There was besides this communiqué a good deal of gossip about the relations among the dragons, which Laurence read to Temeraire only half-attending; between Perscitia’s lines he could easily read the frantic reports racing through Whitehall: unharnessed heavy-weights descending as they wished into every great city of Britain, terrifying the populace and wrecking the business of ordinary carters to boot; and bribing their harnessed fellows with the greatest of ease, despite all the certain persuasions and efforts of those dragons’ captains.
“That is a great pity about Gladius and Cantarella having a falling-out,” Temeraire said, “for I was sure they would have made a splendid egg; also I do not like Queritoris very much, for he was always making a fuss about carrying soldiers, when we all had to do it; so very tiresome, for everyone, but complaining did not make it any better. Laurence, do you suppose we might carry things for people, here, and so be paid? Only, no,” he interrupted his own thought, rather downcast, “for there is only this one town, and no other to carry things to; how I wish we were home!”
Laurence had wished it, too, but silently folded away the letter which killed his hopes of return aborning; it yet crackled in his coat pocket now, as he answered Riley, “I am sorry you should have had the unpleasantness of his threats; we will of course not ask you to interfere, Tom; nor, I hope, put you in any awkward position.”
“Well, I hope I am not so much a scrub as to come here and ask you out of the side of my mouth to have a care, for my own sake,” Riley said. “I am pretty well found in prize-money, after all, and if I am set ashore, at least I can take my little fellow home, and not worry my life away wondering what absurd thing Catherine is doing with him.” This, a little bitterly: he had not received a letter from Captain Harcourt.
“But this could easily grow to be a more serious matter than a mere quarrel,” Laurence said soberly to Temeraire, after Riley had left, “if Bligh chooses to make it a charge of disobedience, and their Lordships pleased to have an excuse for a court-martial; I can easily imagine it.”
“I can, too,” Temeraire said, “and I am sure we oughtn’t let him hurt Riley, or Granby, either; but we cannot let Rankin hurt the egg, either. Laurence, I have made Roland and Demane bring the egg out, just long enough so I might look at it, and I think it is going to hatch very soon; can we not take it away?”
“Away?” Laurence said; there was nowhere to go.
“Oh, into the countryside,” Temeraire said, “only until it has hatched, I mean; and then we can come back again, and it may choose among the officers if it likes. Or if you thought better,” he added, “we might take one or two of the best of them, instead, so it might choose among them directly: but no-one who would mean to try and use a hood, or a net.”
It was a scheme which Laurence ought at once have rejected, but he surprised himself by thinking soberly that so blatant a maneuver would, at least, be a stroke bold enough to ensure blame could be set only to their own much-overdrawn account. Granby and Riley, left behind and unable to trace their whereabouts, could not so easily be complained of as Granby and Riley standing idly by, in the face of some interference carried out immediately before them.
It was scarcely calculated to win him approval from their Lordships; certainly none from Bligh, but there was, Laurence with a little dark humor acknowledged, something liberating in having nothing whatsoever of which he might be robbed by the law: not even hope. He looked at the egg, himself: he did not hold himself up as an expert, but the shell was certainly harder than it had been, aboard ship, and with that same brittle, slightly thinning quality which he remembered a little from Temeraire’s hatching, and Iskierka’s.
“We could take no one else with us,” Laurence said, “at least, not consenting; and there would be something curious in abducting an aviator to make him a captain: the fellow could not help but be doubted, afterwards.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest I think it just as well not to take any of them,” Temeraire said. “I do not think much of the lot: they were all quite unpleasant, on the ship, and they will think they have a right to the eggs, even though they had nothing to do with making them, and I have been taking care of them all this while. They have nothing to recommend them, any more than Rankin does: I don’t suppose the hatchling will want any of them.”
“We are in too much disgrace, my dear, to expect to see any of them display to advantage,” Laurence said, “but Lieutenant Forthing at least is held a good officer, Granby tells me, and fought with courage at the battle of Shoeburyness.”
“Oh, he is the worst of them!” Temeraire said, immediately censorious, though Laurence did not quite know what had provoked such a degree of heat, “and I don’t care if we are in disgrace; that is no excuse for behaving like a scrub. Besides,” Temeraire added, “he is wretchedly untidy: strings coming out of his coat, and his trousers patched; even Rankin does not look ragged.”
“Rankin,” Laurence said, “is the third son of an earl, and can afford to be nice in his clothing; I am afraid Mr. Forthing was a foundling in the dockyards at Dover, and taken on for creeping into the coverts as a child to sleep next to the dragons: he has no kin in the world.”
“He might still brush his coat,” Temeraire said, obstinately. “No: I should quite prefer no-one at all, to him; I am sure Arkady would be quite disgusted with me if I should allow it.” He leaned over to look at the egg, and put out his thin forked tongue to touch the shell.
“I cannot quarrel with you on this point, if he has left the egg in your charge,” Laurence said. “The judgment must be yours. In any case, it would be difficult to manage. We must also contrive some covering, for the egg; and—”
“Oh,” Temeraire said, “oh, no, whatever are you doing?”
Laurence paused in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”
“No, Laurence; I am speaking to the egg,” Temeraire said, raising his head with an expression of consternation, his ruff flattened against his neck. “It is hatching; however are we to get it away, now?”
“Only remember, you must put up with him for a little while,” Temeraire informed the egg, as it rocked a little more, “as otherwise he can make no end of trouble for everyone, but it will only be a few minutes, and then you may choose someone else, or to have no one at all. And if he puts anything on you which you do not like, only wait a moment, and I will take it away directly. You might,” he added a little exasperated, “have waited in the shell a little longer, until we had gone away and you were quite safe: anyone would think you were not listening to me at all.”
“Captain Granby, if you would be so good as to remove the egg from the prospect of any more interference,” Rankin said, as he and the party of officers came up the track and onto the promontory, “I would be grateful; if it would suit you, I should like to arrange the hatching here,” indicating the place where he stood, quite near the track and a distance from the promontory’s edge.
Temeraire flared out his ruff: Rankin indeed had the leather hood which Laurence had spoken of, and a heavy net with chains, such as Temeraire had once been held down with, shipboard during a typhoon; he had not liked it at all. “Remember, only a moment,” he hissed at the egg, and then reluctantly let the aviators take it away: at least they were very careful, carrying it.
When it was in place, Rankin detailed a couple of the younger officers, midshipmen, to stand on the other side of the egg with the mesh netting, as though they would entangle the poor hatchling if it should try and fly away. To add insult to injury, a boy was leading a handsome sheep on a string behind him, and as soon as the first crack had appeared, Rankin nodded, and two men butchered it into a tub—a lovely hot smell of fresh blood—and brought it over. Temeraire thought it quite unfair—one was so hungry, breaking the shell; it would be so very difficult to resist—and wondered if perhaps he ought take the meat away.