by Naomi Novik
The platters were shortly taken off the tables and replaced with an array of wooden dishes, full of dumplings, some with thin crêpe-paper skins and others of thick, yeasty white dough. These were at least easier to get hold of with the sticks, and could be chewed and swallowed whole. The cooks had evidently exercised some ingenuity, lacking essential ingredients; Laurence found a piece of seaweed in one, and the lamb kidneys made their appearance also. Three further courses of small dishes ensued, then a strange dish of uncooked fish, pale pink and fleshy, with cold noodles and pickled greens gone dull brown with long storage. A strange crunchy substance in the mixture was identified after inquiry by Hammond as dried jellyfish, which intelligence caused several men to surreptitiously pick the bits out and drop them onto the floor.
Liu Bao with motions and his own example encouraged Laurence to literally fling the ingredients into the air to mix them together, and Hammond informed them by translation that this was intended to ensure good luck: the higher the better. The British were not unwilling to make the attempt; their coordination was less equal to the task, however, and shortly both uniforms and the table were graced by bits of fish and pickled greens. Dignity was thus dealt a fatal blow: after nearly a jug of rice wine to every man, even Yongxing’s presence was not enough to dampen the hilarity ensuing from watching their fellow-officers fling bits of fish all over themselves.
“It is a dashed sight better than we had in the Normandy’s cutter,” Riley said to Laurence, over-loud, meaning the raw fish; to the more general audience, interest having been expressed by Hammond and Liu Bao both, he expanded on the story: “We were wrecked in the Normandy when Captain Yarrow ran her onto a reef, all of us thrown on a desert island seven hundred miles from Rio. We were sent off in the cutter for rescue—though Laurence was only second lieutenant at the time, the captain and premier knew less about the sea than trained apes, which is how they came to run us aground. They wouldn’t go themselves for love or money, or give us much in the way of supply, either,” he added, still smarting at the memory.
“Twelve men with nothing but hard tack and a bag of cocoanuts; we were glad enough for fish to eat it raw, with our fingers, the moment we caught it,” Laurence said. “But I cannot complain; I am tolerably sure Foley tapped me for his first lieutenant in the Goliath because of it, and I would have eaten a good deal more raw fish for the chance. But this is much nicer, by far,” he added, hastily, thinking this conversation implied that raw fish was fit only for consumption in desperate circumstances, which opinion he privately held true, but not to be shared at present.
This story launched several more anecdotes from various of the naval officers, tongues loosened and backs unstiffened by so much gluttony. The translator was kept busy rendering these for the benefit of the highly interested Chinese audience; even Yongxing followed the stories; he had still not deigned to break his silence, save for the formal toasts, but there was something of a mellowing about his eyes.
Liu Bao was less circumspect about his curiosity. “You have been to a great many places, I see, and had unusual adventures,” he observed to Laurence. “Admiral Zheng sailed all the way to Africa, but he died on his seventh voyage, and his tomb is empty. You have gone around the world more than once. Have you never been worried that you would die at sea, and no one would perform the rites at your grave?”
“I have never thought very much about it,” Laurence said, with a little dishonesty: in truth he had never given the matter any consideration whatsoever. “But after all, Drake and Cook, and so many other great men, have been buried at sea; I really could not complain about sharing their tomb, sir, and with your own navigator as well.”
“Well, I hope you have many sons at home,” Liu Bao said, shaking his head.
The casual air with which he made so personal a remark took Laurence quite aback. “No, sir; none,” he said, too startled to think of anything to do but answer. “I have never married,” he added, seeing Liu Bao about to assume an expression of great sympathy, which on this answer being translated became a look of open astonishment; Yongxing and even Sun Kai turned their heads to stare. Beleaguered, Laurence tried to explain. “There is no urgency; I am a third son, and my eldest brother has three boys already himself.”
“Pardon me, Captain, if I may,” Hammond broke in, rescuing him, and said to them, “Gentlemen, among us, the eldest son alone inherits the family estates, and the younger are expected to make their own way; I know it is not the same with you.”
“I suppose your father is a soldier, like you?” Yongxing said abruptly. “Does he have a very small estate, that he cannot provide for all his sons?”
“No, sir; my father is Lord Allendale,” Laurence said, rather nettled by the suggestion. “Our family seat is in Nottinghamshire; I do not think anyone would call it small.”
Yongxing looked startled and somewhat displeased by this answer, but perhaps he was only frowning at the soup which was at that moment being laid out before them: a very clear broth, pale gold and queer to the taste, smoky and thin, with pitchers of bright red vinegar as accompaniment and to add sharp flavor, and masses of short dried noodles in each bowl, strangely crunchy.
All the while the servants were bringing it in, the translator had been murmuring quietly in answer to some question from Sun Kai, and now on his behalf leaned across the table and asked, “Captain, is your father a relation of the King?”
Though surprised by the question, Laurence was grateful enough for any excuse to put down his spoon; he would have found the soup difficult eating even had he not already gone through six courses. “No, sir; I would hardly be so bold as to call His Majesty a relation. My father’s family are of Plantagenet descent; we are only very distantly connected to the present house.”
Sun Kai listened to this translated, then persisted a little further. “But are you more closely related to the King than the Lord Macartney?”
As the translator pronounced the name a little awkwardly, Laurence had some difficulty in recognizing the name as that of the earlier ambassador, until Hammond, whispering hastily in his ear, made it clear to whom Sun Kai was referring. “Oh, certainly,” Laurence said. “He was raised to the peerage for service to the Crown, himself; not that that is held any less honorable with us, I assure you, but my father is eleventh Earl of Allendale, and his creation dates from 1529.”
Even as he spoke, he was amused at finding himself so absurdly jealous of his ancestry, halfway around the world, in the company of men to whom it could be of no consequence whatsoever, when he had never trumpeted it among his acquaintance at home. Indeed, he had often rebelled against his father’s lectures upon the subject, of which there had been many, particularly after his first abortive attempt to run away to sea. But four weeks of being daily called into his father’s office to endure another repetition had evidently had some effect he had not previously suspected, if he could be provoked to so stuffy a response by being compared with a great diplomat of very respectable lineage.
But quite contrary to his expectations, Sun Kai and his countrymen showed a deep fascination with this intelligence, betraying an enthusiasm for genealogy Laurence had heretofore only encountered in a few of his more stiff-necked relations, and he shortly found himself pressed for details of the family history which he could only vaguely dredge out of his memory. “I beg your pardon,” he said at last, growing rather desperate. “I cannot keep it straight in my head without writing it down; you must forgive me.”
It was an unfortunate choice of gambit: Liu Bao, who had also been listening with interest, promptly said, “Oh, that is easy enough,” and called for brush and ink; the servants were clearing away the soup, and there was room on the table for the moment. At once all those nearby leaned forward to look on, the Chinese in curiosity, the British in self-defense: there was another course waiting in the wings, and no one but the cooks was in a hurry for it to arrive.
Feeling that he was being excessively punished for his moment of vanity, Laur
ence was forced to write out a chart on a long roll of rice paper under all their eyes. The difficulty of forming the Latin alphabet with a paintbrush was added to that of trying to remember the various begats; he had to leave several given names blank, marking them with interrogatives, before finally reaching Edward III after several contortions and one leap through the Salic line. The result said nothing complimentary about his penmanship, but the Chinese passed it around more than once, discussing it amongst themselves with energy, though the writing could hardly have made any more sense to them than theirs to him. Yongxing himself stared at it a long time, though his face remained devoid of emotion, and Sun Kai, receiving it last, rolled it away with an expression of intense satisfaction, apparently for safe-keeping.
Thankfully, that was an end to it; but now there was no more delaying the next dish, and the sacrificed poultry was brought out, all eight at once, on great platters and steaming with a pungent, liquored sauce. They were laid on the table and hacked expertly into small pieces by the servants using a broad-bladed cleaver, and again Laurence rather despairingly allowed his plate to be filled. The meat was delicious, tender and rich with juices, but almost a punishment to eat; nor was this the conclusion: when the chicken was taken away, nowhere close to finished, whole fish were brought out, fried in the rich slush from the hands’ salt pork. No one could do more than pick at this dish, or the course of sweets that followed: seedcake, and sticky-sweet dumplings in syrup, filled with a thick red paste. The servants were especially anxious to press them onto the youngest officers, and poor Roland could be heard saying plaintively, “Can I not eat it tomorrow?”
When finally they were allowed to escape, almost a dozen men had to be bodily lifted up by their seat-mates and helped from the cabin. Those who could still walk unaided escaped to the deck, there to lean on the rail in various attitudes of pretended fascination, which were mostly a cover for waiting their turn in the seats of ease below. Laurence unashamedly took advantage of his private facility, and then heaved himself back up to sit with Temeraire, his head protesting almost as much as his belly.
Laurence was taken aback to find Temeraire himself being feasted in turn by a delegation of the Chinese servants, who had prepared for him delicacies favored by dragons in their own land: the entrails of the cow, stuffed with its own liver and lungs chopped fine and mixed with spices, looking very much like large sausages; also a haunch, very lightly seared and touched with what looked very like the same fiery sauce which had been served to the human guests. The deep maroon flesh of an enormous tunny, sliced into thick steaks and layered with whole delicate sheets of yellow noodles, was his fish course, and after this, with great ceremony, the servants brought out an entire sheep, its meat cooked rather like mince and dressed back up in its skin, which had been dyed a deep crimson, with pieces of driftwood for legs.
Temeraire tasted this dish and said, in surprise, “Why, it is sweet,” and asked the servants something in their native Chinese; they bowed many times, replying, and Temeraire nodded; then he daintily ate the contents, leaving the skin and wooden legs aside. “They are only for decoration,” he told Laurence, settling down with a sigh of deep contentment; the only guest so comfortable. From the quarterdeck below, the faint sound of retching could be heard, as one of the older midshipmen suffered the consequences of overindulgence. “They tell me that in China, dragons do not eat the skins, any more than people do.”
“Well, I only hope you will not find it indigestible, from so much spice,” Laurence said, and was sorry at once, recognizing in himself a species of jealousy that did not like to see Temeraire enjoying any Chinese customs. He was unhappily conscious that it had never occurred to him to offer Temeraire prepared dishes, or any greater variety than the difference between fish and mutton, even for a special occasion.
But Temeraire only said, “No, I like it very well,” unconcerned and yawning; he stretched himself very long and flexed his claws. “Do let us go for a long flight tomorrow?” he said, curling up again more compactly. “I have not been tired at all, this whole last week, coming back; I am sure I can manage a longer journey.”
“By all means,” Laurence said, glad to hear that he was feeling stronger. Keynes had at last put a period to Temeraire’s convalescence, shortly after their departure from Cape Coast. Yongxing’s original prohibition against Laurence’s taking Temeraire aloft again had never been withdrawn, but Laurence had no intention of abiding by this restriction, or begging him to lift it. However Hammond, with some ingenuity and quiet discussion, arranged matters diplomatically: Yongxing came on deck after Keynes’s final pronouncement, and granted the permission audibly, “for the sake of ensuring Lung Tien Xiang’s welfare through healthy exercise,” as he put it. So they were free to take to the air again without any threat of quarreling, but Temeraire had been complaining of soreness, and growing weary with unusual speed.
The feast had lasted so long that Temeraire had begun eating only at twilight; now full darkness spread, and Laurence lay back against Temeraire’s side and looked over the less-familiar stars of the Southern Hemisphere; it was a perfectly clear night, and the master ought to be able to fix a good longitude, he hoped, through the constellations. The hands had been turned up for the evening to celebrate, and the rice wine had flowed freely at their mess tables also; they were singing a boisterous and highly explicit song, and Laurence made sure with a look that Roland and Dyer were not on deck to be interested in it: no sign of either, so they had probably sought their beds after dinner.
One by one the men slowly began to drift away from the festivities and seek their hammocks. Riley came climbing up from the quarterdeck, taking the steps one at a time with both feet, very weary and scarlet in the face; Laurence invited him to sit, and out of consideration did not offer a glass of wine. “You cannot call it anything but a rousing success; any political hostess would consider it a triumph to put on such a dinner,” Laurence said. “But I confess I would have been happier with half so many dishes, and the servants might have been much less solicitous without leaving me hungry.”
“Oh—yes, indeed,” Riley said; distracted, and now that Laurence looked at him more closely, plainly unhappy, discomfited.
“What has occurred? Is something amiss?” Laurence looked at once at the rigging, the masts; but all looked well, and in any case every sense and intuition together told him that the ship was running well: or as well as she ever did, being in the end a great lumbering hulk.
“Laurence, I very much dislike being a tale-bearer, but I cannot conceal this,” Riley said. “That ensign, or I suppose cadet, of yours; Roland. He—that is, Roland was asleep in the Chinese cabin, and as I was leaving, the servants asked me, with their translator, where he slept, so they might carry him there.” Laurence was already dreading the conclusion, and not very surprised when Riley added, “But the fellow said ‘she,’ instead; I was on the point of correcting him when I looked—well, not to drag it out; Roland is a girl. I have not the least notion how she has concealed it so long.”
“Oh bloody Hell,” Laurence said, too tired and irritable from the excess of food and drink to mind his language. “You have not said anything about this, have you, Tom? To anyone else?” Riley nodded, warily, and Laurence said, “I must beg you to keep it quiet; the plain fact of the matter is, Longwings will not go into harness under a male captain. And some other breeds also, but those are of less material significance; Longwings are the kind we cannot do without, and so some girls must be trained up for them.”
Riley said, uncertainly, half-smiling, “Are you—? But this is absurd; was not the leader of your formation here on this very ship, with his Longwing?” he protested, seeing that Laurence was not speaking in jest.
“Do you mean Lily?” Temeraire asked, cocking his head. “Her captain is Catherine Harcourt; she is not a man.”
“It is quite true; I assure you,” Laurence said, while Riley stared at him and Temeraire in turn.
“But Laurence, the v
ery notion,” Riley said, grown now appalled as he began to believe them. “Every feeling must cry out against such an abuse. Why, if we are to send women to war, should we not take them to sea, also? We could double our numbers, and what matter if the deck of every ship become a brothel, and children left motherless and crying on shore?”
“Come, the one does not follow on the other in the slightest,” Laurence said, impatient with this exaggeration; he did not like the necessity himself, but he was not at all willing to be given such romantical arguments against it. “I do not at all say it could or ought to answer in the general case; but where the willing sacrifice of a few may mean the safety and happiness of the rest, I cannot think it so bad. Those women officers whom I have met are not impressed into service, nor forced to the work even by the ordinary necessities that require men to seek employment, and I assure you no one in the service would dream of offering any insult.”
This explanation did not reconcile Riley at all, but he abandoned his general protest for the specific. “And so you truly mean to keep this girl in service?” he said, in tones increasingly plaintive rather than shocked. “And have her going about in male dress in this fashion; can it be allowed?”
“There is formal dispensation from the sumptuary laws for female officers of the Corps while engaged upon their duties, authorized by the Crown,” Laurence said. “I am sorry that you should be put to any distress over the matter, Tom; I had hoped to avoid the issue entirely, but I suppose it was too much to ask for, seven months aboard ship. I promise you,” he added, “I was as shocked as you might wish when I first learned of the practice; but since I have served with several, and they are indeed not at all like ordinary females. They are raised to the life, you know, and under such circumstances habit may trump even birth.”
