Catherine Harcourt
Character Profile
| Name: | Catherine Harcourt |
| Date of Birth: | c.1785 |
| Service: | Aerial Corps |
| Rank: | Captain |
| Nationality: | British |
| Billets: | Loch Laggan covert, captain to Lily |
Biography
Catherine Harcourt was a tall, slender young woman with a wide, pleasant face, a snub nose and long red hair, which she usually wore in a braid. Her mother was a woman from Plymouth who died of a fever when Harcourt was but one year old. Her father, Jack Harcourt, was a member of the Aerial Corps and served as a lieutenant aboard Fluitare. He died in 1802, by which time he already knew that his daughter had been assigned as captain to a yet unhatched Longwing egg and that her future was assured.
The egg hatched five years earlier than expected, so early that Harcourt had not even thought of a name and ended up naming the dragonet Lily instead of one of the more usual Latin names given to British dragons. Longwings, with their acid spray, are naturally the leaders of their formations. The other dragons are trained to fly patterns which give the Longwing the greatest sweep over the ground while retaining the protection of the rest of the wing around it. However, Lily had hatched so early that Harcourt was unusually young to be not only the captain of a heavy-weight but also the lead captain in the formation.
Because of her youth, Harcourt was at first sometimes a bit shy and awkward in dealing with men in the Corps, especially those such as Jeremy Rankin who seemed to make a point of drawing attention to her sex. However, she was quick to speak up in defense of her own rights, as when William Laurence made the mistake of addressing her as "Miss Harcourt" rather than Captain Harcourt.
She also told Laurence and Berkley about an occasion, when she was 16, when she was harassed while attending a concert. She had worn skirts for the occasion, which she was not accustomed to and found a great deal of trouble to arrange when she sat down. So rather than stand up again and hit the fellow who was bothering her, she borrowed a pot of hot coffee from a passing waiter and poured it into his lap.
Besides illustrating Harcourt's character, this incident gives some insight into the sartorial difficulties of female aviators. At the time, it was not merely shocking for women to wear what was perceived to be "male clothing" by the public - it was actually illegal. Female aviators were able to wear trousers and coats only by a special exemption from the laws. On the occasions when they left the coverts, they had to wear long dresses or at least cover their uniforms with long cloaks.
Laurence, when he met Harcourt for the first time, was rather shocked by what he perceived as her "immodest" attire: "breeches that showed every inch of her leg, with a shirt held closed only by a neckcloth" (i.e. exactly what he was wearing himself). He dealt with the situation by addressing "the unalarming top of her head." However, once Temeraire began training with Lily's formation, Laurence rapidly became more used to Harcourt's presence, even addressing her as simply Harcourt in post-practice discussions.
In August 1806, the French Admiral Villeneuve and his fleet were caught at Cadiz and penned there by Admiral Nelson. The Longwing Mortiferus and his formation were sent to Cadiz to assist, while Lily's formation was sent to the Dover covert to take Mortiferus's place in the Channel formation, alongside Excidium's formation. Due to Harcourt's lack of experience, at this time Celeritas gave formal command of the formation to Captain Sutton of Messoria, instructing Sutton to consult with Harcourt as far as possible.
Shortly afterwards, while Lily's formation was on patrol along the Channel, they were ambushed by the French. Lily was badly injured by a Grand Chevalier nearly twice her size. The British formation was able to escape the French only after Captain Jean-Paul Choiseul and Praecursoris, who had gone on ahead of the others, returned to help, apparently because he had only just then caught sight of the battle.
Harcourt was quite distraught over Lily's injuries, and Choiseul took the opportunity to get close to her at this time, bringing food for her to Lily's side and taking it in turns to watch over Lily so that Harcourt would agree to sleep. It turned out that there was more to Choiseul's intentions than simply admiration for a brave and attractive young woman. He had been sent by the French to retrieve the Celestial egg sent to Napoleon by the Chinese, as the French did not yet know that Temeraire had already hatched. When Choiseul learned this, he first considered killing Temeraire, then instead decided to bring Lily to them by seducing Harcourt, taking her hostage and using her to enforce Lily's cooperation.
Choiseul's plan failed because Laurence overheard what was going on and intervened. While Laurence and Choiseul were wrestling on the ground, Harcourt retrieved an iron bar from Lily's equipment and brained Choiseul with it. Afterwards, she asked Choiseul if he had arranged the ambush in which Lily was injured (so that he could make use of her distraught state), but he would not answer.
Harcourt and Lily fought bravely and skillfully during the Battle of Dover. Shortly afterwards, Harcourt was given command of the formation. She was in command during the action that occurred in late 1806 when a French convoy tried to get past the British Channel blockade and make a run for Le Havre.
Lily's formation came to the aid of Temeraire and the HMS Allegiance during the Valerie engagement. This was where Harcourt first met naval captain Tom Riley. However, at the time she was in uniform with her flying hood covering her braid. When Riley invited the other aviators to dinner, Harcourt pled sea sickness so that the naval officers would not have an opportunity to observe her closely. Riley assumed that Harcourt was a man. Later on in the voyage, when he discovered that Emily Roland was a girl, he tried to refute Laurence's explanation that Longwings require female captains by referring to the leader of Laurence's formation with "his" Longwing, i.e., Lily. Temeraire corrected Riley's misassumption.
Africa, 1807
In 1806, Lily and all the other dragons of the Aerial Corps were struck by the Dragon Plague. When Temeraire proved to be immune, probably due to an earlier exposure and cure in Cape Town while en route to China, Admiral Jane Roland sent Lily's formation to Cape Town aboard the Allegiance. The voyage was to take approximately three months. Obviously Harcourt could not hide in her cabin pretending to be seasick for three months. However, out of deference to Riley's sensibilities, Harcourt and Laurence initially agreed that he would act as go-between between Riley and the aviators, where more usually this would have been Harcourt's place as formation leader. Unfortunately, a quarrel between Laurence and Riley made this arrangement impossible, with the result that Harcourt resumed her position as go-between.
The Dragon Plague was particularly hard on the female officers of the Corps. A male officer might buy himself a cavalry commission if the Corps were forced to disband, or at least make shift to live on the half-pay given to retired officers. But there simply was no place in the society of the time for a retired female military officer. Harcourt would have been beset by deep anxiety for Lily as well as by the uncertainty of her own future. At the same time, she was thrown into the company of a naval captain scarcely more than a few years her senior who was extremely conscious of her as a woman, where her fellow aviators were more likely to regard her as a comrade and a sort of sister or niece. It would not have been unnatural her for her to take comfort where she could find it. Remarks made by Riley later on suggest that she may have initiated it.
In any event, by the time the Allegiance reached Cape Town, Harcourt was pregnant. Frequent bouts of nausea forced her to admit the fact to the other aviators, although she made it quite clear to her male colleagues that they were not to make any "fuss" over this point, for example by attempting to dissuade her from expeditions into the continental interior. She continued to act in her position as formation leader. Among other things, this meant deciding, on the advice of Keynes and the other dragon surgeons, in which order the dragons would receive the still scant supplies of the curative mushroom. Harcourt was determined to make such decisions fairly and reasonably, even though it meant that her own Lily would be the last one to receive the cure.
When asked by Berkley, Harcourt freely shared the information that Riley was the father of her child, but neither she nor any of the other aviators - except Laurence - thought to tell Riley. Harcourt had no need of a husband to provide for her child. A daughter would join the Corps and inherit Lily. Even a son could still join the Corps and at least have the advantage of having a parent who could give him a leg up. Before Laurence could inform Riley of the turn events had taken, a British party including both Laurence and Harcourt, among others, was captured by the Tswana dragon Kefentse and brought as captives to Mosi-oa-Tunya.
Harcourt found pregnancy to be a considerable drain. By the time Temeraire, Lily and Dulcia rescued the party - which included Dulcia's captain Chenery - Harcourt had begun to show enough to let out her breeches and thoroughly repented of her carelessness in avoiding conception. One of Lily's first questions after the rescue was to ask her if "the egg" was all right, to which Harcourt replied, "Hang the egg." She was considerably happier about being rejoined with Lily.
The three dragons with their captains and crews arrived in Cape Town just in time to cover the evacuation of the European residents aboard the Allegiance, where it did not take Riley long to realize that his liaison with Harcourt had had consequences. Determined not to be "an outrageous scrub", he tried to do what was, by his standards, the right thing: he asked Harcourt to marry him. Implicit in this offer was Riley's expectation that she would resign from the Corps, i.e., abandon Lily.
Harcourt, of course, refused. As aviators were already outside society, she had no need to marry for respectability's sake. Riley persisted. Her fellow aviators regarded Riley's behaviour as quixotic at best and harassing at worst, with Chenery muttering ominously about "working on" the naval captain.
Besides a general determination to do what he considered right, one of the reasons that Riley was so keen on the marriage was that his father's estates were entailed (could not be inherited by a woman), and his older brother had only daughters. It was only after Laurence explained this - with some difficulty - to Harcourt that she agreed to the marriage, although on the condition that if the child were a girl, she would be given the Harcourt name. Indeed, Harcourt rather expected that if the child were a girl, Riley would divorce her, as in her view of things, he would have no further need for her or the child.
After some effort by Laurence, Riley was given to understand that Lily could not be spared (which was true enough) and that "no one else can be found to take the beast on" (a misapprehension which Laurence did not attempt to correct). The marriage ceremony itself illustrated the gulf of understanding between Harcourt and Riley. It did not occur to Harcourt to obtain a dress, it did not occur to Riley that she would not do so, and when the minister asked for objections, Lily attempted to supply some.
Britain, 1807-1808
By the time the Allegiance reached Britain, Harcourt was still throwing up regularly. Admiral Roland, who had her own experience of motherhood, noted that Harcourt had not gained nearly enough weight and promised to connect her with the midwife Roland had used herself.
The child was born in November 1807. The birth was a difficult one, particularly as the baby was, at ten pounds, fairly large for a human infant. To Harcourt's and Lily's disappointment, it was a boy - in Lily's view, an extremely smelly and noisy boy. Furthermore, Lily was annoyed that Riley had refused to give Harcourt a divorce. Jane Roland had once commented to Laurence, early in their acquaintance, that while marriage is not held against aviators at all in the Corps, "It is only that it is rather hard on the other person, always taking second place to a dragon." Harcourt's and Riley's marriage was proving this out abundantly.
Female dragons are not usually maternal, as John Granby once observed to Laurence, and Harcourt's reaction to the child was rather draconic. A bit more than a month after the birth, Napoleon's troops invaded Britain. Harcourt and Lily left the child with Riley and a wet nurse to rejoin their formation on active duty, even though Harcourt was still somewhat frail at the time. She told Laurence that the Aerial Corps could not spare her and Lily, which was true enough, but it might also have been true that Harcourt had little personal inclination to be spared.
After the Battle of Shoeburyness in March 1808, Laurence's death sentence - he had been convicted of treason - was commuted to transportation and labour in order to stop Temeraire from organizing the other British dragons to obtain more rights. The Allegiance had been fitted out as a prison ship to transport Laurence and Temeraire - along with many, many other less notable convicts - to Australia under Riley's command.
Harcourt thought that perhaps the boy ought to be sent with his father for the voyage, although Laurence attempted to dissuade her. Riley was seen to come aboard "late, and grim, and alone," just before the ship lifted anchor. However, it would have been entirely possible for him to have had the boy - and the requisite wet nurse - sent aboard earlier, so Harcourt's final decision on the matter is not yet known.
