The Dream and the Glory Read online

  While they were still on the terrace, Lady Hamilton came through the open windows to join them.

  She was looking very lovely and her face even in the brilliance of the sun had a beauty that the most famous artists could not depict in their paintings.

  “Good morning, my dears.”

  She greeted them in her gay voice that occasionally, despite all her lessons, had when she spoke in English, an uncultured note in it.

  Cordelia curtseyed while David raised his hostess’s hand to his lips.

  “Good morning, my Lady.”

  "Did you enjoy yourself last night you naughty boy,” Lady Hamilton enquired. “I saw you slip away at almost the beginning of the party. Where did you hide yourself?”

  “I had some books to read and some prayers to say,” David said quite simply.

  Lady Hamilton smiled at him and there was a softness in her eyes as she remarked,

  “So young and so ardent! As I said to Sir William last night, no one could be better cast for the part of a perfect and gentle Knight.”

  David flushed, but Cordelia could see that he was pleased with the compliment.

  Lady Hamilton turned towards her.

  “And you, Cordelia, you were a great success, and very greatly admired.”

  She then paused to say a little archly,

  “And by one person in particular!”

  Cordelia did not answer and after a moment she went on,

  “The Duca di Belina is very much in love with you. Don’t keep him waiting too long for his answer. It would be a mistake to lose him.”

  “The Duca has had my answer,” Cordelia said quietly.

  “My dear child, you mean – ”

  “I have refused to marry him, my Lady, but he will not take ‘no’ for an answer. So I have asked my cousin to speak to him.”

  “Captain Stanton?” Lady Hamilton queried.

  Then she laughed.

  “Has Mark Stanton assumed such responsibilities?”

  She laughed again.

  “I cannot quite see him in the position of Paterfamilias. He has always been a Don Juan or Casanova, who has kissed and run away leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him!”

  Cordelia looked startled.

  “I cannot imagine Cousin Mark being like that.”

  “Perhaps you see him through different eyes,” Lady Hamilton replied. “Or perhaps you should ask the alluring Princess Gianetta di Sapuano what she feels about him.”

  “The Princess?”

  “She adores your cousin and he her,” Lady Hamilton said. “I can assure you it is the on dit of Naples and has been for some years.”

  She gave a little sigh.

  “They are both extremely handsome and will suit each other. I feel quite envious of them.”

  As she spoke, Lady Hamilton moved back into the salon where a servant had appeared with a note, which he carried on a silver salver.

  Cordelia’s eyes followed her. At the same time she was thinking in consternation of what she had just heard.

  ‘Cousin Mark and the Princess Gianetta!’

  Somehow, she thought, she might have suspected it last night when they had come in from the garden and the Princess had behaved so possessively towards him.

  She did not know why, after all it was not her concern, but she felt upset at the thought of Mark marrying the beautiful Neapolitan Princess.

  Would he be prepared to leave the sea? To live in Naples?

  She could not imagine him in such a foreign, environment. He had always seemed to belong to England and to Stanton, where he had fished in the lake, ridden over the broad acres and shot partridge, pheasant and snipe.

  She could remember him coming in wet and muddy from hunting, throwing himself down in front of a log fire while a valet removed his riding boots.

  She could see him coming into the nursery when she was just about to go to bed, resplendent in his evening clothes and looking very adult and grown up, while she was drinking her milk and wearing the nightgown that Nanny had warmed on the guard in front of the fire.

  Looking back now she realised that Mark had been very much a part of her childhood, so much so that now he seemed since last night to have stepped back into the position he had held then of being one of her family.

  She may have been angry with him, she may have been jealous and she may at times have even disliked him.

  But he had been there, just as David was there, a Stanton, someone who belonged and for whom therefore she had a more intimate feeling than she could feel for anyone else.

  But Mark and the Princess!

  She did not understand why it upset her or why the sun seemed somehow less golden than it had before.

  *

  Mark Stanton, reaching the dockyard after luncheon, found, as he expected, the workmen having their inevitable siesta and David tramping about trying to find someone who would listen to his pleas that they should return to work.

  Mark laughed at him.

  “My dear David, if you could change the habits of the Neapolitans, you would be the greatest Commander of men the world has ever known! Nothing and nobody could prevent them sleeping at this time of day, but they start early and they work late.”

  “Will this ship ever be repaired?” David enquired.

  “It will be done in good time and done well! Is Ludwig with you?”

  “He is down below,” David replied. “He feels as frustrated as I do.”

  “I am glad you have met.”

  David smiled and for the moment he seemed to forget his frustration.

  “I think the Baron is absolutely charming,” he said. “He has been telling me lots of things I wanted to know. It is extremely fortunate that I met him before I arrived at my Auberge or I might have made a dozen mistakes!”

  Mark Stanton thought the same thing and he was quite sure that the rather shy but charming young Bavarian would get on well with David.

  There was no doubt later that the two young men were destined to be great friends.

  Already it was obvious that they laughed at the same jokes, shared the same interests and behaved, Mark Stanton thought to himself, very much like two undergraduates during their first term at a University.

  And after all that was exactly what the Order of St. John was to the young Knights, who were naturally at that age full of high spirits and irrepressible.

  There would be plenty of time, Mark Stanton thought philosophically, for David to find that life was not quite so serious as he envisaged it and that high spirits and a certain amount of horseplay were all part of life in Malta.

  One of the great difficulties for a Knight was to find enough to do.

  With its restricted size and limited resources the island was not really large enough for the number of hot-blooded proud young men who were thrown together into the communal life.

  High spirits sometimes initiated a rag, which degenerated into violence. Often some real or pretended insult to their dignity would bring the young aristocrats into open revolt.

  “Discipline,” some of the older Knights had said to Mark Stanton often enough, “is a major problem.”

  There were a great number of punishments for Knights who were disobedient or who broke the rules, but under the New Grand Master these were not as strictly applied as they had been under Emmanuel de Rohan.

  The Prince had been one of the finest Grand Masters that the Order had ever known, but he had died the previous year.

  The present Grand Master, Ferdinand von Hompesch, was only fifty-four and he had neither the strength of character nor the authority that was required for such an important position.

  Mark Stanton would not have mentioned it either to David or to Ludwig von Wütenstein, but he was apprehensive in view of the many rumours regarding Napoleon’s strategy in the Mediterranean as to whether von Hompesch was ready to ensure that Malta maintained her Sovereignty.

  This was, however, only a secret apprehension at the back of his mind.

/>   He had the greatest admiration for Malta and for its Knights and he was well aware that every year the Grand Master’s position became more difficult and more vulnerable.

  One of the most unpleasant shocks the Order had received was when, after the Revolution in France and the execution of King Louis XVI, all the possessions of the Knights in France had been confiscated.

  This meant that the Grand Master, Emmanuel de Rohan, had died a poor man.

  What was more, even before his death, the temporal power of Malta had already seriously waned.

  The opposition of Rome, the interference of Naples, and the abandonment by France had defeated him.

  The times were against him, and Mark Stanton could not help asking himself whether time was not against the Order itself.

  The Knights with their magnificent and glorious history might be facing a situation in which they would no longer be able to survive.

  Then he heard the laughing voices of David and the young Baron coming up the companionway onto the deck and told himself that he was being unnecessarily apprehensive.

  There were still young men from every country in Europe ready to live and if necessary die for their faith.

  They still believed in the great ideals that had echoed down the centuries like a trumpet call to the adventurous, the courageous and the gallant.

  As long as that spirit continued, nothing could destroy the power of the Eight-Pointed Cross!

  Chapter Three

  Cordelia walked onto the terrace to look out over the Bay.

  Tomorrow they were leaving and she could hardly bear to think that she might never see the beauty of Naples again.

  She felt as if she must imprint on her mind the whole wonder of it so that it would be with her forever wherever she might be.

  Was there anywhere else in the world, she asked herself, where the light was so translucent that it seemed as if it came from the Gods themselves?

  There was beauty everywhere.

  From the sloping hills where the Convents blazed white beneath their belfries to the arcades in the City, where pots of camellias, red, white and striped, grew beside the statues of ancient Gods.

  She looked up to where the sombre splendour of Vesuvius rising from the fields of lava and ashes was smoking against the clear blue of the sky.

  Amid the peaceful loveliness it struck a discordant note of danger and to Cordelia it suggested that there might be an eruption from the mountain or something even more explosive nearer at hand.

  But her mind shied away from politics and the tension that always existed beneath the laughter and the false gaiety of Naples.

  Today she wanted only to think of the flowers and instinctively she left the terrace to walk into the garden amidst the fragrant petals of blossoming shrubs.

  As she moved, she disturbed a profusion of colourful butterflies which with the bees were hovering over the open blooms.

  Far away in the distance, so faint it was only a whisper on the air, she could hear someone singing Santa Lucia, the song that was so much a part of Naples that it almost took the place of the National Anthem.

  Mingling with the song of the birds it satisfied her hearing, as the loveliness around her satisfied her sight.

  That the ship was finished and they could leave very early tomorrow morning was news that had sent David into ecstasies.

  Without enquiring for him Cordelia was sure that he and the Baron would have gone down to the dockyard first thing this morning.

  The two young men would wish to assist in victualling the ship for the voyage, seeing that the water butts were filled and attending to the thousand and one things that had to be inspected before they could depart.

  It was still very early and Lady Hamilton was asleep, while Sir William was doubtless attending to the many callers who started arriving at the Embassy first thing in the morning.

  It was a relief to think that she could be alone.

  She could not help reflecting in retrospect that far too much of her visit to this enchanted City had been spent in parties and in the company of people who she had very little in common with.

  Cordelia was used to being on her own, because at Stanton Park when David had been at school or at his University she had no companionship except for her Teachers.

  She would wander in the gardens and in the Park, not lonely but content with her own company and the resourcefulness of her imagination.

  She had in fact invented a fantasy world from the stories she had read of mythology, the books she devoured on history and the treasures in Stanton Park itself, which meant more to her than anything else in her life.

  ‘I am very ignorant,’ she thought now as she moved passed a bush covered with the white petals of fragrant syringa.

  Coming to Naples had been an education in itself and yet in some ways it had been very frightening.

  Cordelia reached the arbour where she and Mark Stanton had sat the night he had arrived and where he had spoken to her of love.

  She had thought so often of his words and they seemed to repeat and re-repeat themselves in her mind, while she told herself that she had never envisaged for one moment that he would say such things to her.

  She had known that he was a man of action and a man born to command, so that it had been impossible for her to imagine that he would look into her heart and understand her secret dreams.

  Now, since he had put it so clearly, she understood what she wanted of life was love!

  She had not had a chance to speak intimately with him again. Always they had been surrounded by chattering socialites or when he had called in the afternoon Lady Hamilton had been with them or David.

  Sometimes Cordelia had glanced at him shyly, thinking that she must have imagined that conversation under the starlit sky.

  Yet she knew that he had swept away her fears and made things that had seemed so tangled and complicated quite simple.

  Now she no longer thought of entering a Convent.

  Instead she was sure, because Mark had said so, that one day she would find a man whom she would love and who would love her in return.

  But of one thing she was quite sure. She would never find the sort of man she was seeking amongst the glittering, affected aristocrats of Naples.

  Mark Stanton must have spoken very effectively to the Duca, for she had not seen him again and he no longer sent her flowers or effusive notes that made her heart beat apprehensively as soon as she saw his bold handwriting.

  These past days had therefore been quiet for her emotionally if not physically.

  In fact there had seemed to be an endless stream of parties, Receptions and visits to the Palace. She also helped to entertain the people who flocked to the British Embassy as if they needed reassurance.

  Cordelia was aware of the Queen’s incessant anxiety about the situation because the strain of it was beginning to react on Lady Hamilton.

  It was not surprising that Her Majesty was perturbed when it was calculated that there were ten thousand French in Lombardy, twenty thousand along the coast around Genoa and reports of the numbers of Warships being fitted out in the Toulon dockyards grew in size every day.

  “The Queen believes herself to be threatened by land and sea with no help save for the British Navy,” Lady Hamilton confided in Cordelia.

  She gave a deep sigh.

  “The only person who can save us now is Sir Horatio Nelson!”

  There was a softness in Lady Hamilton’s voice when she spoke of the Naval hero and indeed she talked of him incessantly.

  There was no doubt that he had made a tremendous impression when he had visited Naples as Captain of The Agamemnon.

  He had been wounded with grape shot in a landing at Santa Cruz and, with his arm having been sawn off by the ship’s surgeon, he had sailed home to join the Captains on half-pay at Bath.

  With only one eye and one arm his vivid personality made him so popular that he was the man the country turned at once to when news came of the huge arma
ments being built by Napoleon in the Mediterranean.

  Sir Horatio had set sail with fourteen first-rate Battleships of the line, but he had been hampered, as Mark Stanton knew, by losing sight of his frigates in a storm, by the shortness of stores and by the damage to his ships.

  Sir Horatio had written to Sir William Hamilton that if he had to move his fleet he would need provisions, frigates and good pilots.

  “Sir William is distracted,” Lady Hamilton explained.

  She talked frankly to Cordelia and David as if she must confide her innermost thoughts to someone and perhaps relieve her own anxiety.

  “Will Sir William be able to help Admiral Nelson?” David enquired

  “How can he?” Lady Hamilton replied. “The King has signed a document in which he vows never to victual or water British ships. As for providing him with frigates – ”

  Lady Hamilton threw up her arms and they knew that even the Queen would be afraid to favour the British with French troops threatening them.

  Now, sitting in the arbour overlooking the Bay, Cordelia deliberately put the thoughts of war, Battleships, the French and the menace of Napoleon, out of her mind.

  Today she wanted only to absorb the beauty of Naples and to forget everything else.

  Butterflies were hovering over the camellias. The syringa blossom was beautiful and a white dove, one of many that flew wild in the Embassy Gardens, perched on the low stone balustrade in front of her and regarded her with inquisitive eyes.

  She kept very still while the soft ‘coo’ of the dove reminded her of the wood pigeons in Stanton Park and she wondered if the house felt lonely now that there were only a few servants left in charge.

  The shutters had been closed in all the principal rooms and there was no knowing when they would be opened again.

  She had always imagined herself living at Stanton Park until David married or perhaps until she herself left for another home.

  In a way it had been heart-breaking, although she would not have admitted it to her brother, to leave behind everything that was familiar and everything that was connected in her mind with her father and mother.

  While her mother had adored David, her father to Cordelia was everything that she admired.