Empire of Ivory (52 page)

settled; we will be seen at once by day and perhaps by

night also. We must make for the mountains on the coast

near Scarborough, pass there the night, and make Holland

our final mark across the sea: the country there is

unsettled enough I hope we need not fear immediate

challenge. Then along the coastline to France; and we shall

hope they do not shoot us down without a word."

He put his tattered shirt upon a stick, in the end, to make

a ragged flag of parley; and waved it mightily against the

side of Temeraire's neck, while they came in over Dunkirk.

Beneath them in the harbor, nevertheless, a frantic alarum

set up aboard the French ships, when they saw Temeraire

coming, to show that the fame of his sinking of the Valérie

had spread this far, and many useless attempts were made,

at firing cannon at him, although he was considerably too

high aloft to be in range.

The French dragons came charging in a determined cloud:

already some of them were coughing, and they were none of

them in a mood to converse, until Temeraire roared out like

thunder in their faces, and took them all aback, then

loudly said, "Ârret! Je ne vous ai pas attaqué il faut que

vous m'écouter: nous sommes venus pour vous apporter du

médicament."

As the first handful were mulling this over, flying circles

around them, another party came flying fresh from the

covert roaring their own defiance; the two groups grew

rapidly more confused, captains shouting at one another

over their speaking-trumpets, until at last signals were

issued, and they were escorted to the ground by a wary

honor-guard, six dragons on either side and more preceding

them and behind. When they had been brought down, in a wide

and pleasant meadow, there was a good deal of shuffling and

edging back, not frightened but wary, and anxious murmurs

from the dragons as their officers descended.

Laurence unstrapped the tub, and unlatched his own

carabiners: men were already swarming up the sides of

Temeraire's harness, and there were pistols leveled at him

before he stood. "You will surrender," a young lieutenant

said, narrow-eyed and thickly accented.

"We already have," Laurence said tiredly, and held out to

him the wooden tub; the young man looked at it, perplexed,

wincing away from the stench. "They are to cure the cough,"

Laurence said, "la grippe, des dragonnes," and pointed to

one of the coughing dragons.

It was taken from him with much suspicion, but passed down,

if not as the priceless treasure it was, at least with some

degree of care. The tub vanished from his sight, at any

rate, and so beyond his concern; a great sinking weariness

was spreading through him, and he fumbled with more

awkwardness even than usual at the harness-straps, climbing

down, until he slipped and fell the last five feet to the

ground.

"Laurence," Temeraire cried urgently, leaning towards him;

another French officer sprang forward and seizing Laurence

by the arm dragged him up and put the muzzle of a pistol,

cold and gritty with powder-grains, to his neck.

"I am well," Laurence said, restraining with an effort a

cough; he did not wish to jar the pistol. "I am well,

Temeraire, you do not need to-"

He was permitted to say no more; there were many hands upon

him, and the officers gathering tight around him like a

knot; he was half-carried across the meadow towards the

tense and waiting line of French dragons, a prisoner, and

Temeraire made a low wordless cry of protest as he was

dragged away.

Chapter 17

LAURENCE SPENT THE night in a solitary uncomfortable cell,

in the bowels of the covert headquarters: clammy and hot,

without a breath of air; the narrow barred window at the

top of wall looked out on a barren parade-ground, and let

in only dust. They gave him a little thin porridge and a

little water; a little straw on the floor for a bed; but

there was none of that humane self-interest which would

have let him buy greater comfort, though he had a little

money in his pockets.

They did not rob him, but his hints were ignored: a cold

resentful suspicion in their looks, and some muttered

colloquial remarks that he thought he was meant to

understand better than his limited French would allow. He

supposed the news had spread, by now, amongst them: the

nature of the disease, the virulence; and he would have

been as little forgiving as they were. The guards were all

old aviators, former ground crewmen with wooden legs, or

missing arms: a sinecure, like the post of cook aboard a

ship; although no cook he had ever known would have refused

a neat bribe for a cup of his slush, not from the Devil

himself.

It did not touch him in a personal way, however; there was

no room for that. He only gave up the attempt, and threw

himself down on the dirty pallet with his coat wrapped

around him, and slept dreamless and long; when he roused

with the gaol-keepers' clanging delivery of the morning's

porridge, he looked down at the floor, where the window

square of sunlight lay divided neatly into its barred

sections, and shut his eyes again, without bothering to

rise and eat.

He had to be woken in the afternoon by rough shaking, and

he was brought afterwards to another room with a handful of

grim-faced senior officers arranged before him, along the

long side of a table. They interrogated him with some

harshness as to the nature of the mushrooms, the disease,

his purpose in bringing the cure, if a cure it was. He was

forced to repeat himself, and exhorted to speak more

quickly when he went slowly in his stumbling French; when

he tried for a little more speed, and misspoke, the errors

were seized upon, and shaken like a rat-killing dog might,

to squeeze all the life there was out of them.

Having been served such a black turn to begin with, they

had some right to suspect him the instrument of some

further underhanded trick, instead of one acting to prevent

it; nevertheless he found it hard to bear up; and when they

began to ask him other questions, of the position of ships

in the Channel, the strength in the Dover covert, he nearly

answered at first, only from fatigue and the habit of

replying, before he caught himself up.

"You do know we may hang you as a spy," one of the officers

said coldly, when Laurence had flatly refused to speak.

"You came in without colors, without uniform-"

"If you wish to object, because I had made my shirt a

parley-flag, it would be kind of you at least to arrange

for me to have another," Laurence said, wondering with

black humor if next they would offer to flog him. "As for

the rest, I had rather hang for a British spy, than be a

French."

He ate the cold waiting porridge when they had put him back

into his cell, mechanically, and went to look out of the

window at what nothing there was to see. He was not afraid,

only still very tired.

The interrogations went on a week, but eased gradually from

suspicion to a wary and bewildered sort of gratitude, in

step with the progress of the trial they had made, of one

of the mushrooms. Even when they had been convinced the

cure was as real as the disease, the officers did not know

what to make of Laurence's actions; they came at him with

the question in one way and then another, and when he

repeated that he had only come to bring the cure, to save

the dragons' lives, they said, "Yes, but why?"

As he could give them no better answer, they settled for

thinking him quixotic, with which he could not argue, and

his keepers grew sufficiently mellow to let him buy some

bread and the occasional stewed fowl. At the end of the

week, they put a fetter on his leg, and took him out to see

Temeraire, established in respectful state in the covert,

and under guard only by one unhappy Petit Chevalier, not

much smaller than he, whose nose dripped continuously upon

the ground. One small tub of course would not do, to cure

all those infected, and although it had evidently been

delivered successfully to the charge of several expert

Brêton mushroom-farmers, many of the sick dragons would

have to suffer for several months more before there was

enough of the cure to go around. Where the disease might

spread further, Laurence could only hope that with the cure

established in England and France, the quarrel of the two

powers must deliver it to their respective allies also, and

cupidity amongst such a widened number of keepers lead to

its eventual dispersal.

"I am very well," Temeraire said. "I like their beef here,

and they have been obliging enough to cook it for me, do

you know? The dragons here at least are perfectly willing

to try cooked food, and Validius here," he nodded to the

Petit Chevalier, who sneezed to acknowledge it, "had a

notion, that they might stew it for us with wine; I have

never understood what was so nice about it, that you were

always drinking it, but now I do; it has a very nice

flavor."

Laurence wondered how many bottles had been sacrificed, to

sate the hunger of two very large dragons; perhaps not a

very good year, he thought, and hoped they had not yet

formed the notion of drinking spirits unadulterated by

cooking. "I am glad you are so comfortably situated," he

said, and made no complaint of his own accommodations.

"Yes, and," Temeraire added, with not a little smugness,

"they would like me to give them five eggs, all to very

large dragons, and one of them a fire-breather; although I

have told them I cannot," he finished wistfully, "because

of course they would teach the eggs French, and make them

attack our friends, in England; they were surprised that I

should mind."

This was of a piece with the questions Laurence had faced:

all the worse grief, that he could so naturally be taken

for a wholehearted turncoat, judged by his own acts; it was

the greater curiosity to all when he did not offer to be a

traitor. He was glad to see Temeraire contented, and

sincerely so; but he returned to his cell lower in his

spirits, conscious that Temeraire would be as happy here,

as he was in England; happier, perhaps.

"I would be grateful for a shirt, and trousers," Laurence

said, "if my purse can stand it; I want for nothing else."

"The clothing I insist you will permit me to arrange from

my own part," De Guignes said, "and we will see you at once

in better accommodations; I am ashamed," he added, with a

cold look over his shoulder that made the gaolers edge away

from where they were listening and peeping in at the door,

"that you should have met with such indignity, monsieur."

Laurence bowed his head. "You are very kind, sir; I have no

complaint to make of my treatment, and I am very sensible

of the honor which you do in coming so far to see me," he

said quietly.

They had last met under very different circumstances: at a

banquet in China, De Guignes there at the head of

Napoleon's envoy, and Laurence with the King's. Although

their political enemy, he had been impossible to dislike;

and Laurence without knowing it had already endeared

himself to the gentleman, some time before, by taking some

pains to preserve the life of his nephew, taken prisoner in

a failed boarding attempt; so the encounter had been, so

far as personal matters went, a friendly one.

That he had come all this way was, however, a marked

kindness; Laurence knew himself a prisoner of no great

importance or rank, except as surety for Temeraire's good

behavior, and De Guignes must have been thoroughly

occupied. While his embassy had failed in its original

designs, De Guignes had succeeded in one marked particular:

seducing Lien to Napoleon's cause, and bringing her back

with him to France. He had been promoted for it, Laurence

vaguely thought, to some higher office in the foreign

service; he had heard something of it, interested more in

the name than in the rank; certainly De Guignes now showed

all the signs of prosperity and position, in his handsome

rings and in the elegance of his silk-and-linen coat.

"It is little enough amends for what you have suffered," De

Guignes said, "and I am here not only in my own person, but

to bear you all the assurances of His Majesty that you will

soon better feel the gratitude of France, which you have so

richly earned."

Laurence said nothing; he would have preferred to remain in

his cell, starved, stripped naked, and fettered with iron,

than be rewarded for his actions. But Temeraire's fate

stopped his mouth: there was one at least in France, who

far from feeling any sentiments of gratitude had all cause

in the world to hate and wish them ill: Lien herself, who

at least in rumor had Napoleon's confidence, and would