Kite shot him, and then couldn’t look under anything else in case he found the same again. The ash in the air was sandpapering the back of his throat.
Jem kicked away a table and rocked to his feet with one hand clamped around his arm, which was bleeding. Kite could see but not hear that he was swearing. Jem caught his shoulders and asked if he was all right, then saw Tom’s body on the floor, the gun still smoking in Kite’s hand, took it off him and flung it away. It bounced off the wall near to where Nelson had been sitting. Parts of him were sitting there still.
Jem must have been trying to talk to him, because he turned him by his elbow and touched his own lips to say watch.
‘Where’s Ru?’
Casting around, it was by accident that they found Admiral Collingwood too, slumped just beside him. Collingwood was trying to talk to Jem. Ru was dead.
‘Lord Nelson, what about …’
‘He’s dead, sir.’
Collingwood stared between them. ‘Right. I see. That was the … where did it come from?’ he said helplessly, and he looked like an old man, though he wasn’t yet sixty.
‘Agamemnon,’ Kite provided. He could only hear his voice inside his own skull. But now Collingwood had asked, he knew; he had seen the flashes from six of Agamemnon’s gun ports, but the memory was only just fighting to the surface.
‘Where’s Captain Brown?’ Collingwood looked around, then stopped when Kite pointed. ‘You’re Kite. You’re the Spaniard?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You have command of Agamemnon. Get over there and find out what the hell is going on. And do it quickly. We can’t afford to leave Agamemnon behind when we sail, we need her guns. Jem, you …’ He was staring at someone’s body. ‘I suppose you’re going to have to take over Orion.’
They helped Collingwood up, but he collapsed again and didn’t wake this time. Jem motioned to get out and organise the boats. Kite eased away through the mess of pieces that had been people a minute ago. The doors were wrecked. Men were coming from the deck to help. Someone caught his arms and tried to stop him walking, and he had to explain, without really hearing his own voice, where he was going. When he looked back, he had left perfect black bootprints across the deck. Blood or wine or tar, he couldn’t tell.
Jem caught up with him and they waited together for the boats to be ready. Orion and Agamemnon were in opposite directions. Kite sat down on some ropes. He felt like he was about to faint.
The sun had set but it wasn’t wholly dark yet. A cloud bank had turned most of the sky orange and smoky, like something gargantuan was burning in it. Jem sat down next to him.
‘You said this would happen,’ Kite said.
‘What?’
‘You said we could lose at Trafalgar. Trafalgar is forty miles away from here. The French are going to run the blockade any minute now and we’ll catch them at Trafalgar.’ He looked up. ‘And if we lose, they’ll get to Calais, and they’ll take the army across to London.’
‘We might not lose.’
‘With about six senior officers left alive to cover twenty-six ships?’
They both fell quiet again.
‘Who’s first?’ a sailor said from behind them. He must have tried to say it before, because he tapped their shoulders to make them look back. He did it carefully, like he was worried they might crumble if he pressed too hard. Kite frowned and felt how stiff the ash was on his skin. They were both grey from it.
Jem brushed his sleeve. ‘Go on.’
‘I’ll see you … well, in Portsmouth.’ He shook his hand, briefly, because there were sailors watching and none of them would feel better if they thought he was convinced he would never see Portsmouth or Jem again. His throat hurt. ‘Good luck.’
‘And you. Miz,’ Jem added as the boat was lowering. He had come to the rail. ‘Go straight there. Better to get it done quickly. I’ll go over to Belleisle and get your things sent across.’
Kite sat down so he could look up without overbalancing. ‘Collingwood should have sent you. You’d have it sorted out in ten minutes.’
‘No, he shouldn’t. If the choice is someone who looks chronically lost and someone who looks like he personally oversaw the Inquisition, I know who I’d bet on.’ He dropped his voice. ‘If they’re scared enough of you, there’s a chance you won’t have to do it. Someone might come forward.’
The sailor with Kite glanced between them and plainly wanted to ask, do what, but Kite hadn’t the energy to say it.
The further from the chaos on Victory the boat lowered, the clearer he could hear the men trapped by their officers on the gun deck of Agamemnon. They were bellowing to be allowed out. The sound carried over the muggy water. Jem was right. Kite wanted to think that if you presented frightened men with a reassuring person, they would tell the truth, but it wasn’t true. They only felt safe enough to lie. ‘First time in my life I’ve been accused of being looks over substance.’
Jem laughed his smoky laugh and stayed at the rail, but the sunset was on the wrong side and before long Kite lost sight of him.
Kite was still climbing the ladder on the Agamemnon’s side when a shout went up from the mast, and then whistles and drums. The French were on their way out of Cadiz. The flagship, lit up with so many torches it was possible to see it clearly even as it rounded the bay, was a titan flying Napoleon’s colours.
Someone leaned through an open gun port and grabbed his arm. It made him jump and he almost punched the man in the face.
‘Sir – sir. Where’s Captain Brown?’ It was a lieutenant, too junior to have gone over to Victory. He glanced back as he spoke, plainly expecting someone to ambush him and shove him into the water. Kite could just see a protective wall of marines behind him. He looked terrified.
‘Dead. I’m replacing him. I’ll be through in a minute.’ He wondered whether the rungs above him would hold up against the weight of a whole person. They didn’t look promising.
The young man either didn’t hear or didn’t care. ‘It’s – we can’t – what should we do?’
He was perversely glad to have something to concentrate on. ‘Did you close off the gun deck as soon as it happened?’
‘Yes, sir, of course. No one’s gone in but me and the marines. Certainly no one’s gone out.’
‘How many men are there?’
‘Forty-five, sir. Everyone else was above; there was a play. We were all …’ He was starting to cry. He could only have been seventeen.
‘All right. Bring them up on deck and get together a firing squad.’
‘But we don’t know which of them – it only took three or four to load and fire six guns, but half of them are accusing the other half and—’
‘There’s no time to sort them out,’ Kite interrupted. Across the fleet, sails were already unfurling. The bang of canvas had a muffled water-echo from here. ‘The firing squad is for all of them. Then we need to be underway.’
35
Edinburgh, 1807
From the top of Arthur’s Seat, the city lights were so many spilled cinders. Joe and Kite had sat on one of the stone outcrops for about half an hour, enough to cool down. They had raced on the last stretch of the way up. Joe had always thought he was quite fit, walking everywhere through London, but Kite won by fifty yards. The electric fizz had gone away from him now. Joe had been glad to lose. Straight ahead of them, across the city, torchlight blazed at the castle, which was gaunt and full of strange angles.