Victory of Eagles (30 page)

not be of assistance to you?” He could not deny it, and she shook her head and looked away, her lips

pressed tight, and Laurence could not work on her any further. “I had thought I was done with
these

fears, anyway,” she added, low and unhappily, but he knew how little her personal feelings would be

permitted to sway her judgment: as little as he would have allowed himself.

He moved away from her, as Woolvey came down the stairs and went to bid her farewell. The two of

them stood talking low a little while, hands clasped, and then he bent his head to hers.

Tharkay was watching the scene with a dry interest. “I beg your pardon for embroiling us so,” Laurence

said.

“In a practical sense, we could ask for nothing better,” Tharkay said. “We are not likely to be stopped in

a blazoned carriage bowling away down the street in open view of everyone. Noticed, certainly, and he

may find his neck in a noose for it afterwards, but that is his concern, and those who would weep for

him.” He looked at Laurence. “Although those may be of interest to you also.”

Laurence was sorry to be so transparent, and sorry even more to be shut up in a carriage for

half-an-hour with Woolvey for the drive to Holland House. There was no conversation of any kind; there

could be nothing said between them, the rejected suitor and the husband. Laurence was silenced further

by a difficult, inchoate sensation, which had no place in the present circumstances and yet insisted on

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making itself felt.

He had never thought very much of Woolvey before; he had dismissed the man as a spendthrift idler, but

in fairness, Woolvey had never been given impetus to his own improvement. With nothing to do but

spend money, he might easily have fixed himself in a vicious character, a deep gamester or a selfish

coward. But he had chosen instead to establish himself respectably, with a wife no man could blush for;

and no coward had acted tonight as he had. If he were a little dull and mulish when he was in drink and

angry for his country’s humiliation, that was not the worst thing that could be said of a man.

And Edith had looked very well. Not happy, no-one could be happy with an army at the door and a

quarrel in the entrance hall; but that she was contented with the lot she had chosen was plain. She did not

regret.

Laurence wholeheartedly wished her happy: his feeling had not that envious quality. But it was

uncomfortable to think Woolvey had brought it about, and, Laurence was painfully aware,
he
had not.

He had kept Edith on the shelf with expectations, when she might have had more advantageous offers;

and their last interview, he could not remember with anything like satisfaction: all selfish petulance on his

side, the gall even to make her an offer which could only be unwelcome, after he had pledged himself to

the Corps. He looked at Woolvey, who was staring out the carriage window. What had Edith to regret?

Nothing: she had rather to congratulate herself on a lucky escape.

The coach drew to a stop. Holland House was dark, and the horses stamped uneasily, warm breath

steaming in the air, while a footman came rubbing sleep from his eyes to hold their heads. “Yes, I know

the family are away,” Woolvey was saying, already climbing out as another opened the door for him. “Be

so good as to stable my horses and bring Gavins out, I want a word with him.”

He gave airy excuses, for his presence in the city, and for his visit: the baby ill and squalling, the wife

impatient, “and I thought to myself what I needed was a walk in the fresh air, and to have a look at the

stars—too many lights in Mayfair—sure Lord Holland would not mind—”

It was a bizarre proposal, at midnight, with an army in the streets and two men in rough clothing behind

him, but Gavins only bowed: familiar with the odd starts of gentlemen in their cups, and too well-trained

to show it, if he were puzzled. “I must advise you, sir, not to go too close to the east end of the park, if

you should walk beyond the gardens,” he said. “I am afraid we have several dragons sleeping there.”

“Oh,” Woolvey said, and when they had been let into the park, he said in a low undertone, “What are

we to do about the beasts?”

“Walk by them,” Tharkay said, blowing out the lantern which they had been given.

“There is no need for you to come farther,” Laurence said. “You have done us a great service already,

Woolvey—”

“I am not afraid,” Woolvey returned, angrily, and strode on ahead.

Tharkay shook his head, and when Laurence looked at him said quietly, “It would be difficult to follow

an officer of some public repute, in the affections of a woman who loves courage.”

It had not occurred to Laurence, that Woolvey meant to display to advantage for Edith’s benefit, or in

any sense of competition with him. “My reputation is hardly such as any sensible man would covet.”

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“It does not call you a coward,” Tharkay said. “Whatever has Bertram Woolvey done?”

THE GROUNDS IMMEDIATELYnear the house were wooded, cedar trees fragrant around them

amid the silent denuded oaks and plane-trees, all crusted with frost. These yielded to broad meadows,

hard-frozen, and their boot-heels crushed the grass like sand underfoot. If their object really had been to

observe the stars, they would have been served well: the night was clear and cold and still; the wind had

died, and no moon.

The dragon interlopers were peacefully snoring, if so could be described a noise like mill-wheels

grinding, audible at a quarter-of-a-mile. It did not have that same hollow-chest resonance of the voices of

the great combat-weight beasts; there were not many men about, and no fires: it looked to be a company

of smaller dragons, couriers, with their solitary captains sleeping huddled up against their sides.

As a practical matter it ought not to have been difficult to simply evade them. Laurence thought himself

well used to the company of dragons by now, and he had not minded the streets of Peking, or the

pavilions where the great beasts slept in vast coiled heaps; but in the near-absence of light, the persistent

low churning noise magnified, and he yet could not wholly repress the shudder which climbed his back as

they walked from one stand of trees to another, crossing the meadows where the dragons slept.

The intellect might know these were thinking creatures, who would rather capture than kill him, but his

belly did not: it knew only that here nearby were a dozen beasts or more, which he could not see if they

chose to move, and which in the ordinary course of animal life would have made an easy meal of him.

They were oddly all the more alarming for their smaller size: a man could not be of as much interest to the

larger dragons as a meal.

So he informed himself, in cool reasoning terms, and nodded back, the whole exchange wholly divorced

from his body’s involuntary response, where every outline became a dragon, and every grumble of

rustling leaves a prelude to attack, and they had yet to keep moving on steadily, through pitch

impenetrable enough that Laurence put out his hand before his face, to keep from running into any

branches.

Woolvey’s breath rasped loud ahead of him, ragged short breaths, and he stumbled occasionally;

Tharkay had taken the lead from him. But he kept moving. Laurence paced breath to footsteps and

doggedly followed: as near to blind as he ever hoped to be. A flicker, or not even so much, only some

vague impression of movement, made his head snap sideways, and he stopped a moment watching,

trying to make anything: a hopeless attempt, except for what might have been a dark snaking blot

reaching into the sky, wherein no stars showed.

He quickened a few steps to stop Woolvey, and gave a soft hiss to make Tharkay turn and come back

again. They waited crouching, listening. The dragon heaved a great yawning sigh and murmured

something in French: then a quick flurrying leap, a leathery flap of wings, and it was up and aloft. They

did not move while it was audible overhead, and stayed a while longer afterwards, meek rabbits huddling

out of the hawk’s sight, before they could make themselves resume.

It seemed a very long time walking before they came at last to another broad rustling stand of trees,

comforting, and the ground underfoot abruptly became the loose crunch of finely graveled and sanded

road: they had reached the end of the estate. Across the road, the broad hedge of the palace garden rose

like a great blank wall before them, and the gleam of lights distantly visible at either end of the lane, small

as fireflies: the guards on watch. But there were none directly ahead, the patrol idling near their sheltered

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posts.

Tharkay motioned Laurence to wait with Woolvey, and after a moment came back to silently guide them

to a place he had found by the hedge: a low rock butting up near the wall, and a thick elm-branch above:

he had already rigged a cord hanging down. Laurence nodded, and taking off the thick leather apron

threw it over the top of the hedge. The scramble was as quiet as he could make it, one hand for the rope

and arms and feet thrusting inconveniently into the thicket of yew, breathing in the fragrant smell of the

needles, and then well-clawed he rolled over its broad flat top on the protective sheet of the apron, and

dropped directly into the garden on the other side, jarringly.

Woolvey came after him, with some delay, panting heavily and in disarray: the fine buckskin of his

breeches, better suited to more decorous use, was torn and bloodied. Tharkay last, silently and quick,

and the great palace lay across a narrow lawn before them: windows full lit, shadows passing back and

forth before the lights, and another half-a-dozen dragons in the way: not sleeping, either, but couriers

wide-awake and waiting for messages.

“The stables,” Woolvey whispered, pointing: the dragons were as far from the low outbuilding as could

be managed. “There is another door, on the side, and from there across only a narrow gap to the

servants’ entrance, to the kitchens.”

The horses whickered at them uneasily, and stamped, watching with liquid terrified eyes; but this was

evidently no change in their behavior with the dragons at the door: no one stirred or came to look in at

them. Tharkay paused at the far door, fingertips resting against the wood: from outside voices came

clear, surly and English. Through a crack Laurence peered at a pair of workmen, who were trundling

manure to the heap without any evidence of pleasure.

“Hst,” he said, softly, when they came close, and the men jerked. “Steady now, men, and quiet, if you

love your country.”

“Aye, sir, only say the word,” one said whispering back, an automatic touch of the forelock: a man badly

wall-eyed, and with blue ink on his bare forearms, sure mark of the sea. He scowled at the lanky younger

fellow with him, whose ready protest subsided instead into silent fidgets and darting sideways looks at

them.

“Is there a prisoner here kept,” Laurence said, “who would have been brought today: a man not thirty

years of age, dark-haired—”

“Aye, sir,” the seaman said, “brought him in with a guard like he was the King, and to the finest bedroom

but the one old Boney copped for himself: there was a noise about it right enough: and that beast of his

out front wailing fit to end the world. We thought she would have us all on fire: she said she would. She

has only gone quiet this last hour.”

Laurence risked it: a quick dash to the corner of the house was enough to confirm Iskierka’s presence.

She was lying miserably coiled before the house in what had been an elegant formal garden adorned with

statuary, and now was a heap of rubble. She no longer wailed, but was gnawing sullenly upon the

remnants of a cow, steam issuing from her spines, and she was not alone. Lien was sitting up on her

haunches beside her, saying, “You must know that he cannot be given back to you, unless he gives his

parole and swears never to take up arms against the Emperor again. There is no sense in your lying here

and being uncomfortable. Come away to the park, and you may have something more to eat.”

“I am not going away anywhere without my Granby,” Iskierka said, “and he will never do any such thing,

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and as soon as I have him back I will kill you, and your emperor, and
all
of you, only see if I do not.

Here, you may
keep
your nasty cows,” and she threw the mauled remainders of her dinner in Lien’s

direction.

The white Celestial put back her ruff in displeasure, for just an involuntary moment, and then nudged up

a mound of dirt over the carcass with one talon, careful never to touch the offal. “I am sorry to see you

insist on being unreasonable. There is no reason we should be enemies. After all, you are not a British

dragon. You are a Turkish dragon, and the Sultan is our ally, not Britain’s.”

“I do not give a fig for the Sultan: I am Granby’s dragon, and Granby is British,” Iskierka said, “and

anyway I have stolen thirty thousand pounds of your shipping, so of course we are enemies.”

“You may have another ten thousand, if you would like to come and fight for us, instead,” Lien said.

“Ha,” Iskierka said disdainfully, “I will have another thirty thousand instead, and take the prizes myself;

and I think you are a spineless coward, too.”