Empire of Ivory Page 0,10
very still, and his head bowed deeply to his chest. "We will be near-by," Laurence went on, after a moment, "and you may write to them every day, if you wish; when we have finished our work."
"Patrolling, I suppose," Temeraire said, with a very unusual note of bitterness, "and more stupid formation-work; while they are all sick, and we can do nothing."
Laurence looked down, into his lap, where their new orders lay amid the oilcloth packet of all his papers, and had no comfort to offer: brusque instructions for their immediate removal to Dover, where Temeraire's expectations were likely to be answered in every particular.
He was not encouraged, on reporting to the headquarters at Dover directly they had landed, by being left to cool his heels in the hall outside the new admiral's office for thirty minutes, listening to voices by no means indistinct despite the heavy oaken door. He recognized Jane Roland, shouting; the voices that answered her were unfamiliar; and Laurence rose to his feet abruptly, straightening as the door was flung open. A tall man in a naval coat came rushing out with clothing and expression both disordered, his lower cheeks mottled to a moderate glow under his sideburns; he did not pause, but threw Laurence a furious glare before he left.
"Come in, Laurence; come in," Jane called, and he went in; she was standing with the admiral, an older man dressed rather astonishingly in a black frock coat and knee-breeches with buckled shoes.
"You have not met Dr. Wapping, I think," Jane said. "Sir, this is Captain Laurence, of Temeraire."
"Sir," Laurence said, and made his leg deep to cover his confusion and dismay. He supposed that if all the dragons were in quarantine, to put the covert in the charge of a physician was the sort of thing which might make sense to landsmen, as with the notion advanced to him once, by a family friend seeking his influence on behalf of a less-fortunate relation, to advance a surgeon - not even a naval surgeon - to the command of a hospital ship.
"Captain, I am honored to make your acquaintance," Dr. Wapping said. "Admiral, I will take my leave; I beg your pardon for having been the cause of so unpleasant a scene."
"Nonsense; those rascals at the Victualing Board are a pack of unhanged scoundrels, and I am happy to put them in their place; good day to you. Would you credit, Laurence," Jane said, as Wapping closed the door behind himself, "that those wretches are not content that the poor creatures eat scarcely enough to feed a bird anymore, but they must send us diseased stock and scrawny?
"But this is a way to welcome you home." She caught him by the shoulders and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. "You are a damned sight; whatever has happened to your coat? Will you have a glass of wine?" She poured for them both without waiting his answer; he took it in a sort of appalled blankness. "I have all your letters, so I have a tolerable notion what you have been doing, and you must forgive me my silence, Laurence; I found it easier to write nothing than to leave out the only matter of any importance."
"No; that is, yes, of course," he said, and sat down with her at the fire. Her coat was thrown over the arm of her chair; now that he looked, he saw the admiral's fourth bar on the shoulders, and the front more magnificently frogged with braid. Her face, too, was altered but not for the better; she had lost a stone of weight at least, he thought, and her dark hair, cropped short, was shot with grey.
"Well, I am sorry to be such a ruin," she said ruefully, and laughed away his apologies. "No, we are all of us decaying, Laurence; there is no denying it. You have seen poor Lenton, I suppose. He held up like a hero for three weeks after she died, but then we found him on the floor of his bedroom in an apoplexy; for a week he could not speak without slurring. He came along a good ways afterwards, but still he has been a shade of himself."
"I am sorry for it," Laurence said, "though I drink to your promotion," and by herculean effort he managed it without a stutter.
"I thank you, dear fellow," she said. "I would be et up with pride, I suppose, if matters were otherwise, and if it were not