Between the clips and thunks of hammers on metal, he kept thinking how McCullough had come out to the pillars with the tortoises when Kite had only intended to ask his grandfather to look after them. The intention alone had been enough to conjure a whole new future.
This wasn’t like that. There were a lot of steps between these telegraphs existing, and changing history. The tide of the war changing wasn’t inevitable just because he’d made them – or not like giving McCullough’s grandfather the tortoise instructions had been inevitable once Kite had decided to do it. This was different.
It had to be different.
The steel pieces hissed and oxidised in the cooling barrel. They were only shapes in metal. But they were shapes that shouldn’t have been thought of for sixty years. A pressure settled on the back of his neck and seeped between the bones. Kite watched him with his endless patience for three days. At the end of those days, the parts weren’t just shapes, but working machines.
37
‘They work,’ Joe said. ‘When can I go?’
They were by the docks. One telegraph was set up on Agamemnon in Kite’s stateroom, the other in the office of a severe man called Lord Howe at the castle. Joe had drawn up two codebooks and the first message had gone through clearly. Does it work then? from Howe. Kite had looked at the clicking machine as if it were hurting him, replied that yes it did work thank you, and left it straight away in the hands of a delighted Lieutenant Wellesley. Joe followed him, childishly hurt that, after everything, Kite didn’t even seem pleased. He caught up with him on the gangplank.
Kite swayed back from his hips when he stepped onto the wharf, letting the wind push him as he slowed down. He had never really stopped looking ill. ‘The blockade, Tournier. I can’t send you anywhere, you’d be killed trying.’
‘We got through.’
‘We had no choice. We had to get you ashore. Sixty-four people were killed.’
‘Are you really trying to blame me for that?’
‘No,’ Kite said, ‘I’m explaining why I don’t want to do it again.’
‘I could go over land.’
‘There are French garrisons all the way to Glasgow.’
Joe fought the urge to hit him. ‘I speak French and I can lie, what’s the problem?’
‘One slip and they’ll have you. Your French isn’t their French, even I can hear that.’
‘Well, the blockade isn’t going anywhere.’
They had been walking along the dock, not into town. Now, they were among ramps where half-made hulls stood partly under tarpaulin, and then past a building so long Joe couldn’t see the end of it. The doors were open, though, and inside, dozens of men were working on enormous stretches of rope, as long as the building. It smelled of tar. Just up ahead was a wooden bridge between the sea and an enclosed part of the dock. It was perfectly rectangular and empty; or, Joe thought it was empty. He jumped when something grumbled in the water. A pair of men had wound a pair of wheels on either side of the pond, which lifted a net and, in the net, half a woodland’s worth of trimmed-down pine trunks rolled together and round each other. The noise was like God’s own wind chimes. Masts. The pond must have been part of the process of treating the wood. Joe had no idea.
‘It will be. I just need to talk to Lord Lawrence. I can’t break a blockade without orders.’
‘My daughter might be disappearing while you’re fretting.’ Joe heard how unfair it was while he was saying it. Lawrence had beaten Kite half to hell while Joe stood there; God knew what he was like in private. No one in their right mind could call how Kite must have felt about that man fretting, but the control Kite had over his own voice was maddening, and the longer he kept it up, the harder Joe wanted to hack it down. Even as the anger started to boil, he could feel that if Kite would just say, look, I’m terrified and I need another day, he would have calmed down. ‘Go and talk to him now.’
They both glanced towards the sea, because a ship had just fired a training round. It was a monster next to all the frigates around it. The Victory. It was even more battered than Agamemnon.
‘If I go there now, he’s going to shoot me in the eye,’ Kite said patiently. ‘Just give it a few days.’
‘There’s going to be a siege in a few days!’
‘Just – there is nothing I can do to get you home now this second. I’m sorry.’
Joe caught his arm and spun him back. ‘You’ve got no intention of letting me go, have you? And it’s nothing to do with whether I’m useful or not. You’re punishing me.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t think I have the right to go home,’ Joe said, not caring that some people on the dockside were looking at them now. In fact, he was glad. When he wasn’t being anyone’s captain, Kite was quiet; exactly the kind of person who hated public scenes. ‘Your sister is dead, and so is Jem, and I keep on and on about my family. No?’ he said, because Kite had been shaking his head. ‘You can say honestly you don’t hate it?’
‘Of course I hate it!’ When Kite snapped, he lowered his voice rather than raised it, but it felt like whiplash all the same. ‘I know officers who didn’t ask for leave for their children’s funerals, and that isn’t extraordinary; it’s just how it should be or there would be no navy. Family is a luxury, and watching you chase after them at the expense of the well-being of thousands of people is repulsive. But I’m not punishing you for anything, Tournier, I physically have not the means to help you now this instant.’
Joe was savagely glad to have got something out of him at last. ‘I’m not repulsive for wanting to go home, Kite. I’m normal. You’re lonely. You don’t object to me because I’m endangering anyone, you object because I’m not lonely and I have a home to go back to.’ He had meant to stop there, but it was the mechanical voice that took over then, because he was furious, and he knew all of Kite’s weak places now, and exactly which sticks to shove into them. ‘You wish I was just as lonely as you, because then I might stay. I remind you of Jem and you were in love with him. You had to be, the way you pine and sulk. But I’m not Jem, and you’re a nasty creep with a disgusting little crush that’s grown on you like rot. Grow the fuck up.’
Kite slowed right down. He watched Joe for too long. Joe stiffened, waiting for a punch in the face, but it never came. ‘If I send you off without approval from Lawrence,’ Kite said, inhumanly level, ‘he’ll send someone after you. They’ll hurt you, and I don’t mean a knock to the head. They’ll hurt you until you swear honest fealty to the King. Whether you like it or not, it is for me to say what’s safe and what isn’t, because you are a member of my crew, and I am responsible for your life. You’re not going anywhere until that blockade is cleared. Do you understand?’
Responsible raked its fingernails along a nerve Joe hadn’t even known he had. Responsible was for slaves. You didn’t keep promises to slaves.
‘I understand,’ Joe said.
‘Good. I have to buy a mast. Do what you like for now. Keep with him,’ Kite added to the marines. ‘I’ll see you back at the house for dinner.’