‘Captain Kite like the pirate,’ Herault agreed. ‘Where did he get you? He can’t have just stumbled over you.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any pirates!’
Herault sat back in his chair, which was irritating, because he was acting the part of someone who felt comfortable, rather than someone who was. ‘Do you know what I think? I think if you are who my source says you are, then I don’t need to interrogate you to confirm it. All I need to do is blare out where you are in a national newspaper, and wait for an extremely well-known pirate to come and fetch you. You’re worth a lot to him. Telegraphs! It took us years to work those out. You must be the very devil with future devices.’
Joe forced himself to fall still inside. ‘I really … don’t understand what’s going on, sir.’
‘No, of course, of course, you’re just a random passer-by who is unaccounted for in any of our garrison records and exactly answers a very precise description.’ He smiled. ‘You know what happens to pirates, when we catch them? And they are pirates. England is not a state any more, M. Tournier, it does not have officers who I must treat as prisoners of war. It is a group of bloody-minded savages who don’t know when to admit they’ve lost. When I catch Missouri Kite, I shall have the pleasure of seeing him tried for treason against the Emperor, and then I shall have a nice champagne on the balcony of Buckingham Palace while he’s torn apart by horses in the courtyard below. How would you like to be on that balcony with me?’
Joe arranged his face into baffled blankness. After sitting opposite Kite – Kite who really was balancing right on the edge of full-blown madness, Kite who had lost everything and who was turning piece by piece into a glass man – Herault wasn’t sinister. He was about as frightening as a theatrically untalented puppy.
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘Where did Kite get you?’ Herault said again.
‘I don’t know your Captain Kite. My master was called M. Saint-Marie.’
‘Was,’ Herault snapped.
‘He died. I was – I was running away. I was trying to get to Edinburgh, they don’t have slaves there, and … I thought that was why you took me.’ He lifted his eyes. ‘It’s not, though, is it. This … Kite person? I’m not a pirate, sir, I’m … please. Maybe I deserve a brand for trying to get away but I’m not – that.’
Herault was staring at him hard, but it was with the intensity of a person covering over some doubts. ‘Where were you running from?’
‘London, sir. Clerkenwell.’
‘And you got all the way up here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What street did you live on?’
‘I don’t know, sir, I was kept in the cellar. I can’t read.’
‘Kept in the cellar,’ Herault echoed flatly. It was the way people talked about misfortune when they hadn’t had any, like you must be making it up because, to them, it sounded so grotesquely unlikely. It struck them like a particularly disgusting piece of fiction, one that literary critics in Le Monde would say was a pile of depraved rubbish and which ought never to have been published.
‘It was quite a nice cellar,’ Joe offered. ‘He gave me paints and things.’
‘Just drop it, Tournier, I know it’s you. I have your name and your description.’
‘Sir, I … far be it from me to tell you anything, but there are a thousand Joe Tourniers, and most of them look just like me.’
Herault stared at him for a long time. ‘I’m sure you’ll reconsider after a week in Newgate,’ he said. ‘And even if you don’t, Kite will come for you.’
Joe lifted his eyes properly. ‘Colonel, Captain Kite isn’t going to come for me. Captain Kite doesn’t know me.’
‘We’ll see,’ Herault said tightly.
Joe didn’t know what to hope for: that Kite would stay away, or that Kite would come.
All he could think of was two teams of horses waiting outside Buckingham Palace.
41
Edinburgh, 1807
There were fireworks on the deck, and a lot of rum going round. Kite had given up on keeping anything like a proper watch going. All of Edinburgh seemed be out on the docks tonight. There was music and more fireworks and the occasional squeak of someone too drunk falling in the sea, both from the jetties and the ships. And bonfires everywhere; people were burning the wreckage of the two French ships whose powder magazines had exploded.
They had taken a ship called the Angleterre, and given the atrocious state of Agamemnon, everyone had moved across, along with what must have been half the crews of the rest of the fleet. The hold, delightfully, was full of coal, so now there were braziers everywhere.
Kite felt hollowed out. There was nothing left to do.
He had nabbed the desk and the far end of the Angleterre’s stateroom before anyone else could, which was just as well. Over the other side of the room, around a mahogany table, a group of captains and officers from other ships were in the middle of an involved-looking card game, coats slung over the back of the ornate chairs. Some of them were snugged up under velvet throws. The French captain had been living quite a nice life.
Had been; Kite had shoved him in front of a firing squad, along with all the French officers. The man had seemed to think that was unfair, and remained unpersuaded even after all the English officers pointed out that a lot worse was waiting for them in London if ever they were caught. Kite thought that was boorish of him. If you were going to dismember people outside Buckingham Palace, it was silly to go round being surprised when someone shot you.
The French sailors had been pressed firmly into English ranks.
‘Wellesley! Almond croissant?’ someone called.
His insides constricted. He had been trying to avoid Wellesley.
He put the cross of his rosary back into the candle again. It was haematite, because the wooden ones always got burned or broken.
‘Have you seen Mr Kite?’ Wellesley’s voice asked. She sounded like she was halfway through a croissant.
‘He was here, we must have put him somewhere. Oh, bugger. Fold.’
‘I’m here,’ he called past the oriental screens. Cowardly to hide. Smoke rose delicately from his arm as he pressed the cross against the tattoo. There were already two burned crosses over most of the lines already.
He hadn’t really decided to get rid of it. He had just known he had to, as soon as he sat down. Normally he couldn’t be anywhere near open flame without dissolving into shuddering moronhood, but this was different, maybe because it was to a purpose. The important fact wasn’t that he was burning off a tattoo. It was that Joe was gone, and he wasn’t coming home again.
Wellesley came through. ‘Has Clay’s cat put something in the fire again? I can smell— Jesus Christ! What if that goes bad!’
‘I burned half my face off without too much difficulty, I think I’ll be fine,’ he said, half-smiling. ‘Are you all right?’
Wellesley stared at him. ‘You’re not even drunk.’
‘No?’
‘Can you drink something please, sir,’ she said, with a mix of rage and helplessness all battened down. She reached over to pick up the rum bottle from the edge of the desk, then froze when Kite flinched right back from her. He lifted his hands a little, trying to say without having to find the words that his nerves were frayed to oakum.