‘Thank you,’ he said softly, and set something down on the floor by Joe’s boot. He stepped up close and spoke right by Joe’s ear. ‘This definitely isn’t a bag with a French uniform and a map in it, and you definitely shouldn’t take it and go now.’
Joe stared at him, then at the bag. The others were still busy with the telegraph; Lieutenant Wellesley and an excited midshipman even younger than Fred. Kite squeezed his hand one last time and let him go with the very smallest glow of a smile.
Clay burst in. Joe had never seen him move so fast. ‘This,’ he said, one finger right in Kite’s face, ‘is mutiny and you fucking know it!’
‘Yes, it is. Go ashore with Mr Tournier, you don’t need to be here.’
‘I’m not going anywhere with him!’ He smacked Joe in the chest.
‘Joe – can you take him and the children ashore, please.’
‘Mutiny,’ Clay said in one of his eerily adult moments, ‘is what got me where I am. That said, I’ll enjoy it if they flog him round the fleet,’ he said to Kite, and smiled in a sick, mad way.
‘No, you wouldn’t, you’d be bored. It takes ages to give someone three hundred lashes,’ Kite said, but he was set and pale in the way he always was when he was in pain. ‘Joe, don’t listen to him, it’s fine. Please – get ashore. We’re leaving in about twenty seconds.’
*
Southampton, 1798
Jem and Agatha were in Bath for a honeymoon, so Kite had gone back to Southampton to see if there was anything to do. Refitting a ship was mainly just carpentry, but he liked it; hammering in some pegs for a few hours a day was much better than sulking around Jermyn Street by himself.
He got off the coach from London stiff and hungry, and feeling that odd catch between irritable and sad that long journeys always provoked. The cold trip out to Defiance on a rowing boat was a prospect that loomed more than it should have. It was only gradually that he noticed the docks looked wrong. There was no one working, and no boats coming to and fro from the ships at anchor. At the jetty which would have taken people out, there was a rope line, and a sign.
Ongoing mutiny on Defiance. Any incoming officers, report to Admiralty.
‘No,’ he said aloud to the sign, not understanding. He’d seen mutinies before, but only on ships with bad officers. Everyone loved Heecham, and Tom and Rupert Grey were universally popular lieutenants. Defiance was the very model of a cheerful ship.
‘Oh, Kite,’ someone said, and he twisted around to find Heecham stumping towards him along the wharf. He looked miserable. ‘What a mess. Come to see them take her back?’
‘Pardon, sir?’
Heecham pointed with two fingers to a ship Kite hadn’t noticed, just setting sail. It was the Calcutta, and on the deck were at least two hundred marines. They were fixing their bayonets. ‘The Admiralty wants to keep the men quiet about Castlereagh and the Kingdom. Lord Lawrence left them out there all this time with no food. They mutinied yesterday to demand supplies, like he bloody knew they’d have to.’ He coughed, but it was more of a sob. ‘Captain Bligh’s got orders to take a few men, the ringleaders. But the rest of them are not going to get off that ship alive if a single man tries to fight. And if they don’t try to fight, Bligh shall have to say that they did.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Kite said, numb. ‘No one would have believed them. This is ridiculous.’
Heecham gave him a hollow look. ‘Missouri. They would all have told exactly the same story. They would all have talked about Castlereagh, named him even. The French would have snatched him within a week.’
Kite almost laughed. ‘They already tried! My sister just married him to keep it from happening again. If someone kills Agatha Lawrence’s husband, the proportionate response would be – destroying Nice.’
Heecham dropped his face into his hands and wept with an awful shudder. Kite gripped his shoulder, hating Lawrence more than he had hated anything.
There was nothing to do but watch as the Calcutta drew up alongside Defiance. Someone on Defiance put up a white flag on the yardarm. Heecham put his hand over Kite’s eyes and told him he’d seen nothing of the sort. The marines boarded anyway, and then there were gunshots.
When the shots stopped, they trailed away together, and drank in silence at a dockside bar.
A week later, the four men who’d written the demands to the Admiralty and organised everyone were flogged around the fleet: three hundred lashes each. It was the kind of sentence the Admiralty only ever handed down if the mutiny had been violent, if officers had been killed. Usually a straightforward mutiny about food was just embarrassing. Not this time. The story was of foul malcontent, nefarious plans. Anything shocking to distract from any mention of the Kingdom. When Kite read the news-sheets afterwards, it had worked. Not a word about the Kingdom or Jem had made it out.
Three of the men died, but one didn’t. Kite watched, because he felt like he had to. Heecham had to leave halfway through to be sick in the sea.
39
Edinburgh, 1807
Joe herded the children down the gangway ahead of him, shocked by how many there were – about forty. They were all grumbling about being made to go, even Alfie, who complained that he wanted to be allowed to do his duty thank you very much. On the dock, Joe lifted him up so he could see the ships go out.
‘It’s a mutiny, lad,’ Clay told him. ‘Don’t want to get caught up in that. Even if they win, they’ll all be shot.’
Joe kicked his ankle. ‘Can you shut up about mutiny?’
‘Mutiny on Defiance, they shot everyone,’ Clay said implacably. He gave Joe a poisonous look. ‘Mr Castlereagh was too secret, so the Admiralty killed everyone who’d seen the Kingdom. Let us starve till we mutinied, then they shot everyone. Except me and the other people who organised it. Flogged round the fleet. They didn’t expect me to make it.’
Joe frowned. ‘I thought Kite did this to you?’
Clay frowned back. ‘No. Mr Kite looked after me.’
*
London, 1798
Clay had woken up in a bright, white room in a single bed. Someone touched his shoulder, and a glass of water appeared in his hands. He took it carefully, not wanting to spill it on the crisp linen. It wasn’t his. It must have been expensive. Whoever owned it would be furious. When he tried to sit up, he screamed. A voice, a familiar one, told him everything was going to be all right, but even while it was happening, it sounded like a memory, because he couldn’t think of anything except how his entire body seemed to be on fire.
Of all the people in the world he could have expected to see, Heecham’s youngest lieutenant wouldn’t even have been on the list. He was the one all the men were afraid of because he always looked like he might kill someone. Clay wondered if that might be true, and tried to edge away, but then he had to do some more screaming.
‘No – no, it’s all right,’ Kite was trying to say. ‘You’re safe.’
Clay sat propped panting against the cold wall, not sure what was going on, or what might happen next. He wished Kite would take the glass of water away. The glass was very thin. Easily smashed.
There was a tiger sitting next to him.