Empire of Ivory (43 page)

wreckage of the battle scattered all around it, and picked

her way over the corpses sprawled upon the curving steps.

Laurence said, "Very well," and turning pulled himself

aboard; there was no more time. Temeraire reared up onto

his haunches, and roaring sprang aloft: the dragons

scattered in alarm before the divine wind, the nearest

crying out shrilly in pain as they fell away, and Lily and

Dulcia fell in with him as together they bent away towards

the Allegiance, a broad spread of sail white against the

ocean, already carrying out of the harbor into the

Atlantic.

In the courtyard, the dragons began to land in the ruins to

pillage among the cattle running free; Mrs. Erasmus was

standing straight-backed at the top of the steps, the

little girl clasped in her arms, their faces turned up, and

Kefentse was arrowing already across the water towards

them, calling loud in a joyful voice.

Chapter 13

PRAY AM I disturbing you?" Riley said awkwardly; he could

not knock, because there was no door. There were a great

many women aboard, refugee, to the service of whose meager

comfort nearly all the cabins and bulkheads had gone, and a

little ragged sailcloth was all which presently divided

Laurence's berth from Chenery's, on one side, and from

Berkley's on the other. "May I ask you to take a turn with

me, on the dragondeck?"

They had already spoken, of course, from necessity, in

those first distracted hours, all the officers united in

the effort to make some sense of seven dragons, wailing

children, wounded men, several hundred inconvenient

passengers, and all the confusion which might be expected

on a ship three times the size of a first-rate, launched

with no preparation directly into a brutal headwind, with a

lee-shore ready to receive her at any time, and her deck

still littered with the large metal-shod stones which had

served the enemy for missiles.

In the melee Laurence had nevertheless seen Riley looking

anxiously over the newly arrived company; an anxiety

visibly relieved by the sight of Harcourt calling orders to

her crew. But another few chances of observation altered

his looks of relief to puzzlement, and then to suspicion.

Riley had at last come up to the dragondeck, on the excuse

of requesting the dragons to shift their places to bring

the ship a little more by the stern, and so obtained a

better view of Catherine's condition. It was just as well

that Laurence had understood what he meant to achieve, for

the request as Riley conveyed it to them became a confused

scheme of putting Maximus at the head of the deck, with

Lily apparently on his back, and Temeraire stretched along

the port rail, which would likely have ended with half the

dragons in the water, and the ship turning in stately

circles.

"Very willing," Laurence now pronounced himself, and they

went above in silence: necessary silence, to some extent,

as Laurence had to follow Riley single-file through the

narrow lanes that were all that was left of navigable space

inside, and up the ladders. The crammed-in passengers

having been given the liberty of the quarterdeck, for light

and exercise, the dragondeck afforded more privacy than was

to be had anywhere else on the ship; so long as one did not

mind an interested audience of dragons.

These were in any case for the moment mostly inanimate;

Temeraire and Lily and Dulcia worn-out, by their long and

desperate flight as well as the excitement at its end, and

Maximus making the forestay hum with the resonance of his

deep, sonorous snores. It was just as well they were tired

enough to sleep without eating, as there was little to be

had, nor would be again until the ship could put in at some

port for resupply; when they woke they would have to fish

for their supper.

"I am afraid," Riley said diffidently, breaking their

silence as they walked along the railing, "that we may have

to water at Benguela; I regret it very much, if it should

give you any pain. I am considering whether we ought not to

try for St. Helena instead."

St. Helena was not a slave port, and out of their way.

Laurence was deeply sensible of the degree of apology

embodied in this offer, and immediately said, "I do not

think it can be recommended. We could easily find ourselves

blown to Rio on the easterlies, and even though both the

cure and word of the loss of the Cape must precede us home,

our formation must still be needed urgently back in

England."

Riley as gratefully received this gesture in return, and

they walked several passes up and down the deck much more

comfortably together. "Of course we cannot lose a moment,"

Riley said, "and for my own part I have reason enough to

wish us home again, as quickly as we might go, or thought I

did, until I realized she meant to be obstinate; but,

Laurence, I beg you will forgive me for speaking freely: I

would be grateful for a headwind all the way, if it meant

we should not arrive before she has married me."

The other aviators had already begun referring, in

uncharitable terms, to what they viewed as Riley's quixotic

behavior, Chenery going so far as to say, "If he will not

leave off harassing poor Harcourt, one will have to do

something; but how is he to be worked on?"

Laurence had rather more sympathy for Riley's plight; he

was a little shocked by Catherine's refusal to marry rather

than burn, when the plain choice was put before her, and he

was forcibly reminded to regret Reverend Erasmus, for the

lack of what he was sure would have been that gentleman's

warm and forceful counsel in favor of the marriage. Mr.

Britten, Riley's official chaplain, assigned by the

Admiralty, could not have brought a moral argument to bear

on anyone, even if he were made sober long enough to do so.

"But at least he is ordained," Riley said, "so there would

be no difficulty about the thing whatsoever; everything

would be quite legal. But she will not hear of it. And she

cannot say, in fairness," he added half-defiantly, "that it

is because I am some sort of scoundrel, because I did not

try to speak before; it was not as though-I was not the one

who-" then cutting himself off hastily, instead ended more

plaintively by saying, "and, I did not know how to begin.

Laurence, has she no family, who might prevail on her?"

"No; quite alone in the world," Laurence said. "And, Tom,

you must know that she cannot leave the service: Lily

cannot be spared."

"Well," Riley said reluctantly, "if no one else can be

found to take the beast on," a notion of which Laurence did

not bother to try and disabuse him, "but it does not

matter: I am not such an outrageous scrub as to abandon

her. And the governor was kind enough to tell me that Mrs.

Grey is perfectly willing to receive her: generous beyond

what anyone might expect, and it would surely make

everything easy for her in England; they have a large

acquaintance, in the best circles; but of course not until

we are married, and she will not listen to reason."

"Perhaps she fears the disapproval of your family,"

Laurence said, more from a motive of consolation than

conviction; he was sure Catherine had not given a thought

to the feelings of Riley's family, nor would have, if she

had determined on the marriage.

"I have already promised her that they would do all that is

proper, and so they would," Riley said. "I do not mean to

say it is the sort of match they would have looked out for

me; but I have my capital, and can marry to please myself

without any accusation of imprudence, at least. I dare say

that my father at least will not care two pins, if only it

is a boy; my brother's wife has not managed anything but

girls, the last four years ago, and everything entailed,"

he finished, very nearly flinging up his hands.

"But it is all nonsense, Laurence," Catherine said, equally

exasperated, when he approached her. "He expects me to

resign the service."

"I believe," Laurence said, "that I have conveyed to him

the impossibility of such a thing, and he is reconciled to

the necessity, if not pleased by it; and you must see," he

added, "the very material importance of the circumstance of

the entailment."

"I do not see, at all," she said. "It is something to do

with his father's estate? What has it to do with me, or the

child? He has an older brother, has he not, with children?"

Laurence, who had not so much been instructed in the legal

structures of inheritance and entailment as absorbed them

through the skin, stared; and then he hastily made her

understand that the estate would descend in the male line,

and her child, if a boy, stood to inherit after his uncle.

"If you refuse, you deny him his patrimony," Laurence said,

"which I believe likely to be substantial, and entailed in

default on a distant relation who would care nothing for

the interest of Riley's nieces."

"It is a stupid way of going on," she said, "but I do see;

and I suppose it would be hard luck on the poor creature,

if he grew up knowing what might have been. But all I am

hoping for is not a boy at all, but a girl; and then what

use is she to him, or I?" She sighed, and rubbed the back

of her hand across her brow, and finally said, "Oh, bother;

I suppose he can always divorce me. Very well: but if it is

a girl, she will be a Harcourt," she added with decision.

The marriage was briefly postponed for want of anything

suitable to make a wedding-feast, until they had managed

some resupply. Already extremity had driven them to shore

on several occasions: there was no safe harbor on their

charts, along the southern coastline, where the Allegiance

might have safely put in; so instead the empty water-casks

were roped together and draped upon the dragons, who daily

flew in the twenty miles of open water which Riley's

caution left between them and the coast, and tried to find

some nameless river emptying into the sea.

Drawing near Benguela, they passed a pair of tattered ships

on the fifteenth of June, with blackened sides and

makeshift slovenly sails a pirate would have been ashamed

to rig, which they took for fellow refugees from the Cape,

choosing to make east for St. Helena. The Allegiance did

not offer to heave-to; they had no water or food to spare

of their own, and in any case the smaller ships ran away

from them, likely fearing to be pressed either for supplies

or men, not without cause. "I would give a good deal for

ten able seamen," Riley said soberly, watching them go

hull-up over the horizon; he did not speak of what he would

give for a proper dole of clean water. The dragons were

already licking the sails in the morning, for the dew, all

the company having been put on half-rations.

They saw the smoke first, still rising, from a long way

off: a steady ongoing smoulder of damp wood piled into

massive bonfires, which as they drew nearer the harbor

resolved themselves into the overturned hulks of ships,

which had been dragged from the ocean onto the beach.

Little more than the stout keels and futtocks remained,

like the rib cages of beached leviathans who had flung

themselves onto the sands to die. The fortifications of the

Dutch factory had been reduced to rubble.

There was no sign of life. With all the gunports open, and

the dragons roused and alive to the least warning of

danger, the ship's boats went to the shore full of empty

water-casks. They came back again, pulling more quickly

despite their heavier load; in Riley's cabin, Lieutenant

Wells reported uneasily. "More than a week, sir, I should

say," he said. "There was food rotting, in some of the

houses, and all that is left of the fort is perfectly cold.

We found a large grave dug in the field behind the port;

there must have been at least a hundred dead."

"It cannot have been the same band who came on us in

Capetown," Riley said, when he had done. "It cannot; could

dragons have flown here, so quickly?"

"Fourteen hundred miles, in less than a week's time? Not if

they meant to fight at the end of it, and very likely not

at all," Catherine said, measuring upon the map with her

fingers; she had the chair, as Riley had managed to carry

the point of giving her the large stern-cabin for the

journey home. "They needn't have, at any rate; there were

dragons enough at the falls to make another raiding party

of the same size, or another ten, for that matter."

"Well, and I am sorry to sound like a damned ill-wishing

crow," Chenery said, "but I don't see a blessed reason why

they shouldn't have gone for Louanda, while they were at

it."

Another day's sailing brought them in range of the second

port; Dulcia and Nitidus set off, beating urgently before