He didn’t, and Joe realised that he’d misinterpreted. Kite wasn’t being quiet for quiet’s sake; he was struggling to stay upright. ‘When does it start?’ Kite asked. ‘The siege.’
‘I don’t know, I’m sorry. I know it’s November.’
‘It’s already November,’ Kite murmured into the wine.
The beautifully dressed bartender drifted past with a whicker of pearls and silk, and Joe understood exactly what Kite had said at the dock, about wanting to hurt someone. There was something obscene about how clean the man was, how rich, how perfect. Joe sank his teeth into his lower lip and looked away, very, very bothered by that. He’d never once felt the urge just to hit someone for no reason, but like a scaled thing that had been asleep somewhere deep in him, it shifted, and stretched.
Kite did make it upstairs, but Joe was waiting for it and caught him when he collapsed just before he could open the door. Behind them, the marines shied back rather than help. Kite was heavy, but it was possible to carry him the last couple of yards to the bed. Joe eased his head down as softly as he could. The marines hovered.
Joe sat down on the edge of the bed and opened Kite’s collar, and kept still with one hand on his chest to make sure he was breathing.
‘Hey, stay away from him,’ one of the marines snapped. It sounded awkward.
Joe did as he was told.
There was firewood at least, even if there wasn’t much of it. Beyond the window the docks glimmered. Most of the ships were full of lights. Music and voices came up through the floor. It was one of those sounds that would have been quite nice to sleep in, but not above. He sat on the chair by the bed and folded forward to put his forearms on the mattress and his head down, tired enough just to listen for a while.
Despite the time, the clack and hiss of hammers and saws came from the docks. Emergency repairs; there was new tarpaulin across parts of the Agamemnon, which was anchored just opposite them, the soldier figurehead right at Joe’s eye level. He glanced at Kite when a crane-load of wood banged down on a wharf, but it didn’t disturb him. He slept flat, one hand resting on his ribs and the other palm up on the sheet. Joe wished he would move; he looked more like a drowned man than a sleeping one. He was breathing just deeply enough for the candlelight to draw moving shadows in the well between his collarbones, but that was all.
The marines were at the table now, playing cards in silence but getting cross with each other in hand signals.
Joe took out Madeline’s letter. He smoothed it out as well as he could against his knee – the pages were suffering now, being pulled from his pocket and thrust back in again – and lit a cigarette.
*
It’s contemptible how quickly hunger can affect one. Alone in a room, with nothing else to think about, another day on bread and water is a prospect of despair even after only a couple of days.
I managed to get out of the window on the third night of that second week. I had no idea where I’d go, but I was already starting to feel dizzy, and I thought that if I was going to get away, I was going to have to do it before I was too shaky to run anywhere. I got down to the ground, but it was a long way across the lawn, and before I’d even gone five yards, a soldier rugby-tackled me, took me back inside, and told me that he was going to Educate me with a distinctly capital E if I didn’t stay put. Once he’d gone, I broke a vase inside a pillowcase and put a shard in my pocket. Broken pottery is not the best Mrs-Beeton-approved prophylactic, but it’s better than nothing.
I stayed awake for the rest of the night, shaking and furious and watching the door and wanting him to come through, because it would have felt better to do something, even if that something was stabbing a man in the neck. I suppose you find it shocking that a woman could be that violent. We are violent creatures, but ours is a rage much more accustomed to suppression than the flabby undisciplined version found in men.
At Herault’s next noon session, Charles had top marks again, and there were more points of interest on the observatory timeline. The rest of us were still on bread and water. A week, that’s all it really took; a week, and I think the rest of us all felt like there was no getting away, and no useful course of action. While Charles huddled into his coat, we all glanced at each other. The other four already looked worn out and strained.
‘But,’ Herault said in his maddeningly cheery way, ‘I thought you might all like some time together. We’ve brought you some coffee.’
I could see what he was doing just as clearly as you do. After a week of bread and water, coffee was a phenomenal luxury. The five of us swung round like bloodhounds. It was bestial. Most of what made our thinking human and logical had eroded away already.
It felt very good to sit down in among the observatory’s pretty couches (upholstered in fleur-de-lis embroidered tapestry in lapis blue no less) and drink the coffee. Herault and the soldiers had theirs at the next table. We were too aware of them, and silent at first, but they ignored us, laughing about something to do with someone’s brother and a pet monkey, and after a while, that invisible wall between tables at teahouses solidified. At last, Frank, the first mate, said,
‘You’re a prick, Stevenson.’
‘I didn’t write very much, I swear,’ Charles said. He was red. ‘I just …’
‘Couldn’t help yourself? Madeline must know as much as you but she’s kept her fucking mouth shut, pardon my French, ma’am.’
‘I think your French is excellent,’ I said into the coffee, and like I’d hoped, a sort of wan laugh went through us all.
William, who had been silent until then, set his cup down on the saucer with a clink. He was Charles’s assistant, but he was the same age, and probably cleverer, just less fortunately born. For the whole week we’d been on the Kingdom, I’d felt awkward around him. I wanted to sympathise about the patronising way Charles spoke to him, and I wanted to say everyone could see he was brilliant, but coming from me, in my ridiculous Belgravia voice, it would have sounded just as bad as it did from Charles. Sometimes I feel as though the voice of the English upper class has been specifically tailored to sound as though it is addressing a favourite dog, even when it’s aimed at people.
I’m not surprised the French killed all their aristocracy, to be honest.
‘Look, I think we all need to talk about what we do now,’ William said quietly. ‘If we carry on with bread and water, we’ll go insane or collapse before long. I think every week, we need to elect someone who’s going to tell him something useful. Then someone eats properly, and this stupid competition thing he’s trying to set up won’t work, because we will have decided, ourselves.’
Nobody argued. There was just a silence.
‘Well,’ Frank said finally. ‘Stevenson’s had his turn.’
We all laughed again, even Charles, who looked relieved we were joking about it and not throttling him.
‘I think we need to let Madeline go next,’ William murmured. ‘She didn’t exactly start out fat and she’s less of a way to go before she starves.’
I don’t often behave as I’d like, but I think I did then. I wasn’t relieved, just offended, and I tried to argue.
‘All respect, but do be quiet,’ he said gently. He was rubbing the scar over his eye. It was still vivid, a nasty right angle from where some piece of debris had smacked him aboard the Kingdom. ‘What does everyone apart from Madeline think?’