—first mate off a whaler, who had married a Wampanoag girl from Aquinnah; together they had hired on another whaling cruise, and the village hoped to arrange to buy a ship with them.
But John had no companion. After hatching, he’d asked Singing Bird for an English name, the plainer the better: it wasn’t like he was going to be mistaken by anyone who mattered, and he figured if he didn’t have a man to go between, at least he might as well give the colonists an easy handle to use for him.
He liked flying more than most other things, so he’d decided to try his hand at shipping. When he had built up enough of a nest egg, the Mashpee would stake him to open a trading house of his own. Or help him buy into one, maybe, it occurred to him. He’d tried Devereux to start because three separate Wampanoag traders had told him the firm drove a fair bargain and didn’t pay Indians worse for the same goods as they did white men, which a lot of other trading houses did, and didn’t mind loading and unloading dragons. Well, it was early days to judge, but John thought pretty well of the old fellow so far, and it stood to reason a house that could go between colonists and Indians and merchant ships stopping in Boston Harbor would be in a good place.
He flew on the rest of the way to New York City on a nice tailwind. There were other dragons at the docks and in the market there, including one big, stern-looking Mohawk who had clearly got some European blood in her with that tonnage and her round head, sitting at the end of Maiden Lane with a gold chain on, keeping the peace. John landed by her to pay his respects. “John Wampanoag, here from Boston with some tea for the market,” he said in English, since he didn’t know Kanienkeha.
The big dragon looked him over closely and then nodded. “The Mohawk buyers will take your goods.”
“Thank you,” John said politely, “but I’ll try selling them myself, first.”
She snorted. “White men don’t know how to talk to dragons.”
Privately, John figured that mostly white men didn’t know how to talk to a dragon who could swallow them in one bite, and why they’d bred them up so big in the first place just to scare themselves with, he didn’t know. Well, he knew, but it still seemed an awful waste.
Anyway, he looked round the edges of the market and found a few boys in a side lane playing some kind of a game with a ball and a stick, half of them with at least some Indian blood in them, and they were more than willing to give him a hand for the promise of a dollar apiece. They untied his oilskins and laid the sacks out neatly and started yelling at the top of their lungs, “Tea for sale, straight from China, shipped dragonback! A dollar a pound! Tea for sale!”
That was undercutting the prices John had overheard cried under the roofs, by a fair margin, and custom started coming his way. He didn’t have a scale or bags, so he had the boys tell people to scoop it out roughly. He was losing a bit on each sale, but he figured it wouldn’t really matter, and it didn’t: in less than half an hour, a man came out from one of the biggest market stalls and quietly asked how much for the whole lot.
“I guess I could see my way clear to selling it for sixty cents a pound,” John said, since they were selling it for a dollar-twenty under the roofs, and after a little back-and-forth they settled on fifty; which made his own pay $300 for four days’ work. He did have to spend $20 of his money on his dinner, because he couldn’t go hunting in Mohawk territory. But since he had to spend $20, he spent $25 instead, and bought himself a prime bullock in the market: those were going cheap pound-for-pound compared to the goats and sheep that would feed an ordinary-sized dragon nicely.
The Mohawk peacekeeper kindly told him about a nice sunning spot up on the heights near Fort Tryon where he could eat and sleep under the guns, with a peacekeeper dragon up there, too. John got the slaughterhouse to cut him up his cow, and he gave her one hindquarter and gave the other to the peacekeeper at the fort: that left him a still-glorious piece of rich fat beef that would feed him for three days even with all this flying, and well more than five dollars’ worth of good will.
“You have good manners—for a Wampanoag,” the fort peacekeeper said, and roared with laughter,
startling a whole flight of pigeons off the nearest roof and making a dozen soldiers come running to see who had attacked. But then he invited John to sleep next to him right inside the fort itself, and he weighed at least eleven tons, so he could make all the bad jokes he liked. John ate his dinner and slept peacefully with his money under his belly.
In the morning, he flew back to Boston with the money: an even easier flight, with no weight on him; he slept just across the Connecticut border and reached Boston just before noon the next day. “You can leave my share right in that pouch,” he said to Devereux. “Next time, if you like to trust me for it, I’ll buy a cargo for the way back.”
“Tell me when you’ll come next, and I’ll have a cargo waiting for you,” Devereux said. He was pleased: he’d cleared three hundred dollars more on the load than he could’ve got in Boston.
They bowed, and agreed on Wednesday, the day after next, and John took his share, did a little shopping of his own, and flew back to Mashpee. It was getting on for sunset by the time he got home, and the cooking fires were making a glow in the houses and the wetu: the village was running about half and half these days. The warm good smell of corn porridge cooking was welcoming, even though he wasn’t hungry yet after that huge meal, and when he landed in the square, a bunch of the children came running to greet him and climb on him and try to poke their fingers into his pouches. “Off you get,” he said firmly, and told the oldest boy to take down the sack of candied flowers and marchpane fruits, and they all squealed with joy and started a fierce negotiation over how to dole it out amongst themselves.
Singing Bird came out of the big house, her warm brown eyes smiling at him. John ducked his head and said gruffly, “I brought some winter clothes, too, and tobacco, and tea.”
“We’re all glad you are back safely,” she said, and put her hand on his side. Some of the other women took his bundles, and he let Singing Bird take the pouch with the money: her face brightened and a few of the worry lines smoothed out when she saw how much he had brought in. “I’ll have time to go and bring in some game tomorrow,” he told her, “and I don’t need supper tonight: I ate like a fighting-dragon in New York.”
“You need rest after a long flight,” she chided gently.
“It wasn’t so long as all that,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see what Devereux thinks about my going west, in a few trips. I could get twice the money for factory goods out in Ohio, I bet, if I take it in furs.”
After dinner, she brought out the big Mashpee account book and the one she’d set aside for him, and sat beside him so he could watch her write the numbers all down. She closed the books when she was done, and put them aside, and sighed softly, looking west: the sun was ducking into the treetops. She smelled good, of earth: she’d been helping with the planting today, surely, like everyone old enough to put hands in the dirt and young enough to walk. “A messenger came from Tecumseh this morning,” she said after a moment.
“Is it all settled?” John said, steady.
“Yes. The Shawnee have offered four eggs, and ten thousand dollars in gold. He will come when the planting is finished.” She drew a deep breath. “We will live in Kentucky during the winters, and come north in the spring.”
John didn’t mean to moan about it. Wampanoag women weren’t supposed to be dragon riders, anyway. Maybe they could have managed something if she hadn’t also been a sachem, and if she hadn’t been the great sachem, and if they didn’t desperately need to bind the nations together, and if, and if. There wasn’t much use in ifs. “Well, Kentucky’s not so far,” he said. “I guess they’ll be wanting goods out there, to
o.”
“I’m sure they will.”
“Maybe you’d like to have a look at the fields, from above, and see if there’s anything going wrong,”
John said.
“It would be nice, if you aren’t too tired,” she answered, a bit guiltily. It did all right for an excuse.
She scrambled up onto his back, not at all like a steady, cool-headed sachem with a heap of responsibilities, and he leapt aloft with her. Even though he was tired, he spent all the hour she would allow herself up in the clouds, and she sang just for him in her deep sweet voice while he flew a long lazy spiral over the fields just peeking green in places, where the corn plants were breaking the ground.
Dawn of Battle
art by Nick Miles)
Author’s Note: Nick Miles’ beautiful painting of an unfortunate ship of the line caught between two dragons and bursting into flames immediately evoked for me
the famous destruction of L’Orient , the French warship that exploded during the Battle of the Nile when her powder magazine caught. This story takes place in the
hours before those cataclysmic events.
JANE AWAKENED EARLY, only a thin line of red-gold at the end of the world below. She put out her hand automatically over her head for her boots, but remembered belatedly they were slung over the bottom of the hammock, where they would knock a midwingman’s head instead of hers, during rolls: the captain’s privilege of space. She pulled them on still lying on her back, shifted her carabiners to the climbing harness, and swung herself out.
A single glance below showed her that the ships of the flotilla were turning eastwards along the Egyptian coast, their lanterns a flock of fireflies turning away from Alexandria harbor. She went up the side, taking automatic note of the rhythm and pace of the wing-beats: Excidium was flying strongly and well, rolling through his strokes, no sign yet of tiring, although he had taken to the air seven hours ago, after only a pontoon-raft nap. The pursuit was going too quickly for their transport to keep pace, and the Egyptian countryside was by no means safe for them to put down.
Caudec was sitting at the neck, hunched in his leather greatcoat with his bristling mustaches dewed with morning mist. He saluted her indifferently and said nothing. “Any signals?” Jane asked. She oughtn’t have had to ask, if there had been, but she knew what the fellow was about.
“Nothing to concern you,” Caudec said, avuncularly.
“I prefer to concern myself,” Jane said. “Ensign Bridely, light along the log-book there,” she called.
She had seen enough of this kind of business with her own mother, who had never managed to say boo to any of her own firsts. The mourning band was still black round Jane’s sleeve, and the fierce grief still a lump in her belly, but there was no use pretending that Mother had not allowed herself to be imposed upon by a long procession of some of the most scabby officers in Christendom: including Caudec himself, who had been aloft with her these last three years.
Bridely, a boy of twelve, scrambled over with the log-book, although he darted a look at Caudec as he did, and well he might when Jane had opened it: Sails to east, frigate at the bottom of the page, not fifteen minutes agone, reported from that big Turkish beast who kept slipping out of formation and trying to climb overhead, instinctively.
“When next a man of war is sighted, Mr. Caudec, you will inform me directly,” Jane said. “Who has gone to look in on them?”
Caudec, stiffening with indignation, said frigidly, “I beg your pardon?”
“No-one, then,” Jane said, deliberately misunderstanding, and unhooked her speaking-trumpet.
“Excidium, dear fellow, will you ask Glidius to take a quick dash eastward ahead of the formation and have a look round for us?”
“Yes,” Excidium answered her, in his deep sonorous voice, and called to their Winchester courier, a clever little fellow as quick as a hummingbird, to go chasing the sunrise and the sight of sail.
Jane shut up the log-book and handed it back to Bridely. “I will stretch my legs a minute,” and without giving Caudec a chance to launch into the speech he was plainly making ready, she set off at once on an easy clamber along the length of Excidium’s spine: as familiar to her as the nursery of her own home, if she had ever had another. She had been kept on Excidium a long time as a child—longer than she had ought to, because Mother hadn’t wanted to be parted from her. It had been her one and only rebellion; Jane thought of her again with mingled love and exasperation, irrepressible even in memory.
It was more than half the Admiralty’s fault, of course. Their Lordships liked very much to put girls up green as grass whenever they had the chance, in hopes they would let some fellow put his hand on the reins. Jane’s grandmother had been perfectly hale and hearty at forty when they had abruptly grounded her and put a timid seventeen-year-old on Excidium’s back for no good reason.
Well, Jane was not a green girl, and certainly she was not timid, and she didn’t mean to have it. She had put up with Caudec so far only because the Admiralty were already wary of her. She had formed a reputation enough herself, by seventeen, that no one had talked of retiring her mother in her favor, then or since. No, if the pleurisy had not carried Sarah Roland off, she would still be up here this very moment, with Caudec neglecting to so much as scout for French positions, even though he ought to have known, if he didn’t, that Admiral Nelson was short on frigates, and would be glad of every minute of warning they could give him and his ships.
The sort of man who would take a post where his understood duty was to encourage his captain to be shy was not the sort of man to be trusted with the management of a Longwing, as Jane would have been glad to tell the Admiralty from long experience. She had watched them march through the post all her childhood, five rotters to one decent man, and the Admiralty had removed him after six months, because he’d been encouraging Mother to give more orders to the wing in flight.
Well, before Donoghue had gone, he’d told Jane quietly to make her mother send her to Kinloch Laggan to get her training begun properly, and to get her own childbearing out of the way early. Jane had been eleven years old at the time, but she’d already been capable of recognizing it as good advice. So Emily was three years old and thriving, back on their transport at the moment with her sensible nurse; and Jane had nine years under her belt studying with old Celeritas and occasionally serving with a decent captain when their Lordships would give her a berth. She knew her work, if she were allowed to do it, and Excidium was quite ready to support her.
They had spoken, after the funeral. The Admiralty could not spare him in the least with Bonaparte stamping all over Italy like a thundering colossus, but Jane had known that there were officers enough prepared to find consolation in grounding her, if Excidium did not like to keep fighting and chose to retire to the breeding grounds instead.
“And I don’t blame you if you are tired of the whole business, after all these years aloft,” Jane had told him forthrightly, ignoring the lecture she had been delivered by an entire panel of admirals reminding her to exert every wile and coaxing allure, as though she were some damned simpering maiden. “But we can ill afford to lose you. The French are talking quite seriously of coming across the Channel, one of these days,” which no one had seen fit to tell him, idiotically, although they had told her to weep and wail if he so much as breathed a word of retirement.
So she had drawn him the map of the French coast in the dirt, which of course he recognized quite well, and pointed out all the places where troops had gathered. “And they have a second Flamme de Gloire hatched lately, of course,” Jane said.
“Yes, I can see it would be nasty without me,” Excidium remarked: he did not need it explained to him further. He rubbed the top cla
ws of his wings together, thoughtfully, which he did when he was getting round to saying something; he was not a chatterbox, and would often go weeks in covert without saying a mortal word. Jane did not interrupt him, but waited, and at last he said, “I do not think dear Sarah was very happy in the Corps.”
Jane still remembered the enormous surge of relief: so he did not want to go. “No,” she had said. “I don’t think you could find anyone less suited to the work than Mother, and it is a damned shame the way the Admiralty saddled her with a great collection of lumps. I will say, if you can see your way clear to sticking it out, that I don’t mean to put up with it myself.”
He had put his eye down to her close, inspecting, and she had put her hand on his snout, full of affection for the dear old thing: he had tolerated her swinging from his bone-spurs and making a portcullis of his teeth when she was not five years old. In the very bad days, when that scoundrel Davidson had been strutting and boasting from sunrise to sunset how Mother would do anything he liked, and spending his nights in her bed, Jane would creep out of the captain’s quarters after dark and tuck herself in the little hollow between jaw and foreleg to sleep; Excidium had never turned her away, and the gurgle of the churning acids in their sacs was her idea of what an ocean should sound like.
“Yes, I will stay in harness; if you are certain,” he had said, a shade of doubt still lingering in his voice.
“I am,” Jane said. “I suppose,” she added, “that those loobies at the Admiralty had a good shout at Mother, too, and told her she must swear to you up and down she wanted nothing but to go aloft, or else she should be a traitor to the crown. So she has spent all these years telling you she was delighted by it, and all the while you could tell otherwise.” Excidium lowered the lids on the deep orange of his eyes, and said nothing, but Jane nodded. “Well, I will not lie to you, dear fellow, about this or anything else: I don’t find it answers well, and I am not afraid of those sacks of wind. But in all honesty, I haven’t the faintest notion what I should do with myself otherwise. I am as ill-suited for a domestic life as Mother was for anything else.”