The men were assembled on deck when he came up, their various chests and bags being loaded upon the launch. The envoys’ baggage would mostly be remaining aboard, after Laurence had pointed out nearly a day would be required to unload it; even so, their bare necessities outweighed all the baggage of the crewmen. Yongxing was on the dragondeck handing over a sealed letter to Lung Yu Ping; he seemed to find nothing at all unusual in entrusting it directly to the dragon, riderless as she was, and she herself took it with practiced skill, holding it so delicately between her long taloned claws she might almost have been gripping it. She tucked it carefully into the gold mesh she wore, to rest against her belly.
After this, she bowed to him and then to Temeraire and waddled forward, her wings ungainly for walking. But at the edge of the deck, she snapped them out wide, fluttered them a little, then sprang with a tremendous leap nearly her full length into the air, already beating furiously, and in an instant had diminished into a tiny speck above.
“Oh,” Temeraire said, impressed, watching her go. “She flies very high; I have never gone so far aloft.”
Laurence was not unimpressed, either, and stood watching through his glass for a few minutes more himself; by then she was wholly out of sight, though the day was clear.
Staunton drew Laurence aside. “May I make a suggestion? Take the children along. If I may speak from my own experience as a boy, they may well be useful. There is nothing like having children present to convey peaceful intentions, and the Chinese have an especial respect for filial relations, both by adoption as well as by blood. You can quite naturally be said to be their guardian, and I am certain I can persuade the Chinese they ought not be counted against your tally.”
Roland overheard: instantly she and Dyer stood shining-eyed and hopeful before Laurence, full of silent pleading, and with some hesitation he said, “Well—if the Chinese have no objection to their addition to the party—” This was enough encouragement; they vanished belowdecks for their own bags, and came scrambling back up even before Staunton had finished negotiating for their inclusion.
“It still seems very silly to me,” Temeraire said, in what was meant to be an undertone. “I could easily carry all of you, and everything in that boat besides. If I must fly alongside, it will surely take much longer.”
“I do not disagree with you, but let us not reopen the discussion,” Laurence said tiredly, leaning against Temeraire and stroking his nose. “That will take more time than could possibly be saved by any other means of transport.”
Temeraire nudged him comfortingly, and Laurence closed his eyes a moment; the moment of quiet after the three hours of frantic hurry brought all his fatigue from the missed night of sleep surging back to the fore. “Yes, I am ready,” he said, straightening up; Granby was there. Laurence settled his hat upon his head and nodded to the crew as he went by, the men touching their foreheads; a few even murmured, “Good luck, sir,” and “Godspeed, sir.”
He shook Franks’s hand, and stepped over the side to the yowling accompaniment of pipes and drums, the rest of the crew already aboard the launch. Yongxing and the other envoys had already been lowered down by means of the bosun’s chair, and were ensconced in the stern under a canopy for shelter from the sun. “Very well, Mr. Tripp; let us get under way,” Laurence said to the midshipman, and they were off, the high sloping sides of the Allegiance receding as they raised the gaff mainsail and took the southerly wind past Macao and into the great sprawling delta of the Pearl River.
Chapter 12
THEY DID NOT follow the usual curve of the river to Whampoa and Canton, but instead took an earlier eastern branch towards the city of Dongguan: now drifting with the wind, now rowing against the slow current, past the broad square-bordered rice fields on either side of the river, verdant green with the tops of the shoots beginning to protrude beyond the water’s surface. The stench of manure hung over the river like a cloud.
Laurence drowsed nearly the entire journey, only vaguely conscious of the futile attempts made by the crew to be quiet, their hissing whispers causing instructions to be repeated three times, gradually increasing to the usual volume. Any occasional slip, such as dropping a coil of rope too heavily, or stumbling over one of the thwarts, brought forth a stream of invective and injunctions to be quiet that were considerably louder than the ordinary noise would have been. Nevertheless he slept, or something close to it; every so often he would open his eyes and look up, to be sure of Temeraire’s form still pacing them overhead.
He woke from a deeper sleep only after dark: the sail was being furled, and a few moments later the launch bumped gently against a dock, followed by the quiet ordinary cursing of the sailors tying-up. There was very little light immediately at hand but the boat’s lanterns, only enough to show a broad stairway leading down into the water, the lowest steps disappearing beneath the river’s surface; to either side of these only the dim shadows of native junks drawn up onto the beach.
A parade of lanterns came towards them from further in on the shore, the locals evidently warned to expect their arrival: great glowing spheres of deep orange-red silk, stretched taut over thin bamboo frames, reflecting like flames in the water. The lamp-bearers spread out along the edges of the walls in careful procession, and suddenly a great many Chinese were climbing aboard the ship, seizing on the various parts of the baggage, and transferring these off without so much as a request for permission, calling out to one another cheerfully as they worked.
Laurence was at first disposed to complain, but there was no cause: the entire operation was being carried out with admirable efficiency. A clerk had seated himself at the base of the steps with something like a drawing-table upon his lap, making a tally of the different parcels on a paper scroll as they passed by him, and at the same time marking each one plainly. Instead Laurence stood up and tried to unstiffen his neck surreptitiously by small movements to either side, without any undignified stretching. Yongxing had already stepped off the boat and gone into the small pavilion on the shore; from inside, Liu Bao’s booming voice could be heard calling for what even Laurence had come to recognize as the word for “wine,” and Sun Kai was on the bank speaking with the local mandarin.
“Sir,” Laurence said to Hammond, “will you be so good as to ask the local officials where Temeraire has come to ground?”
Hammond made some inquiries of the men on the bank, frowned, and said to Laurence in an undertone, “They say he has been taken to the Pavilion of Quiet Waters, and that we are to go elsewhere for the night; pray make some objection at once, loudly, so I may have an excuse to argue with them; we ought not set a precedent of allowing ourselves to be separated from him.”
Laurence, who if not prompted would have at once made a great noise, found himself cast into confusion by the request to play-act; he stammered a little, and said in a raised but awkwardly tentative voice, “I must see Temeraire at once, and be sure he is well.”
Hammond turned back at once to the attendants, spreading his hands in apology, and spoke urgently; under their scowls, Laurence did his best to look stern and unyielding, feeling thoroughly ridiculous and angry all at once, and eventually Hammond turned back with satisfaction and said, “Excellent; they have agreed to take us to him.”
Relieved, Laurence nodded and turned back to the ship’s crew. “Mr. Tripp, let these gentlemen show you and the men where to sleep; I will speak with you in the morning before you return to the Allegiance,” he told the midshipman, who touched his hat, and then he climbed up onto the stairs.