Tongues of Serpents. Naomi Novik
of sending the Viceroy to fetch you home, when she has been refit; only for God’s sake be obliging to the Governor, if you please; and I will thank you not to make any more great noise of yourself: it would be just as well if there is not a word to be said of you in the next reports from the colony, good or evil, but that you have been meek as milk.’
Of that, however, there was certainly no hope, from the moment when Bligh had blotted his lips and thrown down his napkin and said, ‘I will not mince words, Captain Riley: I hope you see your duty clear under the present circumstances, and you as well, Captain Granby,’ he added.
This was, of course, to carry Bligh back to Sydney, there to threaten the colony with bombardment or pillage, at which the ringleaders MacArthur and Johnston would be handed over for judgment. ‘And to be summarily hanged like the mutinous scoundrels they are, I trust,’ Bligh said. ‘It is the only possible repair for the harm which they have done: by God,I should like to see their worm-eaten corpses on display a year and more, for the edification of their fellows; then we may have a little discipline again.’
‘Well, I shan’t,’ Granby said, incautiously blunt, ‘and,’ he added to Laurence and Riley privately, afterwards, ‘I don’t see as we have any business telling the colony they shall have him back: it seems to me after a fellow has been mutinied against three or four times, there is something to it besides bad luck.’
‘Then you shall take me aboard,’ Bligh said, scowling when Riley had also made his more polite refusal. ‘I will return with you to England, and there present the case directly; so far, I trust, you cannot deny me,’ he asserted, with some truth: such a refusal would have been most dangerous politically to Riley, whose position was less assured than Granby’s, and unprotected by any significant interest. But Bligh’s real intention, certainly, was to return not to England but to the colony, in their company and under Riley’s protection with the intention meanwhile of continuing his attempts at persuasion however long they should remain there in port.
It was not to be supposed that Laurence could put himself at Bligh’s service, in that gentleman’s present mood, without at once being ordered to restore him to his office and to turn Temeraire upon the rebels. Even if such a course should serve Laurence’s self-interest, it was wholly inimical to his every feeling. He had allowed himself and Temeraire to be so used once – by Wellington, against the French invaders during Britain’s greatest extremity; it had still left the blackest taste in his mouth, and he would never again so submit.
Yet equally, if Laurence put himself at the service of the New South Wales Corps, he became nearly an assistant to mutiny. It required no great political gifts to know this was of all accusations the one which he could least afford to sustain, and the one which would be most readily believed and seized upon by his enemies and Temeraire’s, to deny them any hope of return.
‘I do not see the difficulty; there is no reason why you should surrender to anyone,’ Temeraire said obstinately, when Laurence had in some anxiety raised the subject with him aboard ship as they made the trip from Van Diemen’s Land to Sydney: the last leg of their long voyage, which Laurence formerly would have advanced with pleasure, and now with far more pleasure would have delayed. ‘We have done perfectly well all this time at sea, and we will do perfectly well now, even if a few tiresome people have been rude.’
‘Legally, I have been in Captain Riley’s charge, and may remain so a little longer,’ Laurence answered. ‘But that cannot answer for very long: ordinarily he ought to discharge me to the authorities with the rest of the prisoners.’
‘Whyever must he? Riley is a sensible person,’ Temeraire said, ‘and if you must surrender to someone, he is certainly better than Bligh. I cannot like anyone who will insist on interrupting us at our reading, four times, only because he wishes to tell you yet again how wicked the colonists are and how much rum they drink: why that should be of any interest to anyone I am sure I do not know.’
‘My dear, Riley will not long remain with us,’ Laurence said. ‘A dragon transport cannot simply sit in harbour; this is the first time one has been spared to this part of the world, and that only to deliver us. When she has been scraped, and the mizzen topmast replaced, from that blow we had near the Cape, they will go; I am sure Riley expects fresh orders very nearly from the next ship into harbour behind us.’
‘Oh,’ Temeraire said, a little downcast, ‘and we will stay, I suppose.’
‘Yes,’ Laurence said, quietly. ‘I am sorry.’
And without transport, Temeraire would be quite truly a prisoner of their new situation: there were few ships, and none of merchant class, which could carry a dragon of Temeraire’s size, and no flying route which could safely see him to any other part of the world. A light courier, built for endurance, perhaps might manage it in extremis with a well-informed navigator, clear weather, and luck, setting down on some deserted and rocky atolls for a rest; but the Aerial Corps did not risk even them on any regular mission to the colony, and Temeraire could never follow such a course without the utmost danger.
And if any degree of persuasion on Granby’s part could manage it, he and Iskierka would go as well, when Riley did, to avoid a similar entrapment; leaving Temeraire quite isolated from his own kind, save for the three prospective hatchlings who were as yet an unknown quantity.
‘Well, that is nothing to be sorry for,’ Temeraire said, rather darkly eyeing Iskierka, who at present was asleep and exhaling quantities of steam from her spikes upon his flank, which gathered into fat droplets and rolled off to soak the deck beneath him. ‘Not,’ he added, ‘that I would object to company; it would be pleasant to see Maximus again, and Lily, and I would like to know how Perscitia is getting on with her pavilion; but I am sure they will write to me when we are settled, and as for her, she may go away any time she likes.’
Laurence felt Temeraire might find it a heavier penalty to be exacted than he yet knew. Yet the prospect of these miseries, which had heretofore on their journey greatly occupied his concerns, seemed petty in comparison with the disaster of the situation that now awaited them: trapped in the roles of convict and kingmaker both, and without any means of escape, save if they chose to sacrifice all intercourse with society and take themselves off into the wilderness.
‘Pray do not worry, Laurence,’ Temeraire said stoutly. ‘I am sure we will find it a very interesting place, and anyway,’ he added, ‘at least there will be something nicer to eat.’
Their reception, however, had if anything only given more credence to Bligh’s representations, and Laurence’s anxiety. The Allegiance could not be said to have crept up on the colony: she had entered the mouth of the harbour at eleven in the morning on a brilliantly clear day, with only the barest breath of wind to bring her along. After eight months at sea, all of them might have been pardoned for impatience, but no one could be immune to the almost shocking loveliness of the immense harbour: one bay after another curving off the main channel, and the thickly forested slopes running down to the water, interspersed with stretches of golden sand.
So Riley did not order out the boats for rowing, or even try to spread a little more sail; he let the men mostly hang along the rail, looking at the new country before them while the Allegiance stately glided among the smaller shipping like a great finwhale among clouds of baitfish. Nearly three hours of slow, clear sailing before they lowered the anchor, then, but still there was no welcome come to meet them.
‘I will fire a salute, I suppose,’ Riley said, doubtfully; and the guns roared out. Many of the colonists in their dusty streets turned to look, but still no answer came, until after another two hours at last Riley put a boat over the side, and sent Lord Purbeck, his first lieutenant, ashore.
Purbeck returned shortly to report he had spoken with Major Johnston, the present chief of the New South Wales Corps, but that gentleman refused to come aboard so long as Bligh was present: the intelligence of Bligh’s return had evidently reached Sydney in advance, likely by some smaller, quicker ship making the same passage from Van Diemen’s Land.
‘We had better go see him ourselves, then,’ Granby said, quite unconscious of the appalled looks Laurence