Empire of Ivory (48 page)

than a year. Nevertheless he had insisted on managing the

flight to London, instead of letting Temeraire carry Jane

with Laurence, and was now paying for his pride with nearprostration; he had done nothing but sleep since their

arrival, the afternoon before.

"Then try and take a little while I am here, for my

comfort," Jane said, and stepped back to the clearing's

edge to keep her best coat and trousers from being

spattered by the fresh-butchered sheep carried hurriedly

over by the covert herdsmen, and hacked apart directly in

front of Excidium's jaws, which ground methodically away at

the joints of meat as they were put in his mouth.

Laurence took the opportunity of escaping her company for a

moment, and went to the neighboring clearing where

Temeraire was busily engaged, despite the early hour, with

his two sand-tables, upon the letter. He was working upon

an account of the disease, and its treatment, which he

meant to send to his mother in China, with Mr. Hammond as

his proxy, against the danger that a similar outbreak might

one day there occur. "You have made that Lung look more

like Chi," he said severely, casting an eye over the work

of his coterie of secretaries: Emily and Dyer, who had been

disgruntled to learn that their promotion to the exalted

rank of ensign had not relieved them of all responsibility

of schoolwork, and with them Demane and Sipho, who were at

least at no greater disadvantage learning Chinese script

than anyone else would have been.

Laurence thought, abruptly, he might have asked her the

other day, after they had disposed of the fate of the boys.

They had been closeted alone together, without

interruption, nearly an hour; that, at any rate, would have

been a more opportune moment to speak, barring any scruple

at introducing a subject so intimate in the precincts of

her office. Or he might have spoken yesterday night, when

they had left the dragons sleeping and retired together to

the barracks-house; or, better still, he ought to have

waited some weeks, until the settling of this first furious

bustle of activity after their arrival: hindsight serving

powerfully to show him how he might better have forwarded

the suit he had not wholly intended to make.

Her rejection had been too practical, too quick, to give

him much encouragement to renew his addresses, under any

future circumstances. In the ordinary way, he should have

considered it as forming a necessary end to their

relations, but the mode of her refusal made it seem mere

petulance to be wounded, or to insist on some sort of

moralizing line. Yet he was conscious of a lowering

unhappiness; perhaps in turning Catherine's advocate

towards the state of matrimony, he had become his own, and

without quite knowing had set his heart upon it, or at any

rate his convictions.

Temeraire finished his present line upon the sand-table,

and lifting his foreleg away to let Emily carefully

exchange it with the second, caught sight of Laurence. "Are

you going?" he inquired. "Will you be very late?"

"Yes," he said, and Temeraire lowered his head and peered

at him searchingly. "Never mind," Laurence said, putting

his hand on Temeraire's muzzle. "It is nothing; I will tell

you later."

"Perhaps you had better not go," Temeraire suggested.

"There can be no question of that," Laurence said. "Mr.

Roland, perhaps you will go and sit with Excidium this

afternoon, and see if you can convince him to take a little

more food, if you please."

"Yes, sir. May I take the children?" Emily said, from the

advanced age of twelve, meaning Demane and Sipho, the older

of whom lifted his head indignantly at the name. "I have

been teaching them how to read and write in English, in the

afternoons," she added importantly, which filled Laurence

with anticipatory horror at the results of this endeavor,

as Emily's penmanship most often resembled nothing more

than snarled thread.

"Very good," he said, consigning them to their fate, "if

Temeraire does not need them."

"No; we are almost finished, and then Dyer may read to me,"

Temeraire said. "Laurence, do you suppose we have enough

mushroom to spare, that we may send a sample with my

letter?"

"I hope so; Dorset tells me that they have managed to find

a way to cultivate the thing, in some caves in Scotland, so

what remains need not all be preserved against future

need," Laurence said.

The carriage was old and not very comfortable, close and

hot and rattling horribly over the streets, which were in

any case none to the good this close to the covert.

Chenery, so ordinarily irrepressible, was sweating and

silent; Harcourt very pale, although this had a more

prosaic cause than anxiety, and halfway along she was

obliged in a choked voice to request they stop, so she

might vomit into the street.

"There, I feel better," she said, leaning back in, and

looked only a little shaky when she stepped down from the

carriage and refused Laurence's arm for the short walk

through the courtyard into the offices.

"A glass of wine, perhaps, before we go in?" Laurence said

to her softly, but she shook her head. "No; I will just

take a touch of brandy," she said, and moistened her lips

from the flask which she carried.

They were received in the boardroom, by the new First Lord

and the other commissioners: the Government had changed

again in their absence, over the question of Catholic

emancipation, Laurence gathered; and the Tories were in

once more: Lord Mulgrave sat now at the head of the table,

a little heavy by the jowls, with a serious expression and

pulling a little at the end of his nose; the Tories did not

think much of the Corps, under any circumstances.

But Nelson was there, also; and quite in defiance of the

general atmosphere he rose as soon as they had entered, and

remained standing, until in some embarrassment the other

gentlemen at the table struggled to their feet; then coming

forward he shook Laurence's hand, in the handsomest manner,

and asked to be presented.

"I am filled with admiration," he declared, on being named

to Catherine, and making her a noble leg, "and indeed

humbled, Captain Harcourt, on having read your account; I

have been accustomed," he added, smiling, "to think a

little well of myself, and to like a little praise: I will

be the first to admit it! but your courage stands above any

example which I can easily recollect, in a lifetime of

service. Now, we are keeping you standing; and you must

have something to drink."

"Oh-no, nothing," Catherine said, so mortally crimson her

freckles stood out as pale spots. "Nothing, thank you, sir;

and it was nothing, I assure you, nothing which anyone else

would not have done; which my fellow-officers did not do,"

she added, confusing her refusals of both refreshment and

praise.

Lord Mulgrave did not look entirely satisfied to have his

precedence thus usurped. A chair had of course to be

offered her, and perforce them all; some shuffling ensued

so they were ranged together in a close row along the

farther side of the table, with the naval lords facing them

along the other, but still it did not quite have the courtmartial quality of standing for interrogation.

They went first through a tedious summation of events, and

a reconcilement of the accounts: Chenery had set down ten

days, for the flight which had carried them prisoner to the

falls; Laurence had made it twelve, Catherine eleven; which

difference consumed nearly an hour, and required several

maps to be dug out by the secretaries, none of which

precisely agreed with one another on the scale of the

interior. "Sir, we would do better to apply to the dragons,

for our facts," Laurence said finally, raising his head

from the fourth of these, when they had only been able to

agree conclusively that there had been a desert somewhere

in the middle, and it had not been less than nine-days'

flying. "I will vouch that Temeraire is well able to judge

distances, in flight, and while they did not follow

directly in our course, I am certain at least he can tell

us where the borders of the desert are, which we crossed,

and the larger of the rivers."

"Hm," Mulgrave said, not encouragingly, stirring the report

before him with a forefinger. "Well, put it aside; let us

move to the matter of insubordination. I understand

correctly, I believe, that all three beasts disregarded

Captain Sutton's orders, to return to Capetown."

"Why, if you like to call it insubordination," Jane said.

"It is a good deal more to the point, that all three of

them listened at all; and that they did not go haring off

wild into the interior at once, when they knew their

captains stolen: remarkable discipline, I assure you, and

more than I would have looked for under the circumstances."

"Then I should like to know what else it is to be called,"

Lord Palmerston said, from his seat further down. "A direct

order disobeyed-"

"Oh-" Jane made half an impatient gesture with her hand,

aborted. "A dragon of twenty tons is not to be called to

account by any means other than persuasion, that I know of,

and if they did not value their captains enough to disobey

for them, they would not ever obey at all; so it is no use

complaining. We might as well say that a ship is

insubordinate, because it will not go forward when there is

no wind: you can command the first as easily as the

latter."

Laurence looked down at the table. He had seen dragons

enough in China, who without any captain or handler

whatsoever behaved with perfect discipline, to know her

defense was flawed. He did not know a better name for it

than insubordination, himself, and was not inclined to

dismiss it so lightly; it in some wise seemed to him more

insulting than otherwise, to suggest that the dragons did

not know better. That Temeraire had known where his duty

lay, Laurence was quite certain; that Temeraire had

disobeyed Sutton's orders willfully, only because he did

not like to follow them, was also certain. He as surely had

considered that disobedience justified and natural, not

even requiring of explanation, and would have been

surprised to find anything else truly expected of him; but

he would never have denied the responsibility.

To draw such a fine point, however, before a hostile

audience, perhaps inducing them to demand an irrational

punishment, Laurence did not deem prudent; even if he had

been inclined to contradict Jane in such a setting. He was

silent, while a brief wrestling over the question ensued;

finished unresolved, when Jane had said, "I am quite

willing to lecture them on the subject, if you should like

it, my Lords; or put them to a court-martial, if that seems

to you sensible; and the best use of our time at present."

"For my part, gentlemen," Nelson said, "I think it cannot

come as a surprise to those here, when I say that victory

is the best of all justifications, and to answer it with

reproaches looks to me very ill. The success of the

expedition proves its merit."

"A very fine success," Admiral Gambier said sourly, "which

has left a crucial colony not merely lost but in ruins, and

seen the destruction of every port along the coast of

Africa; most notably meritorious."

"No-one could have expected a company of seven dragons to

hold the African continent against a plague of hundreds,

under any circumstances," Jane said, "and we had better be

grateful to have, instead, what intelligence we have gained

from the successful recovery of our officers."

Gambier did not contradict her directly, but snorted and

went on to inquire about another small discrepancy, in the

reports; but as the session dragged on, it became gradually

clear through his line of questioning, and Lord

Palmerston's, that they meant to suspect that the prisoners

had provoked the invasion deliberately, and subsequently

had colluded to conceal the act. How they had gone about

it, was not to be specified; nor their motives, until at

last Gambier added, in an ironical tone, "And of course, it

is the slave trade to which they objected so violently;

although as everyone knows, the natives of the continent

have made a practice of it from time immemorial, long

preceding the arrival of Europeans on their shore; or

perhaps I should say, of course it is they, who objected to

the trade. I believe, Captain Laurence, that you have

strong views on the subject; I cannot be speaking out of

turn to say so."

Laurence said only, "No, sir; you are not." He offered no

further remark; he would not dignify the insinuation with a

defense.

"Have we nothing more pressing," Jane said, "that we must