Whoever had owned the house before the Terror, he had been a great astronomy enthusiast. The two soldiers saw us to a broad chamber with a domed roof, and a beautiful telescope set up gleaming on a high dais in the middle, below frescoes of the pagan gods, grand and tasteless.
Colonel Herault was waiting for us there. He is a foxy little man, slight, polite in an unctuous, local-vicar sort of way. I ought to have been relieved to see someone in authority, but I’ve never been as repulsed so instantly by anybody. He struck me as exactly the sort of man who would spend his time now bugling on about Revolutionary fraternity and universal human rights, but who, before the Glorious Eighty-Nine, would have spent all his time pandering and pawing to anyone in a pearl necklace. He isn’t like that – really he’s rather decent – but I was everything wrong with the English aristocracy then, and not used to seeing beyond a man’s manners. Looking back, I can’t believe he was so polite as he was.
He smiled at us, then took out his pistol and shot George in the head. I don’t know if he knew that George was the captain of the Kingdom or if he chose at random. It was the first time I’d ever seen sudden, impersonal violence, and I think I always thought I would be horrified if I were to see it. I don’t know about you, but horror never featured, for me. It was the abruptness that struck me, and rather than wanting to run or scream, I was left only with the huffy impression that Colonel Herault was being very rude.
‘That’s what happens if you try to persuade me you know nothing useful about your own time,’ Herault informed us, like a clerk explaining an obscure contractual clause.
He told us his name, and then he told us his terms. We would live here, in this house, with food, and rooms, and every convenience. In return, we would draw up everything we knew of history between this time and our own. For the first week, we were to do this separately, so we could not confer. If Herault judged that we had not gone into sufficient depth, we would share George’s fate. The house was attended at all times by rotating shifts of guards. The consequences of any attempt to escape would be severe.
*
Joe had to sit back. There was more left, a lot more, but enclosed places with no windows were the worst for seasickness, and for all he’d made his bucket resolution earlier, he couldn’t carry on. He had to lie flat on the bench and shut his eyes, but his mind was whirring. Seven people on the Kingdom; one was Jem. Jem was dead. One was Madeline. George, the captain, had been shot straight off. But the others; God, he could have been any one of the others. She hadn’t said which of them she was married to.
Perhaps it was that she wrote conversationally, but he could hear her voice. He could hear her making fun of silly novels and see her lifting her eyebrow at things she didn’t like. He would have recognised her if he’d seen her, he was sure of it now.
But he had no memory of Colonel Herault, or that grand house with its observatory. It gave him a damp feeling. It was all just gone.
Maybe that was for the best after all. If he didn’t remember, then Kite wouldn’t feel the need to shoot him.
He jumped when Lieutenant Wellesley gave him a ready-peeled orange and a plate of rice.
‘Keep eating,’ she said. ‘You can die of seasickness.’
‘Thank you,’ Joe said miserably. Now he came to think of it, all he’d eaten in the last forty-eight hours had been a piece of cake when he had come off a night watch, feeling briefly and euphorically well. Feeling well had lasted fifteen minutes.
She nodded. ‘Fred likes you a lot. Don’t get yourself killed before his exam, all right?’
‘It feels increasingly unlikely that I’ll manage that, ma’am,’ Joe said. He had to do it in French. He couldn’t face English any more. It felt like swallowing cement.
‘Don’t be silly. Captain Kite’s a good man.’
‘Your French is good,’ he said, surprised.
She smiled. ‘My father was the Earl of Wiltshire. We used to live in France six months a year, before the Revolution. Eat,’ she told him, and tapped the edge of the table.
23
Joe’s next watch started at seven o’clock. He did it in the infirmary, where Agatha set him to cleaning surgical instruments. The letter from Madeline was in his pocket. He wanted to pull it out and start reading again, but he could feel it would still be a bad idea. He could barely stand, and even looking at the row of scalpels for too long was making his head spin.
‘Agatha, what happened to Clay?’ he asked. Kite couldn’t object to that at least. One of his knees panged, a ghost of future pain. Joe had to suck his teeth. It took a certain kind of lunatic to shoot someone’s kneecap off.
Agatha glanced up. She was stitching up a carpenter who’d let the saw slip. ‘Three hundred lashes.’
‘Why?’
‘Mutiny. Do you know what that is?’
‘Isn’t it when someone tries to take over a ship?’ Joe said, struggling to imagine Clay doing that.
She was shaking her head. ‘It’s navy-speak for a strike.’
Joe stared at her. ‘You can get three hundred lashes for refusing to work?’
‘Not only can,’ she said. She smiled with no humour. ‘The Admiralty is more or less legally obliged to do it. So I suggest you don’t refuse.’
The sea was rough. Joe told himself that was why he felt sick. He never normally felt queasy just because he was upset, and had never understood why people like M. Saint-Marie did; he’d just put it down to being delicate. Whatever the reason, though, he had to sink onto his knees and hold the edges of the vinegar bucket, the fumes burning the inside of his nose while spit flooded his mouth.
‘Ginger,’ Agatha murmured from beside him. He shook his head, because he couldn’t even think about eating anything. She set it on the deck beside him and rubbed his back as she got up again. He saw the hem of her indigo dress trail away, stained pale with old cleaning salt.
When the watch was finally over, he went to the gun deck to see Fred, who was running a class about how to tie different knots for the newest round of conscripted men. It was a good, normal thing to concentrate on, and he felt less sick in the cold draught from the gun ports. And the way an excitable Fred kept thrusting new things under his nose, far too many to learn, was reassuring, even though it was driving some of the other sailors so far up the wall they collectively threatened to tie Fred in a knot if he didn’t shut up. Joe would have told them off, but Fred was unsquashable.
The sea was getting rougher, and soon, everyone had lost interest in knots and started watching for shapes in the water. One of the older sailors swore it was kraken weather. Joe didn’t hold out too much hope for kraken, but the water was spectacular anyway. Fred tugged him up to the rail of the top deck.
The sea was mountainous. There was just enough moonlight to filigree the edges of the waves. Foam and spray poured back from them in white manes. Agamemnon would never usually sail in weather like this, Fred explained, but they were in a rush to get back to Edinburgh before the French began the siege. It should have been terrifying, knowing they were sailing in conditions the ship wasn’t built for, but Joe had never seen weather like it, and just for now – he knew he’d change his mind once he was cold enough – it wasn’t frightening, just exhilarating. It was wonderful not to think about Kite or seasickness, just for five minutes.