Lawrence hit him with the end of his cane. It came from nowhere and Joe froze. Kite didn’t even have time to put his hands up. The ivory handle left a graze above his eye. ‘No, there are not, because rather than declaring your dead men dead, you continue to take their wages, and filter them down to any number of unqualified women you seem to have collected from wherever takes your fancy. You have a veritable harem. I believe even your first lieutenant is not in fact a real lieutenant at all, but a dead lieutenant’s wife. Are you going to lie to me about that?’
‘Revelation Wellesley runs the ship better than any other lieutenant I’ve had—’
‘And so while I cannot indict you for letting Agatha on the deck, given that she was not officially on navy pay, I can absolutely come after you for fraud whenever I bloody like, and I will do so with the most intense joy if this man fails to do as he’s promised, understand?’ Lawrence pointed at Joe without looking at him.
‘No, you won’t,’ Kite snapped. ‘Unless you want the horror of women captains, you’re not going to court martial the present ones.’
‘Don’t be so repulsive, they aren’t there for work, they’re there for you to stare at and God knows what else. Take that jacket off, it’s a disgrace.’
Joe felt something tightening in his chest. Kite slid his coat off, then the jacket, slowly, because he couldn’t move well now.
Lawrence went for him. Joe had never seen anyone lose his temper so completely. The walking cane was thin, like a switch, and although Lawrence had been moving at a heavy lumber before, he was fast with it. In five seconds Kite was on the floor.
Without deciding to, Joe wrenched the thing out of the old man’s hand, and threw it at the hearth. The tiger snarled and for a sick instant Joe thought he was about to be torn to pieces by a wild animal, but for whatever reason it had of its own – perhaps Lawrence treated it in the same way he treated Kite, or maybe it liked Kite in the same involuntary way Joe did – it caught Lawrence’s sleeve in its teeth and slung him aside before coming to nose anxiously at them. Joe kept very, very still, crouched over Kite, one arm across his shoulders to keep him as shielded as he could be. He could feel him shaking, or maybe that was Joe himself.
‘Get him out of here,’ Lawrence snarled. His eyes kept skittering to the tiger.
Joe snatched up Kite’s coat and pulled Kite along with him. He’d never been so glad to get out of a room.
Kite had to stop just outside, on the steps of a chapel. Joe sat down next to him. Opposite them, torchlight beamed down through the high windows of what must once have been a banqueting hall, but now, there were flimsy storey-partions a third and two-thirds of the way up the windows. Inside, there were beds, and women in surgeons’ indigo. A girl was singing while she hung up sheets between the rows and rows of beds.
There was no sign of the two marines.
‘Who the hell keeps a tiger anyway?’ Joe asked at last. His voice sounded wrong. He coughed.
‘He served in India,’ Kite said.
‘Are you all right?’ Joe whispered. Sailing through the French assault had been different; that was impersonal violence, and it was easy to imagine that in other circumstances the gunners on either side would get on brilliantly. But what Lawrence had done was rancid.
‘Why did you stop him?’ Kite asked.
Joe shook his head. ‘If you think any normal person can just watch something like that then your idea of the world is even more fucked than I thought. I’d have liked that tiger to eat him then and there.’ He hesitated. ‘Never been defended by a tiger before.’
Kite smiled. It was the most crystalline cheer, just the very first veneer of ice on the sea. ‘It’s your tobacco. She goes for it like catnip.’
‘Well. Make a fortune at the circus if machine work falls through.’
Kite laughed.
Joe lifted Kite’s pistol out of its holster and slid it under his own belt on the opposite side. Now was the time. He could just run. The marines still weren’t here. Kite would never be able to follow, not in this state. Dodge down one of those endless black side alleys and Kite would have no hope of finding him. Having no money wasn’t such a bad problem, especially at this time of night, when pubs were full and people were tipsy. It wasn’t like he was above going home with someone to have somewhere to wait out the frozen night, either. If all the fuss with Alice and Père Philippe had taught him anything, it was not to be precious.
He was just starting to get up when his entire soul cramped. His heart locked and he couldn’t breathe, never mind move, and everything in him was shrieking, as if he’d thrust his hand into a fire.
The second he stopped trying to leave, it eased. He stared at Kite, wondering what the hell they’d spoken about at the lighthouse that would have given him a reaction like that to trying to abandon the man.
‘Can you get up?’ Joe asked, stunned. His heart hurt, the strings inside the muscle structure all too tight still.
Kite hesitated, but then the two marines appeared from another building. They hurried across when they saw Kite and Joe. For the first time since Joe had met him, the slab-faced Drake looked genuinely worried. Maybe, Joe thought hopelessly, it was hard to leave Kite because Kite was just one of those magical people who made everyone love him.
Whatever the reason, the chance had come and gone.
Once Kite was standing, Joe eased his coat around his shoulders. Even the weight of the fabric made him hunch forward. Joe thought he was going to collapse, but Kite only waited and held his breath, then nodded. Joe glanced back at the marines, who looked anxious too, but not surprised. This must have been pretty standard practice for Lord Lawrence.
The cobbles on the sloping road were slick with frost now and, after Joe slipped, they all stepped up on to the high kerb that made a kind of platform for the heavy guns.
‘What’s Lawrence’s problem with you?’ Joe asked eventually.
‘He’s Agatha’s uncle. He considers it a personal affront that his brother’s widow married a carpenter from Cadiz.’ They were passing under the portcullis again. The road they had come up was too steeply downhill now to try and they went a different way, past inns and pubs and shut-up shops. Kite’s next breath rattled; between the bruises and the razor air, his lungs were struggling. ‘After my parents were killed at sea, Agatha wanted to come to England, but Lawrence wouldn’t take her in unless she left me behind. But she wouldn’t. We lived in Spain for about ten years before she was old enough to inherit her father’s money. We served in the navy there. When she did inherit, she moved us to London.’
Joe was quiet at first, because that was by far the most Kite had ever said to him in one go. He had a feeling it was the most Kite had ever said to anyone in one go. ‘If your dad’s from Cadiz,’ he asked at last, ‘how are you called Kite?’
‘It’s translated. Stupid to try and take an officer’s commission in England with a name like Milano. And nobody wants to alliterate.’
‘Oh.’ Joe turned that around in his mind for a while. ‘Where are we going? Not back to the ship.’
‘Yes back to the ship. I can’t leave them—’
‘Kite! Everything’s shot to hell, I’m not taking you back there.’ He looked at the marines for support. They shifted, uncomfortable, but he could see they thought going back was a bad idea too.