The Kingdoms, page 23
I suppose I ought to have seen that coming. But you must understand, my time and my world were different. Nobody could go around depriving prisoners of war basic rations – or, nobody except Lord Kitchener and that sadistic lunacy he perpetrated on the Transvaal. I had never expected physical consequences. Moronic as that sounds.
‘There is also the matter of …’ Herault took out the lighthouse plans. He held up the sheet with the engine specifications. ‘I believe one of you wrote this.’
‘It was Jem,’ Charles said quickly. ‘The man who escaped, he was an engineer.’
That’s the other curious thing about imprisonment. Tiny things take on extraordinary importance. Charles’s was a small lie, but it seemed heroic just then. Jem was no engineer; he sat in the House of Lords.
Herault smiled. ‘That’s unfortunate, because I was going to say that if any one of you can convince me that this document is of your making, then you’ll not only go back up to full rations, but you will be allowed certain freedoms about the house and grounds.’
29
Joe pushed one hand over his mouth. Obnoxious as the idea was, he had to wonder if he was Charles. Charles, who knew all the lighthouse specifications and who’d been trained as an engineer. Everyone had said Joe had learned too quickly, at de Méritens’ workshop. And then the lighthouse picture on the postcard would make even more sense, because of course Madeline would have thought that the lighthouse would jog Charles’s memory.
‘Joe.’
He heard it, but hadn’t heard his first name often enough in Kite’s voice to recognise it. He didn’t understand until one of the guards barked ‘Tournier’ right across the room. Everything in him lurched with hope. He stuffed the letter in his pocket, climbed back the way he had come, and found Kite waiting for him.
‘Lord Lawrence wants to meet you,’ he said.
Joe crept through, past the two guards, convinced they were going to stop him. Outside was only two yards more, but it was another world; the cobbled sloping road was empty and shining in the rain, and everything smelled of sweet stone. He hugged Kite with all that was left of his strength, so happy to see him that he was shocked with himself. Kite must have been shocked too, because he stiffened, but then he rested the heels of his hands on Joe’s back.
‘What’s this?’
‘I didn’t think you were coming. Devil you know and that,’ Joe said helplessly.
‘I told you I was coming back.’ Kite’s voice had cracked with surprise. ‘It’s only been fifteen minutes. What happened?’
‘No, nothing, it …’ Joe trailed off, not sure what to say. ‘They’re making things out of straw.’
Kite looked like he had no idea what to do with him, but then he tipped his head to say, shall we go. He only seemed more confused when Joe smiled at him.
Joe started to shiver straight away, but it was delicious after the heat and the stagnant humidity inside. The air was clear, and the sight of Kite had released the pressure on his chest again. A wry little voice pointed out that you were unquestionably in hot water when you were grateful for a familiar murderer. Kite pointed to the left to tell him which way to go.
‘I hope you’ve thought about what you might do for the navy,’ Kite said. Whoever Lord Lawrence was, he had made Kite small. ‘Lawrence isn’t someone to mess about.’
Joe nodded. He hadn’t dedicated any time to it because he had been thinking about how to get away, but he knew what he would say all the same.
Lord Lawrence was a square man in an old-fashioned wig, the long kind, curling unnaturally over a silk jacket. He wasn’t in uniform. Joe knew nothing about the man, but if the room was anything to judge by – oak-panelled, tapestried, and Jesus Christ the tiger rug on the floor had just sat up – it was because Lawrence thought the uniform would look disagreeably tradesman-like. The office must have been partitioned off in haste, just with wooden walls, other voices and steps sounded very close. Despite that, someone had gone to every effort to posh it up. There was a stuffed flamingo by the hearth, feathers rippling. The tiger, a massive thing with liquid muscles, paced across to have a look at him. It shoved its face straight into Joe’s chest just like Clay’s cat. Incredibly, the thing purred when he touched its ears.
‘It’ll be your tobacco,’ Lawrence explained. ‘She loves anyone who smokes. So: you’re our Mr Tournier.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said, struggling, because he wanted to laugh. The tiger had curled up next him, tail round his ankle.
Lawrence smiled. ‘Distracting, ain’t she. Good test of character. So tell me, you’re – what, a lighthouse keeper, is that right?’
‘I’m a mechanic from the workshop that builds lighthouse engines and generators.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful. I imagine there’s very little you’d less prefer to be doing than working for us, but you understand we are preparing for a siege which – if you told Missouri correctly – will finish us entirely if we don’t do something significant.’
Joe nodded. He didn’t remember telling Kite that, but it was still true. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you know any details of what will happen?’
‘No, sir, I’m sorry. I make engines, I’m not bookish.’
‘Mm.’ Lawrence studied him. He came up too close to do it and Joe caught the smell of powder on him, from the wig. There was a hunger about him, but not curiosity. It was the way a certain sort of little boy would rush up to the carcass of a dog that had made him jump once, and had just been hit by a cart. A nasty triumph. ‘But I hope you have some bright ideas about what to make for us. Lights as bright as the Eilean Mòr lamp would go a long way, you know.’
‘Arc lamps.’ Joe took a deep breath. This was it. He needed to steer Lawrence away from anything that could really change the world. If nothing significant changed, there was a chance Lily would still be all right when he got home. ‘They need a lot of power, and we’d need generators, which I can’t make for you in time for the siege.’
‘What’s a generator?’
‘They make power in a way that hasn’t been discovered here yet. Electricity. The idea is simple but making one is … we’d need a lot of iron, and I think it’s … all going to making guns, isn’t it? I saw them taking down railings on the way here.’
‘Can you improve our guns, then?’
Yes, God yes, they were still using flintlocks for Christ’s sake. The Agamemnon’s cannons had barely got off two rounds per minute. He could give them modern guns, electrically lit ships, engines, and he was absolutely not going to.
He was going to have to sell this properly or he might as well shoot himself right now.
‘I can give you a way to talk to each other that’s far faster than those flag signals you’ve got, and a lot more secret. You’ll be able to convey far more information. They’re called telegraphs.’
‘How long will that take?’
‘With a good blacksmith and the right materials, only a few days.’ Joe’s heart was going too fast. ‘Decent communication will help you. Won’t it?’
‘It certainly will.’ Lawrence was looking right into his face. ‘You understand what will happen to you if you’re lying?’ He said it gently, like a doctor warning him about an operation. But there was that hungry gleam again.
‘Yes, sir,’ Joe said. He thought of the ruin that was Clay’s back, and then had to try hard to stop.
Lawrence patted him. His hand was doughy. ‘And no fretting about changing your future, my boy. It’s already changed. If you don’t make us something, I am going to evacuate Edinburgh of naval forces. So either way, there will be no defeat here.’
It hadn’t even occurred to him that it was already too late. God in heaven. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good boy.’
Joe put a smile on his face and tilted his eyes down, even though deferring to the man was starting to feel sticky. The richness of the office and Lawrence’s clothes was grotesque after a week on Agamemnon, and the more he surveyed Lawrence himself, the more this pallid variety of plumpness had something fungal about it. Maybe that was unfair, but Joe had expected someone different. It was disquieting to see that behind a soldier as upright and war-smashed as Kite, there wasn’t an ironclad general or a righteous empress, but this bejewelled, sickly looking mushroom person.
No wonder England had lost the war.
‘Now, speaking of defeats, Missouri. Mr Tournier, do occupy yourself with the tiger, she likes you, and I think you’ll enjoy what’s about to happen.’
Joe found himself looking at the tiger as if it might explain.
‘I hear,’ Lawrence said to Kite, ‘that my niece was on deck during action. Why was that?’
Kite had turned to stone. ‘There were burned men in the water, sir, and she had come up to help treat them.’
Agatha.
‘Men in the water should be left in the water, for exactly this reason.’
Joe couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard.
‘They were in easy reach, sir.’
‘Don’t argue with me.’ Lawrence folded his arms. ‘I think this is the time to have a little talk about women aboard the Agamemnon, don’t you? Missouri, you have been expressly forbidden, on a number of occasions, from employing women in active naval service.’
Kite’s eyes flicked up. ‘There are none on our books.’
Lawrence hit him with the end of his cane. It came from nowhere and Joe froze. Kite didn’t even have time to put his hands up. The ivory handle left a graze above his eye. ‘No, there are not, because rather than declaring your dead men dead, you continue to take their wages, and filter them down to any number of unqualified women you seem to have collected from wherever takes your fancy. You have a veritable harem. I believe even your first lieutenant is not in fact a real lieutenant at all, but a dead lieutenant’s wife. Are you going to lie to me about that?’
‘Revelation Wellesley runs the ship better than any other lieutenant I’ve had—’
‘And so while I cannot indict you for letting Agatha on the deck, given that she was not officially on navy pay, I can absolutely come after you for fraud whenever I bloody like, and I will do so with the most intense joy if this man fails to do as he’s promised, understand?’ Lawrence pointed at Joe without looking at him.
‘No, you won’t,’ Kite snapped. ‘Unless you want the horror of women captains, you’re not going to court martial the present ones.’
‘Don’t be so repulsive, they aren’t there for work, they’re there for you to stare at and God knows what else. Take that jacket off, it’s a disgrace.’
Joe felt something tightening in his chest. Kite slid his coat off, then the jacket, slowly, because he couldn’t move well now.
Lawrence went for him. Joe had never seen anyone lose his temper so completely. The walking cane was thin, like a switch, and although Lawrence had been moving at a heavy lumber before, he was fast with it. In five seconds Kite was on the floor.
Without deciding to, Joe wrenched the thing out of the old man’s hand, and threw it at the hearth. The tiger snarled and for a sick instant Joe thought he was about to be torn to pieces by a wild animal, but for whatever reason it had of its own – perhaps Lawrence treated it in the same way he treated Kite, or maybe it liked Kite in the same involuntary way Joe did – it caught Lawrence’s sleeve in its teeth and slung him aside before coming to nose anxiously at them. Joe kept very, very still, crouched over Kite, one arm across his shoulders to keep him as shielded as he could be. He could feel him shaking, or maybe that was Joe himself.
‘Get him out of here,’ Lawrence snarled. His eyes kept skittering to the tiger.
Joe snatched up Kite’s coat and pulled Kite along with him. He’d never been so glad to get out of a room.
Kite had to stop just outside, on the steps of a chapel. Joe sat down next to him. Opposite them, torchlight beamed down through the high windows of what must once have been a banqueting hall, but now, there were flimsy storey-partions a third and two-thirds of the way up the windows. Inside, there were beds, and women in surgeons’ indigo. A girl was singing while she hung up sheets between the rows and rows of beds.
There was no sign of the two marines.
‘Who the hell keeps a tiger anyway?’ Joe asked at last. His voice sounded wrong. He coughed.
‘He served in India,’ Kite said.
‘Are you all right?’ Joe whispered. Sailing through the French assault had been different; that was impersonal violence, and it was easy to imagine that in other circumstances the gunners on either side would get on brilliantly. But what Lawrence had done was rancid.
‘Why did you stop him?’ Kite asked.
Joe shook his head. ‘If you think any normal person can just watch something like that then your idea of the world is even more fucked than I thought. I’d have liked that tiger to eat him then and there.’ He hesitated. ‘Never been defended by a tiger before.’
Kite smiled. It was the most crystalline cheer, just the very first veneer of ice on the sea. ‘It’s your tobacco. She goes for it like catnip.’
‘Well. Make a fortune at the circus if machine work falls through.’
Kite laughed.
Joe lifted Kite’s pistol out of its holster and slid it under his own belt on the opposite side. Now was the time. He could just run. The marines still weren’t here. Kite would never be able to follow, not in this state. Dodge down one of those endless black side alleys and Kite would have no hope of finding him. Having no money wasn’t such a bad problem, especially at this time of night, when pubs were full and people were tipsy. It wasn’t like he was above going home with someone to have somewhere to wait out the frozen night, either. If all the fuss with Alice and Père Philippe had taught him anything, it was not to be precious.
He was just starting to get up when his entire soul cramped. His heart locked and he couldn’t breathe, never mind move, and everything in him was shrieking, as if he’d thrust his hand into a fire.
The second he stopped trying to leave, it eased. He stared at Kite, wondering what the hell they’d spoken about at the lighthouse that would have given him a reaction like that to trying to abandon the man.
‘Can you get up?’ Joe asked, stunned. His heart hurt, the strings inside the muscle structure all too tight still.
Kite hesitated, but then the two marines appeared from another building. They hurried across when they saw Kite and Joe. For the first time since Joe had met him, the slab-faced Drake looked genuinely worried. Maybe, Joe thought hopelessly, it was hard to leave Kite because Kite was just one of those magical people who made everyone love him.
Whatever the reason, the chance had come and gone.
Once Kite was standing, Joe eased his coat around his shoulders. Even the weight of the fabric made him hunch forward. Joe thought he was going to collapse, but Kite only waited and held his breath, then nodded. Joe glanced back at the marines, who looked anxious too, but not surprised. This must have been pretty standard practice for Lord Lawrence.
The cobbles on the sloping road were slick with frost now and, after Joe slipped, they all stepped up on to the high kerb that made a kind of platform for the heavy guns.
‘What’s Lawrence’s problem with you?’ Joe asked eventually.
‘He’s Agatha’s uncle. He considers it a personal affront that his brother’s widow married a carpenter from Cadiz.’ They were passing under the portcullis again. The road they had come up was too steeply downhill now to try and they went a different way, past inns and pubs and shut-up shops. Kite’s next breath rattled; between the bruises and the razor air, his lungs were struggling. ‘After my parents were killed at sea, Agatha wanted to come to England, but Lawrence wouldn’t take her in unless she left me behind. But she wouldn’t. We lived in Spain for about ten years before she was old enough to inherit her father’s money. We served in the navy there. When she did inherit, she moved us to London.’
Joe was quiet at first, because that was by far the most Kite had ever said to him in one go. He had a feeling it was the most Kite had ever said to anyone in one go. ‘If your dad’s from Cadiz,’ he asked at last, ‘how are you called Kite?’
‘It’s translated. Stupid to try and take an officer’s commission in England with a name like Milano. And nobody wants to alliterate.’
‘Oh.’ Joe turned that around in his mind for a while. ‘Where are we going? Not back to the ship.’
‘Yes back to the ship. I can’t leave them—’
‘Kite! Everything’s shot to hell, I’m not taking you back there.’ He looked at the marines for support. They shifted, uncomfortable, but he could see they thought going back was a bad idea too.
‘Everyone else is just as beaten up as us, Tournier—’
‘Everyone else doesn’t also have to be in charge, you moron,’ Joe snapped. Those strings in his heart were screwing tight again. ‘You won’t sit down, you’ll wander around being nice to people and then you’ll collapse and die, look at the state of you.’
‘This is normal—’
‘What you think is normal is right on the edge of dying.’ Joe sat down on a wall. ‘I’m not going back to the ship. Try and make me.’
‘I’ve got a gun and two marines,’ Kite pointed out, frowning. The two marines were hanging back, though, doing amazing work of looking like two random passers-by who had nothing to do with the argument. Even Drake didn’t seem willing to drag Joe anywhere this time.
‘Nope, I’ve got your gun, I took it off you at the chapel.’ Joe showed him, then lobbed it behind his own shoulder, where it clattered down steps and cobbles in the steep darkness. ‘Next?’
Kite’s expression opened out into real confusion. ‘That was loaded. Why didn’t you shoot me?’
‘Tried!’ Joe shouted at him. ‘Couldn’t, nearly gave myself a heart attack. Turns out I’m a good person.’
