Tongues of Serpents

‘So long as we are not responsible for either its establishment or its destruction,’ Laurence said grimly, ‘and neither its hated enemy nor its cosseted ally, our situation can only be improved.’

‘I do not see very well how,’ Temeraire said, brooding over the matter; he was not quite certain he saw it the same way, ‘if we must stay here for some time…?’ He paused, interrogatively.

Laurence did not immediately answer. ‘I am afraid so,’ he said, at last, quietly, ‘The waste of your abilities is very nearly criminal, my dear, and Jane will do her best by us, of course; but with matters as they are among the unharnessed beasts in England, and such reports as Bligh is already likely to make of us, I must not counsel you to hope for a quick recall.’

Temeraire could not fail to see that Laurence was quite downcast by his own words. ‘Why, I am sure it will be perfectly pleasant to remain a while,’ Temeraire said, stoutly, making sure to tuck his wings to his sides in a complaisant sort of way. ‘Only if we are to remain,’ he did not allow any disappointment to colour his words, ‘then it seems to me that Caesar is right on this one point: we ought have better leadership, who can arrange it so we can have proper food, and everything nice — perhaps even a pavilion, with some shade and water, against all this heat. We might even build some roads as wide as in China, and put the pavilions directly in the town; just like a properly civilized country.’

‘We cannot hope to promote such a project, however desirable, without the support of civil authority; you cannot force the change wholesale,’ Laurence said; he paused and added, low, ‘We might make such a bargain, with Bligh, I expect; he cannot be insensible of your much greater strength, and he knows he requires at least our complaisance, even if he has Rankin’s aid.’

‘But Laurence, I do not like Bligh at all,’ Temeraire said. ‘I have quite settled it that he is a bounder: he will say anything, and do anything, and be friendly to anyone, only to be back as governor; but I do not think it is because he wishes so much to do anything pleasant or nice for anyone.’

‘No, he wishes only to be vindicated, I believe,’ Laurence answered, ‘and revenged. Not without cause,’ he added, ‘but—’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘There would be a species of tyranny in it, when they have ruled so long and without argument from the citizenry.’

Temeraire brooded on further afterwards, that afternoon, while Caesar discussed enthusiastically with Rankin plans for an elaborate cattle farm, quite exploding Temeraire’s hopes of napping. He was beginning to understand strongly the sentiment that beggars could not be choosers. No one would ever have chosen to be trapped here; but now he must make the best of it, for himself and for Laurence. Temeraire dismally recognized that he had solaced himself, by thinking that Iskierka was only a wretched pirate, really, and her excesses for Granby in poor taste, which Laurence would not have liked, anyway. But now here was Rankin, too, also wearing gold buttons, and he was a captain still, as Laurence ought have been. There was no thinking two ways about it: Temeraire had not taken proper care of him; he had quite mismanaged the situation.

‘Demane,’ Temeraire said, lifting his head, and speaking in the Xhosa language, so Rankin could not sneak and overhear, nor Caesar; Demane looked up from where he was figuring out sums with Roland, or rather, giving his sums to Sipho to figure out for him, while he instead cleaned yet another old flintlock; he had acquired another four in the town, lately. ‘Demane, do you remember that fellow who was here the other day, MacArthur? Will you go into town and find out where he lives; and take him a message?’

‘I cannot but feel I have — I am — mismanaging the situation,’ Laurence said sombrely, tapping his hand restlessly upon the table until he noticed his own fidgeting, which even then required an effort to cease.

From wishing only to have the decision taken out of his own hands, Laurence now found he did not think he could be easy in his mind to watch the colony’s leaders deposed and, as he increasingly thought Bligh’s intention, executed without even awaiting word from England. ‘But if Rankin should move in his support, I cannot avoid the decision: either we must stand by or intervene. I hope,’ he added ruefully, ‘that I am not so petty as to have more sympathy for Johnston and MacArthur, and the less for Bligh, only because Rankin has ranged himself alongside him.’

‘You might have a worse reason,’ Tharkay said. ‘At least you cannot call the decision self-interested; his restoration would be more to your advantage.’

‘Not unless it is by my own doing,’ Laurence said, ‘which I cannot reconcile with a sense of justice; and I doubt even that would serve,’ he added, pessimism sharp in his mouth. ‘Even to act must rouse fresh suspicions; we are damned in either direction, when all they want of us is quiet obedience.’

‘If you will pardon my saying so,’ Tharkay said, ‘you will never satisfy them on that point: the last thing you or Temeraire will ever give anyone is quiet obedience. Have you considered it might be better not to try?’

Laurence would have liked to protest this remark: he believed in the discipline of the service, and still felt himself at heart a serving officer; if he had been forced beyond the bounds of proper submission to authority, it had been most unwillingly. But denial froze in his throat; that excuse was worth precisely the value that their Lordships would have put upon it, which was none.

Tharkay left him to wrestle with it a moment, then added, ‘There are alternatives, if you wished to consider them.’

‘To sit here on the far side of the world, seeing Temeraire wholly wasted on the business of breeding, and condemned to tedium and the absence of all society?’ Laurence said, tiredly. ‘We might, I suppose, do some work for the colony: ferry goods, and assist with the construction of roads—’

‘You might go to sea,’ Tharkay said, and Laurence looked at him in surprise. ‘No, I am not speaking fancifully. You remember, perhaps, Avram Maden?’

Laurence nodded, a little surprised: he had not heard the merchant’s name from Tharkay since they had left Istanbul, nor that of Maden’s daughter; and Laurence had himself avoided any mention of either for fear of giving pain. ‘I must consider myself yet in his debt; I hope he does well. He did not come under any suspicion, after our escape?’

‘No; I believe we made a sufficiently dramatic exit to satisfy the Turks without their seeking for conspirators.’ Tharkay paused, and then his mouth twisted a little. ‘He has been lately presented with his first grandson,’ he added.

‘Ah,’ Laurence said, and reached over to fill Tharkay’s glass.

Tharkay raised it to him silently and drank. A minute passed, then leaving the subject with nothing more said, he abruptly said, ‘I am engaged to perform a service for the directors of the East India Company, at his request; and as I understand it, several of those gentlemen are interested in outfitting privateers, to strike at the French trade in the Pacific.’

‘Yes?’ Laurence said politely, wondering how this should apply to his situation. What service those merchant lords might require, in this still-small port, Laurence could not understand, though it explained at least why Tharkay had come, and then he realized, starting back a little in his chair, that Tharkay meant this as a suggestion.

‘I could scarcely fit Temeraire on a privateer,’ he said, wondering a little that Tharkay could imagine it done: it was not as though he had not seen Temeraire.

‘Without having broached the subject with the gentlemen in question,’ Tharkay said, ‘I will nevertheless go so far as to assure you that the practicalities would be managed, if you were willing. Ships can be built to carry dragons, where interest exists; and a dragon who can sink any vessel afloat must command interest.’

He spoke with certainty; and Laurence could take his point. A dragon could never ordinarily be obtained for such a purpose; as yet they were the exclusive province of the state. They and the first-rates and transports which could bear a dragon were devoted to blockade duty, and to naval warfare, not to the quick and stinging pursuit of the enemy’s shipping. Temeraire would be unopposed, and a privateer so armed would be virtually at liberty to take any ship which it encountered.

Laurence did not know how to answer. There was nothing dishonourable in privateering, nothing dishonourable in the least. He had known several men formerly of the Navy embark on the enterprise and had not diminished in respect for them at all.

‘I doubt the government would deny you a letter of marque,’ Tharkay said.

‘No,’ Laurence said. It would surely suit their Lordships admirably. Temeraire wreaking a wholesale destruction among French shipping would be a great improvement over Temeraire sitting idly in New South Wales, with none of the risks attendant on bringing him back to the front and once again into the company of other impressionable beasts, which he might lure into sedition.

‘I will not urge it on you,’ Tharkay said. ‘If you should care for the introduction, however, I would be at your service.’

‘But that sounds quite splendid,’ Temeraire said, with real enthusiasm, when Laurence had laid the proposal before him in only the barest terms. ‘I am sure we should take any number of prizes; Iskierka should have nothing on it. How long do you suppose it would be, for them to build us a ship?’

Laurence only with difficulty persuaded him to consider it as anything other than a settled thing; Temeraire was already inclined to be making plans for the use of his future wealth. ‘You could not wish to remain here, instead?’ Temeraire said. ‘Not, of course, that I mean to suggest there is anything wrong here,’ he added unconvincingly.

The mornings and late evenings were now the only, and scarcely, bearable times of day, and they had begun to stretch them with early rising and late nights; the sun was only just up over the harbour, spilling a broad swath of light across the water running into all the bays of the harbour, making them glow out brilliantly white against the dark curve of the land rising away, blackish-green and silent. Temeraire had not eaten in two days: the stretch was not markedly unhealthy, given his inaction, but Laurence feared it was due largely to a secret disdain for his food, the regrettable consequence of Temeraire having grown fussy in his tastes, a grave danger for a military man — and there Laurence was forced again to the recollection that they were neither of them military, any longer.

Even so, there was an advantage to a stronger stomach: he himself, subject to shipboard provisions during the most ravenous years of his life, could subsist on weeviled biscuit and salt pork indefinitely; even though he had not often had to endure those conditions. Temeraire had too early in his life developed a finicky palate; and Gong Su had done what was in his power, but he had made quite clear one could not turn a lean, scrub-fed game animal, half bone and sinew and anatomical oddities, into a fat and nicely marbled piece of beef; Laurence was considering if his finances could stretch to the provision of some cattle, at least for a treat.

‘There is Caesar’s breakfast,’ Temeraire said, with a sigh, as the mournful lowing of a cow came towards them from the bottom of the hill; but when it was brought up, by an only slightly less reluctant youth, he delivered it not to Caesar but to them, stammering compliments of Mr. MacArthur, and for Laurence there was an invitation card, asking him to supper.

‘I wonder he should make such a gesture,’ Laurence said, rather taken aback: it was one thing for MacArthur to bring himself to the covert, however irregularly organized, in an official outpost — but quite another to invite Laurence to his home in mixed company likely overseen by his wife. ‘I wonder at it indeed; unless,’ he added, low, ‘he has had some intelligence of Rankin’s interest in Bligh’s case: that might make sufficient motive even for this.’

‘Umm,’ Temeraire said indistinctly, nibbling around a substantial thigh-bone his attention fixed notably on Gong Su’s enthusiastic preparations: the cow had been butchered, and was going into the earth with what greenstuffs had passed muster and some cracked wheat; even Caesar had peeled open an eye and was looking over with covert interest.

The hour was fixed sufficiently late that they could wait until the heat of the day had passed and travel at the beginning of twilight; Temeraire, having made a splendid meal, carried him aloft into the softening but yet unbroken blue: no clouds, yet again, all the day. What would have made an hour’s journey on horse, across rough country, was an easy ten minutes flight dragonback, and there was a wide fallow field open near the house, where Temeraire could set down.

‘Pray thank him for my cow,’ Temeraire said, contentedly settling himself to nap. ‘It was very handsome of him, and I do not think he is a coward anymore, after all.’

Laurence crossed the field to the house, and paused to knock the dirt from his boots before he stepped into the lane: he had worn trousers, and Hessians, more suitable to flying; but in concession to the invitation, he had made an effort with his cravat, and put on his better coat. A groom came out, and looked about confused for Laurence’s horse before pointing him to the door: the house was comfortable but not especially grand, built practically and made for work, but there was an elegance and taste in the arrangements.

He was shown into the salon, and a company heavily slanted: only four women to seven men, most of those in officers’ uniforms; one of the women rose, as Mr. MacArthur came to join him, and he presented her to Laurence as his wife, Elizabeth.

‘I hope you will forgive the informality of our society, Mr. Laurence,’ she said, when he had bowed over her hand. ‘We are grown sadly careless in this wild country, and the heat crushes all aspirations to stiffness. I hope you did not have a very tiring ride.’

‘Not at all; Temeraire brought me,’ Laurence said. ‘He is in your southwest field; I trust it no inconvenience.’

‘Why, none,’ she said, though her eyes had widened, and one of the officers said, ‘Do you mean you have that monster sitting out in the yard?’

‘That monster’s sharpest weapon is his tongue,’ MacArthur said. ‘I am pretty well cut to ribbons yet: did the cow sweeten him at all?’

‘As much as you might like, sir,’ Laurence said, dryly. ‘You have quite hit on the point of weakness.’

The supper was, for all the ulterior motives likely to have been its inspiration, a comfortable and civilized affair: Laurence had not quite known what to expect, from the colonial society, but Mrs. MacArthur was plainly a woman of some character, and though indeed never striving for a formality which both the climate and the situation of the colony would have rendered tiresome and a little absurd, she directed the style of their gathering nevertheless. She could not have a balanced table, so she served the meal in two courses, inviting her guests to refresh themselves in between with a little walking in the gardens, illuminated with lamps, and rearranging the seating on their return to partner the ladies afresh.

The meal was thoughtfully suited to the weather as well: a cool soup of fresh cucumber and mint, meat served in jellied aspic, beef very thinly carved from the joint, lightly boiled chicken; and instead of pudding an array of cakes, with pots of jam, and excellent, fragrant tea; all served on porcelain of the very highest quality, the one real extravagance Laurence noticed: dishes of white and that particularly delicate shade of blue which could not be achieved by any European art, and the strength of real quality.

He noticed it to his hostess with compliments; to his surprise she looked a little crestfallen, and said, ‘Oh, you have found out my weakness, Mr. Laurence; I could not resist them, although I know very well I oughtn’t: they must be smuggled, of course.’

‘Do not say it aloud!’ MacArthur cried. ‘So long as you do not know it for certain, you may ha’e your dishes, and we our tea; and long may the rascals thrive.’