Victory of Eagles. Naomi Novik
dismissive eye. ‘He's a sentimentalist, isn't he—surrendered himself? Damned romantic. What difference does it make? Hang him after.’
Jane took him to her tent. ‘No, you had better stay, Frette,’ she said, speaking to her aide-de-camp, who had risen from a camp-table as she ducked inside. ‘I will not make hay for any more rumours.’
She poured herself a glass of wine, and drank it with her back to Laurence. He could not quarrel with her decision, but he wished that they had been alone. He felt it impossible to speak as he wished before anyone else. Then she put down the glass and sat down behind her desk. ‘Tomorrow you will go by courier to Pen Y Fan,’ she said tiredly, without looking at him. ‘That is where they have been keeping Temeraire. Will you bring him back?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Laurence said.
‘They will very likely hang you after, unless you manage to do something heroic,’ Jane said.
‘If I wished to avoid justice, I might have stayed in France,’ Laurence said. ‘Jane—’
‘Admiral Roland, if you please,’ she said, sharply. After a moment's silence, she added, ‘I cannot blame you, Laurence. Christ knows it was ugly. But if I am to do any good here, I cannot be fighting their damned Lordships as well as Napoleon's dragons. Frette will take you to the officers' tent to eat, and then find you somewhere to sleep. You will go tomorrow, and when you come back you will be flying in formation, under Admiral Sanderson. That will be all.’
She gave a jerk of her head, and Frette held open the tent flap clearing his throat. Laurence could only bow, and withdraw slowly, wishing he had not seen her drop her forehead to her clenched fist, and the grimness around her mouth.
He felt a dreadful sense of awkwardness when entered the large mess tent in Frette's company. He saw none of his nearest acquaintance, and was glad to postpone that evil, but several remarks were made by little known captains. He pretended not to hear, the discomfort and downcast faces of those who would not snub him, but still did not choose to meet his eyes, was worse.
He had been braced for this, so was unprepared when his hand was seized, and aggressively pumped by a gentleman he had only seen perhaps twice before, across the officers' common room at Dover. Captain Hesterfield loudly said, ‘May I shake your hand, sir?’ too late for the request to be refused, and then nearly bodily dragged Laurence over to his table in the corner, and presented him to his companions.
There were six officers at the small and huddled table. Two of them were Prussians, one of whom, Von Pfeil, Laurence recognized from the siege of Danzig, and another who introduced himself as cousin to Captain Dyhern, with whom they had fought at the Battle of Jena. They were now refugees, having chosen exile and service in Britain over the parole Napoleon had offered to Prussian officers.
Another stranger, Captain Prewitt, had been recalled to England a few months before, out of desperation. His Winchester had escaped the epidemic, as they were ordinarily assigned to Halifax covert. He had been stationed on a lonely circuit out in Quebec to put him out of the way of anyone hearing his radical political views, as he freely acknowledged.
‘Or perhaps it was my poetry,’ Prewitt said, laughing at himself, ‘but my pride can better stand condemnation of my politics than of my art, so I choose to take it so. And this is Captain Latour,’ a French Royalist turned British officer. Hesterfield and the two others, Reynolds and Gounod, were Prewitt's political sympathizers, if a little quieter than he on the subject, and Laurence gradually realized the little group not supporters of his act, but were divided from the rest of the company precisely because they quarrelled over its morality.
‘Murder, murder most foul, there is no other word,’ Reynolds declared, covering Laurence's hand with his own, pinning it to the table by the wrist, and looking at him with the focused, earnest expression of the profoundly drunk. Laurence did not know what to say. He had agreed, and had laid down his life to prevent it, but he did not care to be congratulated for it, by a stranger.
‘Treason is another word,’ another officer said, at the nearest populated table, making no pretence about eavesdropping. A half-empty bottle of whiskey stood before him.
‘Hear, hear,’ another man said.
There were too many bottles in the room, and too many angry and disappointed men. It was an invitation for a scene. Laurence disengaged his hand. He would have liked to excuse himself and shift tables, but Frette had abandoned him to Prewitt and his willing company, and Laurence could not imagine imposing himself on anyone else in the room. ‘I beg you gentlemen not to speak of it,’ he said quietly, to the table. But to no avail. Reynolds was already arguing with the whiskey-drinker, and their voices were rising.
Laurence set his jaw, and tried not to listen. ‘And I say,’ the whiskey-drinker was saying, ‘that he is a traitor who ought to be drug outside, strung up, and drawn and quartered after, and you with him, if you say otherwise—’
‘Medieval sentiment—’ They were both standing now, Reynolds shaking off Gounod's half-hearted restraining hand to get up. Their voices were loud enough to drown all nearby conversation.
Laurence rose, and catching Reynolds by the shoulder firmly, pressed him back towards his chair. ‘Sir, you do me no kindness by this. Leave off,’ he said, low and sharply.
‘That's right, let him teach you how to be a coward,’ the other man said.
Laurence stiffened. He could not resent insults he had earned, he had sacrificed the right to defend himself against traitor, but coward was a slap he could not gladly swallow. But he could not make the challenge. He had caused enough harm. He could not—would not, do more. He closed his mouth on the bitterness in the back of his throat, and did not turn to look the man in the face, though he now stood so close his liquored breath came hot and strongly over Laurence's shoulder.
‘Call him a coward, when you would've sat and done nothing,’ Reynolds flung back. He shook off Laurence's hand, or tried. ‘I suppose your dragon would enjoy you being happy to see ten thousand of them put down, poisoned or good as, like dogs—’
‘One at least ought to be poisoned,’ the other man said, and Laurence let go of Reynolds, turned, and knocked the officer down.
The man was drunk and unsteady, and as he went down pulled the table and the bottle over with him. Cheap liquor bubbled out over the ground as it rolled away. For a moment no one spoke, and then chairs went back across the tent, as if nothing more had been wanted than a pretext.
The quarrel at once devolved into a confusing melee, with nothing no sides. Laurence even saw two men from the same table wrestling in a corner. But a few men singled him out, one a captain he knew by face from Dover, if not immediately by name. He had fresh streaks of black dragon-blood on his clothing. His name was Geoffrey Windle, Laurence remembered incongruously, as they grappled, just before Windle struck him full on the jaw.
The impact rocked him back on his heels; his teeth snapped together, and he felt the startling pain of a bitten cheek. Gripping a tent-pole for purchase, Laurence managed to seize a chair and pull it around between them as Windle lunged at him again; the man tripped over it and went into the pole with his full weight, which was considerable: he had some three stone over Laurence. The canvas roof above them sagged precipitously.
Two more men came at Laurence, faces ugly with anger. They caught him by the arms and rushed him against the nearest table. They were drunk enough to be belligerent, but not enough to be clumsy. He still wore his buckled shoes and laddered stockings, and lacked good purchase on the ground, and the weight of his boots to kick out with. They pinned him down, and one of them held out a blade, a dull eating-knife, still slick with grease from his dinner. Laurence set his heel down against the surface of the table and heaved, managing to get his shoulders loose for a moment, twisting away from the short furious stabbing, so the blade only tore into his ragged coat.
The tent pole creaked and gave way. Canvas fell upon them in a sudden catastrophic rush. Laurence had freed his arms, only to be imprisoned in the smothering folds. They were heavy, and he had an effort to lift it enough from his face to