Empire of Ivory

Chapter Three

They reached the Weymouth covert only a little short of dusk, somewhat dispirited. Wringe had expressed her intention seven times during the course of their flight, of climbing off mid-air and flying the rest of the way herself. Then she had accidentally scratched Temeraire twice, in startlement, and had even thrown a couple of the topmen clean off his back with her uneasy shifting. Their lives were saved only by their carabiner-locked straps. On landing, they were both handed down badly bruised and ill from the knocking they had taken, and assisted by their fellows, they limped away to be dosed liberally with brandy at the small barracks-house.

Wringe then put up a fuss upon having the bullets extracted, sidling her hindquarters away when Dorset approached, knife in hand. She insisted that she was quite well, but Temeraire was sufficiently exasperated by now to have lost patience with her evasions, and his low rumbling growl, resonating upon the hard-packed earth, made her flatten to the ground meekly and submit.

‘That will do,’ Dorset said, having pried out the third and final of the balls. ‘Now let’s have some fresh meat for her, just to be sure, and a night’s quiet rest. This dry ground is too hard,’ he added, with disapproval, as he climbed down from her shoulder, the three balls rattling bloodily in his little basin.

‘I do not care if it is the hardest ground in Britain; only let me have a cow and I will sleep,’ Temeraire said wearily, leaning his head so that Laurence could stroke his muzzle while his own shallow cuts were poulticed. He ate the cow in three tremendous tearing gulps, hooves to horns, tipping his head backwards to let the last bite of hindquarters slip down his throat. The farmer who had been prevailed upon to bring some of his beasts to the covert stood paralyzed in macabre fascination, his mouth agape, His two farm-hands stood likewise, their eyes starting from their heads. Laurence pressed a few more guineas into the man’s unresisting hand and hurried them all off; it would do Temeraire’s cause no good to have fresh and lurid tales of draconic savagery spreading.

The ferals disposed of themselves directly around the wounded Wringe, sheltering her from any draft and pillowing themselves one upon the other as comfortably as they could manage, the smaller ones among them crawling upon Temeraire’s back directly he had fallen asleep.

It was too cold to sleep out, and they had not brought tents with them on patrol; Laurence meant to leave the barracks, small enough in all conscience without dividing off a captain’s partition, to his men, and take himself to a hotel, if one might be had; in any case he would have been glad of a chance to send word back to Dover by the stage, that their absence would not occasion distress. He did not trust any of the ferals to go alone, yet, with their few officers so unfamiliar.

Ferris approached as Laurence made inquiry of the few tenants of the covert. ‘Sir, if you please, my family are here in Weymouth; I am sure my mother would be very happy if you chose to stay the night,’ he said, adding, with a quick, anxious glance that belied the easy way in which he issued this invitation, ‘I should only like to send word ahead.’

‘That is handsome of you, Mr. Ferris; I would be grateful, if I should not be putting her out,’ Laurence said. He did not miss the anxiety. It was likely that Ferris felt compelled to make the invitation out of courtesy, and would have done so even if his family had not so much as an attic corner and a crust of bread to spare. Most of his younger gentlemen, indeed most of the Corps, were drawn from the ranks of what could only be called the shabby-gentility. He knew that they were inclined to think him higher than he himself did: his father kept a grand state, certainly, but Laurence had not spent three months together at home since taking to sea, without much sorrow inflicted on either side, except perhaps for his mother’s, and so he was better accustomed to a hanging berth than a palace.

Even so, he would have spared Ferris out of sympathy but for the likely difficulty of finding other lodgings; and his own weary desire to be settled, even if it were indeed in an attic corner, with a crust of bread. With the noise of the day behind them, he was finding it difficult not to yield to a lowness of spirit. The ferals had behaved as badly as expected, and he could not help but think how impossible it would be to guard the Channel with such a company. The contrast to the fine and ordered ranks of British formations could not have been greater. But those ranks were now decimated, and he felt their absence keenly.

The word was sent accordingly and a carriage was summoned. It was waiting outside the covert gates by the time they had gathered their things and walked to meet it down the long narrow path which led away from the dragon-clearings.

A twenty minute drive brought them to the outskirts of Weymouth. Ferris grew more hunched as they bowled along, and became so miserably white that Laurence might have thought him taken ill with motion sickness if he had not known Ferris to be perfectly settled through thunderstorms aloft and typhoons at sea. He was not likely to be distressed by the motion of a comfortable, well-sprung chaise. The carriage turned, then, drawing into a heavily wooded lane. Shortly the forest parted and they drew abreast of the house: a vast and sprawling gothic edifice, its blackened stone barely visible behind centuries of ivy; the windows illuminated, threw a beautiful golden light onto a small ornamental brook which wound through the open lawn before the house.

‘A very fine prospect, Mr. Ferris,’ Laurence said as they rattled over the bridge. ‘You must be sorry not to be at home more often. Has your family resided here long?’

‘Oh, for an age,’ Ferris said, blankly, lifting his head. ‘It was built by some crusader or other, I think, I don’t much know.’

Laurence hesitated and then a little reluctantly offered, ‘My father and I have disagreed on occasion, I am sorry to say, so I am not often at home.’

‘Mine is dead,’ Ferris said. After a moment, he seemed to realize that this was rather an abrupt period to the conversation, and so added with some effort, ‘My brother Albert is a good sort, I suppose, but he has ten years on me and so we have never really come to know one another.’

‘Ah,’ Laurence said, left no more the wiser as to the cause of his dismay.

There was certainly nothing lacking in their welcome. Laurence had braced himself for the usual neglect. He expected to be shown directly to rooms out of sight of the rest of the company and was even tired enough now to hope to be slighted. But nothing of the sort: a dozen footmen were out with their lights lining the drive, another two waiting with the step to hand them down, and a substantial body of the staff coming outside to greet them despite the cold and what must surely have been a full house within to manage, a wholly unnecessary ostentation.

Ferris blurted desperately, just as the horses were drawn up, ‘Sir – I hope you will not take it to heart, if my mother – She means well—’ The footmen opened the door, and discretion forced Ferris’s mouth closed.

They were shown to the drawing-room and found company assembled to meet them: not very large, but decidedly elegant. The women wore clothing of an unfamiliar style, the surest mark of the height of fashion to a man who was often separated from society for a year at a time. Several of the gentlemen bordered on outright dandyism. Laurence noted it all mechanically; he wore trousers and Hessians himself, and those were dust-stained, but he could not be brought to care very much, even when he saw that the other gentlemen were dressed more formally in knee-breeches. There were also a couple of military men among their number, a colonel of the marines whose long, seamy, sun-leathered face held a vague familiarity that most likely meant they had dined together on one ship or another, and a tall army captain in a red coat, stood near him, lantern-jawed and blue-eyed.

‘Henry, my dear!’ A tall woman rose from her seat to come and greet them with both her hands outstretched: too like Ferris to mistake her, with the same high forehead and reddish-brown hair, and the same trick of holding her head very straight, which made her neck look longer. ‘How happy we are you have come!’

‘Mother,’ Ferris said, woodenly, and bent to kiss her obliging cheek. ‘May I present Captain Laurence? Sir, this is Lady Catherine Seymour, my mother.’

‘Captain Laurence, I am overjoyed to make your acquaintance,’ she said, offering him her hand.

‘My lady,’ Laurence said, giving her a formal leg. ‘I am very sorry to intrude upon you; I beg you will forgive us arriving in all our dirt.’

‘Any officer of His Majesty’s Aerial Corps is welcome in this house, Captain,’ she declared, ‘at any moment of day or night, I assure you, and should he come with no introduction at all, he should be welcome still.’

Laurence did not know what to say to this. He would no more have descended upon a strange house without introduction than loot one. The hour was late, but not uncivilized, and he was accompanied by her own son, so found such reassurances to be unnecessary, but having been invited and welcomed, he settled on a vague, ‘Very kind.’

The company was not similarly effusive. Ferris’s eldest brother Albert, the present Lord Seymour, was a little haughty. He made the early point, when Laurence complimented his house, of conveying that the house was called Heytham Abbey, and had been in their possession since the reign of Charles II. The head of the family had risen from knight to baronet to baron in a steady climb, and had there remained.

‘I congratulate you,’ Laurence said, dismissing the obvious opening to puff about his own consequence; he was an aviator now, and knew well that such evil outweighed any other considerations in the eyes of Society. He could not help but wonder why they should have sent a son to the corps; there was no sign of it being an encumbered estate: while appearances might be sustained on credit, so extravagant a number of servants could not have been managed.

Dinner was announced shortly after they arrived, to Laurence’s surprise; he had hoped for nothing more than a little cold supper, and thought it late even for that much. ‘Oh, think nothing of it, we are grown modern, and often keep town hours even when we are in the country,’ Lady Catherine cried. ‘We have so much company from London that it would be tiresome for them to be constantly adjusting their dinner-hour. Dishes would be sent away half-eaten, only to be wished for later. Now, we will certainly not stand on formality; I must have Henry beside me, for I am longing to hear all you have been doing, my dear, and Captain Laurence, you shall escort Lady Seymour, of course.’

Laurence could only bow politely and offer his arm, although Lord Seymour certainly ought to have preceded him, even if Lady Catherine chose to make a natural exception for her younger son. Her daughter-law looked for a moment as if she were going to balk at the offer, but then she laid her hand on his arm without any further hesitation, and he chose not to notice.

‘Henry is my youngest, you know,’ Lady Catherine said to Laurence over the second course; he was on her right. ‘Second sons in this house have always gone to the drum, and the third to the Corps, and I hope that may never change.’ This, Laurence thought might have been subtly directed at his dinner companion, but Lady Seymour gave no sign that she had heard her mother-in-law as she continued to speak with the gentleman on her right, the army captain, who was Ferris’s other brother, Richard. ‘I am very glad, Captain Laurence, to meet a gentleman whose family feels as I do on the matter.’

Laurence, who had only narrowly escaped being thrown from his house by his irate father due to his shift in profession, could not in honesty accept this compliment, and with some awkwardness said, ‘Ma’am, I beg your pardon, I must confess you do us credit and yet we have not earned it. Younger sons in my family are supposed to go to the Church, but I was mad for the sea, and would have no other.’ He was then forced to explain his accidental acquisition of Temeraire and subsequent transfer to the Aerial Corps.

‘I will not withdraw my remarks, sir. It is even more to their credit that you have principle enough to do your duty when it was presented to you,’ Lady Catherine said firmly. ‘It is shameful, the disdain that so many of our finest families profess for the Corps, and I will never hold with them in the least.’

The dishes were being changed once again as she made this ringing and overly-loud speech. Laurence noticed, baffled, that they were returning nearly untouched after all. The food had been excellent, therefore he could only conceive that Lady Catherine’s protestations were humbug, and that they had already dined earlier in the evening. He watched covertly as the next course was dished out, and indeed, the ladies in particular, picked unenthusiastically at the food, scarcely bothering to uphold the pretence of conveying morsels to their mouths. Of the gentlemen only Colonel Prayle seemed to make any serious progress. He caught Laurence looking and gave him just the slightest wink, then continued eating with the steady trencherman rhythm of a professional soldier, used to taking advantage of any food when it was before him.

If they had been a large party, coming late to an empty house, Laurence might have understood a gracious host holding back dinner for their convenience, or serving them a later second meal at the table, but the assumption that they might have been offended by a simple private supper, when the rest of the company had already dined, was absurd. He was obliged to sit through several more removes, uncomfortably aware that they were a pleasure for no one else. Ferris ate sparingly, with his head down; ordinarily he possessed as rapacious an appetite as any nineteen-year-old boy unpredictably fed of late.

When the ladies departed to the drawing room, Lord Seymour began to offer port and cigars, with a determined, if false, note of heartiness. Laurence refused all but the smallest glass for politeness’ sake. No one objected to rejoining the ladies quickly, most of them had already started to droop by the fire even though not half an hour had elapsed.

No one proposed cards or music; the conversation was low and leaden. ‘How dull you all are tonight!’ Lady Catherine rallied them, with a nervous energy. ‘You will give Captain Laurence a quite disgusting impression of our society.

‘You cannot often have been in Dorset, I suppose, Captain.’

‘No, I have not had the pleasure before, ma’am,’ Laurence said. ‘My uncle lives near Wimbourne, but I have not visited him in many years.’

‘Oh! The perhaps you are acquainted with Mrs. Brantham’s family?’

One of the ladies, who had been nodding off, roused long enough to say, with sleepy tactlessness, ‘I am sure he is not.’

‘It is not likely that I been introduced, ma’am; my uncle moves very rarely outside his political circles,’ Laurence said, after a pause. ‘Also, my service has kept me from enjoying wider society, particularly these last few years.’

‘But what compensations you must have had!’ Lady Catherine said. ‘I am sure it must be glorious to travel by dragon, without any worry that you could be sunk in a gale, and to arrive so much more quickly.’

‘Ha ha, unless your ship grows tired of the journey and eats you,’ Captain Ferris said, nudging his younger brother with his elbow.

‘Richard, what nonsense, as if there were any danger of such a thing! I must insist that you withdraw the remark,’ Lady Catherine said. ‘You offend our guest.’

‘Not at all, ma’am,’ Laurence said, discomfited; the vigour of her objection gave an undeserved weight to the joke. He could more easily have borne the jest than her compliments, which he could not help but feel were excessive and insincere.

‘You are kind to be so tolerant,’ she said. ‘Of course, Richard was only joking, but you would be simply appalled to know how many people in society say such things and believe them. I am sure it is very poor-spirited to be afraid of dragons.’

’ ‘I am afraid it is only the natural consequence,’ Laurence said, ‘of the unfortunate state of affairs that prevails in our country, which keeps dragons isolated in distant coverts and encourages horrific conjecture.’

‘But, what else is to be done with them?’ Lord Seymour said. ‘Are we to put them in the village square?’ He amused himself greatly with this suggestion; he was by now uncomfortably florid of face, having heroically performed his duty as host over a second dinner. Even now he did justice to another glass of port, over which he coughed as he laughed.

‘In China, they can be seen in the streets of every town and city,’ Laurence said. ‘They sleep in pavilions no more separated from residences than town-houses in London.’

‘Heavens;’ I would not sleep a wink,’ Mrs. Brantham said, with a shudder. ‘How dreadful these foreign customs are.’

‘It seems to me a most peculiar arrangement,’ Seymour said, his brows drawing together. ‘How do the horses stand it? My driver in town must go a mile out of his way when the wind is in the wrong quarter and blowing over the covert, because the beasts get so skittish.’

Laurence had to concede that even in China they did not cope well; horses were not often evident in the cities, except for trained cavalry beasts. ‘But I assure you their lack is not felt; they employ dragons as living carriages, and citizens of higher estate are conveyed individually by courier, at as you can imagine a much higher rate of speed. Indeed, Bonaparte himself has adopted the system, at least within his encampments.’

‘Oh, Bonaparte,’ Seymour said. ‘No; thank goodness we organize things more sensibly here. I have been meaning to congratulate you. Ordinarily, not a month goes by when my tenants do not complain about the patrols passing overhead, frightening their cattle to pieces and leaving their—’ he waved his hand expressively as a concession to the ladies ‘—everywhere, but this six-month there has been not a peep from them. I suppose you have implemented new routes, and none too soon. I had nearly made up my mind to raise the matter in Parliament.’

Though aware of the circumstance reducing the frequency of the patrols, Laurence could not answer this remark in a civil fashion; so he did not answer at all, and instead went to fill his glass again.

He took it away and went to stand by the window furthest from the fire, to keep his senses refreshed by the cool draught. Lady Seymour had taken a seat beside it for the same reason. She had put aside her wineglass and was slowly fanning herself. When he had stood there for a moment she made a visible effort to engage him. ‘So Captain, you were forced to shift from the Navy to the Aerial Corps? It must have been very hard. I suppose you must have gone to sea when you were fully mature?’

‘I first took ship at the age of twelve, ma’am,’ Laurence said.

‘Oh! But you must have come home, from time to time, surely? And twelve years is not as young as the schooling age of seven; no one can say there is no difference. Even so, I am sure your mother must never have thought of sending you from home at such an age.’

Laurence hesitated, conscious that Lady Catherine and indeed most of the other company, who had not dozed off, were now listening to their conversation. ‘I was fortunate to secure a berth more often than not, so I was not much at home.’ he said, as neutrally as he could. ‘I am sure it must be hard, for a mother, in either case.’

‘Hard! Of course it is hard,’ Lady Catherine said, interjecting. ‘What of it? We mothers ought to have the courage to send our sons, if we expect them to have the courage to go, and we should not view it as some sort of grudging sacrifice and send them off so late that they are too old to properly take to the life.’