“No, indeed,” Temeraire said energetically. “I do not think much of this Nelson, if he has anything to say for slavery: I am sure he cannot be half so nice as Laurence, no matter how many battles he has won. I have never seen anything as dreadful as those poor slaves in Cape Coast; and I am very glad if we can help them, as well as our friends.”
“And this, from a dragon,” Wilberforce said, with great satisfaction, while Laurence was made mute by dismay. “What man can refuse to feel pity for those wretched souls, when it may be stirred in such a breast? Indeed,” he said, turning to Lord Allendale, “we ought to hold the assembly here where we sit. I am certain it will answer all the better, so far as producing a great sensation, and moreover,” he added, with a glint of humor in his eye, “I should like to see the gentleman who will refuse to consider an argument made to him by a dragon, with that dragon standing before him.”
“Out of doors, at this season?” Lord Allendale said.
“We might organize it like the pavilion-dinners in China: long tables, with coal-pits underneath to make them warm,” Temeraire suggested, entering with enthusiasm into the spirit of the thing, while Laurence could only listen with increasing desperation as his fate was sealed. “We will have to knock down some trees to make room, but I can do that very easily, and if we were to hang panels of silk from the remainder, it will seem quite like a pavilion, and keep warm besides.”
“An excellent notion,” Wilberforce said, leaving his chair to inspect the scratched diagrams which Temeraire was making in the dirt. “It will have an Oriental flavor, exactly what is needed.”
“Well, if you think it so; all I can say in its favor, it will certainly be the nine-days’ wonder of society, whether more than half-a-dozen curiosity-seekers come or not,” Lord Allendale said.
“We can spare you for one night, now and again,” Jane said, sinking Laurence’s final hopes of escape. “Our intelligence is nothing to brag about, now we have no couriers to risk on spy-missions; but the Navy do a good business with the French fishermen, on the blockade, and they say there has yet been no movement to the coast. They might be lying, of course,” she added, “but if there were a marked shift in numbers, the prices of the catch would have risen, with livestock going to dragons.”
The maid brought in the tea, and she poured for him. “Do not I beg you repine too much upon it,” Jane went on, meaning the Admiralty’s refusal to give them more funds. “Perhaps this party of yours will do us some good in that quarter, and Powys has written me to say he has cobbled together something for us already, by subscription among the retired senior officers. It will not do for anything extravagant, but I think we can keep the poor creatures in pepper, at least until then.”
In the meanwhile, they set about the experimental pavilion: the promise of so substantial a commission proved enough to tempt a handful of more intrepid tradesmen to the Dover covert. Having met them at the gates, with a party of crewmen, Laurence escorted them the rest of the way to Temeraire, who in an attempt to be unalarming hunched himself down as small as a dragon of some eighteen tons could manage, and nearly flattened his ruff down against his neck. Yet he could not help but insinuate himself into the conversation once the construction of the pavilion was well under discussion, and indeed his offerings were quite necessary, as Laurence had not the faintest notion how to convert the Chinese measurements.
“I want one!” Iskierka said, having overheard too much of the proceedings from her nearby clearing: heedless of Granby’s protests, she squirmed herself through the trees into Temeraire’s clearing, shaking off a blizzard of ash-flakes, and alarming the poor tradesmen very much with a hiccough of fire which sent steam shooting out her spines to clear them. “I want to sleep in a pavilion, too: I do not like this cold dirt at all.”
“Well, you cannot have one,” Temeraire said. “This is for our sick friends, and anyway you have no capital.”
“Then I shall get some,” she declared. “Where does one get capital, and what does it look like?”
Temeraire proudly rubbed his breastplate of platinum and pearl. “This is a piece of capital,” he said, “and Laurence gave it me: he got it from taking a ship in a battle.”
“Oh! that is very easy,” Iskierka said. “Granby, let us go get a ship, and then I may have a pavilion.”
“Lord, you cannot have anything of the sort, do not be silly,” Granby said, nodding his rueful apologies to Laurence as he came into the clearing, along the trail of smashed branches and crushed hedge which she had left in her wake. “You would burn it up in an instant: the thing is made of wood.”
“Can it be made of stone?” she demanded, swinging her head around to one of the wide-eyed tradesmen. She was not grown very large, despite the twelve feet in length she had acquired since settling at Dover with a steady diet, being rather sinuous than bulky, in the Kazilik style, and she yet looked little more than a garden-snake next to Temeraire. But her appearance at close quarters was by no means reassuring, with the hissing-kettle gurgle of whatever internal mechanism produced her fire plainly audible and the vents of hot air issuing from her spines, white and impressive in the cold.
No one answered her, except the elderly architect, a Mr. Royle. “Stone? No, I must advise against it. Brick will be a much more practical construction,” he opined; he had not looked up from the papers since being handed them, so badly nearsighted he was inspecting the plans with a jeweler’s loupe, an inch from his watery blue eyes, and could most likely not make either dragon out in the least. “Silly oriental stuff, this roof, do you insist on having it so?”
“It is not silly oriental stuff at all,” Temeraire said, “it is very elegant: that design is my mother’s own pavilion, and it is in the best fashion.”
“You will need linkboys on it all winter long to brush the snow clear, and I will not give a brass farthing for the gutters after two seasons,” Royle said. “A good slate roof, that is the thing, do you not agree with me, Mr. Cutter?”
Mr. Cutter had not the least opinion to offer, as he was backed to the trees and looked ready to bolt, if Laurence had not prudently stationed his ground crew around the border of the clearing to forestall just such panicked flight.
“I am very willing to be advised by you, sir, as to the best plan of construction, and the most reasonable,” Laurence said, while Royle blinked around himself looking for a response. “Temeraire, our climate here is a good deal wetter, and we must cut our cloth to suit our station.”
“Very well, I suppose,” Temeraire said, with a wistful eye for the upturned roof-corners and the brightly painted wood.
Iskierka meanwhile took inspiration, and began to plot the acquisition of capital. “If I burn up a ship, is that good enough, or must I bring it back?” she demanded, and began her piratical career by presenting Granby with a small fishing-boat, the next morning, which she had picked up from Dover harbor during the night. “Well, you did not say it must be a French ship,” she said crossly, to their recriminations, and curled up to sulk. Gherni was hastily recruited to replace it under cover of darkness, the following night, undoubtedly to the great puzzlement of its temporarily bereft owner.
“Laurence, do you suppose that we should be able to get more capital, by taking French ships,” Temeraire asked, with a thoughtfulness very alarming to Laurence, who had just returned from dealing with this pretty piece of confusion.
“The French ships-of-the-line are penned in their harbors by the Channel blockade, thank Heaven, and we are not privateers, to go plying the lanes for their shipping,” Laurence said. “Your life is too valuable to be risked in such a selfish endeavor; in any case, once you began to behave in such an undisciplined manner, you may be sure Arkady and his lot would follow your example at once, and leave all Britain undefended, not to mention the encouragement Iskierka would take.”