I said, ‘But we won’t get a child of our own now, Jack. Nearly eight years married. You know it’s not going to happen.’

‘You give up too easy.’

‘How have I given up? Don’t I lie with you whenever you ask it?’

It was the truth but Jack had grown bitter.

‘When you’re not off on your royal jaunts, he said. ‘Well if you’re set on doing it nothing I say’ll stop you. I don’t know why you pretend to consult me, Nellie, you always please yourself. But you must do it on your own account. Don’t look to me for money. I’m finished with raising ingrates.’

So Sally Blacklock came to live with us. She was fourteen years old. Sally had been left at the Foundling Hospital, just as Ambrose had, but unlike Ambrose there had been nothing pinned to her nightshirt, no name, no message, nothing to suggest that her mother might some day claim her back. So they had named her for her thick black curls. She could read tolerably well, had a cheerful, open way about her and was a good seamstress. When you added her smiles to the excellent repairs she made to Jack’s shirts he couldn’t resent her for long. He agreed she was a welcome addition to our household. Morphew adored her. ‘Whoever could of gave away a treasure like that?’ he’d say, and he used to sing to her:

When she is by, I leave my work,

I love her so sincerely.

My master comes like any Turk

And bangs me most severely.

But let him bang his bellyful,

I’ll bear it all for Sally.

She is the darling of my heart

And she lives in our alley.

Jack said, ‘Only don’t ruin her, Nellie. You must keep her active. I don’t want to see her with her head in a book, nor scribbling.’

But Sally wasn’t interested in books. She liked to sew and put up pickles and hear my stories about the Royalties. At least, those I dared tell.

The King’s health settled into a fragile calm. There were only occasional eruptions into mania. At Windsor he ordered Upper Lodge to be closed up and the Majesties moved into the castle, but in separate ranges of rooms. And as the Queen claimed Augusta and Elizabeth as her companions, so His Majesty claimed Sofy and Minny and Amelia for himself. Talk of the need for a regency had subsided again, not least because the Prince of Wales was indisposed himself. Nevertheless Sofy was uneasy:

Windsor, April 4th 1805

My dearest Nellie,

I must begin with sad news. Our darling Mrs Che has passed away. Whatever shall we do without her? I feel I have lost a mother.

Here we are braced for a quarrelsome Easter. The King says the Princess of Wales must be made welcome. The Queen says if that is his pleasure she will have an incurable headache and keep to her rooms. Augusta and Elizabeth appear to take her side, then go for stomping walks to vent their crossness. Young Charlotte is our only mutual consolation.

On His Majesty’s side we take turns to dine with him as follows: Minny twice a week, Amelia twice a week and therefore this obedient daughter THRICE a week. It is difficult. He speaks to me more confidentially than I would wish and sometimes his language runs too free. I don’t care for it at all, Nellie, but he has been the best of fathers and so I try to keep my mind on what he once was.

If things continue in this vein we shall remove to Kew, at least to be away from the dust and noise of builders. If His Majesty is well enough to release me a little, please say you’ll come. I want to hear more about yr protégée and I want to read yr book. Have you heard when it will be published?

Sofy

A sore point. It had been almost a year. Miss Tod went back to Johnson’s offices to enquire after my manuscript and Sally went with her. They found the premises burned to a shell and boarded up.

She said, ‘I didn’t know how I’d tell you. All that writing, Nellie, gone up in smoke.’

And not for the first time.

She said, ‘Perhaps it’s not meant to be, dear. Perhaps it’s a sign.’

I even entertained that thought myself, for five minutes. Then I came to my senses and resolved to try a different publishing house as soon as I could write out another copy.

I did visit Sofy but only for an afternoon. She and Minny and Amelia had gone to Kew and were lodged in Dolly Cambridge’s house on the Green, an arrangement I found too confining after the freedom of my own house. The King was accommodated in Kew Palace with his doctors. His recent crisis had been the most distressing yet, Sofy said, swinging between madness and lucidity but with no discernible rhythm. He had begun one day very quiet and mild, then had suddenly struck one of his pages across the head, and soon after, coming to realize what he’d done, he’d cried and begged forgiveness of the man. On another day he had walked in the park and talked to Mr Warren about a new chicken coop but when the time came to return to the house he had lain down and screamed and kicked and refused to move. Dr Willis had had him carried to his room on a hurdle and strapped to a correction chair until he came to his senses enough to know he had done wrong and apologized.

Dr Willis’s methods seemed to succeed where others had failed. The periods of calm grew longer than the fits of mania and he was allowed to walk about again. Sir Joseph Banks had visited him and they had walked for a full hour discussing the merits of different breeds of sheep. Sofy and Minny had been allowed to read to him too, while he soaked his feet in hot water. This was believed to draw mad humours down from the head. If he continued to improve they were to go to Weymouth for their usual stay. Sofy looked forward to it.

‘Even without my Humble Companion,’ she said. ‘To be anywhere away from the noise and grit of stonemasons.’

The King clearly needed tranquillity and the Queen said she must have complete rest or die, and yet the Royalties lived in a constant turmoil of building and renovations and jangling carriage rides from one inconvenient house to another.

As usual I was at Windsor for Sofy’s birthday, her twenty-eighth, but I had promised Jack to be back in town by November 8th at the latest. His order book was full and he couldn’t spare Henry for the shop. When Morphew came for me on the morning of the 7th he was wearing a solemn face and a crêpe armband. The French fleet had been vanquished off the Spanish coast at Cape Trafalgar but Admiral Nelson was dead and that took the shine off a considerable victory.

All the newspapers printed extra editions. Our Navy had taken on the French and the Spanish fleets, outnumbered and outgunned, but by Admiral Nelson’s audacity we had taken twenty of their ships and lost none of our own. Morphew claimed him as no ordinary hero. He was a Norfolk hero. The Admiral was from Burnham Thorpe, Morphew was from Wiggenhall, many miles to the west. But Nelson’s mother was a Suckling and Morphew’s great-aunt Pru had been a kitchen maid in some Suckling household and that was connection enough. By the time we reached Seymour Street Morphew’s handkerchief was sodden and he and Nelson were practically cousins. He caught the mood of England exactly. Trafalgar was a great triumph, so much so that people dared to think the war might soon be over, but England had lost a treasured son and a favourite brother.

The battle had been fought in October but it was nearly Christmas before Nelson’s corpse reached England. They had brought him home in a leaguer filled with brandy, then he lay at Greenwich till everything had been made ready for his funeral. He was carried up the Thames on the King’s barge with an escort of River Fencibles firing a salute every minute. Sally and I went with Morphew to Westminster Bridge hoping to watch him taken off at Whitehall Steps, but the crowd was so great we saw nothing. His casket was gilded oak but within it he lay in an inner coffin, made from the main mast of a French ship he’d sunk at the Battle of the Nile. It was said that he’d kept it in his cabin, as you might keep a chair or a bookshelf, so he should always be reminded that a war-time admiral might not live to see old age.

Morphew was determined to get a better vantage point to see the funeral procession and laid out money for places in a stand on Ludgate Hill. Jack had intended to keep the shop open but I persuaded him to close up and come with us. I knew Henry would like to see it but he’d never have dared ask Jack for time off. We’d a good four miles to walk so we set out before first light, bundled against the bitter cold but very jolly. I suppose we must have looked like a regular family. It struck me then that Jack and I never walked out together. He just worked and worked, afraid of failing if he stopped.

As Henry put it, ‘we’re only ever as good as our last box of bonbons’.

Reluctant as he’d been, even Jack was caught up by the magnificence of that day, the banners and the muffled drums of the dead march and the casket on its ship-shaped carriage flanked by officers from his flagship. Then the Royalties came, walking behind: the Prince of Wales and Fred York, both in Field Marshal’s uniform, Billy Clarence got up as an Admiral, Dolly Cambridge and Gus Sussex in Major-General full dress, and two faces I didn’t know but guessed to be Kent and their cousin Gloucester. Sally was very impressed that I could name so many. God knows, I could have done more than name them. Mr Pitt was there too, very pale and not long for the world himself, and Greenwich pensioners in their blue coats and tricorns, and the crew of Nelson’s flagship, their faces stained with tears.

Around midday the sun put in a brief appearance, then disappeared. Our feet were numb and our bellies were empty and still the procession went on. We were fighting our way through the crowds towards Fetter Lane when someone called out ‘Nellie! Mrs Buzzard!’ and I turned to see Tom Garth. He was carrying young Tommy, though he was a tall, strong boy by then and I’m sure in little danger of being crushed, unlike delicate Miss Wellbeloved who struggled along at his side. They had come all the way from Dorset.

Garth said, ‘The crowds are fearsome, but it couldn’t be missed. It’s a day the boy will remember all his life. Nellie, I wonder if you recall the story of how I came by my parrot?’

I said, ‘Of course. It was in Jamaica, and you were in an infirmary.’

‘I was,’ he said. ‘Put there by a young hothead who didn’t know his limits. That was Horace Nelson. And here I am, a hundred miles from home, come to eat my words and pay my respects to him. Well, well.’

Jack offered to carry Tommy a while, ‘to spare the old gentleman’s arms’ as he said later, but our paths lay in different directions.

He said, ‘The little lad? That’d be his grandchild, I suppose?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘A foundling he took in.’

Sally said she was glad he hadn’t chosen her when he was looking for a ward. She said it wasn’t the mark on his face she minded for she’d grown accustomed to mine and thought nothing of it, but the General was so old and severe looking, she was sure he must frighten the little boy half to death. I think she was wrong. I don’t believe Tommy Garth ever feared anyone.

Jack took my arm. ‘You were right to make me come today, Nellie,’ he said. ‘It was a sight to see and no mistake. And I venture to say I’d have done no trade anyway.’

We were going against the flow of the crowd and it was dusk before we reached Seymour Street but Morphew kept us merry, singing Heart of Oak over and over until Henry and Sally had learned the words well enough to join in.

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