They passed the dining hall on the way; Martin, chattering away, told him that the captains and lieutenants dined at the smaller round table, then midwingmen and ensigns at the long rectangle. “Thankfully, the cadets come in and eat earlier, for the rest of us would starve if we had to hear them squalling throughout our meals, and then the ground crews eat after us,” he finished.
“Do you never take your meals separately?” Laurence asked; the communal dining was rather odd, for officers, and he thought wistfully that he would miss being able to invite friends to his own table; it had been one of his greatest pleasures, ever since he had won enough in prize-money to afford it.
“Of course, if someone is sick, a tray will be sent up,” Martin said. “Oh, are you hungry? I suppose you had no dinner. Hi, Tolly,” he called, and a servant crossing the room with a stack of linens turned to look at them, an eyebrow raised. “This is Captain Laurence; he has just flown in. Can you manage something for him, or must he wait until supper?”
“No, thank you; I am not hungry. I was speaking only from curiosity,” Laurence said.
“Oh, there’s no trouble about it,” the man Tolly said, answering directly. “I dare say one of the cooks can cut you a fair slice or two and dish up some potatoes; I will ask Nan. Tower room on the third floor, yes?” He nodded and went on his way without even waiting for a reply.
“There, Tolly will take care of you,” Martin said, evidently without the least consciousness of anything out of the ordinary. “He is one of the best fellows; Jenkins is never willing to oblige, and Marvell will get it done, but he will moan about it so that you wish you hadn’t asked.”
“I imagine that you have difficulty finding servants who are not bothered by the dragons,” Laurence said; he was beginning to adjust to the informality of the aviators’ address among themselves, but to find a similar degree in a servant had bemused him afresh.
“Oh, they are all born and bred in the villages hereabouts, so they are used to it and us,” Martin said, as they walked through the long hall. “I suppose Tolly has been working here since he was a squeaker; he would not bat an eye at a Regal Copper in a tantrum.”
A metal door closed off the stairway leading down to the baths; when Granby pulled it open, a gust of hot, wet air came out and steamed in the relative cold of the corridor. Laurence followed the other two down the narrow, spiraling stair; it went down for four turns and opened abruptly into a large bare room, with shelves of stone built out of the walls and faded paintings upon the walls, partly chipped away: obvious relics of Roman times. One side held heaps of folded and stacked linens, the other a few piles of discarded clothes.
“Just leave your things on the shelves,” Martin said. “The baths are in a circuit, so we come back out here again.” He and Granby were already stripping.
“Have we time to bathe now?” Laurence asked, a little dubiously.
Martin paused in taking off his boots. “Oh, I thought we would just stroll through; no, Granby? It is not as though there is a need to rush; supper will not be for a few hours yet.”
“Unless you have something urgent to attend to,” Granby said to Laurence, so ungraciously that Martin looked between them in surprise, as if only now noticing the tension.
Laurence compressed his lips and held back a sharp word; he could not be checking every aviator who might be hostile to a Navy man, and to some extent he understood the resentment. He would have to win through it, just like a new midwingman fresh on board. “Not in the least” was all he said. Though he was not sure why they had to strip down merely to tour the baths, he followed their example, save that he arranged his clothes with more care into two neat stacks, and laid his coat atop them rather than creasing it by folding.
Then they left the room by a corridor to the left, and passed through another metal door at its end. He saw the sense in undressing as soon as they were through: the room beyond was so full of steam he could barely see past arm’s length, and he was dripping wet instantly.