Empire of Ivory (12 page)

service, and the respect of the common man-"

"You might better say, the blind adoration of the common

man," Lord Allendale put in, with more heavy disapproval.

"And some not so common, who have less excuse; it is

appalling to see the influence the man has upon the Lords.

Every day he is not at sea is a fresh disaster," and

Laurence gathered, after a few moments more of confusion,

that they were speaking of none other than Lord Nelson

himself.

"Forgive me; we have spoken so much of these matters, among

ourselves, that we go too quickly." Wilberforce drew a hand

over his jaw, rubbing down his jowls. "I believe you know

something already," he said, "of the difficulties which we

have encountered, in our attempts to abolish the trade."

"I do," Laurence said: twice already, victory had seemed in

reach. Early in the struggle, the House of Lords had held

up a resolution already past the Commons, with some excuse

of examining witnesses. On another attempt, a bill had

indeed gone through, but only after amendments had changed

abolition to gradual abolition: so gradual indeed that

there were no signs of it as yet to be seen, fifteen years

later. The Terror in France had by that time been making a

bloody ruin of the word liberty, and putting into the hands

of the slave traders the choice name of Jacobin to be

leveled against abolitionists; no further progress had been

made, for many years.

"But in this last session," Wilberforce said, "we were on

the verge of achieving a vital measure: an act which should

have barred all new ships from the slave trade. It ought to

have passed; we had the votes in our grasp-then Nelson came

from the countryside. He had but lately risen from his

sickbed; he chose to address Parliament upon the subject,

and by the vigor of his opposition alone caused the measure

to fail in the Lords."

"I am sorry to hear it," Laurence said, if not surprised:

Nelson's views had been pronounced in public, often enough.

Like many a naval officer, he thought slavery, if an evil,

also a necessary one, as a nursery for her sailors and a

foundation of her trade; the abolitionists a cohort of

enthusiasts and quixotics, bent on undermining England's

maritime power and threatening her hold upon her colonies,

while only that domination allowed her to hold fast against

the looming threat of Napoleon.

"Very sorry," Laurence continued, "but I do not know what

use I can be to you; I cannot claim any personal

acquaintance, which might give me the right to try and

persuade him-"

"No, no; we have no such hope," Wilberforce said. "He has

expressed himself too decidedly upon the subject; also many

of his great friends, and sadly his creditors, are slaveowners or involved with the trade. I am sorry to say such

considerations may lead astray even the best and wisest of

men."

They sought rather, he explained, while Lord Allendale

looked morose and reluctant, to offer the public a rival

for their interest and admiration; and Laurence gradually

understood through circular approaches that they meant him

for this figure, on the foundation of his recent and exotic

expedition, and the very adoption which he had expected his

father to condemn.

"To the natural interest which the public will have, in

your late adventure," Wilberforce said, "you join the

authority of a military officer, who has fought against

Napoleon himself in the field; your voice can dispute

Nelson's assertions, that the end of the trade should be

the ruin of the nation."

"Sir," Laurence said, not certain if he was sorrier to be

disobliging Mr. Wilberforce, or happier to be forced to

refuse such an undertaking, "I hope you will not think me

lacking in respect or conviction, but I am in no way fitted

for such a role; and could not agree, if I wished to. I am

a serving-officer; my time is not my own."

"But here you are in London," Wilberforce pointed out

gently, "and surely, while you are stationed at the

Channel, can on occasion be spared," a supposition which

Laurence could not easily contradict, without betraying the

secret of the epidemic, presently confined to the Corps and

only the most senior officials of the Admiralty. "I know it

cannot be a comfortable proposal, Captain, but we are

engaged in God's work; we ought not scruple to use any tool

which He has put into our way, in this cause."

"For Heaven's sake, you will have nothing to do but attend

a dinner party, perhaps a few more; kindly do not cavil at

trifles," Lord Allendale said brusquely, tapping his

fingers upon the arm of his chair. "Of course one cannot

like this self-puffery, but you have tolerated far worse

indignities, and made far greater a spectacle of yourself,

than you are asked to do at present: last night, if you

like-"

"You needn't speak so to Laurence," Temeraire interrupted

coldly, giving the gentlemen both a start: they had already

forgotten to look up and see him listening to all their

conversation. "We have chased the French off four times

this last week, and flown nine patrols; we are very tired,

and we have only come to London because our friends are

sick: and left to starve, and die in the cold; because the

Admiralty will do nothing to make them more comfortable."

He finished stormily, a low threatening resonance building

in his throat, the instinctive action of the divine wind

operating; it lingered as an echo, when he had already

stopped speaking. No one spoke for a moment, and then

Wilberforce said thoughtfully, "It seems to me we need not

be at cross-purposes; and we may advance your cause,

Captain, with our own."

They had meant, it seemed, to launch him with some social

event, the dinner-party Lord Allendale had mentioned, or

perhaps even a ball; which Wilberforce now proposed instead

to make a subscription-party, "whose avowed purpose," he

explained, "will be to raise funds for sick and wounded

dragons, veterans of Trafalgar and Dover-there are such

veterans, among the sick?" he asked.

"There are," Laurence said; he did not say, all of them:

all but Temeraire himself.

Wilberforce nodded. "Those are yet names to conjure with,

in these dark days," he said, "when we see Napoleon's star

ascendant over the Continent; and will give still further

emphasis, to your being also a hero of the nation, and make

your words a better counterweight to Nelson's."

Laurence could scarcely bear to hear himself so described;

and in comparison with Nelson, who had led four great fleet

actions, destroyed all Napoleon's navy, established

Britain's complete primacy at sea; who had justly won a

ducal coronet by valor and deeds in honorable battle, not

been made a foreign prince through subterfuge and political

machination. "Sir," he said, with an effort restraining

himself from a truly violent rejection, "I must beg you not

to speak so; there can be no just comparison."

"No, indeed," Temeraire said energetically. "I do not think

much of this Nelson, if he has anything to say for slavery:

I am sure he cannot be half so nice as Laurence, no matter

how many battles he has won. I have never seen anything as

dreadful as those poor slaves in Cape Coast; and I am very

glad if we can help them, as well as our friends."

"And this, from a dragon," Wilberforce said, with great

satisfaction, while Laurence was made mute by dismay. "What

man can refuse to feel pity for those wretched souls, when

it may be stirred in such a breast? Indeed," he said,

turning to Lord Allendale, "we ought to hold the assembly

here where we sit. I am certain it will answer all the

better, so far as producing a great sensation, and

moreover," he added, with a glint of humor in his eye, "I

should like to see the gentleman who will refuse to

consider an argument made to him by a dragon, with that

dragon standing before him."

"Out of doors, at this season?" Lord Allendale said.

"We might organize it like the pavilion-dinners in China:

long tables, with coal-pits underneath to make them warm,"

Temeraire suggested, entering with enthusiasm into the

spirit of the thing, while Laurence could only listen with

increasing desperation as his fate was sealed. "We will

have to knock down some trees to make room, but I can do

that very easily, and if we were to hang panels of silk

from the remainder, it will seem quite like a pavilion, and

keep warm besides."

"An excellent notion," Wilberforce said, leaving his chair

to inspect the scratched diagrams which Temeraire was

making in the dirt. "It will have an Oriental flavor,

exactly what is needed."

"Well, if you think it so; all I can say in its favor, it

will certainly be the nine-days' wonder of society, whether

more than half-a-dozen curiosity-seekers come or not," Lord

Allendale said.

"We can spare you for one night, now and again," Jane said,

sinking Laurence's final hopes of escape. "Our intelligence

is nothing to brag about, now we have no couriers to risk

on spy-missions; but the Navy do a good business with the

French fishermen, on the blockade, and they say there has

yet been no movement to the coast. They might be lying, of

course," she added, "but if there were a marked shift in

numbers, the prices of the catch would have risen, with

livestock going to dragons."

The maid brought in the tea, and she poured for him. "Do

not I beg you repine too much upon it," Jane went on,

meaning the Admiralty's refusal to give them more funds.

"Perhaps this party of yours will do us some good in that

quarter, and Powys has written me to say he has cobbled

together something for us already, by subscription among

the retired senior officers. It will not do for anything

extravagant, but I think we can keep the poor creatures in

pepper, at least until then."

In the meanwhile, they set about the experimental pavilion:

the promise of so substantial a commission proved enough to

tempt a handful of more intrepid tradesmen to the Dover

covert. Having met them at the gates, with a party of

crewmen, Laurence escorted them the rest of the way to

Temeraire, who in an attempt to be unalarming hunched

himself down as small as a dragon of some eighteen tons

could manage, and nearly flattened his ruff down against

his neck. Yet he could not help but insinuate himself into

the conversation once the construction of the pavilion was

well under discussion, and indeed his offerings were quite

necessary, as Laurence had not the faintest notion how to

convert the Chinese measurements.

"I want one!" Iskierka said, having overheard too much of

the proceedings from her nearby clearing: heedless of

Granby's protests, she squirmed herself through the trees

into Temeraire's clearing, shaking off a blizzard of ashflakes, and alarming the poor tradesmen very much with a

hiccough of fire which sent steam shooting out her spines

to clear them. "I want to sleep in a pavilion, too: I do

not like this cold dirt at all."

"Well, you cannot have one," Temeraire said. "This is for

our sick friends, and anyway you have no capital."

"Then I shall get some," she declared. "Where does one get

capital, and what does it look like?"

Temeraire proudly rubbed his breastplate of platinum and

pearl. "This is a piece of capital," he said, "and Laurence

gave it me: he got it from taking a ship in a battle."

"Oh! that is very easy," Iskierka said. "Granby, let us go

get a ship, and then I may have a pavilion."

"Lord, you cannot have anything of the sort, do not be

silly," Granby said, nodding his rueful apologies to

Laurence as he came into the clearing, along the trail of

smashed branches and crushed hedge which she had left in

her wake. "You would burn it up in an instant: the thing is

made of wood."

"Can it be made of stone?" she demanded, swinging her head

around to one of the wide-eyed tradesmen. She was not grown

very large, despite the twelve feet in length she had

acquired since settling at Dover with a steady diet, being

rather sinuous than bulky, in the Kazilik style, and she

yet looked little more than a garden-snake next to

Temeraire. But her appearance at close quarters was by no

means reassuring, with the hissing-kettle gurgle of

whatever internal mechanism produced her fire plainly

audible and the vents of hot air issuing from her spines,

white and impressive in the cold.

No one answered her, except the elderly architect, a Mr.

Royle. "Stone? No, I must advise against it. Brick will be

a much more practical construction," he opined; he had not

looked up from the papers since being handed them, so badly

nearsighted he was inspecting the plans with a jeweler's

loupe, an inch from his watery blue eyes, and could most