Choiseul said, “I hope I do not discourage your hopes in any way; I would be desolate to give you unnecessary concern. But I cannot say that I have great confidence in their chances. I do not wish to sound ungrateful; the Austrian corps was generous enough to grant myself and Praecursoris asylum during the Revolution, and I am most deeply in their debt. But the archdukes are fools, and they will not listen to the few generals of competence they have. Archduke Ferdinand to fight the genius of Marengo and Egypt! It is an absurdity.”
“I cannot say that Marengo was so brilliantly run as all that,” Sutton said. “If the Austrians had only brought up their second aerial division from Verona in time, we would have had a very different ending; it was as much luck as anything.”
Laurence did not feel himself sufficiently in command of land tactics to offer his own comment, but this seemed perilously close to bravado; in any case, he had a healthy respect for luck, and Bonaparte seemed to attract a greater share than most generals.
For his part, Choiseul smiled briefly and did not contradict, saying only, “Perhaps my fears are excessive; still, they have brought us here, for our position in a defeated Austria would be untenable. There are many men in my former service who are very savage against me for having taken so valuable a dragon as Praecursoris away,” he explained, in answer to Laurence’s look of inquiry. “Friends warned me that Bonaparte means to demand our surrender as part of any terms that might be made, and to place us under a charge of treason. So again we have had to flee, and now we cast ourselves upon your generosity.”
He spoke with an easy, pleasant manner, but there were deep lines around his eyes, and they were unhappy; Laurence looked at him with sympathy. He had known French officers of his sort before, naval men who had fled France after the Revolution, eating their hearts out on England’s shores; their position was a sad and bitter one: worse, he felt, than the merely dispossessed noblemen who had fled to save their lives, for they felt all the pain of sitting idle while their nation was at war, and every victory celebrated in England was a wrenching loss for their own service.
“Oh yes, it is uncommon generous of us, taking in a Chanson-de-Guerre like this,” Sutton said, with heavy but well-meant raillery. “After all, we have so very many heavyweights we can hardly squeeze in another, particularly so fine and well-trained a veteran.”
Choiseul bowed slightly in acknowledgment and looked down at his dragon with affection. “I gladly accept the compliment for Praecursoris, but you have already many fine beasts here; that Regal Copper looks prodigious, and I see from his horns he is not yet at his full growth. And your dragon, Captain Laurence, surely he is some new breed? I have not seen his like.”
“No, nor are you likely to again,” Sutton said, “unless you go halfway round the world.”
“He is an Imperial, sir, a Chinese breed,” Laurence said, torn between not wishing to show off and an undeniable pleasure in doing just so. Choiseul’s astonished reaction, though decently restrained, was highly satisfying, but then Laurence was obliged to explain the circumstances of Temeraire’s acquisition, and he could not help but feel somewhat awkward when relating the triumphant capture of a French ship and a French egg to a Frenchman.
But Choiseul was clearly used to the situation and heard the story with at least the appearance of complaisance, though he offered no remark. Though Sutton was inclined to dwell on the French loss a little smugly, Laurence hurried on to ask what Choiseul would be doing in the covert.
“I understand there is a formation in training, and that Praecursoris and I are to join in the maneuvers: some notion I believe of our serving as a relief, when circumstances allow,” Choiseul said. “Celeritas hopes also that Praecursoris may be of some assistance in the training of your heaviest beasts for formation flying: we have always flown in formation, for close on fourteen years now.”
A thundering rush of wings interrupted their conversation as the other dragons were called to the hunting grounds, the first four having finished their meal, and Temeraire and Praecursoris both made an attempt to land at the same convenient outcropping nearby: Laurence was startled to see Temeraire bare his teeth and flare his ruff at the older dragon. “I beg you to excuse me,” he said hastily, and hurried to find another place, calling Temeraire, and with relief saw him wheel away and follow.
“I would have come to you,” Temeraire said, a little reproachfully, casting a narrowed eye at Praecursoris, who was now occupying the contested perch and speaking quietly with Choiseul.
“They are guests here; it is only courteous to give way,” Laurence said. “I had no notion that you were so fierce in matters of precedence, my dear.”
Temeraire furrowed the ground before him with his claws. “He is not any bigger than I am,” he said. “And he is not a Longwing, so he does not spit poison, and there are no fire-breathing dragons in Britain; I do not see why he is any better than I am.”
“He is not one jot better, not at all,” Laurence said, stroking the tensed foreleg. “Precedence is merely a matter of formality, and you are perfectly within your rights to eat with the others. Pray do not be quarrelsome, however; they have fled the Continent, to be away from Bonaparte.”
“Oh?” Temeraire’s ruff smoothed out gradually against his neck, and he looked at the strange dragon with more interest. “But they are speaking French; if they are French, why are they afraid of Bonaparte?”
“They are royalists, loyal to the Bourbon kings,” Laurence said. “I dare say they left after the Jacobins put the King to death; it was very dreadful in France for a while, I am afraid, and though Bonaparte is at least not chopping people’s heads off anymore, he is scarcely much better in their eyes; I assure you they despise him worse than we do.”
“Well, I am sorry if I was rude,” Temeraire murmured, and straightened up to address Praecursoris. “Veuillez m’excuser, si je vous ai dérangé,” he said, to Laurence’s astonishment.
Praecursoris turned around. “Mais non, pas du tout,” he answered mildly, and inclined his head. “Permettez que je vous présente Choiseul, mon capitaine,” he added.
“Et voici Laurence, le mien,” Temeraire said. “Laurence, pray bow,” he added, in an undertone, when Laurence only stood staring.
Laurence at once made his leg; he of course could not interrupt the formal exchange, but he was bursting with curiosity, and as soon as they were winging their way down to the lake for Temeraire’s bath, he demanded, “But how on earth do you come to speak French?”
Temeraire turned his head about. “What do you mean? Is it very unusual to speak French? It was not at all difficult.”
“Well, it is prodigious strange; so far as I know you have never heard a word of it: certainly not from me, for I am lucky if I can say my bonjours without embarrassing myself,” Laurence said.
“I am not surprised that he can speak French,” Celeritas said, when Laurence asked him later that afternoon, at the training grounds, “but only that you should not have heard him do so before; do you mean to say Temeraire did not speak French when he first cracked the shell? He spoke English directly?”
“Why, yes,” Laurence said. “I confess we were surprised, but only to hear him speak at all so soon. Is it unusual?”
“That he spoke, no; we learn language through the shell,” Celeritas said. “And as he was aboard a French vessel in the months before his hatching, I am not surprised at all that he should know that tongue. I am far more surprised that he was able to speak English after only a week aboard. Fluently?”
“From the first moment,” Laurence said, pleased at this fresh evidence of Temeraire’s unique gifts. “You have been forever surprising me, my dear,” he added, patting Temeraire’s neck, making him preen with satisfaction.