Empire of Ivory (46 page)

the sun managed still to look faintly bluish under the

eyes, and pallid. "Are you still being taken ill?"

"Not very often," Catherine said, without perfect candor;

Laurence-indeed, all the ship's company-had been witness to

her regular visits to the rail, aboard ship. "And I am sure

that I will be better now we are not at sea."

Jane shook her head disapprovingly. "At seven months I was

as well as ever I have been in my life. You have not put on

nearly enough weight. It is an engagement like any other,

Harcourt, and we must be sure you are up to the mark."

"Tom wishes me to see a physician, in London," Catherine

said.

"Nonsense," Jane said. "A sensible midwife is what you

need; I think my own is still in harness, here in Dover. I

will find her direction for you. I was damned glad of her,

I will tell you. Twenty-nine hours' labor," she added, with

the same dreadful reminiscent satisfaction as a veteran of

the wars.

"Oh," Catherine said.

"Tell me, do you find-" Jane began, and shortly Laurence

sprang up, and went to interest himself in the map of the

Channel which was laid out on Jane's desk, striving rather

desperately not to hear the rest of their conversation.

The map was not as distressing in the visceral sense,

although this was perhaps rather a sign of improper

sensibility on his part, as the circumstances it depicted

were as unfortunate as could be imagined. All the French

coastline of the Channel was now littered with markers,

blue representing companies of men, white for the

individual dragons: clustered around Brest there were fifty

thousand men at least, and another fifty at Cherbourg; at

Calais a force half that number again; and scattered among

these positions some two hundred dragons.

"Are these figures certain?" Laurence asked, when they had

finished their exchange, and joined him at the table.

"No, more's the pity," Jane said. "He has more; dragons, at

any rate. Those are only the official estimates. Powys

insists he cannot be feeding so many beasts, so close

together, when we have the ports blockaded; but I know they

are there, damn them. I get too many reports from the

scouts, more dragons than they ought to be seeing at a

time; and the Navy tell me they cannot get a smell of fish

but they catch it themselves, the price of meat has gone so

dear across the way. Our own fishermen are rowing over to

sell their catches.

"But let us be grateful," she added. "If the situation were

not so damned dire, I am sure they would keep you in

Whitehall a month, answering questions about this business

in Africa; as it is, I will be able to extract you without

much more than a day or two of agony."

Laurence lingered, when Catherine had left; Jane filled his

glass again. "And you would do as well with a month at the

seashore yourself, to look at you," she said. "You have had

rather a dreadful time of it, I find, Laurence. Will you

stay to dinner?"

"I beg your pardon," he said. "Temeraire wishes to go up to

London while it is still light out." He thought perhaps he

ought to excuse himself; he rather felt that he wished to

talk to her, more than knew what he wanted to say, and he

could not be standing there stupidly.

She rescued him, though, saying, "I am very grateful to

you, by the bye, for the compliment to Emily. I have sent

on to Powys at Aerial Command to confirm her and Dyer in

rank as ensign, just so there should be nothing havey-cavey

about the business; but there shan't be any trouble about

that. I don't suppose you have any likely boys in mind for

their places?"

"I do," he said, steeling himself, "if you please: the ones

I brought from Africa."

Demane had passed the weeks after their escape from

Capetown deep in delirium, with his side, where the bayonet

had gone in, swelled out beneath the small scabbed cut as

if an inflated bladder had sat beneath the skin; and Sipho,

too distressed even to speak, refusing to leave the sickbed

except to creep away and fetch water or gruel, which he

patiently fed his brother spoon by spoon. The southern

coast had slipped rapidly away to starboard, taking with it

any hope of kin to whom they might have been returned, long

before the ship's surgeon had informed Laurence that the

boy would make a recovery. "It is to your credit, sir,"

Laurence had said, even while wondering whatever was to be

done with the boys now; by then the Allegiance had seen

Benguela, and there could be no question of turning back.

"It is no such thing," Mr. Raclef had retorted, "a wound in

the vitals of this sort is invariably fatal, or ought to

be; there was nothing to be done but make him comfortable,"

and he went away again muttering, vaguely offended at

having so obvious a diagnosis defied.

The patient persisted in his defiance, making good proofs

of the resilience of youth, and very shortly had reacquired

the two stone of weight lost in his illness, and another

for good measure. Demane was dismissed the sick-bay before

they had crossed the equator, and the two were installed in

the passenger quarters together, in a tiny curtained-off

compartment scarcely large enough to sling their one small

hammock: the older boy's wariness would not permit them to

sleep at the same time, and he insisted alternating

watches.

He was not without justification nervous of the general

crowd of refugees from the Cape, who regarded the boys with

simmering anger as representatives of the "kaffirs" they

blamed for the destruction of their homes. It was useless

to try and explain to the settlers that Demane and Sipho

were of a wholly different nation than the one which had

attacked them, and there was great indignation that the

boys should be housed among them, particularly from the

elderly shopkeeper and the farmhand whose respective nooks

had each been shortened by the width of seven inches for

their sake.

A few quiet belowdecks scuffles with the settler boys

predictably followed. These ceased quickly, it becoming

rapidly evident that a boy, even lately ill, who had been

for several years entirely dependent for his survival upon

his own hunting skills, and by necessity forced to contend

against lions and hyenas for his supper, was not an

advisable opponent for boys whose experience ended at

schoolyard squabbling. They resorted instead to the petty

torments of smaller children, covert pinching and prodding,

small malicious traps of slush or filth left just beside

the hammock, and the ingenious use of weevils. The third

time Laurence found the boys sleeping on the dragondeck,

tucked up against Temeraire's side, he did not send them

back to their small compartment below.

Temeraire, being nearly their solitary point of familiarity

and the only one left among the company who had any grasp

of their language whatsoever, quickly lost whatever

lingering horrors he had possessed for them; the more so,

as they were sure, in his company, to avoid their

tormentors. The boys were soon as apt to be clambering over

his back, in their games, as any of the younger officers,

and through his tutelage acquiring a reasonable command of

English, so that a little while after they had left Cape

Coast, Demane might come to Laurence and ask, in a steady

voice betrayed only by his hand clutching tightly at the

railing, "Are we your slaves now?"

Laurence stared, shocked, and the boy added, "I will not

let you sell Sipho away from me," defiantly, but with a

note of such desperation as showed his understanding that

he had not much power, to defend himself or his brother

from such a fate.

"No," Laurence said, at once; it was a dreadful blow, to

find himself regarded as a kidnapper. "Certainly not; you

are-" but he was here stopped by the uncomfortable lack of

any position to name, and forced to conclude, lamely, "you

are by no means slaves. You have my word you shall not be

parted," he added; Demane did not look much comforted.

"Of course you are not slaves," Temeraire said, in

dismissive tones, to rather better effect, "you are of my

crew," an assumption springing from his native

possessiveness, which serenely made them his own in spite

of all the obvious impracticality of such an arrangement,

and forced Laurence to recognize he could see no other

solution, which should give them the respectability they

might have earned, among their own tribe, for the services

which they had performed.

No one could have called them gentleman-like, in birth or

in education, and Laurence was dismally aware that while

Sipho was a biddable, good-natured child, Demane was too

independent, and more likely to be obstinate as a pig, if

not belligerent, towards anyone wishing to effect an

alteration in his manners. But difficulty alone could not

be permitted to stand in the way: he had taken them from

home, from all the relations which they might have, and

robbed them of all standing in the world. If, at the end,

there had been no practical way to restore them, he could

not escape responsibility for the situation having arisen;

he had willfully contributed to it, to the material benefit

of the Corps and his mission.

"Captains can choose whom they like; that has always been

the way of it," Jane said, "but I will not say there shan't

be a noise about it: you may be sure that as soon as the

promotions are posted in the Gazette, I will be hearing

from a dozen families. At present we have more likely boys

trained up than places for them, and you have got yourself

the reputation of a proper schoolmaster, even if they did

not like to see their sprouts on a heavy-weight: it is a

pretty sure road to making lieutenant, if they do not cut

straps before then."

"I must surely give the greater weight," he said, "to those

who have given so much in our service; and Temeraire

already counts them as his own crew."

"Yes; but the carpers will say you ought to take them as

personal servants, or at best ground crew," she said. "But

damn them all; you shall have the boys, and if anyone

complains of their birth, you may always declare them

princes in their native country, without any fear of being

proven false. Anyway," she added, "I will put them on the

books, quietly, and we will hope they slip past. Will you

let me give you a third? Temeraire's complement allows for

it."

He assented, of course; and she nodded. "Good: I will send

you Admiral Gordon's youngest grandson, and that will make

him your best advocate, instead of your loudest critic: no

one has as much time for writing letters and making noise

as a retired admiral, I assure you."

Sipho was very willing to be pleased, when informed of

their elevation; Demane said a little suspiciously, "We

take messages? And ride the dragon?"

"And other errands," Laurence said, and was then puzzled

how to explain errands, until Temeraire said, "Those are

small boring things, which no one very much likes to do,"

which did not reduce the suspicion.

"When will I have time to hunt?" the boy demanded.

"I do not suppose you will," Laurence said, taken aback,

and only after a little more exchange gathered the boy did

not realize that they would be fed and clothed: at

Laurence's expense, of course, as they had no family

sponsoring them; cadets drew no pay. "You cannot think we

would let you starve; what have you been eating so far?"

"Rats," Demane said succinctly, explaining belatedly to

Laurence's satisfaction the unusual lack of those delights

more civilly referred to as millers, which had been much

lamented among the midshipmen whose traditional prey they

were, "but now we are on land again, I took two of those

small things last night," and gestured to make long ears.

"Not from the grounds of Dover Castle?" Laurence said;

certainly there would not have been many of them nearer-by,

with the smell of so many dragons about. "You must not,

again; you will be taken up for poaching."

He was not perfectly sure Demane was convinced, but at last

Laurence declared a private victory and detailed the two of

them to Roland and Dyer's supervision, to be led through

their tasks a while.

It was a short flight only to the quarantine-grounds, and

the pavilion established to good effect in a sheltered

valley, sacrificing prospect for a windbreak. It was not

empty: two rather thin and exhausted Yellow Reapers were

sleeping inside, still coughing occasionally, and a limp

little Greyling: not Volly, but Celoxia, and her captain

Meeks. "On the Gibraltar route, I think," Meeks said, to

their inquiry, "if he has not been broken-down again,"

rather bitterly. "I don't mean to carp at you, Laurence;