There was only one door at the top of the narrow stairs. Kite had to negotiate with the key. When it turned, the room beyond was dark and cold. He passed Joe a lamp to hold against the flame of the one in the corridor. Once it was lit, he took it around the others one by one.
The room presented itself in portions. There was a desk full of books and papers, and a string with letters pegged on it, all in the same handwriting. By the fireplace were two ornate chairs that matched, and one, cheaper, that didn’t. That must have been Kite’s standing with Jem and Agatha, right there. Joe had to thump his fist against the wall. He had liked Agatha a lot, but after meeting her uncle, and seeing this, he wanted to spit. This was what people in France had fought a revolution to kill off. In fact, this might even be why some of the French captains in the bay had decided to serve. To try and save people like Kite from people like this, before they turned into what Kite was now.
Up a flight of steps was a bedroom. The windows were diamond-paned and unshuttered, and the bay glistered outside until the light inside was too strong and the glass only showed their reflections. Turkish rugs covered the floorboards. Four boxes full of dead plants hung in a corner that would have been sunny during the day.
After a few minutes, a pair of boys came through with pails of water. Joe watched them go into another room down a narrow corridor. There was a rush of pouring water into something metal. They made another two trips, and then Kite shut the front door, looking glad to do it.
‘You go first,’ he said to Joe.
‘No, I’m always last at home, I don’t mind,’ Joe said, though he was sticky. He was so cold that he didn’t want to take any clothes off yet. He was fast finding that, as the temperature dropped, the level of grime he could put up with see-sawed accordingly. ‘Anyway, you need to get those cuts clean.’
There was no door, just a wooden archway, and Kite glanced back to make sure Joe wasn’t in a direct line of sight before he disappeared inside.
Joe sat on the hearth with his back to the fire. It seemed intrusive to notice, but he could hear the difference between the heavy coat and the thin shirt as Kite took them off. He could hear that Kite was folding everything onto a chair or a windowsill, not just letting it drop. It was taking him a long time. ‘Are you all right?’ Joe said, starting to worry that leaving Kite alone was nothing but medical negligence.
‘Say again? I can’t hear very well.’
Joe lost his nerve. Kite was fine. ‘I say what happens now?’ he asked instead.
‘Dinner and sleep.’
With the back of his shirt lukewarm, Joe went to the archway and sat down across the threshold. The room was whitewashed, with bare rafters. There was nothing in it but them, the bath, and a line of soap and razors on the windowsill, which was right down near the floor.
Kite was sitting straight in the bath, facing away. The marks Lawrence had left were vivid stripes. Under those, he was burned. The scars down his face were only part of it. They reached across to his spine in liquid patterns. It was an old wound, but it looked painful. He must have been able to feel it pull whenever he moved. His undamaged skin was translucent. He looked like glass someone careless had left too near a blast furnace.
Joe stretched, sore. He put his head back against the archway. He could have slept like that. From downstairs came a gust of laughter.
‘Thanks,’ Joe said. ‘For not leaving me at the prison. I know you could have done without bringing me home with you.’
Kite laughed. He was pulling his hair out of its plait. That gave Joe a strange stir, because it was something he’d only ever seen women do before. ‘You brought me.’
‘Well. We must have got on really well at the lighthouse, mustn’t we,’ Joe said. ‘I don’t remember, but I’m feeling protective.’
Kite was quiet for a second. Joe saw the bones in his back flicker. ‘Could you go away now, please?’
Joe hissed his breath through his teeth. ‘I’m not going to make any stupid allegations—’
‘Yes; no, but I’m in the bath.’ He sounded strained.
‘My master talks to me in the bath. Not normal?’
Kite inclined his head without looking back and pressed his hands over his face. His breathing was irregular. Joe realised, feeling slow, that for the entire conversation Kite had been crying. ‘Not a paragon of normal.’
‘Peril of having only a two-year memory,’ Joe said, trying to sound as though he’d not noticed. ‘People can convince me of anything. I shall sod off.’ He wanted to say something else, but he couldn’t think what would help. Stuck in his throat like a shard of glass was the knowledge that Agatha had been killed on her way to murder her brother.
That, the practical voice in his head said, would be something to break Kite with later, if he needed to.
When it was his turn, Joe sank into the hot water – it was reddish from the blood Kite had washed off, but still steaming and wonderful – and went right under it for as long as he could hold his breath. A week was more than enough time to miss being clean. Some of the unpleasantness of everything faded away in the steam. He had meant to ask if he could borrow some clothes, but when he looked back at the door, Kite was already there, kneeling to leave some on the threshold.
When Joe put it on, the shirt was so well-laundered that it felt stiff. Once he was dressed he stood in the window to see out over the castle and the city, and folded his arms to feel it tighten across his back. The jacket that went over it was better sewn than anything he had had before, plain though it was. He straightened out its hem to see just how much fabric the tailor had used. It fell in heavy pleats when he let it go. Even M. Saint-Marie’s things weren’t so fine.
Kite looked different clean and ironed. Out of context, Joe wouldn’t have recognised him. He must have been sitting with his back to the fire, because his hair was dry already, and he’d tied it into an untidy knot rather than the uniform queue. It had a curl to it that made him look softer than normal. ‘I’ll buy you a drink downstairs,’ he said. He was gazing at Joe’s jacket, then seemed to notice what he was doing and looked away.
‘Thanks,’ Joe said, and then had a bolt of horror when he understood that he must have been wearing Jem Castlereagh’s clothes.
31
London, 1797
The Admiralty’s New Year party had taken over the whole of the main hall at the Naval College in Greenwich. Carriages glided down the long drive, between the lawns and the trees full of coloured lamps, and boys waited out on the steps for people’s invitations, hats, and coats.
The cold was intense here, because the Thames was only forty yards away and a sea wind was coming in off the water, but inside was brilliant and hot. Free-standing candelabra marked the way into the main hall, which made a corridor of warmth. The gilt at the tops of the columns glinted, and reflections swam in the mirrory floor.
A forty-foot illusion painting took up the whole back wall, full of steps and sky, so that the hall seemed to open out onto a summer morning. At first, it was difficult to tell which of the people were real, and which were paintings. Everything was a whirl of silk and the smell of melting candle wax.
The second Kite and Agatha reached the hall, Jem appeared and hauled him away, stole an entire bottle of wine from a waiter, and set them up in the only two chairs near the fireplace that weren’t already filled with rear admirals.