Empire of Ivory
Chapter 14

HIDEOUS SLAUGHTER AT THE CAPE
Thousands Slain! Cape Coast Destroyed!
Louanda and Benguela Burnt!
It will require yet some time before a complete Accounting will render final all the worst fears of Kin and Creditors alike, throughout these Isles, as to the extent of the Disaster, which has certainly encompassed the Wreck of several of our foremost citizens, for the destruction of many of their Interests, and left us to mourn without certain knowledge the likely Fate of our brave Adventurers and our noble Missionaries. Despite the territorial Questions, associated with the War with France, which lately made us Enemies, the deepest Sympathies must be extended now across the Channel to those bereaved Families, in the Kingdom of Holland, who in the Settlers at the Cape Colony have lost in some cases all their nearest Relations. All voices must be united in lamenting the most hideous and unprovoked Assault imaginable, by a Horde of violent and savage Beasts, egged on by the Jealousy of the native Tribesmen, resentful of the rewards of honest Christian labor...
LAURENCE FOLDED THE paper, from Bristol, and threw it beside the coffee-pot, with the caricature facing downwards: a bloated and snaggle-toothed creature labeled Africa, evidently meant to be a dragon, and several unclothed natives of grinning black visage prodding with spears a small knot of women and children into its open maw, while the pitiful victims uplifted their hands in prayer and cried O Have You No Pity in a long banner issuing from their mouths.
"I must go see Jane," he said. "I expect we will be bound for London, this afternoon; if you are not too tired."
Temeraire was still toying with his last bullock, not quite sure if he wanted it or not; he had taken three, greedy after the short commons of their voyage. "I do not mind going," he said, "and perhaps we may go a little early, and see our pavilion; there can be no reason not to go near the quarantine-grounds now, surely."
If they did not bring the first intelligence of the wholesale disaster in Africa, having been preceded in their flight by many a swifter vessel, certainly they carried the best: before their arrival, no-one in England had any notion of the identity of the mysterious and implacable foe who had so comprehensively swept clean the African coast. Laurence and Harcourt and Chenery had of course written dispatches, describing their experiences, and handed them on to a frigate which had passed them off Sierra Leone, and to another in Madeira; but in the end, these had only anticipated their arrival by a few days. In any case, formal dispatches, even the lengthy ones produced over the leisure of a month at sea, were by no means calculated to satisfy the clamoring demands of Government for information on so comprehensive a disaster.
Jane at least did not waste their time with a recounting of the facts. "I am sure you will have enough of that before their Lordships," she said. "You will both have to come, and Chenery also; although perhaps I can beg you off, Harcourt, if you like: under the circumstances."
"No, sir, thank you," Catherine said, flushing. "I should prefer no special treatment."
"Oh, I will take all the special treatment we can get, with both hands," Jane said. "At least it will make them give us chairs, I expect; you look wretched."
Jane herself was much improved, from when Laurence had left her; her hair was shot more thoroughly with silver, but her face, better fleshed, showed all the effects of cares lightened and a return to flying: a healthier wind-burnt color in the cheek, and lips a little chapped. She frowned at Catherine, who despite a perpetual lobsterish color from the sun managed still to look faintly bluish under the eyes, and pallid. "Are you still being taken ill?"
"Not very often," Catherine said, without perfect candor; Laurence - indeed, all the ship's company - had been witness to her regular visits to the rail, aboard ship. "And I am sure that I will be better now we are not at sea."
Jane shook her head disapprovingly. "At seven months I was as well as ever I have been in my life. You have not put on nearly enough weight. It is an engagement like any other, Harcourt, and we must be sure you are up to the mark."
"Tom wishes me to see a physician, in London," Catherine said.
"Nonsense," Jane said. "A sensible midwife is what you need; I think my own is still in harness, here in Dover. I will find her direction for you. I was damned glad of her, I will tell you. Twenty-nine hours' labor," she added, with the same dreadful reminiscent satisfaction as a veteran of the wars.
"Oh," Catherine said.
"Tell me, do you find - " Jane began, and shortly Laurence sprang up, and went to interest himself in the map of the Channel which was laid out on Jane's desk, striving rather desperately not to hear the rest of their conversation.
The map was not as distressing in the visceral sense, although this was perhaps rather a sign of improper sensibility on his part, as the circumstances it depicted were as unfortunate as could be imagined. All the French coastline of the Channel was now littered with markers, blue representing companies of men, white for the individual dragons: clustered around Brest there were fifty thousand men at least, and another fifty at Cherbourg; at Calais a force half that number again; and scattered among these positions some two hundred dragons.
"Are these figures certain?" Laurence asked, when they had finished their exchange, and joined him at the table.
"No, more's the pity," Jane said. "He has more; dragons, at any rate. Those are only the official estimates. Powys insists he cannot be feeding so many beasts, so close together, when we have the ports blockaded; but I know they are there, damn them. I get too many reports from the scouts, more dragons than they ought to be seeing at a time; and the Navy tell me they cannot get a smell of fish but they catch it themselves, the price of meat has gone so dear across the way. Our own fishermen are rowing over to sell their catches.
"But let us be grateful," she added. "If the situation were not so damned dire, I am sure they would keep you in Whitehall a month, answering questions about this business in Africa; as it is, I will be able to extract you without much more than a day or two of agony."
Laurence lingered, when Catherine had left; Jane filled his glass again. "And you would do as well with a month at the seashore yourself, to look at you," she said. "You have had rather a dreadful time of it, I find, Laurence. Will you stay to dinner?"
"I beg your pardon," he said. "Temeraire wishes to go up to London while it is still light out." He thought perhaps he ought to excuse himself; he rather felt that he wished to talk to her, more than knew what he wanted to say, and he could not be standing there stupidly.
She rescued him, though, saying, "I am very grateful to you, by the bye, for the compliment to Emily. I have sent on to Powys at Aerial Command to confirm her and Dyer in rank as ensign, just so there should be nothing havey-cavey about the business; but there shan't be any trouble about that. I don't suppose you have any likely boys in mind for their places?"
"I do," he said, steeling himself, "if you please: the ones I brought from Africa."
Demane had passed the weeks after their escape from Capetown deep in delirium, with his side, where the bayonet had gone in, swelled out beneath the small scabbed cut as if an inflated bladder had sat beneath the skin; and Sipho, too distressed even to speak, refusing to leave the sickbed except to creep away and fetch water or gruel, which he patiently fed his brother spoon by spoon. The southern coast had slipped rapidly away to starboard, taking with it any hope of kin to whom they might have been returned, long before the ship's surgeon had informed Laurence that the boy would make a recovery. "It is to your credit, sir," Laurence had said, even while wondering whatever was to be done with the boys now; by then the Allegiance had seen Benguela, and there could be no question of turning back.
"It is no such thing," Mr. Raclef had retorted, "a wound in the vitals of this sort is invariably fatal, or ought to be; there was nothing to be done but make him comfortable," and he went away again muttering, vaguely offended at having so obvious a diagnosis defied.
The patient persisted in his defiance, making good proofs of the resilience of youth, and very shortly had reacquired the two stone of weight lost in his illness, and another for good measure. Demane was dismissed the sick-bay before they had crossed the equator, and the two were installed in the passenger quarters together, in a tiny curtained-off compartment scarcely large enough to sling their one small hammock: the older boy's wariness would not permit them to sleep at the same time, and he insisted alternating watches.
He was not without justification nervous of the general crowd of refugees from the Cape, who regarded the boys with simmering anger as representatives of the "kaffirs" they blamed for the destruction of their homes. It was useless to try and explain to the settlers that Demane and Sipho were of a wholly different nation than the one which had attacked them, and there was great indignation that the boys should be housed among them, particularly from the elderly shopkeeper and the farmhand whose respective nooks had each been shortened by the width of seven inches for their sake.
A few quiet belowdecks scuffles with the settler boys predictably followed. These ceased quickly, it becoming rapidly evident that a boy, even lately ill, who had been for several years entirely dependent for his survival upon his own hunting skills, and by necessity forced to contend against lions and hyenas for his supper, was not an advisable opponent for boys whose experience ended at schoolyard squabbling. They resorted instead to the petty torments of smaller children, covert pinching and prodding, small malicious traps of slush or filth left just beside the hammock, and the ingenious use of weevils. The third time Laurence found the boys sleeping on the dragondeck, tucked up against Temeraire's side, he did not send them back to their small compartment below.
Temeraire, being nearly their solitary point of familiarity and the only one left among the company who had any grasp of their language whatsoever, quickly lost whatever lingering horrors he had possessed for them; the more so, as they were sure, in his company, to avoid their tormentors. The boys were soon as apt to be clambering over his back, in their games, as any of the younger officers, and through his tutelage acquiring a reasonable command of English, so that a little while after they had left Cape Coast, Demane might come to Laurence and ask, in a steady voice betrayed only by his hand clutching tightly at the railing, "Are we your slaves now?"
Laurence stared, shocked, and the boy added, "I will not let you sell Sipho away from me," defiantly, but with a note of such desperation as showed his understanding that he had not much power, to defend himself or his brother from such a fate.
"No," Laurence said, at once; it was a dreadful blow, to find himself regarded as a kidnapper. "Certainly not; you are - " but he was here stopped by the uncomfortable lack of any position to name, and forced to conclude, lamely, "you are by no means slaves. You have my word you shall not be parted," he added; Demane did not look much comforted.
"Of course you are not slaves," Temeraire said, in dismissive tones, to rather better effect, "you are of my crew," an assumption springing from his native possessiveness, which serenely made them his own in spite of all the obvious impracticality of such an arrangement, and forced Laurence to recognize he could see no other solution, which should give them the respectability they might have earned, among their own tribe, for the services which they had performed.
No one could have called them gentleman-like, in birth or in education, and Laurence was dismally aware that while Sipho was a biddable, good-natured child, Demane was too independent, and more likely to be obstinate as a pig, if not belligerent, towards anyone wishing to effect an alteration in his manners. But difficulty alone could not be permitted to stand in the way: he had taken them from home, from all the relations which they might have, and robbed them of all standing in the world. If, at the end, there had been no practical way to restore them, he could not escape responsibility for the situation having arisen; he had willfully contributed to it, to the material benefit of the Corps and his mission.
"Captains can choose whom they like; that has always been the way of it," Jane said, "but I will not say there shan't be a noise about it: you may be sure that as soon as the promotions are posted in the Gazette, I will be hearing from a dozen families. At present we have more likely boys trained up than places for them, and you have got yourself the reputation of a proper schoolmaster, even if they did not like to see their sprouts on a heavy-weight: it is a pretty sure road to making lieutenant, if they do not cut straps before then."
"I must surely give the greater weight," he said, "to those who have given so much in our service; and Temeraire already counts them as his own crew."
"Yes; but the carpers will say you ought to take them as personal servants, or at best ground crew," she said. "But damn them all; you shall have the boys, and if anyone complains of their birth, you may always declare them princes in their native country, without any fear of being proven false. Anyway," she added, "I will put them on the books, quietly, and we will hope they slip past. Will you let me give you a third? Temeraire's complement allows for it."
He assented, of course; and she nodded. "Good: I will send you Admiral Gordon's youngest grandson, and that will make him your best advocate, instead of your loudest critic: no one has as much time for writing letters and making noise as a retired admiral, I assure you."
Sipho was very willing to be pleased, when informed of their elevation; Demane said a little suspiciously, "We take messages? And ride the dragon?"
"And other errands," Laurence said, and was then puzzled how to explain errands, until Temeraire said, "Those are small boring things, which no one very much likes to do," which did not reduce the suspicion.
"When will I have time to hunt?" the boy demanded.
"I do not suppose you will," Laurence said, taken aback, and only after a little more exchange gathered the boy did not realize that they would be fed and clothed: at Laurence's expense, of course, as they had no family sponsoring them; cadets drew no pay. "You cannot think we would let you starve; what have you been eating so far?"
"Rats," Demane said succinctly, explaining belatedly to Laurence's satisfaction the unusual lack of those delights more civilly referred to as millers, which had been much lamented among the midshipmen whose traditional prey they were, "but now we are on land again, I took two of those small things last night," and gestured to make long ears.
"Not from the grounds of Dover Castle?" Laurence said; certainly there would not have been many of them nearer-by, with the smell of so many dragons about. "You must not, again; you will be taken up for poaching."
He was not perfectly sure Demane was convinced, but at last Laurence declared a private victory and detailed the two of them to Roland and Dyer's supervision, to be led through their tasks a while.
It was a short flight only to the quarantine-grounds, and the pavilion established to good effect in a sheltered valley, sacrificing prospect for a windbreak. It was not empty: two rather thin and exhausted Yellow Reapers were sleeping inside, still coughing occasionally, and a limp little Greyling: not Volly, but Celoxia, and her captain Meeks. "On the Gibraltar route, I think," Meeks said, to their inquiry, "if he has not been broken-down again," rather bitterly. "I don't mean to carp at you, Laurence; God knows you have done all you might, and more. But they seem to think at the Admiralty that it is like putting the wheel back on a cart, and they want us flying all the old routes again at once. Halifax and back, by way of Greenland and a transport, anchored in the middle of the north fifties, with ice-water coming over the bow with every wave; of course she is coughing again." He stroked the little dragon's muzzle; she sneezed plaintively.
The floor was very comfortably warm, at least, and if the wood-fire was a little smoky, worming up through the square stone slabs of the floor, the open plan blew the fumes away. It was a simple, practical building, not at all elegant or ornate, and Temeraire might have slept in it, but it could not have been called spacious, on his scale. He regarded it with brooding disappointment, and was not disposed to linger; the crew did not even have the opportunity to dismount before he wished to be off again, putting the pavilion at his back, and flying with rather a drooping ruff.
Laurence tried to console him by remarking on the sick dragons yet sheltering there, even in the summer's heat. "Jane tells me that they would pile them in ten at a time," he said, "during the winter, so wet and cold; and the surgeons are quite certain it saved a dozen lives."
Temeraire only muttered, "Well, I am glad it has been useful," ungraciously; such distant triumphs, achieved out of his sight and several months before, were not quite satisfactory. "That is an ugly hill," he added, "and that one, also; I do not like them," inclined to be displeased even with the landscape, when ordinarily he was mad for anything out of the common way, and would point out anything of the most meager interest to Laurence's attention, with delight.
The hills were odd; irregular and richly covered with grass, they drew the eye queerly as they went overhead. "Oh," said Emily suddenly, on the forward lookout, craning her head over Temeraire's shoulder to look down at them, and shut her mouth hurriedly in embarrassment at the solecism of having spoken without a warning to give. Temeraire's wingbeats slowed. "Oh," he said.
The valley was full of them: not hills but barrow-mounds, raised over the dragon-corpses where they had breathed their last. Here and there an outthrust horn or spike came jutting from the sod; or a little fall of dirt had bared the white curve of a jaw-bone. No one spoke; Laurence saw Allen reach down and close his hands around the jingle of his carabiners, where they hooked on to the harness. They flew on silently, above the verdant deserted green, Temeraire's shadow flowing and rippling over the spines and hollows of the dead.
They were still quiet when Temeraire came in to the London covert, and the little unpacking necessary carried on subdued: the men carried the bundles to be stacked at the side of the clearing, and went back for others; the harness-men had none of their usual cheerful squabbling over who was to manage the belly-netting, but in silence Winston and Porter went to it together. "Mr. Ferris," Laurence said, voice deliberately raised, "when we are in reasonable order, you may give a general leave, through tomorrow dinner; barring any pressing duties."
"Yes, sir; thank you," Ferris said, trying to match his tone; it did not quite take, but the work went a little more briskly, and Laurence was confident a night's revelry would soon finish the work of rousing the men out of the sense of oppression.
He went and stood at Temeraire's head, putting his hand comfortingly on his muzzle. "I am glad it was useful," Temeraire said, low, and slumped more deeply to the ground.
"Come; I would have you eat something," Laurence said. "A little dinner; and then I will read to you, if you like."
Temeraire did not find much consolation in philosophy, or even mathematics; and he picked at his food until, pricking up his ruff, he raised his head and put a protective forehand over his cow, and Volly came tumbling into the clearing, kicking up a furious hovering cloud of dust behind him.
"Temrer," Volly said happily, and butted him in the shoulder, then immediately cast a wistful eye on the cow.
"Don't be taken in," James said, sliding down from his back. "Fed not a quarter-of-an-hour ago, while I was waiting for the mails in Hyde Park, and a perfectly handsome sheep, too. How are you, Laurence? Tolerably brown, I find. Here's for you, if you please."
Laurence gladly accepted the parcel of letters for his crew, with one on top, to his personal direction. "Mr. Ferris," he said, handing the packet over, to be distributed. "Thank you, James; I hope we find you well?"
Volly did not look so bad as Meeks's report might have made Laurence fear, if with a degree of rough scarring around the nostrils, and a slightly raspy voice. It did not inhibit him from rambling happily on to Temeraire, with an enumeration of the sheep and goats which he had lately eaten, and a recounting of his triumph at having sired, early in the recent disaster, an egg, himself. "Why, that is very good," Temeraire said. "When will it hatch?"
"Novembrer," Volly said delightedly.
"He will say so," James said, "although the surgeons have no notion; it hasn't hardened a tick yet, and it would be early. But the blessed creatures do seem to know, sometimes, so they are looking out a likely boy for the thing."
They were bound for India, "Tomorrow, or the day after, maybe; if the weather keeps fair," James said airily.
Temeraire cocked his head. "Captain James, do you suppose that you might carry a letter for me? To China," he added.
James scratched his head to receive such a request; Temeraire was unique among British dragons, so far as Laurence knew, in writing letters; indeed, not many aviators managed the habit themselves. "I can take it to Bombay," he said, "and I suppose some merchantman is bound to be going on; but they'll only go to Canton."
"I am sure if they give it to the Chinese governor there, he will see it delivered," Temeraire said with justifiable confidence; the governor was likely to consider it an Imperial charge.
"But surely we ought not delay you, for personal correspondence," Laurence said a little guiltily; if James did seem a little careless of his schedule.
"Oh, don't trouble yourself," James said. "I don't quite like the sound of his chest yet, and the surgeons don't, either; as their Lordships ain't disposed to worry about it, so neither am I, about being quite on time. I'm happy enough to linger in port a few days, and let him fatten himself up and sleep a while." He slapped Volly on his flank, and led him away to another clearing, the small Greyling following on his heels almost like an eager hound, if a hound were imagined the size of a moderate elephant.
The letter was from his mother, but it had been franked: a small but valuable sign of his father's approval, of its having been sent, with replies to his last letter:
We are very shocked by the News you send us from Africa, which in many respects exceeds that appearing in the Papers, and pray for the Solace of those Christian souls caught in the Wrack, but we do not repudiate some Sentiment, which the Abhorrence of such dreadful Violence cannot wholly silence, that the Wages of Sin are not always held in Arrears to be paid off on the Day of Reckoning, but Malefactors by God's Will may be held to account even in this earthly life; Lord Allendale considers it a Judgment upon the failure of the Vote. He is much satisfied by your Account, that the Tswana (if I have it correctly) might perhaps have been appeased, by the Ban; and we have hopes that this necessary Period, to that evil trade, may soon lead to a better and more humane Condition for those poor Wretches who yet suffer under the Yoke.
She concluded more unfortunately by saying,
...and I have taken the Liberty of enclosing a small Trinket, which amused me to buy, but for which I have no Use, as your Father has mentioned to me that you have taken an Interest in the Education of a Young Lady, who I hope may find it suitable.
It was a fine string of garnets, set in gold; his mother had only one granddaughter, a child of five, out of three sons and now five grandsons, and there was a wistful note to be read between the closely written lines. "That is very nice," Temeraire said, peering over at it with an appraising and covetous eye, although it would not have gone once around one of his talons.
"Yes," Laurence said sadly, and called Emily over to deliver the necklace to her. "My mother sends it you."
"That is very kind of her," Emily said, pleased, and if a little perplexed, quite happy to forgo that sentiment in favor of enjoyment of her present. She admired it, over her hands, and then thought a moment, and a little tentatively inquired, "Ought I write to her?"
"Perhaps I will just express your thanks, in my reply," Laurence said; his mother might not dislike receiving the letter, but it would only have encouraged the misunderstanding, and his father would certainly look with disfavor on any such gesture as suggesting expectations of a formal acknowledgment, no part of his sense of the responsibilities towards an illegitimate child; and there was no easy way to explain to him the perfect lack of foundation for such a concern.
Laurence was sadly puzzled how to write, even in his own letter, to avoid adding to the confusion, as he could not in civility omit the barest facts: that he had delivered the gift, seen it received, and heard thanks; all of which alone revealed that he had seen Emily very lately and, by the speed of his reply, it would seem regularly. He wondered how he might explain the situation to Jane: he had the vague and slightly lowering thought that she would find it highly amusing, nothing to be taken seriously; that she would not at all mind being taken for - and here his pen stuttered and halted, with his thoughts, because of course, she was the mother of a child, out of wedlock; she was not a respectable woman, and it was not only the secret of the Corps which would have prevented him ever making her known to his mother.