Demane gave the dog occasional encouragement by lectures and yelling, but for the most part gave the cur its head. He and his brother followed on its heels closely and quicker than the rest of them could manage, occasionally disappearing up ahead. Their young clear voices came calling back impatiently to guide them, now and then, and at last, in the mid-afternoon, Laurence came stumbling out of the brush and caught them up to find Sipho proudly holding out one of the mushrooms for their inspection.
“Better by far, but we will still need a week at this rate to get enough for the rest of the formation alone,” Warren said that evening, offering Laurence a glass of port in front of his small tent, with an old stump and a smooth rock serving them as formal seating. The dog had found three more mushrooms on the way back to camp, all of them small ones which would have escaped attention otherwise. They were of course happily collected; but they would not make much of the posset, or the draught.
“Yes, at least,” Laurence said tiredly; his legs ached from their unaccustomed labor. He unfolded them with an effort towards the heat of the small twiggy fire, smoky from the green wood but pleasantly hypnotic.
Temeraire and Nitidus had made good use of their idleness to improve upon the camp, trampling down the earth of the slope to make it more level and tearing up several trees and bushes to clear more ground. Temeraire had rather vengefully hurled the bristling acacia far down the slope, where it could now be seen, incongruously, sitting caught upon two tree-tops with a great clump of dirt around its roots in mid-air.
They had provided also a couple of antelope for the party’s dinner, or had meant to; but the hours had dragged, and with nothing better to do they had eventually eaten most of the kill themselves, and were found licking their chops and empty-handed at the end of the day. “I am sorry, but you were so very long,” Temeraire said apologetically. Happily, Demane showed them the trick of catching the plentiful local pheasants, by driving them towards a waiting collaborator with a net, and these, roasted quickly on a spit and rounded out with ship’s biscuit, made the company a dinner pleasant enough: the birds not the least gamy, having fed evidently only on the local grass-seeds and berries.
Now the dragons had curled around the borders of their camp; protection enough to ward off any nightly dangers; the crews had arranged themselves for sleep on beds of crumpled brush, coats used haphazardly for pillows, or were playing at dice and cards in distant corners, murmuring their wagers and occasionally a cry of victory or despair. The boys, who had been eating like wolves, and already looked rather better fleshed, were stretched upon the ground at Mrs. Erasmus’s feet. She had persuaded them to put on some loose duck trousers, sewn by girls from the mission; her husband was methodically laying out for them on the ground, one at a time, stiff picture-cards showing objects to be identified in their language, and rewarding them with doled-out sweetmeats while she noted down the answers in her log-book.
Warren prodded the fire with a long branch, idly, and Laurence felt at last that they were near enough alone to satisfy discretion; that he might speak, however awkwardly.
“No; I did not know about the child,” Warren said, with not the least discomfiture at the inquiry, but gloomily. “It is a bad business: God forbid she should come to a bad pass here; that little runner of yours is the only girl we have, and she is no wise ready to make a captain, even if Lily would have her. And what the devil we should do for Excidium if she did, I would like to know; the admiral cannot be running about having another child now, with Bonaparte on the other side of the Channel, ready to toss his glove across at any minute.
“I damned well hope you have been taking precautions? But I am sure Roland knows her business,” Warren added, without waiting for reply; just as well, as Laurence had never been asked a question he would have less liked to answer; all the more as it had abruptly and appallingly illuminated certain curious habits of Jane’s, which he had never brought himself to inquire into, and her regular consultations of the calendar.
“Oh, pray don’t take me wrong,” Warren said, misunderstanding Laurence’s fixed expression. “I don’t mean to carp in the least; accidents will happen, and Harcourt has had every excuse for distraction. Bad enough for us, these last months, but what the devil was ever to become of her? Half-pay would keep body and soul together, but money don’t make a woman respectable. That is why I asked you, before, about the fellow; I thought, if Lily died, they might make a match of it.”
“She has no family?” Laurence asked.
“None left, none to speak of. She is old Jack Harcourt’s daughter—he was a lieutenant on Fluitare. He cut straps in the year two, damned shame; but at least he knew she’d been tapped for Lily, by then,” Warren said. “Her mother was a girl down Plymouth way, near the covert there. She went off in a fever when Catherine was scarce old enough to crawl, and no relations to take her in: that is how she was thrown on the Corps.”
Laurence said, “Then, under the present circumstances—I know it is damned officious, but if she has no one else, ought one not speak to him? Of the child, I mean,” he added awkwardly.
“Why, what is there for him to do?” Warren said. “If it is a girl, God willing, the Corps needs her with both hands; and if it is a boy, he could go to sea instead, I suppose; but whatever for? It can only hurt him there, to be a by-blow, and meanwhile a captain’s son in the Corps is pretty sure to get a dragon, if he has any merit of his own.”
“But that is what I mean,” Laurence said, puzzled to find himself so misunderstood. “There is no reason the child must be illegitimate; they might easily be married at once.”
“Oh, oh,” Warren said, dawning wonder, confusion. “Why, Laurence, no; there’s no sense in it, you must see that. If she had been grounded, it might have answered; but thank God, no need to think of that anymore, or anything like,” and he jerked his chin gladly at the tightly lidded box which held the fruits of their day’s labors, to be carried back to Capetown in the morning: Lily would certainly be the next recipient. “A comfortable wife she would make him, with orders to follow and a dragon to look after; I dare say they would not see one another one year in six, him posted to one side of the world and she to the other, ha!”
Laurence was little satisfied to find his sentiments so unaffectedly laughed at, but more so for the uncomfortable sensation that there was some rational cause for so dismissive an answer; and he was forced to go to sleep with his resolution yet unformed.
Chapter 9
MR. KEYNES,” CATHERINE said, cutting through the raised voices, “perhaps you will be so good as to explain to us what alternative you prefer, to Mr. Dorset’s suggestion.”
Experience had improved on their rate of return, a little, and Nitidus had carried their spoils back to Capetown daily; so they returned, after a tired and dusty week, to find Lily dosed, Messoria and Immortalis also, and a small and putrid heap of mushrooms yet remaining. Of these, two had been preserved in oil, two in spirits of wine, two only wrapped in paper and oilcloth, and the lot boxed neatly up with the receipt for the cure. They would be sent back to England by the Fiona, which had been held back this long for their report: she would go with the tide.
But there was no sentiment of triumph at their dinner back, only muted satisfaction; at best the results of all their hunting would not do for more than three dragons; six if the surgeons back in Dover took the risk of halving the dose, or used it on smaller beasts, and that only if all three methods preserved whatever virtue the mushrooms held; Dorset would have liked to dry some, also, but there were not enough of them for this final experiment.