Sir William nodded. ' That brings us to the present. What have you in mind to do now? '
' Why,' Roger laughed, ' having pulled the chestnuts out of the fire a second time, to go home.'
'1 assumed as much. Well, in the course of the week a frigate will be sailing for Gibraltar and from there you should have no difficulty in securing a passage to England. I will arrange for accommodation in the frigate to be reserved for you.'
Roger shook his head. '1 thank Your Excellency. Let the frigate carry copies of the despatches, also a full report that I must write for Mr. Pitt which I will let you have tomorrow; but I have no mind to voyage in her. I am the worst sailor that ever was and the very thought of the weather which a ship may meet with in the Bay of Biscay makes my poor stomach turn over. I intend to travel overland up Italy and through France, becoming again Colonel Breuc when the need arises; then I shall get a smuggler to run me across the Channel.'
The Ambassador held up a slim hand in protest. ' No, no! I implore you not to attempt that. As a lone traveller without escort the odds on your coming to grief would be a hundred to one. The whole peninsula is now in ferment. No laws can any longer give you a shadow of protection. Swarms of French deserters and Italian bandits infest every highway. It is said that there are over a hundred thousand of them. No matter whether you travelled as Englishman, Frenchman or Turk it is a certainty that one of these bands would waylay, rob and murder you.'
It would have been the height of folly to ignore such advice; so Roger was forced to reconsider the matter. After a moment he said, ' If King Ferdinand succeeds in continuing his advance and the Tuscan revolt against the French proves successful, so that they join forces above Rome, a few weeks may see the country more or less pacified, at least as far as communications from Naples to the north are" concerned. I should then be able to get through without undue risk.'
' That is a possibility,' Sir William agreed. ' But even given complete victory over the French a considerable time must elapse before these bands can be suppressed and travel becomes reasonably safe again. After all, what are a few days of seasickness? Since you wish to get home, surely it would be better to face the possibility of bad weather and sail in the frigate? '
Roger's mouth set in a hard line. His memories of his frightful sufferings in the Adriatic were so recent that he could not bring himself to agree to Sir William's suggestion. ' No,' he said after a moment, '1 prefer to remain here for a while and see how the war develops.'
It was a decision that before he was much older he was bitterly to regret.
The Looker-on sees most of the Game
Sir william Hamilton urged Roger to become his guest, but he regretfully declined. It was only just over ten years since the Young Pretender had died and a number of the Jacobite nobles who had made up his little Court-in-Exile in Rome still had apartments there. As Roger pointed out, although he might pay his respects to British Ambassadors when in foreign countries, it would not be in keeping for him, while he remained a MacElfic, to stay at the Embassy of the Hanoverian King.
It was agreed, therefore, that he should deliver his despatch late the following night and come again to the Embassy only once a week, to the Ambassador's official reception, as long as he chose to stay in Naples.
Returning to his hotel he procured ink, paper, quills and sand, and took them up to his room. There he spent several hours covering page after page with fine writing, giving Mr. Pitt every particular he could think of concerning the situation in Egypt.
Next morning he went out to renew his acquaintance with the city which, after Paris, was the largest in Europe. Superficially he found it unchanged. The waterfront spread along the northern end of the vast bay which ran out westward to the peninsula of Pozzuoli. Beyond the point lay the islands of Procida and Ischia. Inland from the centre of the bay the great cone of Vesuvius, with its plume of smoke, towered up against the blue sky. In the distance to the south the other arm of the bay curved seaward, forming the twenty-mile-long peninsula of Sorrento. A
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few miles beyond its tip could be seen the island of Capri. Under a wintry sun the prospect was as beautiful as ever, and the narrow, smelly streets behind the waterfront still teemed with bronze-skinned men and sloe-eyed women.
Yet before the day was out he found that the atmosphere and spirit of Naples had become utterly different. His memories of the week he had spent there in '89 had always caused him to think of it as a Paracjise on earth. That, perhaps, was largely due to his having found there again the beautiful Isabella d'Aranda, who had refused him her favours as a maid but, as a neglected wife, had given herself to him willingly. He had stayed with Sir William, who had proved the perfect host; and who had nicknamed his Embassy ' The Royal Arms', in token of the fact that he liked his constant stream of guests to regard themselves as absolutely free to take their meals there only when they wished and to come and go at any hour they liked. That had enabled Roger to spend the greater part of each night with Isabella, and a good part of each day as well.
But it was not only this love-affair that had made the week pass for him in such a haze of happiness. Isabella had introduced him to many of her friends among the Spanish-Neapolitan nobility. All of them owned charming villas outside the city and every day they made up parties of pleasure to drive out and dine at one or other of them, then spend the long afternoons strolling or love-making in enchanted gardens made beautiful with grottoes, arbours, fountains, waterfalls and ancient statues. The only things they thought about were making love, acting charades, reading poetry and carrying on their love-affairs at dances or the opera.
Even the masses in the poorer parts of the city had radiated cheerfulness. They had little money and most of them were dressed in rags, but there was an abundance of fish, fruit and vegetables which could be bought for a few coppers. For the greater part of the year they were warmed by the sun; frequent saints' days provided an excuse for idling and jollification; and wherever one went they were always to be seen laughing and cracking bawdy jokes.
Now they were ominously quiet and sullen. Sir William might be right about the deeply religious peasantry having marched off full of enthusiasm to fight the atheist French; but great numbers of the city-dwellers had been taken too. Their families were anxious for them and in thousands of cases had been deprived of their breadwinners. The price of fish had never been so high, because the fishermen had been pressed to man the Fleet. The supplies of vegetables coming in from the country had also been greatly reduced. In the old days scores of gaming houses and brothels had done a roaring trade; now, owing to the lack of money, two-thirds of them were closed, so that hundreds of pimps and prostitutes were starving.
Roger also found that the carefree social world of Naples had ceased to exist. At his hotel and in the cafes whoever he spoke to would now converse only on two subjects—the war and politics. Elated as the Neapolitans were at their King having entered Rome, many of them expressed dark forebodings about the future. For years past they had heard accounts of French victories and the way in which the French viciously despoiled the territories they conquered. Alone in Italy, the Kingdom of Naples had so far escaped. But could it continue to do so if the French succeeded in concentrating a great Army north of Rome and marched south? Roger found too that, as he had supposed, a large section of the population had become obsessed with revolutionary ideas.