Empire of Ivory (9 page)

said. "Put them in the village square?" He amused himself

greatly with this suggestion; he was uncomfortably florid

in the face, having performed heroically his host's duties

at the second dinner. He even now was doing justice to

another glass of port, over which he coughed his laugh.

"In China, they may be seen in the streets of every town

and city," Laurence said. "They sleep in pavilions no more

separated from residences than one town-house from another,

in London."

"Heavens; I should not sleep a wink," Mrs. Brantham said,

with a shudder. "How dreadful these foreign customs."

"It seems to me a most peculiar arrangement," Seymour said,

his brows drawing together. "Look here, how do the horses

stand it? My driver in town must go a mile out of his way

when the wind is in the wrong quarter and blowing over the

covert, because the beasts get skittish."

Laurence was in honesty forced to admit they did not;

horses were not often to be seen in the Chinese cities,

except for the trained cavalry beasts. "But I assure you

the lack is not felt; aside from mule-carts, they have also

dragons employed as a sort of living stagecoach, and

citizens of higher estate are conveyed by courier, at what

you can imagine must be a much higher rate of speed.

Indeed, Bonaparte has already adopted the system, at least

within his encampments."

"Oh, Bonaparte," Seymour said. "No; thank goodness we

organize things more sensibly here. I have been meaning to

congratulate you, rather: ordinarily not a month goes by

when my tenants are not complaining of the patrols, going

overhead and frightening their cattle to pieces; leaving

their-" he waved his hand expressively in concession to the

ladies "-everywhere, but this sixmonth not a peep. I

suppose you have put in new routes, and none too soon. I

had nearly made up my mind to speak on the matter in

Parliament."

This remark, thoroughly aware as he was of the

circumstances which had reduced the frequency of the

patrols, Laurence could not make himself answer civilly; so

he did not answer at all, and instead went to fill his

glass again.

He took it away and went to stand by the window farthest

from the fire, to keep himself refreshed by the cool

draught which came in. Lady Seymour had taken a seat beside

it, for the same reason; she had put aside her wineglass

and was fanning herself. When he had stood there a moment

she made a visible effort and engaged him. "So you had to

shift from the Navy to the Aerial Corps-It must have been

very hard. I suppose you went to sea when you were older?"

"At the age of twelve, ma'am," Laurence said.

"Oh!-but then you came home again, from time to time,

surely? And twelve is not seven; no one can say there is no

difference. I am sure your mother must never have thought

of sending you from home at such an age."

Laurence hesitated, conscious that Lady Catherine and

indeed most of the other company, which had not already

dozed off, were now listening to their conversation. "I was

fortunate to secure a berth more often than not, so I was

not much at home myself," he said, as neutrally as he

could. "I am sure it must be hard, for a mother, in either

case."

"Hard! of course it is hard," Lady Catherine said,

interjecting here. "What of it? We ought to have the

courage to send our sons, if we expect them to have the

courage to go, and not this sort of half-hearted grudging

sacrifice, to send them so late they are too old to

properly take to the life."

"I suppose," Lady Seymour said, with an angry smile, "that

we might also starve our children, to accustom them to

privation, and send them to sleep in a pigsty, so they

might learn to endure filth and cold-if we cared very

little for them."

What little other conversation had gone forward, now was

extinguished quite; spots of color stood high in Lady

Catherine's cheeks, and Lord Seymour was snoring prudently

by the fire, his eyes shut; poor Lieutenant Ferris had

retreated into the opposite corner of the room and was

staring fixedly out the window into the pitch-dark grounds,

where nothing was to be seen.

Laurence, sorry to have so blundered into an existing

quarrel, by way of making peace said, "I hope you will

permit me to say, I find the Corps as an occupation has

been given a character which it does not deserve, being no

more dangerous or distasteful, in daily use, than any other

branch; I can at least say from my own experience that our

sailors face as much hard duty, and I am sure Captain

Ferris and Colonel Prayle will attest to the privations of

their own respective services." He raised his glass to

those gentlemen.

"Hear, hear," Prayle said, coming to his aid, jovially, "it

is not aviators only who have all the hard luck, but we

fellows, too, who deserve our fair share of your sympathy;

and at least you may be sure they have all the latest news

at any moment: you must know better than any of us, Captain

Laurence, what is going forward on the Continent now; is

Bonaparte setting up for invasion again, now he has packed

the Russians off home?"

"Oh, pray do not speak of that monster," Mrs. Brantham

spoke up. "I am sure I have never heard anything half so

dreadful as what he has done to the poor Queen of Prussia:

taken both her sons away to Paris!"

At this, Lady Seymour, still high-colored, burst out, "I am

sure she must be in agony. What mother's heart could bear

it! Mine would break to pieces, I know."

"I am sorry to hear it," Laurence said, to Mrs. Brantham,

into the awkward silence. "They were very brave children."

"Henry tells me you have had the honor to meet them,

Captain Laurence, and the Queen, during your service," Lady

Catherine said. "I am sure you must agree, that however

much her heart should break, she would never ask her sons

to be cowards, and hide behind her skirts."

He could say nothing, but only gave her a bow; Lady Seymour

was looking out the window and fanning herself with short

jerking strokes. The conversation limped on a very little

longer, until he felt he could in politeness excuse

himself, on the grounds of the necessity of an early

departure.

He was shown to a handsome room, with signs of having been

hastily rearranged, and someone's comb left by the

washbasin suggested it had been otherwise occupied until

perhaps that evening. Laurence shook his head at this fresh

sign of over-solicitousness, and was sorry any of the

guests should have been shifted on his account.

Lieutenant Ferris knocked timidly on his door, before a

quarter-of-an-hour had passed, and when admitted tried to

express his regrets without precisely apologizing, as he

could scarcely do. "I only wish she would not feel it so. I

did not like to go, at the time, I suppose, and she cannot

forget that I wept," he said, fidgeting the curtain

uneasily; he was looking out the window to avoid meeting

Laurence's eyes. "But that was only being afraid at leaving

home, as any child would be; I am not sorry for it now, at

all, and I would not give up the Corps for anything."

He soon made his good-nights and escaped again, leaving

Laurence to the rueful consideration that the cold and open

hostility of his father might yet be preferable to a

welcome so anxious and smothering.

One of the footmen tapped at the door to valet Laurence,

directly Ferris had gone: but he had nothing to do;

Laurence had grown so used to doing for himself, that his

coat was already off, and his boots in the corner, although

he was glad enough to send those for blacking.

He had been abed scarcely a quarter-of-an-hour before he

was roused again, by a great clamor of barking from the

kennels and the horses shrilling madly. He went to the

window: lights were coming on in the distant stables, and

he heard a thin faint whistling somewhere aloft, carrying

clear from a distance. "Bring my boots at once, if you

please; and tell the household to remain within doors,"

Laurence told the footman, who came hurrying at his ring.

He went down in some disarray, still tying his neckcloth,

the flare in his hand. "Clear away, there," he called

strongly, some number of the servants gathered in the open

court before the house. "Clear away: the dragons will need

room to land."

This intelligence left the courtyard empty. Ferris was

already hurrying out, with his own signal-flare and a

candle; he knelt down to set off the blue light, which went

hissing up into the air and burst high. The night was

clear, and the moon only a thin slice; almost at once the

whistling came again, louder: Gherni's high ringing voice,

and she came down to them in a rustle of wings.

"Henry, is that your dragon? Where do you all sit?" said

Captain Ferris, coming down the stairs cautiously. Gherni,

whose head did not come up to the second-story windows,

indeed would have been hard-pressed to carry more than four

or five men. While no dragon could precisely be called

charming, her blue-and-white china complexion was elegant,

and the dark softened the edges of her claws and teeth into

a less threatening shape. Laurence was heartened that some

other few of the party, still dressed more or less, had

gathered on the stoop to see her.

She cocked her head at the question and said something

inquiringly in the dragon-tongue, quite incomprehensible to

them all, then sat up on her hind legs to call out a

piercing answer to some cry which only she had heard.

Temeraire's more resonant voice became audible to them all,

answering, and he came down into the wide lawn behind her:

the lamps gleaming on his obsidian-glossy scales in their

thousands, and his shivering wings kicking up a spray of

dust and small pebbles, which rattled against the walls

like small-shot. He curved down his head from its great

serpentine height, well clear of the roof of the house.

"Hurry, Laurence, pray," he said. "A courier came and

dropped a message to tell us there is a Fleur-de-Nuit

bothering the ships off Boulogne. I have sent Arkady and

the others to chase him away, but I do not trust them to

mind without me there."

"No indeed," Laurence said, and turned only to shake

Captain Ferris's hand; but there was no sign of him, or of

any living soul but Ferris and Gherni: the doors had been

shut up tight, and the windows all were close-shuttered

before they lifted away.

"Well, we are in for it, make no mistake," Jane said,

having taken his report in Temeraire's clearing: the first

skirmish off Weymouth and the nuisance of chasing away the

Fleur-de-Nuit, and besides those another alarm which had

roused them, after a few more hours of snatched sleep; and

quite unnecessarily, for they arrived only in time, at the

edge of dawn, to catch sight of a single French courier

vanishing off over the horizon, chased by the orange gouts

of cannon-fire from the fearsome shore battery which had

lately been established at Plymouth.

"These were none of them real attacks," Laurence said.

"Even that skirmish, though they provoked it. If they had

worsted us, they could not have stayed to take any

advantage of it, not such small dragons; not if they wished

to get themselves home again before they were forced to

collapse on shore."

He had given his men leave to snatch some sleep on the way

back, and his own eyes had closed once or twice during the

flight, but that was nothing to seeing Temeraire almost

grey with fatigue, his wings tucked limply against his

back.

"No; they are probing our defenses, and more aggressively

than I had looked for," Jane said. "I am afraid they have

grown suspicious. They chased you into Scotland without

hide nor wing of another dragon to be seen: the French are

not fools to overlook something like that, however badly it

ended for them. If any one of those beasts gets into the

countryside and flies over the quarantine-coverts, the game

will be up: they will know they have free rein."

"How have you kept them from growing suspicious before?"

Laurence said. "Surely they must have noted the absence of

our patrols."

"We have managed to disguise the situation, so far, by

sending out the sick for short patrols, on clear days when

they can be seen for a good distance," Jane said. "A good

many of them can still fly, and even fight for a while,

although none of them can stand up to a long journey: they

tire too easily, and they feel the cold more than they

should; they complain of their bones aching, and the winter

has only made matters worse."

"Oh! If they are laying upon the ground, I am not surprised

they do not feel well," Temeraire said, rousing, and