‘Sail,’ someone called, uncertainly, from the bow; then, ‘Sail!’
Everyone swung around, searching the horizon. Kite wished they were allowed to put up a signal that said they would all like to personally shake the hand of the first French captain who tried a run on the blockade.
‘It’s the Victory! Lord Nelson’s here!’
Tom shot down the quarterdeck stairs. ‘What’s the signal, can you see?’
Kite had to frown into the heat haze to see Victory’s mast. The flags there said, We have sugar. Come for dinner.
Tom thumped his shoulder. ‘Thank Christ.’
Nelson was waiting for visiting officers on the deck, looking scruffy and only a little more substantial than a collection of dandelion feathers, but cheerful all the same. Victory had pulled in just on the far side of Agamemnon, so it didn’t take long to cross. A couple of men helped them over the rail. Kite wove through the crowd, catching other people’s shoulders when they passed too quickly, and then smiled when he found him.
‘Jem.’
Jem whipped round and snatched him close. He felt more fragile than he should have, but Kite couldn’t tell if he really was, or if it was only that, being older, Jem had always been the same size, while Kite himself had broadened in the last couple of years. Jem gripped his shoulders to get a proper look at him.
‘You look terrible – what’s Tom done to you?’
‘Are you all right now?’ Kite demanded. ‘Your last letter; you said you’d had an accident with the guns and then you didn’t say anything else.’
‘I didn’t want to fuss,’ Jem said easily. He smiled and hugged him again, and bumped their foreheads together. Kite shut his eyes. His whole chest hurt with the effort of not weeping. He wasn’t very successful and he had to put his head down against Jem’s neck. Two years; he felt like he could breathe again. Jem pressed one hand over the back of his skull and curled forward over him. It was all right, though. They weren’t the only ones. Some triplets had just found each other, and even Tom had to push his sleeve over his eyes when he managed to collar Jem’s captain, a sweet man called Codrington who’d got them all hopelessly lost in Canada once.
‘Gentlemen!’ Nelson was tiny and therefore invisible in the crowd, but he had a clear voice. ‘I’m delighted to see you all so pleased with each other, but before I forget, I’ve brought the post.’ He burst into his merry laugh as he was mobbed.
The stateroom tables were laid out with water jugs and bread, and real butter. Most of the captains and first lieutenants were there and more besides. Formality was out the window faster than orange peel. It felt more like being in a coffeehouse than a fleet flagship, and because there were so many of them, it was even laid out that way, with ten or twelve tables. There was easily space; Victory was a first-class ship of the line, and the stateroom was twice the size of Belleisle’s.
Tom arranged them in a square, he and his brother Ru on one side and Kite and Jem on the other. Further down were officers from Jem’s ship and from Ru’s, all familiar. Despite all the doors and windows being open, the room was too hot, and before long Kite had to pull off his cravat and open his collar. Jem did too, then produced a needle and ink from his pocket and claimed Kite’s arm. He put a new star on to the tattoo whenever they met up. He was two off finishing Orion.
When the food came, there were pomegranates and pears, real grapes, duck, wood-pigeon for God’s sake, things Kite hadn’t seen for years. The sun set fast here and, when it did, the servants came in with lamps. The silverware reflected the lights and the bright buttons on their jacket sleeves. Kite was strict about it with the men, so he didn’t have much of a head for wine. He leaned gradually against Jem. It brought him nearer the tiny crackle of the cigarette Jem was sharing with Ru, and the sweet smell of the tobacco. From the other side of the room, the Grenadier fife and drum song broke out, with dirtier lyrics than usual.
Jem had one hand on his thigh, stroking the edge of his thumb to and fro over his hip. Kite was on the edge of falling asleep after the second glass of wine. The idea of getting up, never mind going back outside, finding a boat and rowing back to the Belleisle, was starting to take on the same enormity as a journey to Brazil. He hoped someone organised was going to invite them all to stay here overnight. There was nothing in the world more appealing than settling down in a hammock with drunk conversations seeping through the grain of the deck, breathing the rich smell of old sherry.
‘Hammocks going up below, gentlemen,’ someone called.
Thank God.
‘Do you want to share? Then we won’t have to fight for two,’ Jem said.
‘No.’ Kite straightened up. ‘Too hot. I’ll fight.’
‘What? I haven’t seen you for two years.’
‘No,’ Kite said again, and smiled so that he wouldn’t look miserable. He’d requested to be transferred to the Belleisle because he’d hoped that his psyche, always lazy and suggestible, wouldn’t be up to staying in love with someone it hadn’t seen for years. It had turned out to be a lot more determined than he’d thought.
The feeling was so deep-rooted now it might as well have been hunched up round all his organs and staining his blood, a pestilential thing staring hard at his sister’s marriage. Given one single hour alone and drunk enough, and he would assuredly say something that led to a punch in the face. Whatever Jem – poor decent kind Jem – had meant that night by the river, it had not been to provoke this creeping, deformed devotion.
‘Miz,’ Jem said, frowning. ‘Come on.’
He would just have to be offended. Kite shook his head.
‘Can I have that cigarette back?’ Ru asked. ‘It’s wasted on you, Jem, you smoke so much I bet you can’t even taste pepper, never mind—’
The shots came straight through the window at the back of the room. They blasted the far wall. He didn’t see it but it must have been chain shot, to do to the room what it did. He had been flung ten feet backward into the wall and his lungs wouldn’t fill properly. When they did, he choked and realised there was too much on top of him. Broken chairs, part of a table.
Something was hissing right by his head. He thought it was the cigarette, but when he looked, there was a cannonball sitting on the deck, perfectly intact and still glowing red from the furnace. The floor began to catch fire while he was staring. He found a water jug and upended it. The steam roared.
The whole thing belonged so much to action on a gun deck that he couldn’t remember where he was. When he did, he stood up unsteadily and looked around the wreckage for any sign of Jem. It was impossible to tell what was furniture and what was a person at first. Splintered bones and splintered wood looked alike. Smoke poured up from the fires, which were everywhere because the brandy bottles had exploded and ignited. He waited until he could tell people moving apart from the flickering shadows and the shapes in the smoke. There was no use shouting. All he could hear was a dull howl.
He started to move the fallen tables. Towards his side of the room there were more people lurching upright than nearer the windows, but not all of them. Tom was there, torn in half, still alive.
‘Help a fellow along, Miz,’ he said, quite himself.