by Naomi Novik
Laurence felt a great coldness descend on him; he was very tired suddenly, and he had no heart at all to argue. He heard his own voice almost as if from a distance, and there was no emotion in it at all as he said, “Very good, sir; I shall leave at once.” He would have to take Temeraire to the commons to sleep, undoubtedly scaring the village herd, and buy him a few sheep out of his own pocket in the morning if possible or ask him to fly hungry if not; but they would manage.
“Do not be absurd,” Lord Allendale said. “I am not disowning you; not that you do not deserve it, but I do not choose to enact a melodrama for the benefit of the world. You will stay the night and leave tomorrow, as you declared; that will do very well. I think nothing more needs to be said; you may go.”
Laurence went back upstairs as quickly as he was able; closing the door of his bedroom behind him felt like allowing a burden to slip off his shoulders. He had meant to call for a bath, but he did not think he could bear to speak to anyone, even a maid or a footman: to be alone and quiet was everything. He consoled himself with the reminder that they could leave early in the morning, and he would not have to endure another formal meal with the company, nor exchange another word with his father, who rarely rose before eleven even in the country.
He looked at his bed a moment longer; then abruptly he took an old frock coat and a worn pair of trousers from his wardrobe, exchanged these for his evening dress, and went outside. Temeraire was already asleep, curled neatly about himself, but before Laurence could slip away again, one of his eyes half-opened, and he lifted his wing in instinctive welcome. Laurence had taken a blanket from the stables; he was as warm and comfortable as he could wish, stretched upon the dragon’s broad foreleg.
“Is all well?” Temeraire asked him softly, putting his other foreleg protectively around Laurence, sheltering him more closely against his breast; his wings half-rose, mantling. “Something has distressed you. Shall we not go at once?”
The thought was tempting, but there was no sense in it; he and Temeraire would both be the better for a quiet night and breakfast in the morning, and in any case he was not going to creep away as if ashamed. “No, no,” Laurence said, petting him until his wings settled again. “There is no need, I assure you; I have only had words with my father.” He fell silent; he could not shake the memory of the interview, his father’s cold dismissiveness, and his shoulders hunched.
“Is he angry about our coming?” Temeraire asked.
Temeraire’s quick perception and the concern in his voice were like a tonic for his weary unhappiness, and it made Laurence speak more freely than he meant to. “It is an old quarrel at heart,” he said. “He would have had me go into the Church, like my brother; he has never counted the Navy an honorable occupation.”
“And is an aviator worse, then?” Temeraire said, a little too perceptive now. “Is that why you did not like to leave the Navy?”
“In his eyes, perhaps, the Corps is worse, but not in mine; there is too great a compensation.” He reached up to stroke Temeraire’s nose; Temeraire nuzzled back affectionately. “But truly, he has never approved my choice of career; I had to run away from home as a boy for him to let me go to sea. I cannot allow his will to govern me, for I see my duty differently than he does.”
Temeraire snorted, his warm breath coming out as small trails of smoke in the cool night air. “But he will not let you sleep inside?”
“Oh, no,” Laurence said, and felt a little embarrassed to confess the weakness that had brought him out to seek comfort in Temeraire. “I only felt I would rather be with you, than sleep alone.”
But Temeraire did not see anything unusual in it. “So long as you are quite warm,” he said, resettling himself carefully and sweeping his wings forward a little, to encircle them from the wind.
“I am very comfortable; I beg you to have no concern,” Laurence said, stretching out upon the broad, firm limb, and drawing the blanket around himself. “Good night, my dear.” He was suddenly very tired, but with a natural physical fatigue: the bone-deep, painful weariness was gone.
He woke very early, just before sunrise, as Temeraire’s belly rumbled strongly enough for the sound to rouse them both. “Oh, I am hungry,” Temeraire said, waking up bright-eyed, and looked eagerly over at the herd of deer milling nervously in the park, clustered against the far wall.
Laurence climbed down. “I will leave you to your breakfast, and go to have my own,” he said, giving Temeraire’s side one final pat before turning back to the house. He was in no fit state to be seen; fortunately, with the hour so early, the guests were not yet about, and he was able to gain his bedroom without any encounter which might have rendered him still more disreputable.
He washed briskly, put on his flying dress while a manservant repacked his solitary piece of baggage, and went down as soon as he thought acceptable. The maids were still laying the first breakfast dishes out upon the sideboard, and the coffeepot had just been laid upon the table. He had hoped to avoid all the party, but to his surprise, Edith was at the breakfast table already, though she had never been an early riser.
Her face was outwardly calm, her clothing in perfect order and her hair drawn up smoothly into a golden knot, but her hands betrayed her, clenched together in her lap. She had not taken any food, only a cup of tea, and even that sat untouched before her. “Good morning,” she said, with a brightness that rang false; she glanced at the servants as she spoke. “May I pour for you?”
“Thank you,” he said, the only possible reply, and took the place next to her; she poured coffee for him and added half a spoonful of sugar and cream each, exactly to his tastes. They sat stiffly together, neither eating nor speaking, until the servants finished the preparations and left the room.
“I hoped I might have a chance to speak with you before you left,” she said quietly, looking at him at last. “I am so very sorry, Will; I suppose there was no other alternative?”
He needed a moment to understand she meant his going into harness; despite his anxieties on the subject of his training, he had already forgotten to view his new situation as an evil. “No, my duty was clear,” he said, shortly; he might have to tolerate criticism from his father on the subject, but he would not accept it from any other quarter.
But in the event, Edith only nodded. “I knew as soon as I heard that it would be something of the sort,” she said. She bowed her head again; her hands, which had been twisting restlessly over each other, stilled.
“My feelings have not altered with my circumstances,” Laurence said at last, when it was clear she would say nothing more. He felt he already had received his answer, by her lack of warmth, but she would not say, later on, that he had not been true to his word; he would let her be the one to put an end to their understanding. “If yours have, you need merely say a word to silence me.” Even as he made the offer, he could not help but feel resentment, and he could hear an unaccustomed coldness creeping into his voice: a strange tone for a proposal.
She drew a quick, startled breath, and said almost fiercely, “How can you speak so?” For a moment he hoped again; but she went on at once to say, “Have I ever been mercenary; have I ever reproached you for following your chosen course, with all its attendant dangers and discomforts? If you had gone into the Church, you would certainly have had any number of good livings settled upon you; by now we could have been comfortable together in our own home, with children, and I should not have had to spend so many hours in fear for you away at sea.”
She spoke very fast, with more emotion than he was used to seeing in her, and spots of color standing high on her cheeks. There was a great deal of justice in her remarks; he could not fail to see it, and be embarrassed at his own resentment. He half-reached out his hand to her, but she was already continuing: “I have not complained, have I? I have waited; I have been patient; but I have been waiting for something better than a solitary life, far from the society of all my friends and family, with only a very little share of your attention.
My feelings are just as they have always been, but I am not so reckless or sentimental as to rely on feeling alone to ensure happiness in the face of every possible obstacle.”
Here at last she stopped. “Forgive me,” Laurence said, heavy with mortification: every word seemed a just reproach, when he had been pleased to think himself ill-used. “I should not have spoken, Edith; I had better have asked your pardon for having placed you in so wretched a position.” He rose from the table and bowed; of course he could not stay in her company now. “I must beg you to excuse me; pray accept all my best wishes for your happiness.”
But she was rising also, and shaking her head. “No, you must stay and finish your breakfast,” she said. “You have a long journey ahead of you; I am not hungry in the least. No, I assure you, I am going.” She gave him her hand and a smile that trembled very slightly. He thought she meant to make a polite farewell, but if that was her intention, it failed at the last moment. “Pray do not think ill of me,” she said, very low, and left the room as quickly as she might.
She need not have worried; he could not. On the contrary, he felt only guilt for having felt coldly towards her even for a moment, and for having failed in his obligation to her. Their understanding had been formed between a gentleman’s daughter with a respectable dowry and a naval officer with few expectations but handsome prospects. He had reduced his standing through his own actions, and he could not deny that nearly all the world would have disagreed with his own assessment of his duty in the matter.
And she was not unreasonable in asking more than an aviator could give. Laurence had only to think of the degree of his attention and affection which Temeraire commanded to realize he could have very little left to offer a wife, even on those rare occasions when he would be at liberty. He had been selfish in making the offer, asking her to sacrifice her own happiness to his comfort.
He had very little heart or appetite left for his breakfast, but he did not want to stop along his way; he filled his plate and forced himself to eat. He was not left in solitude long; only a little while after Edith had gone, Miss Montagu came downstairs, dressed in a too-elegant riding habit, something more suitable for a sedate canter through London than a country ride, which nevertheless showed her figure to great advantage. She was smiling as she came into the room, which expression turned instantly to a frown to see him the only one there, and she took a seat at the far end of the table. Woolvey shortly joined her, likewise dressed for riding; Laurence nodded to them both with bare civility and paid no attention to their idle conversation.
Just as he was finishing, his mother came down, showing signs of hurried dressing and lines of fatigue around her eyes; she looked into his face anxiously. He smiled at her, hoping to reassure, but he could see he was not very successful: his unhappiness and the reserve with which he had armored himself against his father’s disapproval and the curiosity of the general company was visible in his face, with all he could do.
“I must be going shortly; will you come and meet Temeraire?” he asked her, thinking they might have a private few minutes walking, at least.
“Temeraire?” Lady Allendale said blankly. “William, you do not mean you have your dragon here, do you? Good Heavens, where is he?”
“Certainly he is here; how else would I be traveling? I left him outside behind the stables, in the old yearling paddock,” Laurence said. “He will have eaten by now; I told him to make free of the deer.”
“Oh!” said Miss Montagu, overhearing; curiosity evidently overcame her objections to the company of an aviator. “I have never seen a dragon; pray may we come? How famous!”
It was impossible to refuse, although he would have liked to, so when he had rung for his baggage, the four of them went out to the field together. Temeraire was sitting up on his haunches, watching the morning fog gradually burn away over the countryside; against the cold grey sky he loomed very large, even from a considerable distance.
Laurence stopped for a moment to pick up a bucket and rags from the stables, then led his suddenly reluctant party on with a certain relish at Woolvey and Miss Montagu’s dragging steps. His mother was not unalarmed herself, but she did not show it, save by holding Laurence’s arm a little more tightly, and stopping several paces back as he went to Temeraire’s side.
Temeraire looked at the strangers with interest as he lowered his head to be washed; his chops were gory with the remains of the deer, and he opened his jaws to let Laurence clean away the blood from the corners of his mouth. There were three or four sets of antlers upon the ground. “I tried to bathe in that pond, but it is too shallow, and the mud came into my nose,” he told Laurence apologetically.
“Oh, he talks!” Miss Montagu exclaimed, clinging to Woolvey’s arm; the two of them had backed away at the sight of the rows of gleaming white teeth: Temeraire’s incisors were already larger than a man’s fist, and with a serrated edge.
Temeraire was taken aback at first; but then his pupils widened and he said, very gently, “Yes, I talk,” and to Laurence, “Would she perhaps like to come up on my back, and see around?”
Laurence could not repress an unworthy flash of malice. “I am sure she would; pray come forward, Miss Montagu, I can see you are not one of those poor-spirited creatures who are afraid of dragons.”
“No, no,” she said palely, drawing back. “I have trespassed on Mr. Woolvey’s time enough, we must be going for our ride.” Woolvey stammered a few equally transparent excuses as well, and they escaped at once together, stumbling in their haste to be away.
Temeraire blinked after them in mild surprise. “Oh, they were just afraid,” he said. “I thought she was like Volly at first. I do not understand; it is not as though they were cows, and anyway I have just eaten.”
Laurence concealed his private sentiment of victory and drew his mother forward. “Do not be afraid at all, there is not the least cause,” he said to her softly. “Temeraire, this is my mother, Lady Allendale.”
“Oh, a mother, that is special, is it not?” Temeraire said, lowering his head to look at her more closely. “I am honored to meet you.”
Laurence guided her hand to Temeraire’s snout, and once she made the first tentative touch to the warm hide, she soon began petting the dragon with more confidence. “Why, the pleasure is mine,” she said. “And how soft! I would never have thought it.”
Temeraire made a pleased low rumble at the compliment and the petting, and Laurence looked at the two of them with a great deal of his happiness restored; he thought how little the rest of the world should matter to him, when he was secure in the good opinion of those he valued most, and in the knowledge that he was doing his duty. “Temeraire is a Chinese Imperial,” he told his mother, with unconcealed pride. “One of the very rarest of all dragons: the only one in all Europe.”
“Truly? How splendid, my dear; I do recall having heard before that Chinese dragons are quite out of the common way,” she said. But she still looked at him anxiously, and there was a silent question in her eyes.
“Yes,” he said, trying to answer it. “I count myself very fortunate, I promise you. Perhaps we will take you flying someday, when we have more time,” he added. “It is quite extraordinary; there is nothing to compare to it.”
“Oh, flying, indeed,” she said indignantly, yet she seemed satisfied on a deeper level. “When you know perfectly well I cannot even keep myself on a horse. What I should do on a dragon’s back, I am sure I do not know.”
“You would be strapped on quite securely, just as I am,” Laurence said. “Temeraire is not a horse, he would not try to have you off.”
Temeraire said earnestly, “Oh yes, and if you did fall off, I dare say I could catch you,” which was perhaps not the most reassuring remark, but his desire to please was very obvious, and Lady Allendale smiled up at him anyway.
“How very kind you are; I had no idea dragons were so well-mannered,” she said. “You will take prodigious care of William, will you not? He has always given me twice
as much anxiety as any of my other children, and he is forever getting himself into scrapes.”
Laurence was a little indignant to hear himself described so, and to have Temeraire say, “I promise you, I will never let him come to harm.”
“I see I have delayed too long; shortly the two of you will have me wrapped in cotton batting and fed on gruel,” he said, bending to kiss her cheek. “Mother, you may write to me care of the Corps at Loch Laggan covert, in Scotland; we will be training there. Temeraire, will you sit up? I will sling this bandbox again.”
“Perhaps you could take out that book by Duncan?” Temeraire asked, rearing up. “The Naval Trident? We never finished reading about the battle of the Glorious First, and you might read it to me as we go.”
“Does he read to you?” Lady Allendale asked Temeraire, amused.
“Yes; you see, I cannot hold them myself, for they are too small, and also I cannot turn the pages very well,” Temeraire said.
“You are misunderstanding; she is only shocked to learn that I am ever to be persuaded to open a book; she was forever trying to make me sit to them when I was a boy,” Laurence said, rummaging in one of his other boxes to find the volume. “You would be quite astonished at how much of a bluestocking I am become, Mother; he is quite insatiable. I am ready, Temeraire.”
She laughed and stepped back to the edge of the field as Temeraire put Laurence up, and stood watching them, shading her eyes with one hand, as they drove up into the air; a small figure, vanishing with every beat of the great wings, and then the gardens and the towers of the house rolled away behind the curve of a hill.
Chapter 5
T HE SKY OVER Loch Laggan was full of low-hanging clouds, pearl grey, mirrored in the black water of the lake. Spring had not yet arrived; a crust of ice and snow lay over the shore, ripples of yellow sand from an autumn tide still preserved beneath. The crisp cold smell of pine and fresh-cut wood rose from the forest. A gravel road wound up from the northern shores of the lake to the complex of the covert, and Temeraire turned to follow it up the low mountain.