan could identify woodsmoke, sour, water-staunched charcoal cooking fires. Wine and laundry, tanneries and hot iron, the aftertaste of succulent spices. The wind off the sea…

Naples lay spread at his feet, beyond the palace grounds and the protective walls. Vesuvius was over his left shoulder, gently fuming a thin, indistinct pipesmoker's pall. Dark slopes tumbled to the fields where Pompeii and Herculaneum once stood, and from Torre del Greco, all ephemeral with dusky blue moonlight. Umber walls and terra-cotta roof tiles shone icy with moonlight, rendered snowy blue white or black now. Tiny amber sparks on the hills, on the flatlands far away, in the town, marked country crofts, villages or late-night taverns. To the west, the Bay of Naples shimmered on the moonglade, in silver and black, and ships lay still as discarded playthings on a nursery room floor below him, bare-poled and silent, with only faint glims by belfries and taffrails. H.M.S. Cockerel lay off to his right, silhouetted ebony on flickering argent waters which reflected pale yellow cat's-paws on a quicksilver moon trough, brushed by the light night breeze. Squinting, he almost thought he could espy a pattern to it, a chimera about to rise, like an ever-pirouetting dancer. To the sou'west, there was a darker hump on the sea's horizon, the steady, measured flick of a lighthouse. Capri. Tucked like an apostrophe near the tip of a finger of distance-greyed land, at his angle of view.

"Punta Campanella," Lewrie murmured with pleasure in the novel and alien, savouring the taste of its strange wonder on his tongue as he recalled the peninsula's name. Along with the heady fumes and bite of the Armagnac. And that tiny smear of light, that sleeping village on the peninsula's north shore which faced his balcony?

"Damme, I had a squint at the chart. So what's the bloody place called? Sam… Ser… S, something."

" Sorrento," a soft voice said behind him.

He started with alarm, spun about to spy out who his tutor was.

" Sorrento," Lady Emma Hamilton whispered as she emerged from the darkness of the far end of his balcony. Came near enough to take the snifter from his nerveless fingers and drink deep. "A lovely town, is Sorrento. There are some who like the Bay of Salerno, beyond the Punta Campanella. But I much prefer the Bay of Naples. Don't you?"

"Immensely," he assured her, getting his poise back.

"When Goethe was here, not long ago, he told me…"

"You met Goethe?" Lewrie marveled.

"But of course, Alan," she laughed low in her throat. "Everyone comes to Naples, sooner or later. Goethe said, ' Naples is a Paradise. Everyone lives, after his manner, intoxicated in self-forgetfulness.' Languid… romantic beyond words… tolerant and accepting. I've been here for years. I cannot imagine living anywhere else."

"In self-forgetfulness," he prompted and smiled.

She lifted the snifter, drained it to heel-taps, and set it on a marble-topped wrought-iron wine table beside her. Then slipped into his embrace boldly. She turned her face up to his, pressing her lips first warm and inviting, then fierce, turning her head and groaning as their mouths parted, as eager breaths

mingled.

"How did you manage…?" he murmured against her throat, as he lifted her dark, curling hair to kiss her below her ear, to devour her neck and soft bared shoulder.

"Palazzi…" she chuckled, with more than amusement, writhing against him. "Passages, vacant adjoining suites… unseeing servants. Hurry!"

He frog-marched her backwards into the suite, across the room and onto the edge of the high bedstead, all the while fumbling with the buttons and hooks of her sack gown, with her strong, capable hands on his breeches flap and belt in a fury. They tumbled onto the piles of goose-down mattresses, his feet still just touching the floor. Up went his hands, searching and hungry, lifting skirts and petticoats, sliding needful and possessive along her silken knee hose, up along the outside of her thighs, bare and soft, so milky white and malleable.

"Caution," she insisted, lifting his head from his delightful work, whimpering and panting with want of her own, taking his face in both hands and raining wide-mouthed, writhing, dewy-wet kisses on him. "Caution. A moment. Have you…?"

Bloody Hell, what if I don't, he groaned silently. Kissing her one last time, he shucked his breeches and strode in his shirt-tails to the armoire, digging into his shore kit.

God, thankee, Cony, you still know how to pack for me! Shaking out one of Mother Jones' very best (guinea the dozen) lambskin cundums from the Old Green Lantern in Half Moon Street, he went back to her.

She'd snuffed candles, all but the last on the nightstand, and shed her gown and petticoats and chemise. Almost demure, tucked into bed beneath the silk sheets, her mass of ebon curls spilling stark on the shining pillows.

He slid into bed with her, sinking into the mattresses, sliding together as the center gave and the edges rose to enfold them in sleek luxury. She raised a thigh, hugged him fierce again and let him roll atop, between… enfolding him with her own soft, yielding flesh. He went back to her shoulders, her breasts, sliding down to render total worship, but she almost dragged him to a stop, reached down, dandled his manhood, and chuckled deep in her throat as her hands surveyed his size and strength. Helped him with their "caution," then guided him… guided him…

"Ah, God!" she muttered huskily, straining with him, lifting her legs high about him, pressing her ankles and heels into his buttocks, rocking her hips to exact his last, full measure, to the very depths of her. "Lord, yes, I…!"

"Emma!" he panted, against her mouth, cupping his hands over her shoulders, sinking into her, losing himself in her.

"Gawd," she cooed, bemused by her own responses as she clasped him snug and rocked him, thrusting upwards to meet him, "I'll never in my life know… what it is… 'bout me and sailors!"

He felt insatiable. Lucky for him, Emma Hamilton was a perfect match. Though she did tend to babble more than he liked, between bouts.

He learned, whether he cared to or not, that she'd been born a village girl, one Emma Hart, daughter of a smith in Neston, Cheshire. Close enough to Liverpool, so her first lover had been a sea officer, when she was in her mid-teens. Then had come London, and the stage…

Or at least something close to theatrical, Lewrie smirked, in fond remembrance of the "actresses" who plied their wares about his old haunts of Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

Blithering away, chirpy as a magpie, she boldly confessed she'd taken up-"under the protection," she put it-with the wealthy Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh, and had lived at his fabulous estate, Up Park, in Sussex, for a time, grooming her stage presentations, whatever that signified. But then something cross had occurred between them, and he shipped her back to Neston. Yet soon after, she'd lived under the protection, again, of Charles Greville. Through him, she'd met Sir William Hamilton when he'd come home from Naples for a visit, had come away with him, had lived in his palazzo as his paramour for five years, and had then become his wife for the last two.

"Separate bed-chambers, I take it," Lewrie murmured, rolling to embrace her and nuzzle suggestively. Out of her rags, he found her to be a touch more fubsy than he'd thought; but it was such a welcoming and biddable fubsiness! "An old man, with his infirmities?"

" Hamilton was a soldier, a sportsman. He's climbed Vesuvius, Lord, I don't know, twenty times since he's been here. Poor dear isn't as infirm as you think, Alan. No," she frowned, sloughing off his attentions to stretch for the Armagnac and plump up the pillows to sit against the headboard. "It's more… you come to our palazzo, you'll see. Hamilton is a collector. Roman, Etruscan, Greek antiquities… books and maps, rare old things. Palazzo Sessa's more museum than house, all on loving display," she sneered into her snifter.

"So, are you on display, too, I take it?" he pressed, sliding up to join her and take a sip from her glass.

"Yes, in a way, I am," she chuckled, a bit moodily. "Everyone tells him what a delightful and wondrous adornment I am to his house. Like his vases and kraters. As if I should be in a niche somewhere, in one of the galleries, where the light's best. One man even dared to say-in my hearin', mind!-that I was a credit to the station to which I'd been raised!"

"Yet you're not on display. You put a foot forward, bold as I ever did see," he cooed to her, blowing her a kiss, which she turned and intercepted, leaning over him to bestow the real thing. "An ear for languages… on familial terms with royalty…"

"God, sometimes I wish to God I was a man!" she huffed, and he tried to jolly her out of her pet, in his own, inimitable fashion. But she was having none of it, at that moment.

"How far may a woman go in this world? Aye, I've sense, more'n most. An ear for languages, music… books and learning. Not just the frightful novels. What you described this morning, about fighting the pirates and all. I'd love to be able to do something meaningful… be a voice people heeded. Wield as much influence as you did. Hamilton… well, he is happy with me. He tolerates my… enthusiasms, yet…"

And you know which side your toast is buttered, Lewrie thought.

"His passion, though… I think he saves his passion for diplomacy, for antiquities… studying volcanoes. We're comfortable together as old shoes. Because I ornament him so well, like his marbles." She sighed and took a deep sip of brandy. "He bought me, you know. Same as his ancient urns," she confessed with a shrug and pout-lip sigh.

"He bloody what?"

"Charlie Greville is Sir William's nephew, Alan," she told him, snuggling close, confidentially, her head on his shoulder. "I lived quite happily with him, but… he wanted to improve his estate. He'd more than enough, I thought. Though his condition was not of the very best, it was more than comfortable. He had a chance to make a rich marriage, and… I'd have been quite content to stay with him, but for that. Anyway, Hamilton came home on leave, to palaver with the Foreign Office or something, and… blink of an eye, I sailed away, here to Naples."

"The cads. Both of 'em," Lewrie groused, slipping a protective arm about her shoulders.

"Oh, no! Never say that about 'em, Alan," she dissented, sitting up and away. "Charlie Greville was wonderful to me! He's still a dear friend. Before Charlie, I hadn't two letters in my head, and as for my cyphers…! He saw I was tutored. Speech, singing, music and cultural attainments. He brought my mother down from Neston, to be my companion. Bought both of us the best of everything, paid for… well, paid for what Sir Harry would not, settled… well. And as for Hamilton! He's such a dear, true gentleman. Mentor, companion, loving friend to me! He's opened my eyes to so much, introduced me to so many wonderful people. Goethe? Where'd a chit from Neston ever have the chance to meet Goethe, sit at table with him and chat him up? Haydn… kings and queens?"

"I see your point. Like being royalty yourself? Ennobled?"

"Exactly!" she giggled. "Why, tonight, after supper, I went up to Maria Carolina's chambers, swept in like family, and had a chat at her bedside… all sorts of womanly matters, frank and first-name as a sister. Think of it, Alan! That's why I love Naples so, it's so accepting. Here, I can be who I was truly born to be. Not like sneering London. Cold and hateful, stay in your place… well, when Hamilton and I go back to England, authors of a treaty that won the war and put every royal house in Europe in against France… and France is done to a turn. You will do France to a turn for me, won't you, Alan? Do just think how people will have to take to me, no matter what!" Emma boasted, brazen, yet wistful for what-was-to-be. "Heavens! Is that the timeT

She sprang from the bed, bouncing prettily, though without much grace, and bent for her discarded chemise.

"Hamilton and Acton said they'd be up late. Gave me a chamber, in case I wished to stay and coach home with him later. Two down, not to worry. Do me up, dear man," she ordered, stepping into her petticoats, hoops and pads.

Lewrie went to the armoire and retrieved a silk Chinee dressing gown for himself before obeying. It was fiery red, lambent with moire dragons in green and blue, with ivory eyes and teeth.

" Hamilton won't take much notice, but Sir John might. And Lord, mother! She has eyes in the back of her head, I swear!"

"Your mother's still with you?" Lewrie asked, ready to hand her her gown as she carefully aligned her underdresses and hair in a tall oval-framed gilt mirror.

"Companion, adviser, cook," she chuckled throatily. "She goes by Mistress Cadogan now. Though, you're not to know that, when you come… Great God! What a horror!" She stopped primping suddenly, on espying his dressing robe in the mirror. "Wherever did you get thatV

" Canton, China, if you must know," Alan said, a trifle sulkily. Nobody seemed to care for it, it seemed. It had been relegated to his sea-chest-out of sight, out of mind-lest he embarrass others back home. "I rather like it," he continued, self-mocking yet defensive. "Though my wife… uhm…" OH, DAMME!

"Your wife," she replied evenly, cocking a brow. After a moment she grinned ironically. "Yes, well… were I your wife, Alan, I would object to it, too. Let me hazard a guess. You've been wed… at least seven years?"

"Uh, as a matter of fact, just barely seven… and a bit," Alan blushed.

"Dear Lord, seven years, the two of us," she sighed, surprising him by stepping to him and hugging him close. "Each to our own fashion, mind. Dear Alan, it does seem such a mile-post in Me, don't it?"

"Amen," he sighed with an afterglow of pleasure, kindled by her scent and the warmth of her flesh. They kissed again, soft, lingering-almost a fare-thee-well, instead of a goodnight.

"Come to Palazzo Sessa," she ordered, taking her gown from him. "It would help if you express a keen interest in antiquities. Hamilton will be delighted to tour you round. In the afternoon, he has his 'grampus-puff.' His nap, silly goose! A most sensible Neapolitan custom, is siesta. Especially for a gentleman his age. Do me up whilst I preen, will you? Then… the view from my chambers is just as good. And there are so many galleries, full of art… full of nude statuary. Quite inspiring, some of 'em," she taunted, leaning her bottom back to his groin as he coped with getting the right hook or button in the correct slot or eye.

"Sounds delightful," he murmured against her neck as she lifted her hair and began to pin it properly.

"Perhaps we may even dine you in," she went on matter-of-factly, a pin in her mouth. "And after supper, I will pose for you. I will do my 'Attitudes.' Hamilton loves them. I was known for them, when I was still in the theatre. He helps me with the lights, the drapes…"

"A menage a… something?" Lewrie gawped. "Mean he takes part?"

"Not like that, silly man," she laughed, turning to view his work in the mirror. "I do poses. Tableaux! Dressed, mind," Emma said with a fetching moue. "Classical figures, famous people, the ancient gods… with a tambourine and shawl, very few props. Ecco!"

She stepped to the sideboard, picked up a silver salver, struck a pose with her profile to him. "For you. 'Britannia, Mistress of the Seas.' " Quickly she changed, moving to another, announcing what allegory she represented. "A poor girl of the streets… an Amazonian warrior queen… Pallas Athena… d'ye see? Oh, pish! I've spoiled it for you! You'll know mem, and they won't be a surprise!"

"I swear I'll show all gape-jawed wonder, Emma," he promised.

"I must go. But we're not done yet, Alan. We cannot be!" She sighed, bitter at their parting, clinging to him and kissing him, dewy and full of promise of delights to come. "Dear as my life's become, I sometimes have to dare, to feel alive again. Swear you'll dare all as well. God save me, but I cannot thrive on esteem and companionship, I must have passion. Rare as it is in this world… rare as it's been in my life. But, when the right man appears and I feel so half-seas-over, like a girl again… then hang the risk!"

"Uhmhmm," Alan commented (sort of), nodding against her hair, and wondering just what half-cocked idiocy he'd gotten himself into this time. And what sort of swoony lunatick he was dealing with.

She broke free of his embrace at last, strode to the balcony doors, and turned… to pose, one hand high on the door sill. "For all the time you remain in Naples, dear Alan. All the time we have, be my bold captain. Fortune favours the bold. Buona node, caro mio. Until tomorrow, and tomorrow… and tomorrow!"

And then she swept away dramatically, making a grand exit, back for her secret passage to her borrowed chamber. Back to an air of respectability.

"Whew!" he exclaimed at her departure. Speaking softly to himself, in case she had lingered to count the house. "Buona notte, me dear. Grazie, o' course. Damn' grazie! Lord, though… wonder what Italian is for 'daft as bats'!"