‘Yes, sir,’ Joe whispered. Sold on; not ideal, but it was progress. He could get out of a normal house a hell of a lot more easily than out of prison, and he came from the Missouri Kite training school of applied savagery.
The edges of the vision – the memory – were still with him. Kite was still waiting by the sea, as patient and as silent as always.
45
London, 1807
Kite hadn’t thought he’d ever see London again. It was all the same and all different. Spanish frigates harboured at Deptford; the dry docks were full of warships he knew very well indeed, because they had once been English – the Bellerophon, the Mars, more – but repainted and given new French names. He had never had time to feel the loss of them before, but there was nothing else to do now.
‘Quieter than last time we were here,’ he said to Wellesley.
She was standing with him in a green silk dress. He’d never seen her out of uniform, not since she first came aboard, and now the dress seemed as stupid on her as it would have on a lioness. You didn’t put people like Wellesley in dresses.
With her perfect French, she would pretend to be the dead captain’s wife when they docked. If reward collections here worked anything like they did in the English navy, then she would be able to take him to Newgate herself, and speak directly with the warden; he would give her a prisoner receipt, and the docket to collect the money from the Admiralty. After that … she’d told him how she would get to Joe, but everything was falling out of his head. He’d never worried about dying in action, but dying in front of Buckingham Palace had a gravity that the quarterdeck didn’t.
He watched the ruined dome of St Paul’s creep nearer. Joe would be all right. He had an amazing knack for being all right.
At the docks, Wellesley was enjoyably French at the customs men, and they got by without any trouble. Once they were past, they moved in a tight phalanx towards Newgate; six of Agamemnon’s crew in French uniforms they’d taken from the pressed men, flanking her and Kite.
‘I’m not leaving you there, you know,’ she told him.
‘You have to. Collect the reward money, get Tournier, and get out. I thought we’d agreed?’ he said tiredly. He’d been afraid something like this was on the way.
‘No. You agreed and I made a humming noise,’ she said. ‘We can do it. Forty men; it will be straightforward enough.’
‘And how many of those men will die in the process? You can’t risk a single sailor, Ray; we haven’t got the people to replace them, never mind trained people.’
‘Well, we’re not leaving you there to be executed.’
He turned to face her. They were on a ruined street that had never been properly cleaned up; the rubble of blasted buildings still sloped towards the pavements, and here and there, groups of unoccupied children hung around, playing cards at brick tables. It had taken him the whole length of the walk to recognise that it was Oxford Street. ‘I killed your brother,’ he said.
‘Yes, and the moon is assuredly made of cheese.’
Kite had no idea what he’d ever done that would have made her that loyal. He wanted to catch her sleeve and shake her, but he couldn’t bring himself to. She was taller than him, and probably stronger, but there was a special side-chapel in hell for men who decided it was all right to lay hands on women, any women. It wasn’t about being stronger. It was about everything else. In the end he had to put his arm out ahead of her to stop her walking.
‘I threw him overboard before we came into Edinburgh.’
‘Stop it. Why would you?’
Kite shook his head slightly. ‘He had … one of his turns. He hit me. I suppose it was just battle fatigue, but I snapped.’ He looked up at her and held her eyes for a long time. ‘I’m sorry, but I did, and you should be leaving me here.’
‘You wouldn’t just …’ She looked less sure, and he didn’t blame her. Even aside from what he was saying, he looked exactly like the sort of person who might murder someone. He always had, but the burns made it look especially convincing now.
‘I did.’
‘Why?’ she said again.
He shrugged, because he knew it would make her angry, but he felt disgusting doing it, especially because he could have explained exactly why.
*
Edinburgh, 1805 (twenty-five days after Trafalgar)
It had been a nightmarish journey from London to Edinburgh. The sea had turned rough, and Kite would never usually have worried, but six in seven – six in seven – of the men had been killed either at Trafalgar or at the evacuation of London, and now most of the people raising sails and tying lines were not sailors at all, but women and children who Revelation Wellesley, his dead first lieutenant’s very young wife, had conscripted to the cause. There was a moment off Newcastle when he was certain they were going to sink. He never once got sight of the Orion. He’d signalled to other ships, but no one seemed to know if she’d even made it past the line at Trafalgar.
He had never been so happy to see a harbour when they came into Edinburgh, or more surprised to make it to one. Even one in a state like this.
It was crowded to the point that it was impossible to dock at a wharf. They had to anchor a little way out and send boats ashore to request medics, who, thank Christ, had been waiting on the harbour. The School of Surgeons was only a couple of miles away and they seemed to have sent every single student and alumnus they could lay hands on. A vicious wind tore into the damaged ship from the north, which spun them in loops even at anchor. It was hard to get people aboard. He spent about an hour helping nurses over the side, and then collapsed on a doctor. The doctor took him firmly into the stateroom to look at the burns.
People were in and out all the time. Heroically, Agatha and Ray Wellesley had gone straight ashore and managed to buy space at the already crowded boarding houses on the dockside for the wounded men. Wellesley had come aboard with a rope of pearls and sold it for them. He still couldn’t believe she’d done that. She had nothing except those pearls and one change of clothes, but she seemed to think she was only doing what anyone would.
Able people would have to stay aboard and help with the repairs. Messages came up from the infirmary and its overspill on the gun deck; they needed cleaning salt, urgently, or there was going to be cholera. The mainmast was loose in its socket. The Admiralty had taken over Edinburgh Castle and they were calling all able officers to get up there for a briefing, but the doctor threatened to hit Kite with his instrument case if he made any noises about being able. It was a relief. When he did manage to get away from the man and his odious salt solution, which hurt a lot more than getting the burns in the first place, he could only just walk. He hated letting the sailors see him like that, but there wasn’t much choice now.
He limped onto the deck to make sure everyone had enough in the way of warm clothes. With the death toll from Trafalgar, and from London, one thing they did have in abundance was spare coats. Then he stopped.
Sitting on a cannon with a little boy was Jem. They were talking over what seemed to be a set of salt and pepper pots, and a copy of the lieutenants’ exam book.
‘So that’s where that odd number comes from,’ Jem was finishing. ‘It’s because of the curve of the wave, which is why it’s related to pi. Hardly beyond the wit of man. Want to try a cigarette?’ he added. ‘Nice blend, from Jamaica. It smells of warm weather even if it doesn’t do much for you.’