The boy revived with a little brandy splashed into his mouth and smelling-salts under his nose; and he got out his message in German, gasping long stuttering breaths between the words to keep from breaking into sobs.
“Laurence, we were to go to Halle, were we not?” Temeraire said, listening. “He says the French have taken the town; they attacked this morning.”
“We cannot hold Berlin,” Hohenlohe said.
The King did not protest; he only nodded. “How long until the French reach the city?” the Queen asked; she was very pale, but composed, with her hands lying in her lap folded over lightly. “The children are there.”
“There is no time to waste,” Hohenlohe said; enough of an answer. He paused and said, his voice almost breaking, “Majesty—I beg you will forgive—”
The Queen sprang up and took his shoulders in her hands, kissing him on the cheek. “We will prevail against him,” she said fiercely. “Have courage; we will see you in the east.”
Regaining some measure of self-control, Hohenlohe rambled on a little longer, plans, intentions: he would rally more of the stragglers, send the artillery trains west, organize the middle-weights into formations; they would fall back to the fortress of Stettin, they would defend the line of the Oder. He did not sound as though he believed any of it.
Laurence stood uncomfortably in the corner of the room, as far away as he could manage. “Will you take their Majesties?” Hohenlohe had asked, heavily, when Laurence had first told him the news.
“Surely you will need us here, sir,” Laurence had said. “A fast courier—” but Hohenlohe had shaken his head.
“After what happened to this one, bringing the news? No; we cannot take such a risk. Their patrols will be out in force all around us.”
The King now raised the same objection and was answered the same way. “You cannot be taken,” Hohenlohe said. “It would be the end, Sire, he could dictate whatever terms he desired; or God forbid, if you should be killed, and the crown prince still in Berlin when they come there—”
“O God! My children in that monster’s power,” the Queen said. “We cannot stand here talking; let us go at once.” She went to the door and called her maid, waiting outside, to go and fetch a coat.
“Will you be all right?” the King asked her quietly.
“What, am I a child, to be afraid?” she said scornfully. “I have been flying on couriers; it cannot be very different,” but a courier twice the size of a horse was not to be compared with a heavy-weight bigger than the whole barn. “Is that your dragon, on the hill over there?” she asked Laurence, as they came into view of the covert; Laurence saw no hill, and then realized she was pointing at the middling-sized Berghexe sleeping on Temeraire’s back.
Before Laurence could correct her, Temeraire himself lifted up his head and looked in their direction. “Oh,” she said, a little faintly.
Laurence, who remembered when Temeraire had been small enough to fit into a hammock aboard the Reliant, still in some part did not think of him being quite so large as he really was. “He is perfectly gentle,” he said, in an awkward attempt at reassurance; also a brazen lie, since Temeraire had just enthusiastically spent the previous day in the most violent pursuits imaginable; but it seemed the thing to say.
All the dragon-crews sprang up startled to their feet as the royal couple entered the makeshift covert, and remained at stiff and awkward attention; aviators were not used to being so graced, as the little couriers who ordinarily bore important passengers went to their lodgings to carry them to and fro. Neither monarch looked very easy, particularly when all the dragons, catching their crews’ excitement, began craning their heads to peer at them; but with true grace the King took the Queen’s arm in his and went around to speak to the captains and give each a few words of approval.
Laurence seized the moment and beckoned hurriedly to Granby and Fellowes. “Can we get a tent put up for them aboard?” he asked urgently.
“I don’t know we can, sir; we left all behind what we could spare, running from the battlefield, and that lummox Bell had out the tents to make room for his kit, as though we couldn’t work him up a tanning-barrel anywhere we went,” Fellowes said, rubbing at the back of his neck nervously. “But we’ll manage something, if you can give me a turn of the glass; maybe some of these other fellows can lend us a bit of scrap.”
The tent was indeed managed out of two pieces of spare leather sewn together; personal harnesses were cobbled together; a half-respectable cold supper was hastily assembled and packed into a basket with even a bottle of wine, though how this should be opened mid-flight without disaster, Laurence had not the least idea. “If you are ready, Your Majesty,” he said tentatively, and offered the Queen his arm when she nodded. “Temeraire, will you put us up? Very carefully, if you please.”
Temeraire obligingly put down his claw for them to step into. She looked at it a little palely; the nails of his talons were roughly the length of her forearm and of polished black horn, sharp along the edges and coming to a wicked point. “Shall I go first?” the King said to her quietly; she threw her head back and said, “No, of course not,” and stepped in, though she could not help but throw an anxious look at the talons curving above her head.
Temeraire was regarding her with great interest, and having let her step off again onto his shoulder, he whispered, “Laurence, I always thought queens would have a great many jewels, but she has none at all; have they been stolen?”
Fortunately he spoke in English, as otherwise this remark would not have been much of a secret, issuing as it did from jaws large enough to swallow a horse. Laurence hurried the Queen into the tent before Temeraire could shift to German or French and take to questioning her on the state of her array; she very sensibly wore a plain heavy overcoat of wool over her gown, adorned with nothing more elaborate than silver buttons, and a fur pelisse and hat, practical enough on a flight.
The King had the benefit at least of a military officer’s experience of dragons, and showed no hesitation, if he felt any; but the retinue of guards and servants looked more deeply anxious even at coming near. Looking at their pale faces, the King said something briefly in German; Laurence guessed from the looks of shamefacedness and relief that he was giving them permission to stay behind.
Temeraire took this opportunity to put in his own remarks in that language, provoking startled looks all around; and he then stretched out his foreleg towards the group. This did not quite have the effect that Laurence imagined Temeraire had intended, and a few moments later there were left only four of the royal guard, and one old woman servant, who snorted profoundly and climbed without ceremony into Temeraire’s hand to be put aboard.
“What did you say to them?” Laurence asked, half-amused and half-despairing.
“I only told them they were being very silly,” Temeraire said in injured tones, “and that if I meant to do them any harm, it would be much easier for me to reach them where they were standing, anyway, than if they were on my back.”
Berlin was in a ferment; the townspeople looked without love on soldiers in uniform, and Laurence, going through the town in haste, trying to get what supplies he could, heard muttering about the “damned War Party” in every shop and corner. News of the terrible loss had already reached them, along with news of the French drive on the city, but there was no spirit of resistance or revolt, or even any great unhappiness; indeed the general impression was a kind of sullen satisfaction at being proven right.