Crucible of Gold (43 page)

“There!” Temeraire said, triumphantly, and then cried out himself, shuddering, and nearly dropped into the sea: there was a dreadful burning pain just beneath his wing-joint, so that to stay aloft was agony with each stroke; he cried out gasping again, and abruptly Kulingile was there beside him, to take his weight, and saw him down to the deck of the
Maréchal
beside Maximus.

“But Laurence,” Temeraire said, gulping a breath, “Laurence—”

“
He
has not got himself shot,” said Gaiters, Maximus’s surgeon, who was laboring away urgently and with his arms bloodied to the shoulder, “so just you hold still there, until one of us can come and look at you; for God’s sake,” he roared up at the young ensign who was temporarily his assistant, and attempting to assist him in stanching the wounds, “pack that sailcloth in harder; stand on it, if you have to.”

“I am not going to sit on deck while we are still fighting,” Temeraire protested, and craned his head around to look at the injury—perhaps it was not quite so severe as all that, and he might—“Ow!” He stopped: even turning so far was dreadfully unpleasant; he could feel the hooks of the ball tearing at his flesh. “Maximus, are you very badly hurt?”

“I am sure I will be perfectly stout when they have patched me together,” Maximus said, with a grunt. “I should not have roared at all, only it took me by surprise.”

“You will be stone-dead in an hour if we do not stop this blood, so you will shut your eyes and keep quiet, damn you,” Gaiters said furiously. “Where is that fire-breather? Why don’t she make herself useful: I will need this cauterized, as soon as I have dug out this ball—”

“Ough,” Maximus said—not really a complaint, Temeraire thought loyally; it was only a startled noise—as Gaiters very nearly put his head into Maximus’s side, and came out dragging the great iron cannonball with him in both hands, hissing himself in pain: it was still hot, and he dropped it on the deck and rolled it away over the side with his foot.

Iskierka landed, in answer to their signal, and heated the iron bar which Gaiters held out to her with tongs; Maximus reared up his head and yelled—not even the most loyal interpretation could call it anything else, sadly—as it was clapped to the wound, sewn up already with catgut.

But even as the wound was seared, the ship shuddered beneath them with the rolling thunder of the guns, and Temeraire looked
anxiously out towards the
Polonaise
, where Laurence was still fighting. Although Lieutenant Creed and his party had so far also managed to keep the French penned belowdecks, there were still nearly six hundred men aboard, and those had gone to the gundeck, instead, and now were taking aim at the other transport’s deck to save her from their own fate.

But Granby’s men and Roland’s had done their work: the chainmail netting hung over the sides of the ship, and if it did not stop the balls it dragged them down so they went splashing one and all into the sea; only a couple from the end reached the other ship, and splintered away a portion of her dragondeck.

Berkley stood up from Maximus’s head, and climbing down heavily to the deck banged his big gauntleted fist down on the planking beside the fore ladderway. “Is your captain down there? We have the deck; you can see your fellows are all ahoo; now say you strike, or I will let you up, and the dragons can start knocking you overboard like ninepins: but I will damned well have an end of it.”

“I
DO NOT WISH IN THE LEAST
to diminish your very just sense of accomplishment, Captain,” Hammond said to Laurence, looking out from the promontory at the two transports, flying British colors and supporting at present three and four dragons respectively: the rest being engaged in shepherding anxiously the boats which were ferrying over their recovered kindred, or bringing themselves the sacks of grain and dried salt beef which should sustain them over the six-week journey to the coast of Africa: in a species of justice, perhaps, they would disembark at the ruins of Lunda, that same port which had seen so many of them first pressed into bondage.

“Not in the least,” Hammond repeated, in dismal tones. The
Potentate
could also be glimpsed, at a fair distance but coming in: she would be at anchor before sunset, Laurence judged, and they would begin their own process of provisioning her for the journey back to Portsmouth: one which Hammond certainly could not anticipate with any sense of pleasure.

No good would come him from the report which the Portuguese ambassador should make of him: at best, Hammond would figure as an ineffectual nonentity; at worst, as deliberately conniving at Laurence’s insubordinate maneuvering, and the latter was more likely: to do him credit, with the transports acquired, Hammond had devoted his energies to winning over sufficient support at the Portuguese court for the negotiations to see them grudgingly accepted.

And Hammond could not rely on any leavening of success to gloss his supposed misdeeds. The Admiralty would make hay of the cutting-out of the transports, but the Foreign Office would not care much for that in the face of the devastating news regarding the Inca, and to hear that yet another great power had aligned itself, willingly, with Bonaparte: to hear that Britain stood now alone.

“And whatever am I to do about the beast? It is very well and good to say she is not mine; if she persists in following me, she may as well be mine, and I cannot find that any of the dragons have the least sympathy, or inclination to chase her away,” he added, in some exasperation. Indeed Churki’s attachment showed every sign of tenacity, and Hammond’s attempts to dismiss her were met with the amusement of a parent retrieving a wayward child.

“She can’t very well follow you over-sea,” Chenery said.

“Can she not?” Hammond said bitterly. “I have already overheard her discussing arrangements with Temeraire: she means to provide so many bullocks, in exchange for her passage; and how is she to be got off the ship once she has landed on it?”

“But Laurence,” Temeraire said, when Laurence had at Hammond’s plea spoken with him, “I cannot see any reason why Churki should not come back to England with us: you have said very often that the Admiralty is always quite desperate for new dragons who will fight. She was an officer in the Inca army, you know: no-one could argue she does not know how to go about it, and she has promised she will, if she is given her own crew.”

“My dear, she is a subject of an empire which must now be inimical to our own,” Laurence said. “If she aids us, she is a traitor; if she does not, she is our enemy.”

“It does not seem to me treasonous,” Temeraire protested. “After all, it is not as though she were going to fight Incan dragons, her friends perhaps; she will be fighting the French, and she says the Sapa Inca marrying does not make Napoleon
her
Emperor. Anyway,” he added, “I cannot see myself being so dreadfully rude as to
shove her off: she is not so big that she will make things uncomfortable, and she is so much older than any of us except Messoria.”

“So I am afraid I can offer you not much hope of escape,” Laurence told Hammond on shore, supervising the packing of his sea-chest: Gerry was not particularly handy, and Laurence was having to refold every item before it entered the flimsy wooden crate which should have to serve him for the purpose, “unless you should persuade some other person to inveigle her away from you; I may assure you that given your blessing there are several officers among our company who would gladly take your place in her affections.”

“I give it with all my heart,” Hammond said, “and have not the least hope of its answering. If she meant to be fickle, she might have remained in her own country; and I dare say she will be perfectly ready, in the Incan style, to accept any number of suitors, and consider them all her own without letting
me
off: I will count myself fortunate if I can only persuade her to remain in covert, instead of romping down the Strand behind me, as I suppose she would be glad to do. Unless you could contrive to poison her?” he inquired in a bitter spirit of Gong Su, who had ducked into the tent.

“Did you require me about the provisions?” Laurence asked.

“No, Captain,” Gong Su said, “and Mr. Hammond, I cannot satisfy you; but if I may propose an alternative, you would find Churki no source of difficulty if she should accompany you to China.”

“Ha; I shall not be posted back to China,” Hammond said. “I will be pushed off into the countryside with vague promises of some other occasions in future, which will never come—unless Dom da Câmara decides to try and induce their Lordships to bring me under charges, which I cannot discount—”

“Pardon me,” Gong Su said, gently breaking into this morose ramble, which trailed away low but showed no sign of immediately concluding, “but you need not return to England first: the ship may carry you to China, instead.”

“What?” Hammond said, staring.

“And you, of course, Captain,” Gong Su said, bowing, “and Lung Tien Xiang; that is what I wish to humbly suggest.”

Laurence was rather taken aback himself at what could only be called the effrontery of the suggestion they might virtually commandeer the
Potentate
, particularly when that suggestion came from a source so ordinarily self-effacing: although that Gong Su might desire to return to his own country was no surprise if one considered it; Laurence made it five years since they had left China. “We are very likely to stop a merchantman on its way to Canton, at Madeira if not before,” Laurence said, “and I would of course book your passage if you wished—” But Gong Su was shaking his head.

“My own insignificant presence cannot make a difference in these matters,” Gong Su said. “But I am of the opinion that my master would, when the fullness of events in this distant part of the world have been laid before him, welcome the chance to consult with you more intimately: and that noble lord, your most honored elder brother and the heir of the dread lord who commands the Celestial Throne, has lately granted me the honor to invite you to visit him, if circumstances should seem to make that desirable: such is his foresight and wisdom.”

He concluded this by bringing out a packet of oilcloth, which he unrolled to reveal a narrow and folded letter—the same letter, Laurence realized after a moment, which Lung Shen Li had brought him in Australia, before their departure, and which Laurence had assumed a message from his family: sealed magnificently with red and enclosed in a wrapper labeled all over with Chinese characters. Gong Su placed it across both hands and presented it to Laurence.

“My elder—my what?” Laurence said, baffled, and then said, “Do you mean Prince Mianning? Your
master
? What—” He stopped, and pressed his lips shut against betraying himself into an undignified yammer: having been under the impression, until the present moment, that Gong Su had been his cook, he could only
regard with outrage both the shockingly brazen mode and the act itself, the self-acknowledgment of a—

“He is
not
a spy,” Hammond hissed at him urgently, having dragged Laurence nearly bodily to the far corner of the tent, “not a spy, at all, Captain; you must not consider him so. He is—” Hammond groped for some excuse. “He has been delegated to your service—”

“Delegated to my service?” Laurence glared at Hammond. “Mr. Hammond, if you will instruct me what else, but a spy, I am to consider a man who has assuredly reported every minute detail of my affairs—he was a guest in my father’s house!—and those of the service to a foreign power—”

“To your relations, who surely had some right to an interest,” Hammond said, as brazen as Gong Su himself, but hastily altered his course, seeing that Laurence was by no means to be persuaded along these lines, “—to his own government, to whom he surely offers his first allegiance; and in any case,” he dashed on, “in any case, you must see the utmost significance—if Prince Mianning invites us to China officially—”

“Prince Mianning has issued no invitation but one hypothetical,” Laurence said, “and left the power of making it in the hands of this—”

“—servant of the throne,” Hammond said loudly, overriding, “and plainly one of trusted probity and judgment to have been given such license, for, Captain, there can only be one purpose in asking us to make such a journey: they wish to discuss an alliance.”

“How you should arrive at a conclusion so wholly unsupported by any past evidence offered by their behavior—” Laurence began.

“I have been laboring these last five years myself, Captain,” Hammond said, “and not, I trust, to no purpose: China may not have opened her ports to us, but there has certainly been a softening of—”

“From a softening to alliance?” Laurence said.

“If I may,” Gong Su said, apologetically: their voices had risen
past even a fiction of private conversation, though Laurence was not much inclined to forgive the reminder that virtually all his conversation, save those conducted under rare circumstances of real privacy, had been exposed to an interest beyond ordinary gossiping curiosity. “I do not presume to speculate as to the motives of my lord, or as to the purpose of his invitation! But I have been impelled to speak as I have by those late events, which one must fear as altering for evil the very balance and the order of the world: and it is with that consideration that I do urge you to hasten without delay to answer the invitation of the crown prince, as is your filial duty.”