They would be in Nottinghamshire before nightfall, and Wollaton Hall had a herd of four hundred or more. “I can send you elsewhere,” Jane said, but Laurence shook his head. He little wished to be at home in the present circumstances: a condemned traitor, with the worst sort of news, bringing twenty hungry dragons to tear up the estate. But it could not be helped; worse if he took himself to some other house nearby, without paying his formal respects, and let some other group of dragons use the grounds; that would be cowardice, and shirking. If Lord Allendale chose to forbid him the house when he came, that was his father’s privilege; his own duty was to endure the rebuke he had earned.
They landed at last a few hours later, the dragons setting down their burdens with deep and grateful sighs; it was no joke even for a heavy-weight to carry two sixteen-pounders, over a distance of thirty miles, and Maximus and Requiescat had been loaded down with four apiece. Temeraire sighed and stretched himself out upon the cool ground like a long black snake.
Laurence slid down from Temeraire’s back, weary and sore himself with the long hours sitting dragon-back. “Will you speak to them up at the house?” Jane asked him, “or will I send Frette?”
“No; I will go,” Laurence said, and touching his hat turned away.
“Pray give my best regards to your mother,” Temeraire said, rousing a little, when Laurence rubbed his muzzle in farewell.
He walked slowly and with reluctance to the house, the windows mostly dark, and only a few link lights burning, near the door. There were a couple of footmen outside gripping muskets, nervously. “It is all right, Jones,” Laurence said, when he came close enough to recognize their faces. “It is only me; is Lord Allendale at home?”
“Oh—yes, sir, but,” Jones said, looking at him wide-eyed, and then the door opened. For a moment Laurence thought it was his father; but it was his eldest brother George, in slippers and dressing-gown over his nightshirt, and a valet getting a coat on over his shoulders.
“For Heaven’s sake, Will,” George said, coming down the stairs: he was Laurence’s senior by six years, and nearly as much time had gone by since Laurence had last seen him; he had grown stouter, but the tone of exasperation was unchanged. “That will be all,” he added abruptly to the footmen, “you may go back inside.” He said nothing more, until the door had shut behind them, and then turning back to Laurence hissed, “What in God’s name are you doing here? And coming to the front door—you might have a little discretion, at least. Have you—are you—hungry, do you need—”
He floundered, and Laurence flushed in sudden understanding, and bit out, “I have not fled gaol and come to the door to beg; I am paroled, to fight the invasion.”
“Paroled?” George said. “Paroled, for the invasion, and here you are in the middle of Nottinghamshire! Whoever is likely to believe such a story, I ask you.”
“Good God, I am not lying to you,” Laurence said impatiently. “I am not going to explain this twice over; will my father see me?”
“No; I shan’t so much as tell him you are here,” George said. “He is sick, Will: three stone down since August, and the doctors have said he must keep quiet, do you understand, perfectly quiet, if we want him to see another year. He cannot even oversee the estate manager anymore; why do you think I am here? and no wonder, with the worry he has had. If you need money, or someplace to sleep—”
“I am not here for myself,” Laurence broke in on him at last, feeling stiff and strange; the idea of his father ill, reduced, seemed unreal. “I am here with the Corps; we must requisition the deer, to feed the dragons. There are nine at present,” he added, “and will be more before morning; I did not want you to be alarmed.”
“Nine—” George looked towards the deer park, and saw the lights, the shadows of many dragons moving. “Then, you are not lying,” he said slowly. “What has happened?”
The news could hardly be concealed. “Trounced us, outside London,” Laurence said. “The army is strung out from Weedon to here, and he took ten thousand prisoner. We are falling back on Scotland.”
“My God,” George said, and they stood together in silence a moment. “Are you staying by the wood?” When Laurence had nodded, George said, “Well—you may take whatever you need of the deer, of course; it is the King’s right. There are the stables, and the farmhouse—I will send food down to you all from the kitchens, and your commander, we can give him a bed—” It was all a long string of delaying tactics, and at last he came to it and finished, awkwardly, “I am still not going to have you in, Will; I am sorry.”
“No,” Laurence said. “No, of course.” He might have insisted, for himself or his fellows: it was their right as officers to be quartered, when there was room in the house. But he could not bear to do so. Jane might, if she chose; he could not, himself, force his way in.
“Will you tell me—will he come through here?” George asked him, low. “Ought I send Elizabeth and Mother and the children away, to Northumbria perhaps—”
“I imagine he will send men to take cattle, for his beasts,” Laurence said, “but if he marches, he will march up the coast; he cannot leave our outposts behind his flank.” He drew his hand across his forehead, tiredly. “I am sorry, I cannot be sure of the counsel I am giving you, but I think there is no place much safer than here, unless you send them to Liverpool and by ship to Halifax.”
George nodded again, and turned and went up the stairs. He hesitated at the door, as if he would have spoken again; but in the end he said nothing. He went back inside, and the door shut behind him.
Laurence walked back alone from the house, his feet sure on the familiar lanes despite the dark; no insect sounds or any noise but the sighing of wind, occasionally, shaking the few dried leaves like rattles, drifting the smell of the dragons near, and of smoke. The ground crews of the harnessed dragons were making a little camp, not comfortless; fire at least was easy enough to come by when Granby only needed ask Iskierka for a little. The other captains were standing by it, warming their hands and talking in low voices, tracing the course they should take in the morning.
Some of the dragons were still arriving, who had guarded the rear of the retreat, and others already deep into their dinners, the lean bodies of deer stretched out limp upon the ground. Iskierka was doing the hunting, to the satisfaction of all except the smaller creatures of the forest, who fled out into the open with the panicked deer when she belched a roaring tongue of flame over the timber: mice and rabbits and sparrows, and a few poachers from the village fleeing with their snares.
“We will head onwards to Scotland, to Loch Laggan,” Jane was saying, “and wait there for the army to regroup. It will be a precious slow trip for them, but Wellington will pick up twenty thousand men at Weedon Bec guns, and another twenty in Manchester.”
“But can we keep the beasts fed along the way, and while we wait?” another woman’s voice asked from above, as another Longwing settled. “Mort, be a love and set me down.”
Laurence had never met Captain St. Germain before; she had long been assigned to Gibraltar. Mortiferus put her down beside the fire: a woman very tall and fat with delicate features, a mop of fair hair curling in wisps and pale-lashed blue eyes; in complete effect rather like a Rubens painting. She could have made two of Jane, who was not slender, and likely would have tipped the scales over Berkley.
“The countrymen will find venison thin on the ground for a few winters, but we will manage somehow,” Jane said. She looked around, at a small shriek; the servants from the house with their lanterns and the baskets of food had come down the lane, and one of the maids had stopped and fainted, on seeing the dragons. “Why, I call that handsome, Laurence; I hope you have given them our thanks,” she said, and waved her men forward to go take the food off their hands.