Crucible of Gold

arranged for the captains, and the dragons laid down split logs around it.

While the preparations were under way, Laurence and Granby together described more fully the course of their unfortunate negotiations. “We cannot be certain,” Laurence concluded as they seated themselves, “but the Empress would scarcely have committed herself so fully as to order an attack upon us if she had not resolved upon the marriage: we must assume if it is not yet accomplished, it soon will be.”

“I suppose there is not much chance we could catch them this side of the Horn, if we set sail at once?” Little asked, sitting down beside Granby and handing him a mug of grog. “If he has lingered over the wedding- ceremonies, perhaps.” Laurence exerted an effort of will not to permit himself a look at Granby’s face: he would not have known of the liaison, save for Iskierka’s indiscretion, and so he would not know of it.

“If we did manage to find them in the middle of the ocean, I don’t know what we’d do with him,” Granby said. “Two transports at least, if not another ship, and trust the Incas to cram every dragon aboard that they can.”

“Well, so far we’re even,” Sutton said. “Captain Blaise has the Potentate waiting off the coast, and I presume the Allegiance is hereabouts somewhere?”

Granby stopped and looked at Laurence, who also was halted by surprise: but of course his report to the Admiralty was still in his writing-case—and his letter to Harcourt very likely still in the courier-bag aboard the Triomphe, De Guignes having in courtesy accepted the duty of posting it. Even if that had been handed on to some French courier or frigate by now, Harcourt had been at sea for months now: she could not have received it. The evil news must come to her now, fresh and with no warning.

“Gentlemen, you will excuse me a moment; Captain Harcourt, may I ask the favor of a word?” Laurence said, at least hoping to give her a moment of privacy, but she stood up and looked him in the face and said, “Laurence, Tom is not dead?”

He looked at her helplessly; there was no help to be had or given. “Forgive me,” he said. “I ought to have realized I had outrun my news: the Allegiance was lost in the forties, after a five days’ storm.”

“And he wouldn’t come away?” she said.

“I beg you not to assign to him any such willful act of self-destruction,” Laurence said. “He was to my last sight of him engaged in the most vigorous efforts to rescue the ship from disaster, which until those final moments not the most cautious observer would have considered without hope.”

She nodded silently, and stood there a moment austerely pale and still; her long face had lost its youthful flesh in the crucible of the service and of childbirth, and her hair was pulled back into a severe plait. “You will pardon me, gentlemen,” she said, and walked away from the firelight alone.

Her slim silhouette remained dark on the edge of the camp a long while, with only Lily’s head bent down to her side, offering comfort. Laurence sat up by the fire, waiting, when the others had withdrawn to their tents; thinking she might wish to question him further as to the circumstances: if he could give her little satisfaction, there was no-one to offer more. But when she returned at last with reddened eyes and her skin blotted in places, and sitting down picked up her cup, she did not ask him anything; she only said, “What a dreadful waste; and oh! whyever did I let you persuade me to marry him? His brother is dead, too, and now that harridan will be after me day and night to let her keep little Tom.”

Laurence gathered that by this she meant Riley’s sister-in-law, who was surely anxious not only for her nephew’s education but for the fate of her three daughters, left with only meager portions. After the baby, the estate would devolve upon a distant cousin who could scarcely be expected to have much consideration for their future, or for the comfort of the widow.

“And he is welcome to the whole kit, as far as I care; do you know little Tom can already climb the harness from belly-netting to the captain’s seat, all by himself?” Harcourt said, with a pride which Laurence could not wholeheartedly approve in the case of a three-year-old child. “I have begun to take him up with me: I am sure he will get a dragon even if I cannot persuade Lily to consider him, after all; how I should like not to have to bother with another.”

The advent of the formation, killing Hammond’s last hopes of bringing pressure to bear which should force Laurence into a nearer compliance with his wishes, at last broke the hanging stalemate. The regent yet refused to meet with the Tswana directly, an attempt at preserving his royal dignities, and delegated the conference to several of his noblemen headed by one Dom Soares da Câmara, a gentleman who spoke proudly of holding some thousand men, women, and children as chattel; and meanwhile the Tswana general Mogotsi who had charge of their forces bore rather a contemptuous look when he came into the main fortification at Paraty, which was too small to have allowed the entrance of dragons.

Laurence could understand only some words of what the general said aside to Lethabo, but gathered the meaning: a sneering at someone who had not a single ancestor worthy of rebirth. Mogotsi’s dismissive flip of a hand at the feral dragons outside, hanging well back from Kefentse, required no translation whatsoever. The subsequent negotiations were carried on with a degree of hostility better merited by open warfare: which several of the Portuguese negotiators, slave-owners themselves, seemed if anything to be making an attempt to provoke.

“It must be their only hope of preserving their estates, of course,” Hammond said distractedly as he paced the small anteroom to which they had retired for a brief respite, “their only hope—at least if there is a war, there is some chance of victory—indeed I am most impressed with the forbearance of that general; one would not expect it of a military man—”

Laurence, who had listened to Lethabo translating and picked out whatever he could, did not think that Mogotsi had needed to exercise so much restraint as Hammond would have given him credit for; and suspected that some remarks on the other side which might have given the Portuguese noblemen some excuse for ending the discussion had similarly been left out.

The chief Portuguese negotiator only snorted, and returned to his own occupation of glaring at Laurence; under his urgent whispers, Hammond had thrice renewed his attempts at remonstration, since Lily and her formation had arrived and put a period to his hopes of obviating any need for Laurence’s assistance. These attempts—cajolery, threats, insults, appeals—had not been crowned with success, and at last Hammond had given over and turned his efforts to persuasion of the regent, instead, to make some at least temporary peace.

That it should be temporary was certainly the second hope of the Portuguese negotiators. But in the night, one of the little dragons came darting into the courtyard; his courier-rider dropped off panting, and ran in to convey the news that another French transport approached the harbor: with another nine Tswana dragons who had already left the deck and come to join their fellows on the shore.

The negotiators, roused in the early hours by the news, huddled murmuring and grim together until dawn brought Kefentse back, and the discussions resumed. Having given over the notion of preserving their slave-holdings for the moment, the Portuguese now began to argue for the manumitted slaves remaining on their estates—plainly, Laurence thought, with an eye to reversing that manumission as soon as circumstances might permit it, if not rendering it a mere fiction to begin with.

Lethabo listened, spoke with Mogotsi, and then turning back said, “You have torn kinsmen from one another; this cannot be allowed. Where they do not desire to return to their homeland, however, they may be reunited with their ancestors upon the estates.”

Laurence doubted extremely that the Portuguese negotiators, wearing self-satisfaction in every line of their faces, understood that by ancestors the Tswana meant the dragons; nor did he enlighten them when afterwards Soares da Câmara bragged to his fellows in the next recess.

“You see how they swallow the least gesture,” he said. “We ought to have met them across the table before: these savages have no understanding, no sophistication; they can easily be led if only one should satisfy their primitive impulses. They have learned that to be a slave is undesirable; very well, we will let them call themselves free; what does it matter, if they do not refuse to live in service to their betters, as some instinct of wisdom must lead them to accept? Even if a few thousand of them decide to brave the passage again and go back to Africa, we will scarcely be the losers when one considers the rate at which presently they flee their appointed places, knowing they may escape to the beasts.”

Hammond looked uneasily at Laurence, perhaps wondering how much he understood and whether he would object; Laurence said nothing, and only glanced across the room at Lethabo, who looked back and met his eye with