by Naomi Novik
Tharkay caught his eye, and said low, “He has horses,” with a jerk of his head at Woolvey: a suggestion which Laurence did not in the least like. He saw no better alternative, but every feeling rebelled against putting his life, all their lives, in Woolvey’s hands, and he did not trust Woolvey’s servants not to listen.
They remained standing all in silence, except for the continuing low snuffles of Sutton-Leeds’s snoring. A maid brought the coffee service, and took a long while arranging it on the table, covertly glancing up at them all. They made an absurd gathering: Woolvey in his evening-dress; Edith in a soft high-waisted morning gown of clear lawn, without stays: she must have snatched it from the closet and put it on alone. Tharkay and himself, in their rough workman’s clothes, smudged with dirt and stinking, no doubt, of cattle and of the docks.
“Thank you, Martha,” Edith said at last, “I will pour,” and bent over the table when the maid had gone. She gave them cups, or Woolvey and Laurence; she hesitated a moment, and then finally poured another for Tharkay.
Tharkay smiled with a faint twist at her doubtful gesture towards him. “Thank you,” he said, and drank the coffee quickly; then setting down the cup he went to the door and opened it again. The maid and footman lingering outside made shift to vanish quickly. Tharkay glanced back at Laurence and, meaningfully, at the clock, then he slipped into the hall, closing the door behind him: no-one now would be able to come near and eavesdrop.
Laurence put down his own cup of excellently strong coffee, and looked at the dark square of the casement window: framed with thick curtains of velvet in pale blue, with elegant gold tasseled cords. He had the unreasonable desire to simply smother Woolvey with one of them, and leave him trussed on the floor while they fled; but of course he would begin to shout at once, and Laurence could not put Edith in such a position.
“Well?” Woolvey said. “I am not going to be put off, Laurence, and if you keep me waiting any longer I have a dashed notion to have my footmen put you in the cellar, and there let you sit until morning.”
Laurence compressed his lips on the first several answers he wished to make. He was aware he was unjust. Woolvey had no more reason to love him than the reverse, and no reason to believe him. “We do not have until morning,” he said, at last, shortly. “Earlier today a British officer was captured, a dragon captain—”
“What of it? I hear ten thousand men were captured yesterday.” Woolvey spoke bitterly and with real feeling: one sentiment at least which Laurence could share.
“It means his beast is taken prisoner, too,” Laurence said. “He is hostage for her good behavior: and his beast is our fire-breather—our only fire-breather.”
“Oh,” Edith said, suddenly. “—I saw her, this morning. She came down in Hyde Park.”
Laurence nodded. “And there is some little chance he is yet held at the palace itself,” he said. “Do you understand now our urgency? While Bonaparte—”
“I am not a simpleton,” Woolvey said, interrupting, “but why only you and this havey-cavey fellow with you—”
“One good man is better than a dozen of lesser ability, in such an expedition,” Laurence said. “We were the only ones nearby enough, to make the attempt. No: enough questions,” he added sharply. “I am not going to waste time answering whatever sequence of objections you can dredge up. If you mean to continue this blundering interference, where you have no understanding of the situation, you may be damned: we will take our chances in the street with Bonaparte’s guardsmen.”
Woolvey looked still undecided. “Will,” Edith said, quietly, and they both looked at her, “will you swear on the Bible that you are telling the truth?”
This gesture did not entirely satisfy Woolvey, but Edith took him by the arm and said, “Dearest, I have known Will since we were little children: I can believe he would have managed to get himself convicted of treason, but not that he would lie under oath.”
Sullenly he said, “Still; it is all a dashed rum affair if you ask me.” He drew away from her and poured himself a second cup of coffee, in an irritable tension that splashed it across the china and the polished wood, and did not bother to put in the cream but drank it straight from the cup, a few swallows only, and set it down again with a clatter. “So what is it, do you mean to rescue him?” he said abruptly, with a new note of something even more dangerous than suspicion: enthusiasm.
“If we can,” Laurence said, and forced himself to ask, “If you can spare us your carriage-horses—”
“No,” Woolvey said after a moment. “No, I will take you, in the carriage. Lord Holland’s servants know me, and his grounds march with the palace gardens: it is not a mile from his house. If you really mean to get yourselves into the palace, and it is not all a phantasy, I will see you there. And if it is all a pack of nonsense, and you have some other thing in mind, I dare say with the coachman and a couple of footmen we can just as well put paid to your notion.”
Edith flinched. “Woolvey, do not be absurd,” Laurence said. “You have not been brought up for this sort of work.”
“Driving you an easy couple of miles, to the house of a gentleman of my acquaintance, and then a stroll through his park?” Woolvey shot back, sarcastic. “I dare say I will manage somehow.”
“And then?” Laurence said. “When we have gone into the house, and taken Granby out, and a hue and cry is raised after us?”
“I am certain I know Kensington Park a damned sight better than you,” Woolvey said, “so as for getting out, I have a better chance than you of doing it. What is your next objection? I am ready to be as patient as you care to be, Laurence, you are the one insisting on a hurry.”
Woolvey went upstairs to change his clothes, having first taken the precaution of calling down two footmen to watch them, while the coach was pulled around. “Can you not persuade him?” Laurence asked Edith, low, in a corner: she had her arms folded about her waist, hands gripping at the elbows.
“What would you have me say?” she returned. “I will not counsel my husband to be a coward. Will this not be of assistance to you?” He could not deny it, and she shook her head and looked away, her lips pressed tight, and Laurence could not work on her any further. “I had thought I was done with these fears, anyway,” she added, low and unhappily, but he knew how little her personal feelings would be permitted to sway her judgment: as little as he would have allowed himself.
He moved away from her, as Woolvey came down the stairs and went to bid her farewell. The two of them stood talking low a little while, hands clasped, and then he bent his head to hers.
Tharkay was watching the scene with a dry interest. “I beg your pardon for embroiling us so,” Laurence said.
“In a practical sense, we could ask for nothing better,” Tharkay said. “We are not likely to be stopped in a blazoned carriage bowling away down the street in open view of everyone. Noticed, certainly, and he may find his neck in a noose for it afterwards, but that is his concern, and those who would weep for him.” He looked at Laurence. “Although those may be of interest to you also.”
Laurence was sorry to be so transparent, and sorry even more to be shut up in a carriage for half-an-hour with Woolvey for the drive to Holland House. There was no conversation of any kind; there could be nothing said between them, the rejected suitor and the husband. Laurence was silenced further by a difficult, inchoate sensation, which had no place in the present circumstances and yet insisted on making itself felt.
He had never thought very much of Woolvey before; he had dismissed the man as a spendthrift idler, but in fairness, Woolvey had never been given impetus to his own improvement. With nothing to do but spend money, he might easily have fixed himself in a vicious character, a deep gamester or a selfish coward. But he had chosen instead to establish himself respectably, with a wife no man could blush for; and no coward had acted tonight as he had. If he were a little dull and mulish when he was in drink and angry for his country’s humiliation, that was not the worst thing that co
uld be said of a man.
And Edith had looked very well. Not happy, no-one could be happy with an army at the door and a quarrel in the entrance hall; but that she was contented with the lot she had chosen was plain. She did not regret.
Laurence wholeheartedly wished her happy: his feeling had not that envious quality. But it was uncomfortable to think Woolvey had brought it about, and, Laurence was painfully aware, he had not. He had kept Edith on the shelf with expectations, when she might have had more advantageous offers; and their last interview, he could not remember with anything like satisfaction: all selfish petulance on his side, the gall even to make her an offer which could only be unwelcome, after he had pledged himself to the Corps. He looked at Woolvey, who was staring out the carriage window. What had Edith to regret? Nothing: she had rather to congratulate herself on a lucky escape.
The coach drew to a stop. Holland House was dark, and the horses stamped uneasily, warm breath steaming in the air, while a footman came rubbing sleep from his eyes to hold their heads. “Yes, I know the family are away,” Woolvey was saying, already climbing out as another opened the door for him. “Be so good as to stable my horses and bring Gavins out, I want a word with him.”
He gave airy excuses, for his presence in the city, and for his visit: the baby ill and squalling, the wife impatient, “and I thought to myself what I needed was a walk in the fresh air, and to have a look at the stars—too many lights in Mayfair—sure Lord Holland would not mind—”
It was a bizarre proposal, at midnight, with an army in the streets and two men in rough clothing behind him, but Gavins only bowed: familiar with the odd starts of gentlemen in their cups, and too well-trained to show it, if he were puzzled. “I must advise you, sir, not to go too close to the east end of the park, if you should walk beyond the gardens,” he said. “I am afraid we have several dragons sleeping there.”
“Oh,” Woolvey said, and when they had been let into the park, he said in a low undertone, “What are we to do about the beasts?”
“Walk by them,” Tharkay said, blowing out the lantern which they had been given.
“There is no need for you to come farther,” Laurence said. “You have done us a great service already, Woolvey—”
“I am not afraid,” Woolvey returned, angrily, and strode on ahead.
Tharkay shook his head, and when Laurence looked at him said quietly, “It would be difficult to follow an officer of some public repute, in the affections of a woman who loves courage.”
It had not occurred to Laurence, that Woolvey meant to display to advantage for Edith’s benefit, or in any sense of competition with him. “My reputation is hardly such as any sensible man would covet.”
“It does not call you a coward,” Tharkay said. “Whatever has Bertram Woolvey done?”
THE GROUNDS IMMEDIATELY near the house were wooded, cedar trees fragrant around them amid the silent denuded oaks and plane-trees, all crusted with frost. These yielded to broad meadows, hard-frozen, and their boot-heels crushed the grass like sand underfoot. If their object really had been to observe the stars, they would have been served well: the night was clear and cold and still; the wind had died, and no moon.
The dragon interlopers were peacefully snoring, if so could be described a noise like mill-wheels grinding, audible at a quarter-of-a-mile. It did not have that same hollow-chest resonance of the voices of the great combat-weight beasts; there were not many men about, and no fires: it looked to be a company of smaller dragons, couriers, with their solitary captains sleeping huddled up against their sides.
As a practical matter it ought not to have been difficult to simply evade them. Laurence thought himself well used to the company of dragons by now, and he had not minded the streets of Peking, or the pavilions where the great beasts slept in vast coiled heaps; but in the near-absence of light, the persistent low churning noise magnified, and he yet could not wholly repress the shudder which climbed his back as they walked from one stand of trees to another, crossing the meadows where the dragons slept.
The intellect might know these were thinking creatures, who would rather capture than kill him, but his belly did not: it knew only that here nearby were a dozen beasts or more, which he could not see if they chose to move, and which in the ordinary course of animal life would have made an easy meal of him. They were oddly all the more alarming for their smaller size: a man could not be of as much interest to the larger dragons as a meal.
So he informed himself, in cool reasoning terms, and nodded back, the whole exchange wholly divorced from his body’s involuntary response, where every outline became a dragon, and every grumble of rustling leaves a prelude to attack, and they had yet to keep moving on steadily, through pitch impenetrable enough that Laurence put out his hand before his face, to keep from running into any branches.
Woolvey’s breath rasped loud ahead of him, ragged short breaths, and he stumbled occasionally; Tharkay had taken the lead from him. But he kept moving. Laurence paced breath to footsteps and doggedly followed: as near to blind as he ever hoped to be. A flicker, or not even so much, only some vague impression of movement, made his head snap sideways, and he stopped a moment watching, trying to make anything: a hopeless attempt, except for what might have been a dark snaking blot reaching into the sky, wherein no stars showed.
He quickened a few steps to stop Woolvey, and gave a soft hiss to make Tharkay turn and come back again. They waited crouching, listening. The dragon heaved a great yawning sigh and murmured something in French: then a quick flurrying leap, a leathery flap of wings, and it was up and aloft. They did not move while it was audible overhead, and stayed a while longer afterwards, meek rabbits huddling out of the hawk’s sight, before they could make themselves resume.
It seemed a very long time walking before they came at last to another broad rustling stand of trees, comforting, and the ground underfoot abruptly became the loose crunch of finely graveled and sanded road: they had reached the end of the estate. Across the road, the broad hedge of the palace garden rose like a great blank wall before them, and the gleam of lights distantly visible at either end of the lane, small as fireflies: the guards on watch. But there were none directly ahead, the patrol idling near their sheltered posts.
Tharkay motioned Laurence to wait with Woolvey, and after a moment came back to silently guide them to a place he had found by the hedge: a low rock butting up near the wall, and a thick elm-branch above: he had already rigged a cord hanging down. Laurence nodded, and taking off the thick leather apron threw it over the top of the hedge. The scramble was as quiet as he could make it, one hand for the rope and arms and feet thrusting inconveniently into the thicket of yew, breathing in the fragrant smell of the needles, and then well-clawed he rolled over its broad flat top on the protective sheet of the apron, and dropped directly into the garden on the other side, jarringly.
Woolvey came after him, with some delay, panting heavily and in disarray: the fine buckskin of his breeches, better suited to more decorous use, was torn and bloodied. Tharkay last, silently and quick, and the great palace lay across a narrow lawn before them: windows full lit, shadows passing back and forth before the lights, and another half-a-dozen dragons in the way: not sleeping, either, but couriers wide-awake and waiting for messages.
“The stables,” Woolvey whispered, pointing: the dragons were as far from the low outbuilding as could be managed. “There is another door, on the side, and from there across only a narrow gap to the servants’ entrance, to the kitchens.”
The horses whickered at them uneasily, and stamped, watching with liquid terrified eyes; but this was evidently no change in their behavior with the dragons at the door: no one stirred or came to look in at them. Tharkay paused at the far door, fingertips resting against the wood: from outside voices came clear, surly and English. Through a crack Laurence peered at a pair of workmen, who were trundling manure to the heap without any evidence of pleasure.
“Hst,” he said, softly, when they came cl
ose, and the men jerked. “Steady now, men, and quiet, if you love your country.”
“Aye, sir, only say the word,” one said whispering back, an automatic touch of the forelock: a man badly wall-eyed, and with blue ink on his bare forearms, sure mark of the sea. He scowled at the lanky younger fellow with him, whose ready protest subsided instead into silent fidgets and darting sideways looks at them.
“Is there a prisoner here kept,” Laurence said, “who would have been brought today: a man not thirty years of age, dark-haired—”
“Aye, sir,” the seaman said, “brought him in with a guard like he was the King, and to the finest bedroom but the one old Boney copped for himself: there was a noise about it right enough: and that beast of his out front wailing fit to end the world. We thought she would have us all on fire: she said she would. She has only gone quiet this last hour.”
Laurence risked it: a quick dash to the corner of the house was enough to confirm Iskierka’s presence. She was lying miserably coiled before the house in what had been an elegant formal garden adorned with statuary, and now was a heap of rubble. She no longer wailed, but was gnawing sullenly upon the remnants of a cow, steam issuing from her spines, and she was not alone. Lien was sitting up on her haunches beside her, saying, “You must know that he cannot be given back to you, unless he gives his parole and swears never to take up arms against the Emperor again. There is no sense in your lying here and being uncomfortable. Come away to the park, and you may have something more to eat.”
“I am not going away anywhere without my Granby,” Iskierka said, “and he will never do any such thing, and as soon as I have him back I will kill you, and your emperor, and all of you, only see if I do not. Here, you may keep your nasty cows,” and she threw the mauled remainders of her dinner in Lien’s direction.
The white Celestial put back her ruff in displeasure, for just an involuntary moment, and then nudged up a mound of dirt over the carcass with one talon, careful never to touch the offal. “I am sorry to see you insist on being unreasonable. There is no reason we should be enemies. After all, you are not a British dragon. You are a Turkish dragon, and the Sultan is our ally, not Britain’s.”
