Empire of Ivory (29 page)

force instead, and strapped it down. It was inclined to

squirm and struggle against the makeshift harness, making

several abortive attempts to leap off into the air, until

Temeraire lifted away; then after a few yelps of

excitement, it sat down on its haunches with its mouth open

and tongue lolling out, thrashing its tail furiously with

delight, better pleased than its unhappy master, who clung

anxiously to the harness and to Sipho, although they were

both well hooked on with carabiners.

"Proper circus you make," Berkley said, with a snort of

laughter Laurence considered unnecessary, when they landed

in the clearing and set the dog down; it promptly went

tearing around the parade grounds, yelling at the dragons.

For their part they were only interested and curious until

the dog bit a too-inquisitive Dulcia on the tender tip of

her muzzle, at which she hissed in anger; the dog yelped

and fled back to the dubious shelter of Temeraire's side;

he looked down at it in irritation, and tried

unsuccessfully to nudge it away.

"Pray be careful of the creature; I have no idea how we

should get or train another," Laurence said, and Temeraire

at last grumbling allowed it to curl up beside him.

Chenery limped out to eat with them that evening in the

parade grounds to reassure Dulcia of his improvement,

professing himself too tired for any more bed-rest, so they

made a merry meal of optimism and roast beef, and passed

around the bottle freely; perhaps too freely, for shortly

after the cigars were passed, Catherine said, "Oh,

damnation," and getting up went to the side of the clearing

to vomit.

It was not the first time she had been ill lately, but the

bout was an enthusiastic one. They politely averted their

faces, and in a little while she rejoined them at the fire,

with a dismal expression. Warren offered her a little more

wine, but she shook her head and only rinsed her mouth with

water and spat on the ground, and then looking around them

all said heavily, "Well, gentlemen, I am sorry to be

indelicate, but if I am going to be sickly like this all

the way through, you had better know now. I am afraid I

have made a mull of it.-I am increasing."

Laurence only gradually realized that he was staring, with

an intolerably rude gaping expression. He closed his mouth

at once and held himself rigidly still, fighting the

inclination to look at his fellow captains, the five of

them sitting around the fire, and study them in the light

of candidates.

Berkley and Sutton, both senior to him by ten years, he

thought stood more in the relation of uncle to Catherine

than anything else. Warren also was older, and had been

matched to his rather nervous beast Nitidus for the very

steadiness of his nature, which made it difficult to easily

imagine him in the light of a lover, under their present

circumstances. Chenery was a younger man of high and

cheerful spirits, thoroughly innocent of any sense of

decorum, and made more handsome by his smiles and a rough

careless charm than his looks deserved, being a little thin

in the chest and face, with an unfortunately sallow

complexion and hair generally blown straight as straw. He

was perhaps in personality the most likely, although

Immortalis's captain Little, of a similar age, was the

better-looking, despite a nose which was inclined to be

beaky, with china-blue eyes and wavy dark hair kept a

little long in a poetic style; but this, Laurence

suspected, was due more to a lack of attention than any

deliberate vanity, and Little was rather abstemious in his

habits than luxurious.

There was of course Catherine's first lieutenant, Hobbes,

an intense young man only a year her junior, but Laurence

could scarcely believe she would engage herself with a

subordinate, and risk all the resentment and difficulties

which he had known similar practices, albeit of a more

illegal nature, to produce aboard ship. No; it must be one

of them; and Laurence could not help but see, from the

corner of his eye, that Sutton and Little at least bore

expressions more or less of surprise, and that he was being

looked at with the same spirit of speculation he himself

had been unable to repress, exhibited more openly.

Laurence was unhappily conscious that he could not object.

He had committed an equal indiscretion, without ever

considering what he should say, or do, if he and Jane were

to similarly be taken aback. He could hardly imagine his

father's reaction and even his mother's, on being presented

with such a match: a woman some years his senior, with a

natural-born child, of no particular family wholly aside

from her complete sacrifice of respectability to her duty.

But marriage it would have to be; anything else should be

as good as offering insult, to one who deserved from him

the confusion of respect of a gentlewoman and a comrade-inarms, and exposing her and the child to the censure of all

society.

Therefore to just such a dreadful situation he had

willingly hazarded himself, and he could hardly complain if

he were now to suffer a share of that pain on another

party's behalf. Only the one who knew himself guilty could

know the truth, of course; and so long as he remained

unconfessed, Laurence and his fellow captains should all

jointly have to endure the curiosity of the world, however

unpleasant, without remedy.

"Well, it is damned bad luck," Berkley said, setting down

his fork. "Whose is it?"

Harcourt said easily, "Oh, it is Tom's, I mean Captain

Riley; thank you, Tooke," and held out her hand for the cup

of tea which her young runner had brought her, while

Laurence blushed for all of them.

He passed an uncomfortable and wakeful night, suffering the

incessant shrill barking of the dog outside, and, within,

all the confusion which could be imagined: whether to speak

to Riley, and on what grounds, Laurence scarcely knew.

He felt a certain responsibility for Catherine's honor and

the child's; irrational under the circumstances, perhaps,

when she herself seemed wholly unconcerned. But though she

might not care for the good opinion of society or feel

herself dishonored, nor her fellow aviators, Laurence was

well aware that Riley could claim no such disdain for the

eyes of the world. All Riley's odd constraint, towards the

end of the voyage, now bespoke a guilty conscience;

certainly he had not approved the notion of women officers,

and Laurence did not for a moment imagine that his opinion

had altered in consequence of this affair. Riley had only

taken personal advantage where it became available to him,

and with full knowledge had entered into what for him must

be seen as the ruin of a gentlewoman, an act selfish if not

vicious, and deserving of the strongest reproof. But

Laurence had no standing whatsoever in the world to pursue

it; any attempt would only make a thorough scandal of the

whole, and as an aviator he was forbidden to enter into

personal challenges in any case.

To complicate matters still further, he had a wholly

separate motive for speaking, and that to give Riley

intelligence of the child's existence, of which he might

well be ignorant. Jane Roland, at least, thought nothing of

her daughter Emily's illegitimacy; by her own admission she

had not so much as seen the father since the event of

conception, nor seemed to think he had anything to do with

the child in the least. This perfect lack of sensibility

Catherine evidently shared. Laurence had not dwelt long on

this pragmatic ruthlessness before the event; but now he

put himself in Riley's place, and felt that Riley at once

deserved all the difficulties of the situation, and the

opportunity of rising to meet them.

Laurence rose undecided and unrested, and without much

enthusiasm entered into their first attempt to take out the

dog. Seeing them make ready, the cur did not wait to be

carried aboard, but leapt onto Temeraire's back and settled

itself in pride of place at the base of his neck, just

where Laurence ordinarily sat, and barked officiously to

hurry the rest of their preparations. "Cannot it ride with

Nitidus?" Temeraire said, disgruntled, craning his neck to

give it a repressive hiss. Familiarity had already bred

contempt; the dog only wagged its tail back at him.

"No, no; I do not want it," Nitidus said, mantling his

wings in resistance. "You are bigger, it does not weigh on

you at all." Temeraire flattened his ruff against his neck

and muttered.

They crossed over the mountains again and settled

themselves just past the leading edge where the settlements

petered out, on a slope lately somewhat bared by a

rockslide, which offered the dragons the best opportunity

to land deep in the undergrowth. Nitidus managed to wedge

himself into a gap left among the trees, where a larger had

fallen, but Temeraire was forced to try and make himself a

landing place by trampling down the smaller but more

stubborn shrubs which had invaded the space. The acacia

thorns were long and slender enough to probe between his

scales, and catch the flesh beneath, so he flinched to one

side or another several times before at last he had

something like sure footing and could let them clamber down

off his back, to hack themselves out some room and pitch

the tents once again.

The dog made itself a nuisance while they made camp,

inclined to frolic and startle up the fat brown-and-white

pheasants, which ran away from it unhappily, their heads

bobbing; until all at once it went very quiet, and its lean

rangy body stiffened with excitement. Lieutenant Riggs

raised his rifle to his ear, and they all froze,

remembering the rhinoceros; but in a moment a troop of

baboons came out from among the trees. The largest, a

grizzled fellow with a long sour face and a shining rump of

bright scarlet protruding from his fur, impossible to

ignore, sat back on his haunches and gave them a jaundiced

eye; then the band ambled off, the smallest clinging to

their mothers' fur and turning their heads around to stare

with curiosity as they were carried away.

There were few large trees; the thickness was made rather

of yellow grass everywhere, higher than a man's head, which

filled in every gap the green thornbrake allowed. Above,

the thin trees threw up little cloud-like clusters of

branches, which gave no relief from the sun. The air was

close and hot and full of dust, crumbled grass and dried

leaves, and clouds of small birds twitting each other in

the brush. The dog led them on an aimless straggling path

through the ferocious underbrush; it more easily than they

could work through the tangled shrubs and deadwood.

Demane gave the dog occasional encouragement by lectures

and yelling, but for the most part gave the cur its head.

He and his brother followed on its heels closely and

quicker than the rest of them could manage, occasionally

disappearing up ahead. Their young clear voices came

calling back impatiently to guide them, now and then, and

at last, in the mid-afternoon, Laurence came stumbling out

of the brush and caught them up to find Sipho proudly

holding out one of the mushrooms for their inspection.

"Better by far, but we will still need a week at this rate

to get enough for the rest of the formation alone," Warren

said that evening, offering Laurence a glass of port in

front of his small tent, with an old stump and a smooth

rock serving them as formal seating. The dog had found

three more mushrooms on the way back to camp, all of them

small ones which would have escaped attention otherwise.

They were of course happily collected; but they would not

make much of the posset, or the draught.

"Yes, at least," Laurence said tiredly; his legs ached from

their unaccustomed labor. He unfolded them with an effort

towards the heat of the small twiggy fire, smoky from the

green wood but pleasantly hypnotic.

Temeraire and Nitidus had made good use of their idleness

to improve upon the camp, trampling down the earth of the

slope to make it more level and tearing up several trees

and bushes to clear more ground. Temeraire had rather

vengefully hurled the bristling acacia far down the slope,

where it could now be seen, incongruously, sitting caught

upon two tree-tops with a great clump of dirt around its

roots in mid-air.

They had provided also a couple of antelope for the party's

dinner, or had meant to; but the hours had dragged, and

with nothing better to do they had eventually eaten most of

the kill themselves, and were found licking their chops and

empty-handed at the end of the day. "I am sorry, but you

were so very long," Temeraire said apologetically. Happily,