“No,” Temeraire said, very quietly. “I am perfectly well.” He submitted to being examined, in silence, and Keynes pronounced him unharmed by the exertion.
“I must go and speak with Martin,” Laurence said, still at a loss; Temeraire did not answer, but curled himself up and swept his wings forward, around his head, and after a long moment, Laurence left the deck and went below.
The cabin was close and hot, even with all the windows standing open, and not calculated to improve Laurence’s temper. Martin was pacing the length of the cabin in agitation; he was untidy in a suit of warm-weather slops, his face two days unshaven and presently flushed, his hair too long and flopping over his eyes. He did not recognize the degree of Laurence’s real anger, but burst out talking the moment Laurence came in.
“I am so very sorry; it was all my fault. I oughtn’t have spoken at all,” he said, even while Laurence limped to his chair and sat down heavily. “You cannot punish Blythe, Laurence.”
Laurence had grown used to the lack of formality among aviators, and ordinarily did not balk at this liberty in passing, but for Martin to make use of it under the circumstances was so egregious that Laurence sat back and stared at him, outrage plainly written on his face. Martin went pale under his freckled skin, swallowed, and hurriedly said, “I mean, Captain, sir.”
“I will do whatever I must to keep order among this crew, Mr. Martin, which appears to be more than I thought necessary,” Laurence said, and moderated his volume only with a great effort; he felt truly savage. “You will tell me at once what happened.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Martin said, much subdued. “That fellow Reynolds has been making remarks all week, and Ferris told us to pay him no mind, but I was walking by, and he said—”
“I am not interested in hearing you bear tales,” Laurence said. “What did you do?”
“Oh—” Martin said, flushing. “I only said—well, I said something back, which I should rather not repeat; and then he—” Martin stopped, and looked somewhat confused as to how to finish the story without seeming to accuse Reynolds again, and finished lamely, “At any rate, sir, he was on the point of offering me a challenge, and that was when Blythe knocked him down; he only did it because he knew I could not fight, and did not want to see me have to refuse in front of the sailors; truly, sir, it is my fault, and not his.”
“I cannot disagree with you in the least,” Laurence said, brutally, and was glad in his anger to see Martin’s shoulders hunch forward, as if struck. “And when I have to have Blythe flogged on Sunday for striking an officer, I hope you will keep in mind that he is paying for your lack of self-restraint. You are dismissed; you are to keep belowdecks and to your quarters for the week, save when defaulters are called.”
Martin’s lips worked a moment; his “Yes, sir,” emerged only faintly, and he was almost stumbling as he left the room. Laurence sat still breathing harshly, almost panting in the thick air; the anger slowly deserted him in spite of every effort, and gave way to a heavier, bitter oppression. Blythe had saved not only Martin’s reputation but that of the aviators as a whole; if Martin had openly refused a challenge made in front of the entire crew, it would have blackened all their characters; no matter that it was forced on them by the regulations of the Corps, which forbade dueling.
And yet there was no room for leniency in the matter whatsoever. Blythe had openly struck an officer before witnesses, and Laurence would have to sentence him to sufficient punishment to give the sailors satisfaction, and all of the men pause against any future capers of the sort. And the punishment would be carried out by the bosun’s mate: a sailor, like as not to relish the chance to be severe on an aviator, particularly for such an offense.
He would have to go and speak with Blythe; but a tapping at the door broke in upon him before he could rise, and Riley came in: unsmiling, in his coat and with his hat under his arm, neckcloth freshly tied.
Chapter 7
THEY DREW NEAR Cape Coast a week later with the atmosphere of ill-will a settled and living thing among them, as palpable as the heat. Blythe had taken ill from his brutal flogging; he still lay nearly senseless in the sick-bay, the other ground-crew hands taking it in turn to sit by him and fan the bloody weals, and to coax him to take some water. They had taken the measure of Laurence’s temper, and so their bitterness against the sailors was not expressed in word or direct action, but in sullen, black looks and murmurs, and abrupt silences whenever a sailor came in earshot.
Laurence had not dined in the great cabin since the incident: Riley had been offended at having Purbeck corrected on the deck; Laurence had grown short in turn when Riley refused to unbend and made it plain he was not satisfied by the dozen lashes which were all Laurence would sentence. In the heat of discussion, Laurence had let slip some suggestion of his distaste for going to the slave port, Riley had resented the implication, and they had ended not in shouting but in cold formality.
But worse by far than this, Temeraire’s spirits were very low. He had forgiven Laurence the moment of harshness, and been persuaded to understand that some punishment was necessary for the offense. But he had not been at all reconciled to the actual event, and during the flogging he had growled savagely when Blythe had screamed towards the end. Some good had come of that: the bosun’s mate Hingley, who had been wielding the cat with more than usual energy, had been alarmed, and the last couple of strokes had been mild; but the damage had already been done.
Temeraire had since remained unhappy and quiet, answering only briefly, and he was not eating well. The sailors, for their part, were as dissatisfied with the light sentence as the aviators were with the brutality; poor Martin, set to tanning hides with the harness-master for punishment, was more wretched with guilt than from his punishment, and spent every spare moment at Blythe’s bedside; and the only person at all satisfied with the situation was Yongxing, who seized the opportunity to hold several more long conversations with Temeraire in Chinese: privately, as Temeraire made no effort to include Laurence.
Yongxing looked less pleased, however, at the conclusion of the last of these, when Temeraire hissed, put back his ruff, and then proceeded to all but knock Laurence off his feet in coiling possessively around him. “What has he been saying to you?” Laurence demanded, trying futilely to peer above the great black sides rising around him; he had already reached a state of high irritation at Yongxing’s continued interference and was very nearly at the end of his patience.
“He has been telling me about China, and how things are managed there for dragons,” Temeraire said, evasively, by which Laurence suspected that Temeraire had liked these described arrangements. “But then he told me I should have a more worthy companion there, and you would be sent away.”
By the time he could be persuaded to uncoil himself again, Yongxing had gone, “looking mad as fire,” Ferris reported, with glee unbecoming a senior lieutenant.
This scarcely contented Laurence. “I am not going to have Temeraire distressed in this manner,” he said to Hammond angrily, trying without success to persuade the diplomat to carry a highly undiplomatic message to the prince.
“You are taking a very short-sighted view of the matter,” Hammond said, maddeningly. “If Prince Yongxing can be convinced over the course of this journey that Temeraire will not agree to be parted from you, all the better for us: they will be far more ready to negotiate when finally we arrive in China.” He paused and asked, with still more infuriating anxiousness, “You are quite certain, that he will not agree?”