Наоми Новик – Tongues of Serpents (страница 14)
‘There is Caesar’s breakfast,’ Temeraire said, with a sigh, as the mournful lowing of a cow came towards them from the bottom of the hill; but when it was brought up, by an only slightly less reluctant youth, he delivered it not to Caesar but to them, stammering compliments of Mr. MacArthur, and for Laurence there was an invitation card, asking him to supper.
‘I wonder he should make such a gesture,’ Laurence said, rather taken aback: it was one thing for MacArthur to bring himself to the covert, however irregularly organized, in an official outpost — but quite another to invite Laurence to his home in mixed company likely overseen by his wife. ‘I wonder at it indeed; unless,’ he added, low, ‘he has had some intelligence of Rankin’s interest in Bligh’s case: that might make sufficient motive even for this.’
‘Umm,’ Temeraire said indistinctly, nibbling around a substantial thigh-bone his attention fixed notably on Gong Su’s enthusiastic preparations: the cow had been butchered, and was going into the earth with what greenstuffs had passed muster and some cracked wheat; even Caesar had peeled open an eye and was looking over with covert interest.
The hour was fixed sufficiently late that they could wait until the heat of the day had passed and travel at the beginning of twilight; Temeraire, having made a splendid meal, carried him aloft into the softening but yet unbroken blue: no clouds, yet again, all the day. What would have made an hour’s journey on horse, across rough country, was an easy ten minutes flight dragonback, and there was a wide fallow field open near the house, where Temeraire could set down.
‘Pray thank him for my cow,’ Temeraire said, contentedly settling himself to nap. ‘It was very handsome of him, and I do not think he is a coward anymore, after all.’
Laurence crossed the field to the house, and paused to knock the dirt from his boots before he stepped into the lane: he had worn trousers, and Hessians, more suitable to flying; but in concession to the invitation, he had made an effort with his cravat, and put on his better coat. A groom came out, and looked about confused for Laurence’s horse before pointing him to the door: the house was comfortable but not especially grand, built practically and made for work, but there was an elegance and taste in the arrangements.
He was shown into the salon, and a company heavily slanted: only four women to seven men, most of those in officers’ uniforms; one of the women rose, as Mr. MacArthur came to join him, and he presented her to Laurence as his wife, Elizabeth.
‘I hope you will forgive the informality of our society, Mr. Laurence,’ she said, when he had bowed over her hand. ‘We are grown sadly careless in this wild country, and the heat crushes all aspirations to stiffness. I hope you did not have a very tiring ride.’
‘Not at all; Temeraire brought me,’ Laurence said. ‘He is in your southwest field; I trust it no inconvenience.’
‘Why, none,’ she said, though her eyes had widened, and one of the officers said, ‘Do you mean you have that monster sitting out in the yard?’
‘That monster’s sharpest weapon is his tongue,’ MacArthur said. ‘I am pretty well cut to ribbons yet: did the cow sweeten him at all?’
‘As much as you might like, sir,’ Laurence said, dryly. ‘You have quite hit on the point of weakness.’
The supper was, for all the ulterior motives likely to have been its inspiration, a comfortable and civilized affair: Laurence had not quite known what to expect, from the colonial society, but Mrs. MacArthur was plainly a woman of some character, and though indeed never striving for a formality which both the climate and the situation of the colony would have rendered tiresome and a little absurd, she directed the style of their gathering nevertheless. She could not have a balanced table, so she served the meal in two courses, inviting her guests to refresh themselves in between with a little walking in the gardens, illuminated with lamps, and rearranging the seating on their return to partner the ladies afresh.
The meal was thoughtfully suited to the weather as well: a cool soup of fresh cucumber and mint, meat served in jellied aspic, beef very thinly carved from the joint, lightly boiled chicken; and instead of pudding an array of cakes, with pots of jam, and excellent, fragrant tea; all served on porcelain of the very highest quality, the one real extravagance Laurence noticed: dishes of white and that particularly delicate shade of blue which could not be achieved by any European art, and the strength of real quality.
He noticed it to his hostess with compliments; to his surprise she looked a little crestfallen, and said, ‘Oh, you have found out
‘Do not say it aloud!’ MacArthur cried. ‘So long as you do not know it for certain, you may ha’e your dishes, and we our tea; and long may the rascals thrive.’
One of the many charges Bligh had laid at the rebels’ door had been the practice of smuggling: the back alleys and trading houses of Sydney were flooded with goods from China, which from the price alone one could tell had evaded the East India Company’s monopoly on such trade. ‘And I expect he would blame us for the drought, too, if he heard me say I thought the weather would hold clear another month,’ MacArthur said, offering a glass of port, when the ladies had left them.
‘I don’t say we have never brought in some goods which a governor might not approve of,’ he continued, ‘but I am speaking of rum, which we must have; you cannot get a man to work here, except you fill his glass, and with more than you can pour at five shillings the bottle. A damned folly, too: a pickled liver cannot tell good dark West Indian rum from the Bengali stuff. But we cannot even bring in that, now: there is not a smell of any kind of goods, from Africa, since the Cape was lost.
‘As for the China goods, by God! If I could make a profit selling China ware at two pounds a box in Sydney, with all the cost and risk of freight, I would be packing it on ships for England, instead, and die rich as Croesus. There are fellows making a pretty penny selling it on, I believe, even when they can only buy it one box at a time.’
There was a general murmur of agreement, and some anecdotes of trading agreements followed: it seemed to Laurence the officers all were tradesmen also, in some measure, and the tradesmen all former officers, and many of them landed as well: they made no distinction amongst themselves, and perhaps could not have, if there were not men of business enough established in the colony to provide opportunities for investment, or their rough-and-tumble fortunes not yet sufficiently realized in coin to take advantage of them.
MacArthur drew him aside, as the cigars were offered around and lit, and to the open doors looking into the gardens: squeaking small bats were flying now in clouds around the trees where earlier they had slept, hanging. ‘I am grateful to you for coming,’ he said. ‘We gave you little enough reason to do so.’
‘You are a good host, sir,’ Laurence said, ‘and it is a welcome I had not looked for.’
‘Governor Bligh would call me a traitor, so far as that goes: has done oft enough, I imagine,’ MacArthur said, ‘and would hang me for it, too. I will not pretend, sir, to be anything less than deeply interested, under the circumstances. I said to you, I believe, that I am ready to stand judgment for my acts; and so I am, but I don’t care to be marched to the scaffold
Laurence looked out at the gardens a little grimly: they were wilting in the heat, yet still restful to look upon, neatly arranged; beyond them spread wide fields. He was conscious that MacArthur’s establishment made a powerful argument in support of his claim to have made something of himself, and in an isolate and difficult country to have carried forward the banner of civilization: uniting all the taste and respectability which was absent from the sad and rackety condition of the town. So long from England and longer yet from any respectability, Laurence could feel the force of that argument all the more strongly.
‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘I can well understand your desire; but forgive me, I will not commit myself, and moreover Temeraire, to any course of action in advance. I have a reputation which may make me seem more a friend to rebellion than I am by any willing choice; and for that part, my assistance might not be an unmitigated boon to you, if you had it.’
‘And, if you will allow me to be blunt,’ MacArthur said, ‘for your part, you would be in a pretty position, standing in the way of seeing Governor Bligh restored, if a frigate should come in a couple of weeks, declare us the worst unhanged scoundrels south of the line, and the Governor to be put back into place at gunpoint. No, sir; I do not ask any man, so unconnected to me as you are, to put his neck on the chopping-block with mine; but if you are amenable enough to listen, I had rather propose to you a means of evading the issue entirely.’