Empire of Ivory (14 page)

having taken service on an East Indiaman. They are not

properly trained, of course, but they will only be carrying

dishes to and from the Kitchens, and we have instructed

them most severely to show no alarm at being in the

presence of the dragon, which I hope they have understood.

However, I do have some Anxiety as to their comprehension

of what faces them, and should you have enough liberty to

come early, that we may try their Fortitude, it would be

just as well.

Laurence did not indulge in sighs; he folded the letter,

sent his Chinese coat to his tailors for refurbishment, and

asked Jane her permission to go some hours earlier. In the

event, the Chinese servants did set up a great commotion on

their arrival, but only by leaving all their work and

running to prostrate themselves before Temeraire, nearly

throwing themselves beneath his feet in their efforts to

make the show of respect generally considered due a

Celestial, as symbolic of the Imperial family. The British

workmen engaged in the final decoration of the covert were

not nearly so complaisant, and vanished one and all,

leaving the great panels of embroidered silk, surely made

at vast expense, hanging half askew from the tree branches

and dragging upon the earth.

Wilberforce exclaimed in dismay as he came to greet

Laurence; but Temeraire issued instructions to the Chinese

servants, who set to work with great energy, and with the

assistance of the crew the covert was a handsome if

astonishing sight in time to receive the guests, with brass

lamps tied makeshift onto branches to stand in place of

Chinese paper lanterns, and small coal-stoves placed at

intervals along the tables.

"We may bring the business off, if only it will not come on

to snow," Lord Allendale said pessimistically, arriving

early to inspect the arrangements. "It is a pity your

mother could not be here," he added, "but the child has not

yet come, and she does not like to leave Elizabeth in her

confinement," referring to the wife of Laurence's eldest

brother, soon to present him with his fifth.

The night stayed clear, if cold, and the guests began to

arrive in cautious dribs and drabs, keeping well away from

Temeraire, who was ensconced in his clearing at the far end

of the long tables, and peering at him not very

surreptitiously through opera glasses. Laurence's officers

were all meanwhile standing by him, stiff and equally

terrified in their best coats and trousers: all new,

fortunately, Laurence having taken the trouble to direct

his officers to the better tailors in Dover, and funding

himself the necessary repairs which all their wardrobes had

required after their long sojourn abroad.

Emily was the only one of them pleased, as she had acquired

her first silk gown for the occasion, and if she tripped

upon the hem a little she did not seem to mind, rather

exultant in her kid gloves and a string of pearls, which

Jane had bestowed upon her. "It is late enough in

conscience for her to be learning how to manage skirts,"

Jane said. "Do not fret, Laurence; I promise you no one

will be suspicious. I have made a cake of myself in public

a dozen times, and no one ever thought me an aviator for

it. But if it gives you any comfort, you may tell them she

is your niece."

"I may do no such thing; my father will be there, and I

assure you he is thoroughly aware of all his

grandchildren," Laurence said. He did not tell her that his

father would immediately conclude Emily to be his own

natural-born child, should he make such a false claim, but

only privately decided he should keep Emily close by

Temeraire's side, where she would be little seen; he had

been in no doubt that his guests would keep a very good

distance, whatever persuasion Mr. Wilberforce intended to

apply.

That persuasion, however, took the most undesirable form,

Mr. Wilberforce saying, "Come; behold this young girl here

who thinks nothing of standing in reach of the dragon. If

you can permit yourself, madam, to be outdone by trained

aviators, I hope you will not allow a child to outstrip

you," while Laurence with sinking heart observed his father

turning to cast an astonished eye on Emily which confirmed

all his worst fears.

Lord Allendale did not scruple, either, to approach and

interrogate her; Emily, perfectly innocent of malice,

answered in her clear girlish voice, "Oh, I have lessons

every day, sir, from the captain, although it is Temeraire

who gives me my mathematics, now, as Captain Laurence does

not like the calculus. But I had rather practice fencing,"

she added candidly, and looked a little uncertain when she

found herself laughed over, and pronounced a dear, by the

pair of society ladies who had been persuaded to venture

close to the great table, by her example.

"A masterful stroke, Captain," Wilberforce murmured softly;

"wherever did you find her?" and did not wait for an answer

before he accosted a few gentlemen who had risked coming

near, and worked upon them in the same fashion, adding to

his persuasions that if Lady So-and-So had approached

Temeraire, surely they could not show themselves hesitant.

Temeraire was very interested in all the guests,

particularly admiring the more bejeweled of the ladies, and

managed by accident to please the Marchioness of Carstoke,

a lady of advanced years and receded neckline whose bosom

was concealed only by a vulgar set of emeralds-in-gold, by

informing her she looked a good deal more the part, in his

estimation, than the Queen of Prussia, whom he had only

seen in traveling-clothes. Several gentlemen challenged him

to perform simple sums; he blinked a little, and having

given them the answers inquired whether this was a sort of

game performed at parties, and whether he ought to offer

them a mathematical problem in return.

"Dyer, pray bring me my sand-table," he said, and when this

was arranged, he sketched out with his claw a small diagram

for purposes of setting them a question on the Pythagorean

theorem, sufficient to baffle most of the attending

gentlemen, whose own mathematical skills did not extend

past the card-tables.

"But it is a very simple exercise," Temeraire said in some

confusion, wondering aloud to Laurence if he had missed

some sort of joke, until at last a gentleman, a member of

the Royal Society on a quest to observe for himself certain

aspects of Celestial anatomy, was able to solve the puzzle.

When Temeraire had audibly spoken to the servants in

Chinese, and conversed in fluent French with several of the

guests, and had failed to eat or crush anyone, increasing

fascination began at last to trump fear and draw more of

the company towards him. Laurence shortly found himself

quite neglected as of considerably less interest: a

circumstance which would have delighted him, if only it had

not left him subject to awkward conversation with his

father, who inquired stiltedly about Emily's mother:

questions whose evasion would only have made Laurence seem

the more guilty, and yet whose perfectly truthful answers,

that Emily was the natural-born daughter of a Jane Roland,

a gentlewoman living in Dover, and whose education he had

taken as his charge, left entirely the wrong impression,

which Laurence could no more correct than his father would

outright ask.

"She is a pretty-behaved girl, for her station in life, and

I hope she does not want for anything," Lord Allendale

said, in a sort of sidling way. "I am sure if there was any

difficulty in finding her a respectable situation, when she

is grown, your mother and I would be glad to be of

assistance."

Laurence did his best to make it clear that this handsome

offer was unnecessary, in some desperation turning to a lie

of omission, saying, "She has friends, sir, as must prevent

her ever being in real distress; I believe there is already

some arrangement made for her future." He gave no details,

and his father, his sense of propriety satisfied, did not

inquire further; fortunate, as that arrangement, military

service in the Corps, would hardly have recommended itself

to Lord Allendale. The bleak notion came to Laurence only

afterwards, that if Excidium were to die, Emily should have

no dragon to inherit, and thus no assured post: though a

handful of Longwing eggs were presently being tended at

Loch Laggan, there were more women serving in the Corps

than would be needed to satisfy these new hatchlings.

He made his escape, saying he saw Wilberforce beckoning him

over; that gentleman indeed welcomed his company, if he had

not immediately been soliciting it, and took hold of

Laurence's arm to guide him through the crowd, and

introduce him to all his prodigious acquaintance, amongst

the curiously mingled attendance. Many had come merely to

be entertained, and for the sensation of seeing a dragon;

or more honestly for the right to say they had done so: a

substantial number of these being gentlemen of fashion,

come already from heavy drinking, whose conversation would

have made the noise impenetrable in a smaller space. Those

ladies and gentlemen active in the abolition movement, or

evangelical causes, were easily distinguished by their

markedly more sober appearance, both in dress and mien; the

tracts which they were giving out were ending largely upon

the ground, and being trodden into the dirt.

There were also a great many patriots, whether from real

feeling or the desire to attach their names to a

subscription-list with the word Trafalgar upon it, as

Wilberforce had arranged it should be published in the

newspapers, and not inclined to be quibbling over whether

those veterans were men or dragons. The political range was

thoroughly represented, therefore, and more than one heated

discussion had broken out, with the lubrications of liquor

and enthusiasm. One stout and red-faced gentleman,

identified by Wilberforce as a member from Bristol, was

declaring to a pale and fervent young lady trying to give

him a tract that "it is all nonsense; the passage is

perfectly healthy, for it is in the interest of the traders

to preserve their goods. It is as good a thing as ever will

happen to a black, to be taken to a Christian land, where

he may lose his heathen religion and be converted."

"That is excellent grounds, sir, for importing the Gospel

to Africa; it does less well to excuse the behavior of

Christian men, in tearing away the Africans from their

homes, for profit," he was answered, not by the lady, but

by a black gentleman, who had been standing a little behind

her, and assisting her in giving out the pamphlets. A

narrow, raised scar, the thickness of a leather strap, ran

down the side of his face, and the edges of ridged bands of

scar tissue protruded past the ends of his sleeves, paler

pink against his very dark skin.

The gentleman from Bristol perhaps had not quite that

brazen character which would have permitted him to defend

the trade in the face of one of its victims. He chose

rather to retreat behind an expression of offended hauteur

at having been addressed without introduction, and would

have turned aside without reply; but Wilberforce leaned

forward and said with gentle malice, "Pray, Mr. Bathurst,

allow me to present you the Reverend Josiah Erasmus, lately

of Jamaica." Erasmus bowed; Bathurst gave a short jerking

nod, and cravenly quitted the field, with an excuse too

muttered to be intelligible.

Erasmus was an evangelical minister, "And I hope a

missionary, soon," he added, shaking Laurence's hand, "back

to my native continent," whence he had been taken, a boy of

six years of age, to suffer through that aforementioned

healthy passage, chained ankles and wrists to his

neighbors, in a space scarcely large enough to lie down in.

"It was not at all pleasant to be chained," Temeraire said,

very low, when Erasmus had been presented him, "and I knew

at least they would be taken off, when the storm had

finished; anyway, I am sure I could have broken them."

Those chains of which he spoke, indeed, had been for his

own protection, to keep him secured to the deck through a

three-days' typhoon; but the occasion had come close on the

heels of his witnessing the brutal treatment of a party of

slaves, at the port of Cape Coast, and had left an

indelible impression.

Erasmus said simply, "So did some of our number; the

fetters were not well made. But they had nowhere to go but

to throw themselves on the mercy of the sharks: we had not

wings to fly."

He spoke without the rancor for which he might have been

pardoned, and when Temeraire had expressed, darkly, the

wish that the slavers might have been thrown overboard