The mechanical voice was raging.
I’ll fucking show you responsible.
Joe turned off onto a random street and walked until he found what he was looking for: a woman putting out washing. He slipped through the open door behind her and through the house, out the front. Nobody noticed. He waited, but the marines didn’t come after him. Then he walked as quickly as he could to the castle.
He had been too disorientated and too tired to notice when they’d first come up, but there were barricades on the road – star-shaped hulks of wood spaced far enough apart to admit people but not horses. There was traffic on both sides; carters from the city were stopping to unload onto carts that must have been running the rest of the way up to the castle, and then having to go through the precarious business of turning around at the front of the queue.
People were ducking through the horses and the wheels. Close to the barricade, children held signs saying they would courier packages up for much less than the official carts did. Joe went through slowly, part of a single-file shuffle. The points of two star-arms met just above his head. They’d been salvaged from ships. One of the beams still had rope loops pegged into it, the kind that ran along all the ceilings on Agamemnon so you could hang hammocks. He glanced back down the hill in case the marines had guessed where he was going. The crowd was full of men in the same red jackets, but none of them were hurrying. Slimy unease turned over in his stomach again even so. Kite had known what he was going to do, he was sure.
He gave himself a shake. Kite was not omniscient.
He followed the way round, up the steep hill and past the forbidding guards, until he found the Admiralty’s surprisingly small building opposite the prison.
He had no idea if Lord Lawrence would be in and he thought that, if he wasn’t, he’d have to bribe someone or do some sneaking. But when he asked the servant inside, the servant stared at him for too long, then nodded and saw him up so quickly that Joe wondered if the man was worried about voodoo curses waiting to be deployed on the unobliging.
At the top of the stairs was a library. Lawrence was the only person there, settled in an armchair by the fire, with a bottle of red wine open beside him. His tiger was there too. She loped across and rubbed her head against Joe’s hip. Tentatively, Joe stroked her neck.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lawrence frowned. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in the gaol?’
‘I was under guard, sir, but I wanted to see you.’
He lifted his eyebrows. They were black, and they looked too dark with the grey wig. ‘Why?’
Why? Well. What I’d really like you to do, you see, is arrest Missouri Kite and chuck him in a cell as he richly deserves, and in the inevitable chaos that will ensue when your soldiers come for him, everyone will forget about me for at least a minute. That’s more than long enough to get on my way to Eilean Mòr.
Or maybe I won’t be so lucky, maybe you’ll be organised and you’ll hand me to some other captain to look after, but whoever that is, I’ll take my chances. Maybe I can’t talk my way round Kite, but that’s because he’s a block of cement. Other people aren’t.
You aren’t.
Watch.
Joe took a deeper, slower breath. ‘I have to report a murder. Kite killed a midshipman.’
Lawrence sharpened. ‘Midshipman.’
‘Frederick Hathaway, sir. I think he was the Earl of Wiltshire’s son.’
Lawrence lost the reluctance in his manner instantly, just like Joe had known he would. ‘You saw this?’
‘Yes, sir. It was stormy, and I was playing with Hathaway, we were looking for shapes in the water. Kite came out of the cabin to talk to him. I looked back at the wrong moment. He pushed him overboard. I pretended not to have seen.’
‘Why on earth would he do that?’
‘I wish I knew; he’d scare me less.’
Lawrence only paced. He was one of those men who made far more noise than he had to, and his steps banged as he thumped over the Turkish rug. He walked without bending his knees much. When he reached the table, he picked up the brandy decanter.
‘And you tell me this why?’ he asked abruptly as he poured out a measure.
Joe felt strange. It should have been difficult, coming in here and talking to an important man he didn’t know, but it wasn’t. After all the time he’d spent sidestepping around de Méritens and sweet-talking M. Saint-Marie, after coping with Kite, it was nothing. ‘He’s either mad or going mad. I understand why I was pressed, I can’t argue that and God knows I want a free England.’ The patriotic rubbish came easily after all the insanity the Saints spouted. God Save the King! ‘But I think he’s going to shoot me before I can get the job done.’ He inclined his head. ‘If I wanted to run away, sir, I could have done it right now. I don’t.’
Because if I go now then Kite will come after me like a prince of hell.
Lawrence nodded slowly. ‘You could have,’ he agreed. He watched him for a long time. ‘You are right about Missouri, naturally. Anyone could tell you that. But this doesn’t mean you’ll be freed for your trouble. I ought to put you in the gaol right now, in fact. He took you out without my permission.’
‘No, sir, I was hoping it would mean I would work under your supervision rather than his. As I say, I want to help.’ He shifted in what he hoped was an awkward way. ‘But you don’t seem the type to hold a pistol to a man’s kneecap.’
And you’re much stupider than Kite. Anyone with a temper like yours is a moron.
‘Oh, he is delightful, isn’t he,’ Lawrence said irritably. ‘It’s what comes of letting carpenters’ boys become captains – Agatha wouldn’t be told, of course. She paid for the commission. I hadn’t the heart to stop her.’ He snorted his breath out again. The longer Joe was with him, the more he seemed like a stunted buffalo. ‘I’m sure we can arrange something less ballistic. Have you made the machine I asked for yet?’
‘This morning. Two machines, they communicate with each other. One is on Agamemnon now, one is in Lord Howe’s office. They work. They’ll allow the navy to talk to the land without signal flags over about twenty miles.’
Lawrence lifted his peppery eyebrows. ‘Twenty miles. That’s quite something, lad.’
‘It’s standard,’ Joe said. ‘I’ve given Mr Kite the specifications.’
‘Good. Very good. And I hope you’ll be able to make us other things too?’
‘Yes, sir. I mean to.’ He held Lawrence’s eyes, clear and straight. ‘But if you put me in the prison, he’ll know I spoke to you. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man I’d like to give a warning to.’
‘Ah, how nice of you to be concerned about me.’
‘I’m not. I’m very concerned about me.’
Lawrence seemed to take that as the sign of an honest man. ‘Only sensible. Now, can I trust you to take yourself back?’
Lily had laid more sophisticated traps. ‘No.’ He made himself look worried. ‘I got a bit lost on the way here. If you’d send someone with me I’d be grateful.’
‘Good,’ Lawrence laughed. He shook Joe’s hand. He had warm dry palms, unscarred, and a firm handshake. ‘Very good. Now let me see you out. Under no circumstances tell him that you spoke to me, do you understand? He’d kill you.’