Empire of Ivory (54 page)

you be killed while I am alive. And if they do not like to

execute me, I will go lie down in front of Parliament,

until they have changed their minds."

They were escorted across the gardens to the great

pavilion, together; Laurence marched in a company of

Imperial Guards, splendid and sweating in their tall black

shakos and blue coats. Lien was lying upon the riverbank,

observing benevolently the traffic which went up and down

the Seine before her, and turned her head when they came,

inclining it politely; Temeraire went very stiff, and

rumbled, deep in his throat.

She shook her head disapprovingly at his manners. "You

needn't shake your head at me," Temeraire retorted,

"because I do not care to pretend that we are friendly; it

is only that I am not deceitful: so there."

"How is it deceitful, when you know we are not friendly,

and so do I," Lien pointed out, "and all who are in our

confidence? There is no-one deceived, who has any right to

know, but those who prefer to take no notice of it; except

with your boorish behavior, no one about can avoid knowing,

and being made to feel awkward."

Temeraire subsided muttering, and crowded up as close as he

could to the nervous guards, trying to hover protectively

near Laurence; a dish of tea was brought him, which he

sniffed suspiciously and then disdained, and a glass of

cold sillery, which Laurence did not; a slight cooling

breeze came off the water and the greenery of the park, and

the vast marbled space was pleasant, with somewhere hidden

a running gurgle of water over stone, but the day was still

very hot, even with the morning not yet far advanced.

The soldiers went to attention; and then Bonaparte was

coming down the walk, trailing guards and secretaries, one

of whom was writing desperately even as they came: taking

down a letter. The valedictions were added as they came up

the steps, then Bonaparte turned away, came through the two

files of guards hastily shuffling out of his way, and

seizing Laurence by the shoulders kissed him on both

cheeks.

"Your Majesty," Laurence said, rather faintly. He had seen

the emperor once before, briefly and from concealment,

while Bonaparte had been overlooking the field of Jena; and

had been impressed at that time with the intensity and the

nearly cruel anticipation in his expression, the remote

eye, the hawk about to stoop. There was no less intensity

now, but perhaps some softening; the emperor looked

stouter, his face a little more rounded, than on that peak.

"Come, walk with me," Bonaparte said, and drew him by the

arm down to the water, where Laurence was not himself

required to walk, but rather to stand and let the emperor

pace before him, gesturing, with a restless energy. "What

do you think of what I have done with Paris?" he asked,

waving his hand towards the sparrow-cloud of dragons

visible, working on the new road. "Few men have had the

opportunity to see my designs, as you have, from the air."

"An extraordinary work, Your Majesty," Laurence said, sorry

to be so sincere; it was the kind of work which only

tyranny, he supposed unhappily, could achieve, and

characteristic of all Napoleon's works, smashing through

tradition with a kind of heedless forward motion; he would

have preferred to find it ugly, and ill-reasoned. "It will

expand all the character of the city."

Bonaparte nodded, satisfied with this remark, and said, "It

is only a mirror held up to the expansion of the national

character, however, that I am going to achieve. I will not

allow men to fear dragons: if cowardice, it is

dishonorable; if superstition, distasteful; and there are

no rational objections. It is only habit, and habit which

can and must be broken. Why should Peking be superior to

Paris? I will have this the most beautiful city of the

world, of men and dragons both."

"It is a noble ambition," Laurence said, low.

"But you do not agree with it," Bonaparte said, pouncing;

Laurence twitched before the sudden assault, very nearly of

palpable force. "But you will not stay, and see it done,

though you have already been given proof of the perfidy,

the dishonorable measures to which a government of

oligarchs will stoop: it can never be otherwise," he added;

more declaration than an attempt to convince, "when money

becomes the driving force of the state: there must be some

moral power beneath, some ambition, that is not only for

wealth and safety."

Laurence did not think very much of Bonaparte's method,

which substituted an insatiable hunger for glory and power,

at the cost of men's lives and liberty; but he did not try

to argue. It would have been hard indeed, he thought, to

marshal any argument in the face of the monologue, which

Bonaparte did not mind continuing in the absence of

opposition or even response; he ranged widely across

philosophy and economics, the useless folly of government

by clerks, the differences, which he detailed minutely on

philosophical grounds quite beyond Laurence's

comprehension, between the despotism of the Bourbons and

his own imperial state: they had been tyrants, parasites,

holding power through superstition and for their own

personal pleasure, lacking in merit; he was the defender of

the Republic, and the servant of the nation.

Laurence only withstood, as a small rock in a deluge; and

the gale past said simply, "Your Majesty, I am a soldier,

not a statesman; and I have no great philosophy but that I

love my country. I came because it was my duty as a

Christian and a man; now it is my duty to return."

Bonaparte regarded him, frowning, displeased, a tyrant's

lowering look; but it flitted quickly away, then he stepped

closer, and gripped Laurence by the arm, persuasive. "You

mistake your duty. You would throw away your life: all

right, you might say, but it is not yours alone. You have a

young dragon, who has devoted himself to your interest, and

who has given you all his love and confidence. What can a

man not accomplish, with such a friend, such a councilor,

free from any trace of envy or self-interest? It has made

you who you are. Think where would you now be, without the

stroke of fortune that put his heart into your keeping?"

At sea, like as not, or at home: a small estate in England

perhaps, married, by now his first child here; Edith

Woolvey, née Galman, had been delivered of her first four

months before. Marching steadily up the post-list towards

flag-rank; he would probably have been sitting presently on

blockade, beating up and down off Brest or Calais, a

tedious but necessary routine. A prosperous and an honest

life, and if no great chance of glory, as far from treason

as from the moon; he had never asked for anything else, or

expected it.

The vision stood at a distance almost bewildering, now;

mythical, softened by a comfortable blind innocence. He

might have regretted it; he did regret it, now, except

there was no room in the gardens of that house for a dragon

to be sleeping in the sun.

Bonaparte said, "You do not suffer from the disease of

ambition-so much the better. Let me give you an honorable

retirement. I won't insult you by offering you a fortune,

only his keep and yours. A house in the country, a cattleherd. Nothing will be asked of you that you do not want to

give." His hand tightened, when Laurence would have drawn

away. "Will your conscience be more clear when you have

delivered him into captivity? Into a long captivity," he

added sharply. "-they will not tell him when they put you

to death."

Laurence flinched; and through the grip Bonaparte felt it

and pursued, as a breach in his lines. "Do you think they

would hesitate to forge your name to letters? You know they

will not, and in any case the messages will only be read

aloud. A few words-you are well, you think of him, you hope

that he is obedient-and he will be imprisoned by them

better than iron bars. He will wait and linger and hope for

many years, starved and cold and neglected, long after you

have swung from a gibbet. Can you be satisfied to condemn

him to it?"

Laurence knew all this sprang from a selfish concern: if

Bonaparte could not have Temeraire's active complaisance,

even in the matter of breeding, he would still have been

glad at least to deny him to the British; and he probably

had hopes of persuading them, in time, to do more. That

knowledge, cold and impersonal, gave Laurence no comfort;

it did not matter to him that Bonaparte was interested,

when he was very likely also right.

"Sir," Laurence said unevenly, "I wish you may persuade him

to stay.-I must go back."

The words had to be forced. He spoke past a constriction,

as one who has been running a race uphill, for a long time:

since that moment in the clearing, since they had left

London behind. But now the hill was past; he had reached

the summit, and he stood there breathing hard; there was

nothing more he had to say or bear; his answer was fixed.

He looked over at Temeraire, waiting anxiously inside the

open pavilion. He thought he would try and put himself in

Temeraire's hands, at least, rather than be marched back to

prison; if he was killed in the attempt, it did not make

much difference.

Bonaparte recognized it; he let go Laurence's arm, and

turned away from him to pace frowning up and down; but at

last he turned. "God forbid I should alter such a resolve.

Your choice is the choice of Regulus, and I honor you for

it. You will have your liberty-you must have your liberty,"

he said, "and more: a troop of my Old Guard will escort you

to Calais; Accendare's formation see you across the

Channel, under flag of truce: and all the world will know

that France at least can recognize a man of honor."

The covert at Calais was busy: fourteen dragons were not

easily put in order, and Accendare herself was inclined to

snap and be difficult, irritable and weary with coughing.

Laurence turned away from the confusion, and wished only,

dully, to be gone; to have done with everything, all the

hollow ceremony: eagles and flags, polished buckles, the

fresh pressed blue of the French uniforms. The wind was

fair for England; their party was expected, letters having

traveled across and back to arrange the parley. There would

be dragons and chains to meet them: perhaps even Jane, or

Granby, or strangers who knew nothing more of him than his

crime. By now his family surely would know all.

De Guignes was rolling up the map of Africa from the table;

Laurence had shown him the valley where they had found the

mushroom supply. It was nothing materially more than he had

already done; the mushrooms were growing, but Bonaparte did

not care to wait, Laurence supposed, or risk a failure of

the harvest. They meant at once to send an expedition,

which was even now outfitting in the harbor: two sleek

frigates, and he believed another three going from La

Rochelle, in hopes that at least one would evade the

blockade and reach their destination, and by stealth or

negotiation acquire an immediately useful supply. Laurence

hoped only they should not all be taken prisoner, but even

if they were, he supposed it could not matter; the cure was

established and would spread; no more dragons would die. It

was a small satisfaction, at least, if a dry and tasteless

one.

He had feared some last attempt at bribery or seduction,

but De Guignes did not even ask him to say anything, with a

great sensitivity, but brought out a dusty bottle of

brandy, and poured him a generous glass. "To the hope of

peace between our people," he proposed; Laurence moistened

his lips, polite, and left the cold collation untouched;

and when it had been cleared, he went outside to Temeraire.

Temeraire was not embroiled in the general clamor; he was

sitting quietly hunched on one side, looking out to sea

over the straits: the white cliffs were plainly visible,

from their perch. Laurence leaned against his side and shut

his eyes, the steady heartbeat beneath like the rushing

tide in a conch shell. "I beg you will stay," Laurence

said. "You serve me not at all, nor your own cause; it will

only be thought blind loyalty."

Temeraire said, after a moment, "If I do, will you tell

them that I carried you away, against your will, and made

you do it?"

"Never, good God," Laurence said, straightening, and

wounded even to be asked; too late he realized he had been

led up to the mark.

"Napoleon said that if I stayed, you might tell them so if

you liked," Temeraire said, "and then they might spare you.

But I said you would never say such a thing at all, so it

was no use; and so you may stop trying to persuade me. I