“At present,” Hammond said, “our most pressing need is for your continued health. You can do nothing if you have been prostrated by an aggravation of your—your injury, and your presence is vital—utterly vital—to all the hopes of our mission.”
Laurence hesitated. Hammond was the King’s envoy, and evidently in charge of their mission to China; his urgency could not help but carry great weight. “Thank Heavens that you have not lost your facility with the Chinese language—I must credit,” Hammond added, “the extent of our practice, the several months of our voyage—your dedication there, Captain, has been very commendable, and I consider this the reward; everything else can be managed. I assure you, we will manage. We will begin at once to review the likely ceremonies of welcome: our arrival at Tien-sing, the forms of your greeting to the crown prince, and to the Emperor—”
If anything had been likely to give him a relapse of brain-fever, Laurence thought it would be the programme of etiquette study which Hammond laid out, which would have been a punishment even if spread over the course of three years. How he intended to touch upon all its parts in the space of time required to sail from Nagasaki to Tien-sing harbor, Laurence had not the least notion.
“All the more need, sir,” Mr. Pettiforth interjected, “not to add any additional strain upon your nerves. Avoiding any particular, any notable shock,” he looked at Granby with a hard, meaningful look, which Laurence could not interpret, “must be of the utmost importance.”
Granby looked at Laurence helplessly; Laurence drew and released a deep breath. “Very well,” he said, grimly. “I will be guided by you, gentlemen.”
He would rather have forgone the study, and closeted himself with Granby until he knew every detail that could be obtained of the last eight years from one who had been his close companion in nearly all of that time, from what he understood. But he could not refuse Hammond’s request. His weakness of brain had already endangered their cause—it was incumbent upon him to do whatever he might to assist a mission whose urgency was evident.
Britain’s situation, and that of all Europe, was more desperate than he had feared at the worst. Granby had, to his great comfort, been able to assure him of the health of his family, but little else of good could be said. The story of the invasion of Britain, of which he until now had received only the faintest outlines, had filled Laurence with horror: Nelson dead—Nelson, and fourteen ships-of-the-line sunk. Even so complete a victory over Napoleon as had been achieved could scarcely compensate for such a loss.
Indeed, Laurence was forced to give some credence to Pettiforth’s concerns: if there had been more such disasters, in the years he had lost, he did wonder how well he might support the news. “But I must learn something of my duties,” he said, “enough at least to carry them out: there is no telling but we may see battle, and at least the dragons must be exercised, surely? Captain Granby, who is the senior officer of our company?”
Granby rubbed his face with his good hand. “It has been all in the air, anyway—Harcourt has command of the formation, but you and I aren’t formally assigned to her, or she to either of us, and—oh, damn it all,” he muttered, at Laurence’s bafflement—her?—and turning said, “look, Hammond, I must tell him something.”
But even when Granby had explained, appallingly, that Longwings insisted on female captains, and that the slim young gentleman captaining that beast was indeed a woman, he had not much clarified their chain of command. “It goes by the beasts, you know,” he said. “It’s not much use our standing on ceremony, if they settle it otherwise amongst themselves; it don’t matter if a Winchester’s captain has twenty years on me when Iskierka gives a snort, you can be sure.”
With four heavy-weights and a Longwing aboard, such a policy must surely have kept the command in a state of peculiar confusion: all the more so that the captain of the largest beast, an immense golden creature called Kulingile, was scarcely more than a boy, and not British at all but from Africa; Laurence could hardly imagine how he had been appointed to his post. “Well, he wasn’t,” Granby said, “Demane is from Capetown, you took him and his brother up when—” He halted abruptly, biting his lip. “You took them up,” he continued awkwardly, leaving an ominous gap behind him, “as your runners, and he picked up the beast when no-one else would have it: came out of the shell deformed, and not the size of a lamb.”