Kite nodded. He let his breath out slowly. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, and you ask me anything you don’t remember.’
49
Edinburgh, 1805
It was only a few months after the fall of London that the order came from the Admiralty. Someone at the whaling station on Lewis and Harris had sent round word that the French seemed to be building some kind of tower on a rock out to sea, supplied by ships like no one had ever seen. Once Agamemnon was refitted, they were to investigate straight away. Kite didn’t see at first that Jem had dropped down onto the floor. He was bent forward with his hand against his chest, his colour gone. It took him a minute or so to say anything and when he did, he promised it was only nerves, and then explained what the tower was.
Jem knew what had happened as soon as he saw the lighthouse. It took a while to find where the time difference was, that it was between the pillars in the sea, but when they went through, the town turned from a healthy whaling station to bones on the beach and one lit lodging house.
‘What the hell are we meant to do about that?’ Kite said finally.
Agamemnon was waiting in the lee of the lighthouse island, unable to get any closer because of the rocks under the surface of the sea. Kite and Jem had rowed out, and now the boat was rocking just on the future side of the pillars. If Kite leaned to the left, to see outside a pillar, the lighthouse looked ruined. Lean to the right, to see it through the pillars on the past side, it was brand new and not even quite finished yet. The new one was on the wrong side.
Jem was quiet and tight. He was holding the oars, because Kite’s fingers were broken. Kite couldn’t remember breaking them, but they were getting painful in cold weather. ‘We sailed through here in the Kingdom. None of us realised anything was different. I always thought it was that fog. You know, when … you found us.’
Kite didn’t know what to say. He knew what he wanted to say, but it was all questions. Just what Jem’s life had been before: had he been married; did he have children. The things Jem had never told him. But none of that would have helped. ‘We need to find a way to brick it up. The French are going to find it, if we’re not …’
Jem looked at him slowly. ‘Say again, sorry?’
‘I say we need to close this off somehow.’
‘My son will be twelve by now.’
‘Oh,’ was all Kite could say.
‘Or maybe not,’ Jem said. He was staring at the whaling station. ‘I came from an England where we won at Trafalgar. This will be an England where we didn’t. London will be French. God knows how that will have changed people, families …’
‘You never talked about yours.’
‘My what?’
‘Family.’
‘Well, damn all use, was there.’
Kite had to look away. Jem had settled and made the best of a bad job, he’d always known that. Hearing about a son, though, felt like taking chain shot to one of the foundation supports of their own ramshackle little family.
‘I was married. She was – she is, called Madeline. She was aboard the Kingdom with me, the French took with her with the others. But we had a son. We left him behind, at school. I thought I’d never see him again.’
‘Well, here we are. Do you want to try?’
Jem looked up. ‘I have no idea how things have changed. And anyway, I lived in London.’
Kite couldn’t bring himself to argue for it any further. Jem wanted him to, he could see that; he wanted to be persuaded rather than suggest it himself, and a better, more chivalrous person would have done that for him, but drowning would have been easier.
Jem swallowed. ‘Miz … thing is, if we were to go through, if we went to London, they would have records. Of everything that’s going to happen to us, in our time, in Edinburgh. We could check. We could see if there are things we can change.’
Kite didn’t say that there were libraries in Glasgow, and there was no earthly need to go all the way to London for that. ‘Yes.’
‘It will all be different obviously. Edward won’t be there.’ But his eyes were full of begging.
‘He might be,’ Kite heard himself say. His whole mind was going numb, etherising itself. ‘We can’t know until we check.’
‘Even if he is, I don’t see how he could know who I am. Everything’s different.’ Jem’s voice was shaking. His heart was already there, hundreds of miles south.
‘We don’t know how it works,’ Kite murmured.
‘Do you really think he might …?’
‘Maybe.’
Jem looked at him properly, shining now. ‘Will – shall you come with me?’
Kite didn’t want to meet Jem’s son. He didn’t want to have to trail back to Edinburgh, alone, to explain to Agatha that obviously Jem had stayed in the future after all, with the family he had chosen, and not the one that had been thrust on him by circumstance.
As if wanting gave him some God-given right to get in the way. Jesus Christ. Jem deserved to go home, to his real home, after all this time.
‘Of course,’ he said.
An hour later they were on a steamship, chugging away from the future-side whaling station. Kite had heard about engines before but he had never imagined what they were like. Noisy, grimy, and very fast, even though there was no wind. It took them round to Glasgow, where finally the time difference was unavoidable. Machinery dominated the docks. The shipyards were like nothing he’d seen. They were building ironclads there in scaffolding, titanic things with propellers four times the height of a person. Cranes moved to and fro everywhere, and men – welders, not carpenters. An impossible number of people. Jem didn’t let him look for long and went straight to the railway station.
Kite had never disliked anything as instantly as he disliked the trains and the rivers of track. An engine was steaming in just as they came out onto the platforms and all at once he understood why Jem had never minded sliding under the guns to fix chassis axles. Next to these colossal machines, a cannon was tiny.
The train had slowed to a crawl, easing forward inch by ponderous inch. But when it hit the buffers, it banged, hard. He couldn’t even guess how heavy it must have been. Only a few people stepped down.
Jem climbed the three-step ladder up to the door and pulled it open, then dropped back down again to hand Kite up first. Kite waited for him at the top, looking around. The corridors were about what they were on a ship, but taller. Glass doors joined the carriages. Jem touched his elbows and steered him to the right, to an empty compartment, which was like a small cabin with upholstered chairs.
‘First class,’ Jem explained. ‘I can’t sit on a train for twelve hours on a bench in third.’
Only twelve hours, all the way to London. How long did it take to ride from here – what, a week?
Kite sat down slowly, then let himself tip forwards and raked his hands through his hair. He could have slept there and then, though it was only seven o’clock. Jem rubbed the back of his neck and pulled him harder and harder until he dropped sideways over his knees. Jem took his scarf off and put it round Kite instead. It was dark tartan. It still smelled brand new under the soft overlay of tobacco, not quite his yet.
He heard the door open once, but if anyone said anything he didn’t catch it. When he woke up properly, it took a long few seconds to understand where they were and why. He wasn’t good at sleeping in snatches. Coming out of it was close to vertigo. He had to close his eyes again and wait for it to go off. Jem had bent over him to keep him from the glare of the gas lamp, which was much brighter than oil.