‘You’re the new man?’ she said.
‘Yes – Joe. The captain sent me. I’m looking for the surgeon?’
‘That’s me.’ She stretched to shake his hand. ‘Mrs Castlereagh. Have a seat,’ she said, getting up. The fabric of her dress shushed. ‘Mind the tortoise.’
He sat carefully and nudged the cricket ball. The tortoise hurried after it. It had a ‘2’ painted on its shell, or rather, etched on and then coloured in.
Mrs Castlereagh brought across a bowl of water and a cloth. Alice would be furious when he told her that married English ladies were allowed to work, and as proper surgeons no less. Married English ladies a hundred years ago.
She stood close to see the whip-mark and Joe had to look away. He could make out the flower pattern that used to be on her dress, before she’d dyed it the deep indigo it was now. There were still shadows under the colour. Sometimes her arm crossed into his view. She had a slim jade bracelet on.
‘Right,’ she said at last. ‘No need for stitches, so I’ll just polish you up a bit.’
When he smiled, the muscles across one side of his face ached. ‘Thanks.’
She smiled too and smoothed a damp cloth down the lash-mark. It stung. ‘Anything else I should know, any problems you’re likely to have while you’re with us?’ She was businesslike, as though kidnapping mechanics from the future were an ordinary part of her week. She brushed the cloth over his forehead too, looking right into his face. Her eyes were sharp and black.
He had to make an effort not to fold his arms. Of all the stupid things; he’d been able to sit straight opposite Kite, who was terrifying, but show him a friendly woman and he was fighting the need to run away. He had to swallow a mouthful of shame. He’d known that all the stuff with Alice and Père Philippe had bothered him, but not so much that he would start to feel jumpy around any women who stood too near. ‘Epilepsy.’
‘How often does it come on?’
His arms folded themselves. ‘I only have auras, not seizures. Once a fortnight or so.’
‘Ever puts you in danger?’
‘Sometimes. I forget things.’ He swallowed. ‘I went ashore earlier and I forgot what the inside of the lighthouse even looked like. And I think – I might have forgotten other things as well. Mr Kite was talking like I’d already met him.’
‘You did,’ she said. Her focus intensified. ‘Yesterday. You saved him from the sea; he went overboard in the rip tide after a shore run. He tried to send you back to Harris, but you came back to the lighthouse. He wasn’t happy about taking you just now.’ She inclined her head. There was an intense precision about her, just the same as a newly-wound watch. It was unsettlingly familiar. ‘He told the officers that no one was there when he looked inside, and he turned off the lamp himself. And then of course you turned it back on and he couldn’t very well lie any more. We wondered why you’d done it. You’re saying you don’t remember any of that now? At all?’
‘I …’ He was shaking his head before he knew he was doing it. ‘No. You don’t sound surprised.’
She was quiet to start with. ‘You told him you’ve had memory problems.’
‘Oh,’ said Joe. There was something frightening about being told things he’d said but of which he had no recollection. His body had been up to all sorts of things without him.
Mrs Castlereagh looked terse. No doubt she was wishing she wasn’t medically responsible for a chronic amnesiac.
A light came on in his head. She wasn’t familiar because of an aura, she was familiar because she really was. She had Kite’s fine manners and the same shape to her eyes too, and when she saw him studying her and lifted her eyebrows to ask why, the similarity was even more pronounced.
‘He’s your brother, isn’t he?’ Joe said. ‘Kite, I mean.’
She gave him a curious, disconcerted look. ‘Yes.’
‘Is he going to kill me?’ Joe said. His voice had turned small.
‘Not if you don’t piss about.’
He nodded.
‘Go easy for the rest of the evening,’ she said seriously. She frowned, like she had no real faith he was made of the stuff that weathered well on warships. It didn’t show in her voice any more than Kite’s expressions did in his.
Joe moved the ball and the tortoise scuffled after it. He didn’t want to get up again yet. It wasn’t that he was tired, and still nothing hurt as much as it should have; it was that he didn’t know where to go, and even if he had done, he would have staked a lot on its being wet and cold. And here was safe.
‘I’ve been seeing a lot of tortoises.’
‘Yes.’ She brightened. ‘We need to test whether you’ll vanish if we change too much and your ancestors are killed. We’ve got four Galapagos tortoises aboard. They live upwards of two hundred years, so that’s easily long enough for the time difference. We have the juveniles here. Missouri means to go to the mainland today to pay a man to look after them for a hundred years and bring them to the pillars at six o’clock today, your time. Our theory is that an intention here should be spooling out already on your side of the gate.’
Joe straightened. ‘It is. There’s a man with four tortoises at the … I don’t understand, though, what can tortoises tell you?’
‘Well, if we kill a little one, we’ll see if the older one disappears. Better than doing it with people.’
‘Oh.’
A girl in a heavy blacksmith’s apron leaned in. ‘Ma’am? Captain says it’s time to go out to the pillars.’
‘Right. Let’s see how it goes off, shall we?’ Mrs Castlereagh said to Joe. ‘Bring the tortoise.’
14
Eilean Mòr, 1807
There were four tortoises in all, and four people: Kite, Mrs Castlereagh, Joe, and a limping Scottish sailor of unclear purpose. The weather was still misty and the land was invisible now, but the gate in the sea was still there, just, infernal in the red danger light from the lighthouse. Standing not far away on the other side was the man from the inn. On a sleigh, in crates, were four boulder-sized things under blankets.
Beyond the lighthouse, the town was a clear run away over the ice.
Kite came up on that side of him by way of showing that he had noticed. Joe looked down.
Together, they all walked towards the gate and the waiting man. He came forward a short way too. When they were close enough to see his face, he looked awed. He put his hand out and Kite shook it. Joe had the alien thought that people here must never have touched each other otherwise. There was no kiss, no hug, nothing. They were all oysters sealed in their stiff manners.
‘You’re Captain Kite?’
‘Yes. You must be related to Thomas McCullough.’
‘Jesus, Dad was telling the truth, but I thought, why not go and see. Anyway, I’m Guillaume.’
Kite looked as unsettled as McCullough looked fascinated. ‘Yes. I hope you’re not too fond of these things.’
‘They’re not brilliant company, I have to say,’ McCullough said. ‘But … why?’
‘Because I’m going to shoot them.’