Victory of Eagles (38 page)

could see a handful of lights moving, too high for ships, too bright for stars: a few dragons on patrol.

“Another three hundred thousand of them buggers lying along the coast from Calais to Boulogne, just

waiting for their chance,” a sergeant of Marines said to his fellow soldier, as the two of them came by on

their round, and he spat aggressively over the parapet towards the sea, as if he might hit the distant

enemy.

They had not yet seen Laurence. Wellesley and his staff were inside the tower chambers; he had been

left outside until called for, despite the night cold and wet, the stones slick with ice, and room enough in

the antechamber for him to wait inside: a deliberate slight. The damp penetrated his cloak and his leather

coat effortlessly. But he had chosen to stand at the limit of the parapet, out of the lantern light, so he

could see farther out. It was only a romantic impulse: he could not see anything of real significance at this

hour.

“He’ll squeeze over another thousand to-night,” the sergeant went on. “Every dark night, those fucking

Fleur-de-Nuits carry them. The Navy shot one down two days ago, though,” he added, with vindictive

satisfaction. “Down into the ocean like a stone, and two hundred Frogs on its back, I hear: but more

often than not they can’t be seen.”

“I heard as he burned Weedon to the ground,” the young soldier with him ventured. “I heard, he set

dragons on it, sent the whole place up.”

“Fucking Jacobin buggers,” the sergeant said gloomily. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, seeing

Laurence and touching his hat.

He nodded to them, and they fell silent, taking their post. A door opened in the side of the tower, and

raised voices came drifting out while it sighed gently shut again: more heated argument, strategy and

sacrifice. Laurence looked, but it was not Wellesley or one of his aides; it was an old man in nightshirt

and bed slippers, muttering to himself as he came into the rain. His hair was grey and thinned out, matted

without a wig, and he walked with the uneasy hitch of rheumatism as he groped his way towards the

chapel across the courtyard.

“Is it the vicar?” the young Marine whispered.

“At this hour?” the sergeant said, doubtfully, and they both looked at Laurence.

Laurence crossed the courtyard to go to his side: the old man did not seem steady on the wet icy stones,

and he was talking to himself, a stream of low unintelligible speech, which remained incomprehensible

even as Laurence came close enough to make out the words. “Horses,” the old man said, “horses and

mules, and three weeks’ grain, and Copenhagen; the fleet in Copenhagen. Thirty-three pounds.”

He did not seem to notice Laurence’s approach at all; until Laurence said, “Sir, should you not go back

inside?”

“I will not,” the old man said, querulous. “Is that you, Murat? Is that you?” He peered at Laurence’s

face, touched his coat, and, evidently satisfied, nodded. “You are not Napoleon; you are Murat. Are you

here to kill me? Give me your arm,” he said, abruptly peremptory, and, taking a grip on Laurence’s arm,

leaned on him heavily. He had fixed his gaze on the chapel, and started determinedly to limp on towards

it. “They all mean to kill me,” he told Laurence, confidentially. “They are in there talking of it now. My

son is with them.” He sounded neither indignant nor afraid, more as though he were sharing a piece of

Page 136

interesting gossip.

Laurence looked back at the tower, and then at the old man again, at his profile; and recognition came.

“Sire,” Laurence said, low and wretchedly, “may I not help you inside? You ought not be out in this

weather.” He dragged at the ties of his own cloak, and shrugging it off managed to put it over the King’s

shoulders.

“I will go to Windsor,” the King said. “Napoleon is not there. Why may I not go to Windsor?” He

continued his unsteady progress towards the chapel, and Laurence had either to pace him or let him go

alone. “He is in London, he is in London. He is not in Windsor. I need not go to Halifax. It would be

cowardly to go. Do you want me to go to Halifax?” he demanded. “My son wants me to go. He wishes

me to die on the ocean.”

“I would wish to see you safe, Sire,” Laurence said, “as I am sure would he.”

“I will not go,” the King said. “I ought not go. I will die in England.”

The door flung open again: frightened servants hurrying with cloak and umbrella to hold over him, and

coax him back within; they gave Laurence no more than a glance, and he stepped back to let them work.

The King’s voice rose in protest over their guiding hands, and then died away again into muttering

confusion. He let himself be drawn gradually back inside.

“Poor old fellow,” the sergeant of Marines said, coming close to peer after them, for a glimpse inside the

tower. “Gone out of his head, I suppose. Who was he?”

Laurence stood in the courtyard behind the closing door, rain running down his sleeves and his face like

blood; stood and said aloud, “O God, I wish I had not done it.”

Chapter 13

T
EMERAIRE PULLED CLOSEaround himself, his tail coiled snugly against his body, and tried without

much success to sleep; there were a great many things he did not want to think about, but so long as he

continued awake, they clamored for his attention.

They had landed in Edinburgh covert only after dark, and found it wet and bleak and muddy, and the

water of the pond not fit to drink: there were too many dragons buried there, too recently. So they had to

take turns putting their heads below a thin run-off from the castle walls, which tasted unpleasantly green,

and settle themselves uncomfortably between the two burial-mounds most widely separated. They were

crowded, and there was plenty of room for one or another of them to go and sleep among the other

mounds, but no-one at all proposed to go off alone; they rather huddled more closely. Laurence had left

almost at once to go and speak with Wellesley, and he was gone a long time; enough that they had

finished their dinner long before his return—a couple of old tough cows and three sheep, hacked up and

pit-roasted with a great heap of potatoes, which Gong Su had organized the crews to procure: happily

these took on some of the flavor of the meat and were not unappetizing at all, once they had cooked long

Page 137

enough.

“I don’t hold with this cookery much,” Maximus had said, licking his chops, having slowly and

thoughtfully wrecked seventeen bushels of potatoes roasted in their skins, “but these are not half bad, if

one cannot have a nice fresh cow, that is.”

Temeraire took a long time over his own meal, but at last he had stretched it as far as it could go, and

Maximus was eyeing the last pile of sheep-intestines hopefully, so Temeraire had to finish it off; and then

he had nothing to do but lie uncomfortably in the mud, curled up small to stay warmer, and worry about

Laurence.

“Of course he ain’t happy,” Gentius said sleepily. “The country overrun by all these Frogs, who would

be happy? I would not think much of his sense if he were dancing a jig.”

“But that is not the same as
unhappy,
” Temeraire said, “when we are going to fight to make the French

leave, and will have some battles soon.”

Gentius cocked his head ruminatively. “Men like to be unhappy sometimes,” he offered. “My second

captain would come sit under my wing with a book and weep over it, most evenings. I thought at first she

must be wounded, but she told me not to fret at all, she liked to do it; and the next morning she would be

right as rain again.” Temeraire was doubtful; he had never noticed Laurence weeping over a book,

although sometimes he did not enjoy them very much.

But he did not quite like to press the conversation very far. To be perfectly honest, Temeraire was a little

concerned—he was perhaps anxious—very well, he was
afraid,
that he might learn that Laurence was

not so much upset as angry—He was afraid that Laurence was angry with him.

Temeraire had not quite understood what it would mean, for Laurence to be called a traitor. Of course,

the Government meant to execute him or imprison them away from one another, but Temeraire had

thought, with those two fates averted, that otherwise all would be much the same; and at first it seemed

so: they flew together, and were given orders, and everything nearly like. But it was not the same at all.

Of course there had been no other alternative but to take over the cure; only, Temeraire had not quite

understood, before they went, that treason meant Laurence should be losing his life,
and
his crew,
and

his rank.

“At least,” he said, “at least, you are still
my
captain; and after all, while there are many captains who

have
some
sort of dragon, I am the only dragon who is a commodore—” But when he had tried this

argument out privately to himself, it did not sound really consoling after all: puffing himself off, as though

Laurence ought to be satisfied with Temeraire’s consequence and none of his own—insult to injury, and

Laurence had lost his gold bars, too.

Temeraire raised his head out of the mud and said, “Roland, do you know Captain Fenter’s neck-chain,

the gold one, with the emerald? It is not official, is it? Anyone might wear something of the sort?” It was a

handsome piece which he and all the others at Loch Laggan had remarked, on the captain of a smug

Anglewing named Orchestia; and, Temeraire thought, something very suitable to the captain of a dragon

of elevated rank, however neglectful of him the Corps might be. “Do you suppose that Laurence might

buy something like it, here in town?”

“I expect he could not afford it; the law-suit, you know,” she said wisely, looking up from her boots,

which she was blacking.

Page 138

“What law-suit?” Temeraire said, puzzled.

“Over those slaves,” she said, “which we let loose in Africa. Those slave-owners we carried back sued

the captain, and I suppose he could not fight the suit very well, as he was in prison, so they have taken all

his capital.”

“
Taken
it?” Temeraire with difficulty kept his tail from quivering and thumping upon the ground. “Surely

not
all
his capital,” he said, in a struggling voice.

“I heard it was ten thousand pounds, or something like,” Emily said.

“Ten thousand pounds!” Gentius exclaimed, horror-struck, his head jerking from the ground, the mud

squelching dreadfully. “Ten thousand pounds! You did not say anything about
ten thousand pounds

gone. Why, that is ten of those eagles, or more,” and everyone murmured shocked; even Maximus and

Lily flinched, and could not quite look at Temeraire.

Temeraire felt quite staggered, and nearly ill. Laurence had not said anything beforehand; he had not said

that all his treasure should be taken away; or so Temeraire tried to argue to himself. But it felt a very

flimsy and weak excuse, and when he opened his mouth to make it to the others, he stopped without

giving it voice. He had not troubled to find out, and now here he was, himself a commodore, showing

away with jewels and two epaulettes, while Laurence had nothing but a plain coat growing every day

more shabby.

“Ten thousand pounds,” Gentius said again, censoriously, wagging his head from side to side. “You have

certainly made a good mull of it,” and Temeraire huddled himself down, feeling all the justice of the

condemnation.

“But, if we had not taken over the cure,” he said, rather small, “a great many dragons should have died,

even who had nothing at all to do with the war, or France. It cannot have been wrong.”

“If you ask me,” Perscitia said, after a moment, “the French ought to have given you some treasure to

make up for it, as you went on their account; at least, not precisely on their account,” she amended, “but

they did well out of it, so I don’t think much of them letting you come out the worser, when you needn’t

have done it at all.”

“Well,” Temeraire said, and was forced to admit that such an offer had been made, and a most

handsome one. “Only Laurence said no, because that would have been more treasonous,” he finished.

“I don’t see myself how getting treasure,
after
you had already done treason, could make it any worse,”

Chalcedony said. “After all, they are the enemy, and if they gave you treasure, they would have less, and