‘What’s this?’
‘I didn’t think you were coming. Devil you know and that,’ Joe said helplessly.
‘I told you I was coming back.’ Kite’s voice had cracked with surprise. ‘It’s only been fifteen minutes. What happened?’
‘No, nothing, it …’ Joe trailed off, not sure what to say. ‘They’re making things out of straw.’
Kite looked like he had no idea what to do with him, but then he tipped his head to say, shall we go. He only seemed more confused when Joe smiled at him.
Joe started to shiver straight away, but it was delicious after the heat and the stagnant humidity inside. The air was clear, and the sight of Kite had released the pressure on his chest again. A wry little voice pointed out that you were unquestionably in hot water when you were grateful for a familiar murderer. Kite pointed to the left to tell him which way to go.
‘I hope you’ve thought about what you might do for the navy,’ Kite said. Whoever Lord Lawrence was, he had made Kite small. ‘Lawrence isn’t someone to mess about.’
Joe nodded. He hadn’t dedicated any time to it because he had been thinking about how to get away, but he knew what he would say all the same.
Lord Lawrence was a square man in an old-fashioned wig, the long kind, curling unnaturally over a silk jacket. He wasn’t in uniform. Joe knew nothing about the man, but if the room was anything to judge by – oak-panelled, tapestried, and Jesus Christ the tiger rug on the floor had just sat up – it was because Lawrence thought the uniform would look disagreeably tradesman-like. The office must have been partitioned off in haste, just with wooden walls, other voices and steps sounded very close. Despite that, someone had gone to every effort to posh it up. There was a stuffed flamingo by the hearth, feathers rippling. The tiger, a massive thing with liquid muscles, paced across to have a look at him. It shoved its face straight into Joe’s chest just like Clay’s cat. Incredibly, the thing purred when he touched its ears.
‘It’ll be your tobacco,’ Lawrence explained. ‘She loves anyone who smokes. So: you’re our Mr Tournier.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said, struggling, because he wanted to laugh. The tiger had curled up next him, tail round his ankle.
Lawrence smiled. ‘Distracting, ain’t she. Good test of character. So tell me, you’re – what, a lighthouse keeper, is that right?’
‘I’m a mechanic from the workshop that builds lighthouse engines and generators.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful. I imagine there’s very little you’d less prefer to be doing than working for us, but you understand we are preparing for a siege which – if you told Missouri correctly – will finish us entirely if we don’t do something significant.’
Joe nodded. He didn’t remember telling Kite that, but it was still true. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you know any details of what will happen?’
‘No, sir, I’m sorry. I make engines, I’m not bookish.’
‘Mm.’ Lawrence studied him. He came up too close to do it and Joe caught the smell of powder on him, from the wig. There was a hunger about him, but not curiosity. It was the way a certain sort of little boy would rush up to the carcass of a dog that had made him jump once, and had just been hit by a cart. A nasty triumph. ‘But I hope you have some bright ideas about what to make for us. Lights as bright as the Eilean Mòr lamp would go a long way, you know.’
‘Arc lamps.’ Joe took a deep breath. This was it. He needed to steer Lawrence away from anything that could really change the world. If nothing significant changed, there was a chance Lily would still be all right when he got home. ‘They need a lot of power, and we’d need generators, which I can’t make for you in time for the siege.’
‘What’s a generator?’
‘They make power in a way that hasn’t been discovered here yet. Electricity. The idea is simple but making one is … we’d need a lot of iron, and I think it’s … all going to making guns, isn’t it? I saw them taking down railings on the way here.’
‘Can you improve our guns, then?’
Yes, God yes, they were still using flintlocks for Christ’s sake. The Agamemnon’s cannons had barely got off two rounds per minute. He could give them modern guns, electrically lit ships, engines, and he was absolutely not going to.
He was going to have to sell this properly or he might as well shoot himself right now.
‘I can give you a way to talk to each other that’s far faster than those flag signals you’ve got, and a lot more secret. You’ll be able to convey far more information. They’re called telegraphs.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘With a good blacksmith and the right materials, only a few days.’ Joe’s heart was going too fast. ‘Decent communication will help you. Won’t it?’
‘It certainly will.’ Lawrence was looking right into his face. ‘You understand what will happen to you if you’re lying?’ He said it gently, like a doctor warning him about an operation. But there was that hungry gleam again.
‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said. He thought of the ruin that was Clay’s back, and then had to try hard to stop.
Lawrence patted him. His hand was doughy. ‘And no fretting about changing your future, my boy. It’s already changed. If you don’t make us something, I am going to evacuate Edinburgh of naval forces. So either way, there will be no defeat here.’
It hadn’t even occurred to him that it was already too late. God in heaven. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good boy.’
Joe put a smile on his face and tilted his eyes down, even though deferring to the man was starting to feel sticky. The richness of the office and Lawrence’s clothes was grotesque after a week on Agamemnon, and the more he surveyed Lawrence himself, the more this pallid variety of plumpness had something fungal about it. Maybe that was unfair, but Joe had expected someone different. It was disquieting to see that behind a soldier as upright and war-smashed as Kite, there wasn’t an ironclad general or a righteous empress, but this bejewelled, sickly looking mushroom person.
No wonder England had lost the war.
‘Now, speaking of defeats, Missouri. Mr Tournier, do occupy yourself with the tiger, she likes you, and I think you’ll enjoy what’s about to happen.’
Joe found himself looking at the tiger as if it might explain.
‘I hear,’ Lawrence said to Kite, ‘that my niece was on deck during action. Why was that?’
Kite had turned to stone. ‘There were burned men in the water, sir, and she had come up to help treat them.’
Agatha.
‘Men in the water should be left in the water, for exactly this reason.’
Joe couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard.
‘They were in easy reach, sir.’
‘Don’t argue with me.’ Lawrence folded his arms. ‘I think this is the time to have a little talk about women aboard the Agamemnon, don’t you? Missouri, you have been expressly forbidden, on a number of occasions, from employing women in active naval service.’
Kite’s eyes flicked up. ‘There are none on our books.’