Crucible of Gold

Chapter Three

Temeraire could not particularly regret seeing the small mean buildings of Sydney dropping away behind them, although Laurence and Riley spoke together so approvingly of the qualities of the harbor; that was very well, but it did not make up for the untidy appearance of the unpaved streets, which were too narrow besides, and the mud which was everywhere. And while he certainly appreciated all the goods which the sea-serpents brought, from China, he did not appreciate the extraordinary stench of the mash of half-rotten fish which they liked to eat; and he did not see why it needed to be kept in open barrels by the dockside. The wind was very nearly directly at their back, carrying the smell along to haunt them as the Allegiance traveled onward.

“I suppose they would not eat any of us?” Mrs. Pemberton inquired of Roland, hesitating at the base of the stairs up to the dragon-deck.

“Oh, they certainly would, if ever you gave them any opportunity,” Temeraire said, peering down at her, “—They have no discrimination at all, I am afraid; but you see, they do not seem to be able to speak, so one cannot very easily explain to them that one ought not to eat people. If you should care to go swimming, you had better wait until we are at least a few days out.”

The lady stared up at him dumbly. Temeraire had not precisely followed why Laurence had felt her presence necessary, and when he had asked Roland, she had said, “It is not, at all,” in venomous tones; she now answered Mrs. Pemberton with faint contempt. “Of course none of them will eat you: she means you, Temeraire, and Iskierka and Kulingile, not the serpents.”

“So I am afraid she cannot be very clever,” Temeraire said to Laurence in an undertone, later that day, when they had come out into open ocean and Laurence had come up to the dragondeck again. “And you know, Laurence, I must say that I would consider myself equal to providing any protection which Roland should need, if only you had mentioned it to me; even if she were not of my own crew, I should consider it only my duty to Excidium, since he cannot be with us.”

He could not quite suppress a hint of injury: in the interim Lieutenant Ferris—or Mr. Ferris, as he evidently was to be called—had explained Mrs. Pemberton’s position to him, and Temeraire found himself in perfect agreement with Roland on the subject.

“In body I have no doubt of it,” Laurence said dryly, “—in reputation, I am afraid you might have more difficulty: your opinion would not be solicited in the matter.” He sighed and added, “She is a sensible woman, and not a coward, to have agreed to the position in the first place; I am sure she will soon understand you are no danger to her.”

Several of the serpents had followed them out of the harbor, either for a frolic or in hopes of a meal, and played in the froth spilling out from the Allegiance’s bow, their sides gleaming in spray. No-one liked their company; aside from the smell, which anyone might have objected to, the sailors were very anxious over them and worrying they might at any moment attack. Which the serpents would not, of course, because they were too fat and well-fed; they had only to go back to the harbor if they were hungry. But the sailors were unconvinced and viewed the dragons as their only defense, so that if ever Temeraire tried to take a nap, the sailors were sure to make a great noise in the sails overhead, or send a cannonball rolling across the deck, or drop a coil of rope down upon him from aloft.

“I might be a danger to them, after all,” Temeraire said, disgruntled, when a pailful of slurry had by supposed accident been allowed to pour down onto his neck after one of the serpents still following along in their wake had breached the water in a great curving iridescent leap, evidently to make sure he was paying attention.

Roland was now apparently too senior to wash him: instead Sipho was put to the task, along with a little creature called Gerry: the relic of a New South Wales officer and his wife who had both been carried off by some sort of fever, leaving behind the boy, not quite eight, with no family in the world within two thousand miles. Laurence had acquired him as a runner from Mrs. MacArthur, along with Mrs. Pemberton. “The price of her advice,” Laurence said ruefully, but as far as Temeraire was concerned, Gerry was far more useful: his small fingers were much better able to clean underneath the scales, where some of the slurry had leaked unpleasantly.

He cried when brought up on the dragondeck, to be sure, but Roland abused him for stupidity. “I would have given a great deal to be taken on as a runner two years early, instead of only being put into school; what business do you have to be blubbing like an infant? No-one will ever think you worthy of having a dragon yourself, if you cannot properly appreciate the chance,” she said.

Gerry sniffed wetly and said, “I do not want a dragon myself,” which Temeraire could only approve: perhaps at last he might have another person in his crew who did not mean to go scurrying off to some other dragon, just when he and Laurence had got them trained properly.

“Then you are a great looby,” Roland said. “Who would not like a dragon of their own, and be able to go flying and do their duty to England; and you the son of a soldier: you ought to be ashamed.”

As Gerry’s father had been an eager participant in MacArthur’s rebellion, that late gentleman’s commitment to country and duty was perhaps in question, but the argument at least distracted the boy from his tears. “I am not a looby,” he said sullenly, and followed Sipho up on Temeraire’s back, and by the time they had finished washing him was already reconciled to his new situation enough to go sliding down Temeraire’s flank after.

No-one went pouring slurry on Iskierka, who slept in hissing, steaming state coiled along the front of the dragondeck; Temeraire regarded her with deep disfavor. At least Kulingile was being useful, and fishing: even if he did eat most of what he caught himself, that at least kept him from eating everything in sight at dinner-time, and looking wistfully over at other people’s portions if one did not eat quickly enough.

“You needn’t rock the boat so hard when you land,” Iskierka even complained, when Kulingile had dropped back down licking his chops.

“You needn’t make a noise about anyone else who is not lazing about quite uselessly,” Temeraire said, “and that is very kind of you, Kulingile; thank you,” he added graciously, taking the remnants of the small whale which Kulingile had brought back to offer around, though the edges were ragged and somewhat gnawed, and even these leftovers were more than Temeraire really wanted. He did not quite like to admit that he could not eat so much as Kulingile; it did not seem fair that anyone who had started quite so small and deflated should now be larger than himself, and very soon might even outstrip Maximus.

“I am not hungry,” Iskierka said. “If there were any prizes in sight, that would be different, but there is no sense in flying around only for fish one does not want. Anyway you are not hunting yourself, either.”

“I am guarding the ship from the serpents,” Temeraire said, dignified.

The last of the serpents fell back to Sydney by mid-morning the next day, and left the Allegiance alone and driving towards the roaring forties: the water cold, dark iron-grey, and mazed with greenish froth. Laurence joined Riley at the stern to watch them go, through the glass: spined backs breaching the surface in glittering curves up and down as they swam, until they reached the end of the water stirred up in the Allegiance’s wake, and then plunged deep and vanished.

From there on, monotony, of the sort a sailor loved best: a steady knife-edged wind at their back, and the sun small and cold white on the horizon for all but a few hours of the day. Laurence woke each day to the holystoning of the deck, the round of the ship’s bells; sometimes in the first confusion of rising he wondered why he had not been called for the morning’s watch, and looked in vain for a blue coat.

He could have wished only for a little more occupation: he had grown used in the valley to have every day as much to do as could be done, and found himself now unequal to the task of filling the hours aboard a ship where he had no duty but to be a passenger. Even his self-imposed duties as schoolmaster were usurped by Roland’s chaperone, whom he could not deny was better suited to the task than himself, having before her marriage served as a governess.

He had Granby for company; and might have had Riley, but their relations had never quite recovered from the tensions which had arisen on their journey to Africa. Riley’s father was a slave-owner in the West Indies; Laurence’s own, Lord Allendale, devoted to the cause of abolition: the voyage which led them past all the wretched slave-port cities of that continent had left them constantly rubbed against one another, and without room for apology. Laurence could not open his real feelings on the subject of their mission to Riley; Riley could scarcely avoid knowing what those feelings were; they walked around each other with scrupulous courtesy, and spoke only of sailing, and the weather, and the life of the ship.

Laurence had the pleasure, at least, of going out flying with Temeraire: cold air brisk in their faces, clouds stinging with snow if they ventured south, and beneath them now and again great silvery schools of fish, or pods of whales or porpoises; occasionally the shadow of a handful of sharks. “I do wonder why they are not at all good eating when what they eat themselves is nice; it seems a waste,” Temeraire said, as an aside, before continuing, “And I do not see why we should not do exactly as you propose, Laurence: after all, if the Tswana will take away the slaves anyway, the Portuguese may as well let them all go instead and not have all their cities destroyed, too.”

“The Tswana cannot hope to raid all of Brazil,” Laurence said, “not in time to rescue any of their people yet alive; if that is their only preoccupation.”

He spoke cautiously but hoped otherwise: the Tswana had bent their wrath against even slave ports which had never shipped a single one of their own people, at great distances from their empire; that augured for a chance of persuading them to accept the offer which Laurence privately wished to make: a general liberation throughout the country, in lieu of having all their particular kindred returned.

This hope he did not intend to unfold as yet to anyone but Temeraire; Laurence could easily imagine Hammond’s reaction. Wholesale abolition would scarcely recommend itself to the Portuguese, and might not satisfy the Tswana, either; but the mere possibility of engineering such a stroke demanded any effort in its pursuit.

“At least we must make the attempt; and if we had no other cause to come away, it must have been enough,” he added.

“Certainly we must; and I am sure that the Portuguese will think better of refusing, if they do, when the Tswana have burned up a few more of their cities,” Temeraire said blithely. “And I do not see that Hammond will have any reason to complain, if we should make peace as he wishes. Then we will go back to Britain and defeat Napoleon at last. Do you suppose that is a prize, Laurence?”

It was not: a whaler in the distance, almost certainly a neutral; too small to support Temeraire’s weight, and undoubtedly only to be alarmed by such a visit even if they had been worth bespeaking for news. Temeraire looked around inquiringly; Laurence shook his head in answer; they wheeled away and flew onward without descending even to be seen.

The ocean was otherwise deserted and had been for weeks now; a few islands along their way, mostly rocky outcroppings of deserted volcanic rock half-eaten by lichen. The isolation, for lack of work, was more to be felt than in their valley; Laurence chose to feel it more. It was what he must expect, if he did not mean to subject himself to authority or ask Temeraire to do the same; if they meant to follow their own judgment. Laurence could not but look down half-rueful and half-amazed at the ship below, when they returned to her, and he saw in her the orderly decided pattern of his former life: an ordinary life, a comprehensible one.

He wondered suddenly at Bonaparte: at a man who would discard such a life deliberately, not under an inexorable press of duty or honor but only a flashing reckless hunger; at a man who could put himself outside the society of his fellows for such a motive. “I do not suppose anything will ever content him,” he said to Temeraire. “What victory, what glory, could satisfy such a man? Although perhaps age may do what the mere turning of the world will not, and wear away the worst of his ambition.”

“You may be sure that even if he were to grow tired of conquering and glory, that Lien would not; after all she will not be old for a very long time,” Temeraire said darkly. “And anyway it does not seem to me we ought to only wait and hope: we had much better stop him ourselves, and be quite sure he cannot do any more harm.”

“If Napoleon can seek to ascend all the thrones of Europe, I suppose we may go dragging them out from under him,” Laurence said, although with some humor: descending alone from Temeraire’s back to a ship on the far side of the world in the midst of a cold ocean, and setting his sights on the acknowledged sovereign of a great nation and the conqueror of half of Europe.

The table he returned to, that evening, was a slightly peculiar one, for Laurence and Granby had privately agreed they should treat Demane as if he possessed the rank to which his dragon entitled him, although neither his conversation nor his manners were suited to a seat near the head. But that was an evil often found in the service, in men without the excuse of tender years, and at least Demane might yet be worked on by admonishment and the embarrassment of finding himself under more observation than he had been used to, either as a runner or while deliberately ignored in Sydney.

But Hammond was an uncritical guest, and did not notice if Demane ate through four removes in a row in perfect silence or had to be nudged to make a toast; and his own conversation was more than adequate to fill anything lacking among the rest of the company. Four years as the chief British representative at the Chinese court had brought him some two stone in weight and settled his former driven confidence into assurance, but he was as pell-mell and passionate as ever when enlarging upon a subject close to his heart.

“By report, they have shipped two transports already, which remain in the harbor at present,” he said, laying down biscuit crumbs to make the outline of Rio, and picking out the weevils. “The Tswana have evidently encamped within the ruins of the city.”

“They cannot be much fonder of Bonaparte than of us,” Granby said. “He hasn’t outlawed slavery, either; are they really his allies?”

“I suppose one cannot call it an alliance, not in the real sense of the word,” Hammond said. “You might better say they have given him a truce, in exchange for reparations: but as his reparations involve shipping them across the sea to attack their enemies, which are also his, there is very little to choose between the two. They have not ceased their attacks upon the Spanish coast and the Portuguese, either,” he added with a significant look at Laurence: such attacks should certainly pose a danger to any troops which Britain should land, as well.

“I don’t suppose we might give them something more to think about at the Cape?” Granby said. “Or closer to their home, anyway; the Med is a long way from the south of Africa, and I don’t suppose they can have an easy time of supply.”

“The prospects of a new front in wholly unknown territory, for uncertain gain, can have but little appeal,” Laurence said. “We knew nothing of the existence of the Tswana and their empire, and the present evils of our situation are in no small order due to that ignorance; how much more cautious ought we to be about venturing yet again past the coast of that continent, when we have already certain proofs of their ability to maintain a significant force over so great a distance.”

He spoke absently, listening: above their heads, a change in the rhythm of footsteps and voices on deck had intruded gradually upon his awareness. There was no alarm, no beating to quarters; he had no excuse for leaving the table, and had perforce to restrain his curiosity until the meal had been cleared away, when he could propose coffee on the dragondeck.

Laurence put his head out of the ladderway and saw the sky: curiosity was at once satisfied. Riley had been due to dine with the gunroom that evening; he was already on the quarterdeck, directing the men: no frantic hurry, but a steady progress; the sails were all being reefed. “We are in for a blow, I think; nothing to alarm anyone, of course,” he said out loud, cheerfully, before he added to Laurence in an undertone, “The mercury would have run out of the bottom of the glass, if it could; the dragons had better be chained down sooner than late.”

Laurence nodded silent acknowledgment and went to tell Temeraire he must endure the storm-chains which he so hated. “There is time for a short flight beforehand, if you should like,” he added by way of apology, when Temeraire had flattened down his ruff in protest.

“I do not see why it must always be storming, when we are at sea,” Temeraire said disconsolately, when they had gone aloft and seen in the distance the great billowings of red-violet and purple climbing the sky; the ocean had flattened to black.

He landed reluctantly prepared to submit; and then Iskierka said, “Well, I do not mean to be chained at all: whyever should I not just hold on to the ship, or if it is very bad, we may as well stay aloft,” and Laurence realized in dismay she had never yet experienced a true three-days’ gale, which should outstrip the endurance of any dragon even if the winds alone did not prove fatal.

“I suppose it is likely to blow too long,” Granby said, looking inquiry up at Laurence, who slid from Temeraire’s back and hastened to assure him of the necessity, as quietly as he could manage. Even so the sailors standing ready with the great tarpaulins and the storm-chains cast reproaching looks at him for inviting ill-fortune, which grew still more mournful as Granby began to argue with Iskierka, at a volume which could not help but carry across the ship.

Apart from a general deprecation of superstition, Laurence could not think that the storm building ahead of them required any additional invitation to be as thoroughly bad as could be imagined. Certainly the worse consequence would come from leaving Iskierka unconvinced and unprepared to endure the length of the confinement which the weather bode fair to demand. She argued the matter with Granby for the better part of an hour, while the shadow crept steadily nearer and Riley began to look anxious for the men being kept idle, and the dragons still unsecured. At last in desperation Granby said, “Dear one, we must have done: I will wear the coat if only you will do this for me; pray lie down and let them secure you.”

This coat was a monstrosity of cloth-of-gold crusted with gemstone beads which would not have looked out of place in the last century at Versailles; Iskierka had managed to arrange for its commission in India through Mr. Richers, Granby’s new first lieutenant—subsequently much chastened by his captain—and Granby’s flat refusal to be displayed in so much magnificence had since been a source of great and running dissatisfaction to her.

She pounced at once on the offer. “Whenever I wish it?” she demanded.

“So long as it isn’t all wrong for the occasion,” Granby said, hurriedly qualifying.

“Only if I may decide whether it is wrong or not,” Iskierka said, and Granby submitted to his doom with resignation if not precisely with grace; in turn at last she yielded and stretched herself upon the deck, and allowed them to drag the netting over the massive red-and-black coils of her body, with the chains laced atop it.

Granby avoided Laurence’s eye and went to stand in the bow while the process went forward. Laurence knew it ashamed him deeply to be forced to resort to bribery and stratagem to subdue Iskierka’s temper to the needs of the service, and he could not have been comforted when Kulingile, who was of a very different and amiable temperament, said, “Oh, if you like, but how am I to go hunting?” when Demane asked him to lie down under the tarpaulins also, and required only the assurance that he would be fed if he grew hungry to reconcile him to the experience.

“It will not be at all comfortable,” Temeraire said unhappily as he stretched himself out also, with more accuracy than pessimism: he and Kulingile would spend the storm lying to either side of Iskierka, whose inconvenient spikes made her more difficult to secure, as additional anchors for her bulk: subject as a result not only to the worse brunt of the storm but also to the perpetual emissions of steam from her body.

“We had better feed them up now,” Granby said, returning, while the chains were made fast to the deck, and ropes thrown after them for reinforcement. The debate had consumed nearly all the time which remained to them of the unearthly calm, and now the swell began to slap rhythmic warning against the ship’s sides. Even the hands who normally shied from any contact with the dragons were clambering urgently over the talons and scales to draw the bonds tight: the weight of the beasts could easily overset the ship, if they were not well-secured. “It can only help if they sleep away the first day or so, and there may be difficulties getting the cattle up on deck later on.”

Temeraire was determined not to be difficult; he had seen Granby’s crimson cheek, and Laurence should certainly have no such cause to blush for him, even if Temeraire disliked the chains extremely, more than Iskierka did, and therefore had far better right to ask some return.

“But I am not going to kick up a fuss, and make difficulties for everyone and the poor sailors, who will be working all the storm,” Temeraire said, although he was sorry a moment later to have silenced himself a little too early: he would very much have preferred to have a proper meal, cooked through, but instead he could see a cow being hoisted out from the fore hatch, and the ordinary slaughtering-tubs were out on deck, even as the first spatters of rain came down and rattled in them tinnily.

“And for that matter,” he added sulkily, as the meat was served out, “Laurence has more right than Granby to wear finery; after all he is a prince and a captain, both, and Granby even has less seniority. So if Laurence does not choose to always be going about in his best robes,” which Temeraire could understand: one did not wish to risk damage to anything so handsome unnecessarily, “I do not see that Granby is at all right to do otherwise.”