The boy laughed, delighted with him. Kite waited while Jem showed him how to roll a cigarette, and then, stiffly, sat down beside them on the gun.
‘Aha,’ said Jem softly. ‘Here he is.’
Kite couldn’t say anything at first. All he could do was slump against Jem and try to reassure himself that he was real, not a battle-fatigue hallucination. Jem gripped his hand. ‘What are we doing?’ Kite managed at last.
‘Waveforms,’ Jem said, sunny as ever. ‘And this young man is going to remember them now because they will be inextricably linked to the far more memorable memory of his first decent cigarette. I’m clever that way.’
‘You’re ridiculous,’ Kite told him. ‘Don’t let children smoke.’
‘I like it,’ the little boy protested. Then, brightly, ‘Are you Captain Kite? Did you really sail into battle with fifty dead people hanging off the yards?’
‘I – what? No,’ said Kite. ‘Who said that?’
‘Everyone,’ the boy said happily.
Fantastic.
‘Better run away,’ Jem said in a stage whisper. Once the boy was gone, Jem put his head against Kite’s. He talked quietly; he’d been here two days, one of the first to arrive. Orion had brought the King, which was why it had been so far ahead. Shore was chaos; there were message boards right along the docks, full of notes so relatives could find each other; the army had opened an office just to deal with getting people back together with their families. And people, brilliant ordinary people, had set up more message boards detailing spare rooms and attics where refugees from London could stay. Kite didn’t hear half of what he said, because he was deaf on one side and had been for days, but it was still good to watch him talk.
Kite had forgotten that that little boy on the gun with Jem had been Fred Hathaway. It had stayed forgotten right until that moment he had seen Joe give Fred a cigarette.
Usually, Joe was different enough that Kite didn’t struggle too much to see him as someone new. Every so often, though, he was still Jem.
Only he wasn’t Jem any more. He was a desperate man with a child to get home to, and if Fred had told him who he was, he would have seen straight through all of Kite’s stupid threats and walked away in broad daylight without giving them an atom of help, knowing that Kite was incapable of hurting him.
*
Newgate Gaol, 1807
Kite waited by the window of the warden’s office with two of Agamemnon’s men in French uniforms, feeling exposed all the same. Wellesley had insisted on hanging onto him until the warden arrived to sign the docket that would allow her to collect the reward money, and then – well, then she’d have to leave him there, he’d vanish into the prison and that would be that. She had turned very quiet after he told her about Fred, and he did not doubt that she would be happy to leave him now.
There were plenty of other considerations he ought to have been giving his time to, but his overriding thought was that he wasn’t used to land any more. Even at Edinburgh, he usually slept on the ship. He didn’t like how solid ground was. Normally, if everything was perfectly still, you were becalmed on the Pacific and you were looking seriously at the prospect of starving to death. It gave him a knee-jerk anxiety.
Sergeant Drake, from the marines, was one of the disguised men. He seemed to see that Kite was teetering, and put one hand on the small of his back. He was usually a granite man, but he offered him an awkward little smile now. Kite winked. Drake looked reassured.
When the warden did arrive, he was a dandy with a streety Parisian accent, which he exaggerated in the way of someone extremely pleased with himself for not being an aristocrat.
‘Madame!’ he exclaimed at Wellesley rather than to her, and then did a funny skipping retreat when she stood up and turned out to be so much taller than him. Kite could have laughed. He loved watching people meet Wellesley for the first time. ‘I hear you brought in Missouri Kite on behalf of your husband, the captain of the … dah-dah-dah, where is it – Angleterre?’
‘I did.’
‘Amazing,’ he said happily. He skittered over to look at Kite, who couldn’t help thinking of a discombobulated daddy-long-legs. There was an urge to be careful with him but also to throw him out the window. ‘And we’re sure it’s him?’
‘How many other redhead Spanish pirate captains are there kicking around the North Sea?’ Wellesley said drily.
‘Are you really Spanish?’ the warden said to Kite. Kite could follow his French, more or less. Joe had got him used to it, with that strange, Anglified future French. The grammar got turned around, or something subtle but significant, and it made a bridge between English and this Parisian thing. ‘Silly of you to join the English fleet, don’t you think, given that your side won?’
‘In hindsight it was something of an error,’ Kite agreed in Spanish, to prove that he could.
The warden laughed as if a wild animal had spoken to him. He turned back to Wellesley. ‘Excellent! I’ll sign the docket for you, madame. I think this merits a proper glass of wine, don’t you?’
She smiled. Kite was still struggling to find the magnificent green dress anything less than offensive, but she was playing the part well. She even sat differently; usually she had the tall person’s inclination to curve forward, but she was resting against the corsetry now, bolt upright. ‘Indeed it does, sir; and, while we’re here, and since I find myself rather newly wealthy, I was wondering about the purchase of a slave or two. Perhaps I could look at some before I go to the Ministry to retrieve the reward money?’
The warden looked delighted. ‘Oh, absolutely. But wine first. What kind of slaves?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I have to say, I have been hankering after a handsome man to be decorative about the house. Dark and pretty, perhaps?’
Kite frowned, because he hadn’t thought this would ever happen; that she might just be able to put Joe in a room with all of them at the same time. Which meant there was a chance of getting out of here. He swallowed hard, because hope was worse than fatalism.
‘Absolutely, absolutely – oh, here’s Colonel Herault,’ the warden added as a side door opened. ‘He wants to have a look at our pirate; Herault, meet Missouri Kite.’
‘Isn’t it interesting,’ Herault said, ‘that you turn up just after I put an advert in the paper about your man?’
‘What man?’ Kite said. ‘What paper?’
Herault swept his eyes over him slowly, taking him in, the cuts, bruises, the chains, and then tilted them towards Wellesley. He didn’t say anything, and only folded down into the armchair not far from Kite. When the warden burbled that they were going to sell some slaves to the lady, Herault glanced at Kite and lifted one eyebrow.
‘Are you indeed,’ he said.
46
Newgate Gaol, 1807
After the dimness in the yard and on the stairs, the light in the office was rich. It looked to Joe like a room trapped in amber. There were a lot of people there now; Colonel Herault in an armchair by the window, a flouncy man who might have been the warden, three other men who must have been prisoners from the state of them. Joe glanced at them uncertainly. One of them gave him a thin smile. All of them were in their twenties or thirties, and remarkably good-looking. The warden hurried across and shuffled Joe into line.