League of Dragons (5 page)

Two women inside were huddled in terror half-fainting against the cushions: a beautiful young lady in a gown cut too low for respectability, and her maid; they clung to each other and screamed when the door was opened. “Good God,” Dyhern said.

“The Emperor,” Laurence asked them sharply in French. “Where is he?”

The women stared at him; the lady said, in a trembling voice, “He is with Oudinot—with Oudinot!” and hid her face against the maid's shoulder. Laurence stepped back, dismayed, and looked back at the wagon: Temeraire reached for the cover with his talons, seized, tore.

The sun blazed on gold: gold plate and paintings in gilt frames; silver ornaments, brass-banded chests and traveling boxes. They threw back the covers: more gold and silver and copper, sheaves of paper money. They had taken only Napoleon's baggage: the Emperor was safely away.

“I
T DOES NOT SEEM
reasonable,” Temeraire said disconsolately, “that when I should have liked nothing more than to have a great fortune, none was to be had; and now here it is, just when I should have preferred to catch Napoleon. Not,” he added, hurriedly, so as not to tempt fate, “that I mean to complain, precisely; I do not at all
mind
the treasure. But Laurence, it is beyond everything that he should have slipped past us: he has quite certainly got away?”

“Yes,” Hammond answered for Laurence, who was yet bent over the letters which Placet had brought them all from Riga. “Our latest intelligence allows no other possibility. He was seen in Paris three days ago, with the Empress: he must have gone by courier-beast the instant his men had finished crossing. They say he has already ordered another conscription.”

Temeraire sighed and put his head down.

The treasure remained largely in its wagon, which was convenient for carrying. Laurence had insisted on returning those pieces which could be easily identified, such as several particularly fine paintings stolen from the Tsar's palace, but there were not so many of those; nearly all of it had been chests full of misshapen lumps of gold, which had likely been melted in the burning of Moscow, and which no-one could have recognized.

Temeraire did not deny it was a handsome consolation; but it did not make amends for Napoleon's escape, and while he was not at all sorry that the Russian heavy-weights now looked on him with considerably more respect and had one and all avowed that in future they would listen to him when he told them not to stop, they would not believe that he had not done it for the gold. “I was doing my duty,” he had said, stiffly, “and trying to capture Napoleon, which is what all of you ought to have done, too.”

“Oh, yes,” they all answered, nodding wisely, “your duty: now tell us again, how much gold is in that middling chest with the four bands around it?” It was not what he called satisfying.

“And now Napoleon is perfectly comfortable at home again,” Temeraire said, “having tea with Lien, no doubt; I am sure
she
has not spent the winter half-frozen: I dare say she has been sleeping in a dozen different pavilions, and eating feasts. And
we
are still here.”

“
Still
here?” Hammond cried. “Good Heavens, we took Vilna not three days ago; you cannot consider our residence here of long duration.”

But Temeraire personally did not make much difference between Vilna and Kaluga; yes, he could see perfectly well that upon the map there were five hundred miles between them, and it was just as well to have crossed them, and anyone might
say
that they were in Lithuania instead of Russia; but he found little altered, and nothing to be very glad of, in their present surroundings. The coverts, on the very fringes of the city, were unimproved; the ground frozen ever as hard as in Russia proper, and though there was more food to be had, it remained unappetizing: dead horses, only ever dead horses. Laurence had arranged for a bed to be made up for him of straw and rags, which daily the ground crew built up a little more, but this was a very meager sort of comfort when Temeraire might look down the hill at the palace in the city's heart lit up with celebrations from which dragons were entirely excluded, although the victory could not possibly have been won without them.

“Indeed I am almost glad,” Temeraire said, “that the
jalan
had to return to China; I should not know what to say to them if they had met with such incivility; not to speak of ill-use. It is one thing to endure any number of discomforts in the field, on campaign; one must expect these things, and I am sure no-one would say we were unwilling to share in the general privation. It is quite another to be left sitting in mud, in
frozen
mud, and offered half-thawed dead horsemeat, while the Tsar is feasting everyone else who has done anything of note, and yet he never thinks of asking any of 
us.
”

“But he has,” Hammond said earnestly. “Indeed, Captain,” he added, turning towards Laurence, “I am here to request your attendance: it is the Tsar's birthday to-day, and it is of course of all things desirable that you should attend as a representative not only of His Majesty's Government—” Temeraire flattened his ruff at the mention of that body of so-called gentlemen, but Hammond threw an anxious look at him and hurried on. “—but of our friendship, indeed our intimate ties, with China; I wondered if perhaps you might be prevailed upon to wear the Imperial robes of state, which the Emperor has been so kind as to bestow upon you—”

Despite a strong sense of indignation at being himself neglected in the invitation, Temeraire could not help but approve this idea, wishing to see Laurence, at least, recognized as he deserved. But Laurence had a horror, a very peculiar horror, of putting himself forward. He would at once refuse, Temeraire was sure; he always required the most inordinate persuasion to display himself even in honors which he had properly earned—

“As you wish,” Laurence said, without lifting his head from his letters; his voice sounded distant and a little strange.

Hammond blinked, as though he himself had not expected to meet with so quick a success, and then he hastily rose to his feet. “Splendid!” he said. “I must do something about my own clothes as well; I will call for you in an hour, then, if that will do. I hope you will pardon me until then.”

“Yes,” Laurence said, still remote, and Hammond bowed deeply and took himself out of the clearing nearly at a trot. Temeraire peered down at Laurence in some surprise, and then in dismay said, “Laurence—Laurence, are you quite well? Are you ill?”

“No,” Laurence said. “No, I am well. I beg your pardon. I am afraid I have received some unhappy news from England.” He paused a long moment still bent over the letter, while Temeraire held himself anxious and stiff, waiting: what had happened? Then Laurence said, “My father is dead.”

Lord Allendale had been a stern and distant parent, not an affectionate one, but Laurence was conscious that he had always had the satisfaction of being able to respect his father. While not always agreeing with his judgment, Laurence had never blushed for his father's honor, both in private and in public life unstained by any reproach; and in this moment, Laurence was bitterly conscious that his father could not have said the same of his youngest son. His treason had broken his father's health, had certainly hastened this final event.

Laurence did not know if his father could ever have been brought to understand or to approve the choice which he had made. He had reconciled himself to his own crime only with difficulty, and he had before him every day all the proofs which any man could require, of the sentience and soul of dragons. He had seen those dragons dying hideously, worn away by the slow coughing degrees of the plague; he had with his own eyes witnessed their agony and seen the carrion-mounds of a hundred beasts raised outside Dover. He had known what the Ministry did, in deliberately infecting the dragons of Europe with that disease: a wholesale murder of allies and innocents as much as of their enemies.

All this had been required to turn his hand to the act, to make him bring the cure to France and give it into Napoleon's hand. And even so, he had recoiled from the act at first. He had dreamt of the moment of crisis again only three nights ago; of Temeraire saying, “I will go alone,” and afterwards in the dream Laurence found himself in an empty covert, going from clearing to clearing, calling Temeraire's name, with no answer.

With an effort, Laurence recalled himself to his circumstances: Temeraire's head was lowered to peer at him, full of anxiety. “I am well,” he said again, and put his head on the dragon's muzzle as reassurance. “I am not overset.”

“Will you not take anything? Gerry,” Temeraire called, raising his head, “pray go and fetch a cup of hot grog for Laurence, if you please; as we have nothing better it must do,” he added, turning back down. “Oh, Laurence; I am so very sorry to hear it: I hope your mother is not hurt? Have the French invaded them again? Ought we go at once?”

“No,” Laurence said. “The letter is a month old, my dear; we are too late for the funeral rites.” He did not say that he should scarcely have been welcome, with or without a twenty-ton dragon. “He died in his bed. My mother is not ill, only much grieved.” His voice, low, faded out without his entirely willing it to do so. The letter was in his mother's hand, brief, sharp-edged with sorrow. His father had been hale and vigorous five years ago, still in his prime; she might justly have hoped not to be made a widow so soon. When Gerry came running with the hot cup, Laurence drank.

“In his bed?” Temeraire was muttering to himself, as if he did not understand; but he did not press any further for explanation; he only curled himself around Laurence, and offered the comfort of his companionship. Laurence seated himself heavily upon the dragon's foreleg, grateful, and read the letter over again so he might at least have the pleasure of being unhappy with those whose unhappiness he had caused.

“I am sorry, Laurence; I do not suppose he could have heard that your fortune was restored,” Temeraire said, looking over at the wagon-cart, still piled high.

“He would have known me restored to the list,” Laurence said, but this was only a sop to Temeraire's feelings. He knew that neither his fortune, nor his pardon and the reinstatement of his rank, which might restore him in the good graces of the world, would have weighed at all with Lord Allendale. That gentlemen could more easily have brooked his son's public execution, on a charge he knew to be false, than to see his son laureled with gold and praised in every corner, and known to him as a traitor.

He might have told his father that worldly concerns at least had not weighed with him; he had acted only as his conscience had brutally required. But he had not seen his father since his conviction; he had not presumed to write, even after his sentence had been commuted to transportation, nor since his pardon. And they would now never speak again. There would be no opportunity for defense or explanation.

And Laurence could not but regard Temeraire's extravagant hoard with dismay, although the Russians had been more astonished by his being willing to return any part of the treasure than by his keeping it entirely for himself. Laurence had asked how and where they should surrender the pillaged goods; the other aviators had only stared uncomprehending, and asked how he had managed to persuade Temeraire to surrender even the Tsar's paintings, which could not have had a plainer provenance. He knew perfectly well what his father would have thought of a fortune obtained with so little character of law to the process.

But there was something too much like bitterness in that thought. Laurence made himself fold up the letter, and put it away in his pocket. He would not dwell upon what he could not repair. They were still at war; the French Emperor might have escaped, but the French army was yet strung out between Vilna and Berlin, what was left of it, and there would surely be more work to do soon enough.

There were other letters; letters from Spain: one from Jane Roland and one from Granby, with an enclosure addressed to Temeraire directly. Laurence meant to open them, but Temeraire said tentatively, “Laurence, I suppose you must begin to dress: Hammond will be calling for you in a quarter of an hour. Roland,” he called, “will you pray bring out Laurence's robes? Be sure you do not track them in the dirt.”

Too late, Laurence recalled the conversation he had not attended; too late, protest sprang to his lips. Emily Roland was already with great ceremony and satisfaction unfolding the immense and heavily embroidered robes of silk which belonged to the son of the Emperor of China, and not to that of Lord Allendale.

When Laurence had gone, Temeraire brooded, watching the celebrations get under way. Even the magnificent display of fireworks which opened the evening did not please him: a stand of trees blocked a great deal of the covert's view, which he felt might have been taken into account, and the faint drifting smoke only reminded him that he and every other dragon had eaten nothing but porridge and burnt horse for months.