Kite caught his arm. For the first time, he was certain that none of it was made up. He’d never seen a person in so much distress and trying so hard not to be.
‘Jem, I don’t know what things are like where you’re from, but this is the navy. People get nervous. We’re experts in nervous, we invent nervous problems. Battle fatigue, cabin fever, we’re all wrecks. Christ’s sake, you’re a hundred years lost. It is all a bit trying.’
‘I suppose.’ When he was unhappy, Jem turned even better-spoken than usual, until there was so much cut glass in his voice that speaking to him was more like trying to talk to a chandelier than a person.
Kite rubbed his elbow. ‘I’ve had a distressing thought and if it’s right, we can’t be associated any more. I do have my honour to uphold.’
‘What?’ Jem whispered.
‘You show, sir, every unfortunate symptom of being from the army.’
Jem laughed like he hadn’t expected to and then hugged him, hard. Jem was taller and stronger, and for the first time in Kite’s adult life he couldn’t have got away even if he’d wanted to. It gave him a deep bolt of alarm. But then he saw that what Jem needed more than anything was control over something, even if it was just whether or not a signal lieutenant got out of bed on time.
As it turned out, there was nothing for the watch officers to do; the Solent was calm and it would take hours to get into Southampton, because there was construction work in the harbour and they’d have to wait for someone to free up a docking space. So Kite took Jem up to the officers’ mess for breakfast, where Heecham’s secretary was showing a gaggle of fascinated midshipmen how to tattoo a stretch of pigskin. When someone herded them off to oversee some sailors cleaning, Jem took the needle himself and traced out fine clear lines. It was the lighthouse the architects had meant to build in Scotland. It was beautiful; he could really draw. Kite said so.
‘Spend my life looking at architectural plans,’ Jem said ruefully. For the fourth or fifth time, he glanced at the window, checking where they were. They hadn’t moved. He must have been going mad. No one had said what would happen to him when they arrived, except that Heecham would talk to the Admiralty. That sounded ominous even to Kite. There was every chance the Admiralty would declare Jem a fraud, the crew hysterical en masse, and shove Jem out into the street with nowhere to go. Or worse, into a military prison.
Kite nudged him. ‘Put that on me.’
Jem looked round at him. ‘What?’
‘It’s good.’
Jem leaned down a little to catch Kite’s eye and make sure he meant it, then held a match to the needle to clean it and turned back Kite’s sleeve. It didn’t hurt, and Jem did it even better than he had the first time, all razor lines and precise angles, and strange places where stairways went nowhere and something coiled in the sea.
‘God’s sake,’ Heecham growled in passing. ‘Tattoos on officers, I should demote you …’
‘It was a psychological emergency,’ Jem explained, looking guilty.
‘The bloody hell are you doing having psychological emergencies on your watch, Kite? Get the arsing topsails sorted out.’ Heecham peered over his shoulder. ‘Though I have to say that’s very good.’
18
HMS
Agamemnon
, 1807
When Kite had finished, he looked at Agatha. He hadn’t spoken for long – there had been a future ship, the French shot at it and took it, the English saved a man called Jem, all as factual as an official report – but he was asking if he could stop now. He had his hand clamped over the tattoo. There was a long quiet, filled only by the click of the coals in the brazier and the squeak of the dim safety lamps.
‘Why did you tell me that?’ Joe asked at last. ‘Was I one of the others on that ship?’
The man who waited by the sea. It would be very, very good to have a name for him. If it was Jem – that would be something. Madeline had faded from his mind’s eye, but that lonely figure by the water was something different. He couldn’t see him well, but he could feel him, as distinct as if the man had only just left the room.
Agatha was sitting back from him. ‘No. No, it’s nothing to do with you.’
Joe wanted to explode. ‘But then why—’
‘Enough,’ Kite said. He sounded normal, but his hand shook when he set down the wine. When he saw Joe notice, he shot him a flat stare that invited Joe to call it anything other than an injury tremor and see where it got him. Joe dropped his eyes. ‘I need to get some sleep.’
‘We’d better turn in too,’ Agatha told Joe. She sounded hollow.
‘What happened to the Kingdom?’ Joe demanded. He was nearly choking. ‘Where is Jem now? Can I talk to him?’
‘No, he’s dead,’ Agatha said. She was twisting her ring finger. ‘I told you.’
Joe felt dim. Jem Castlereagh; she was Mrs Castlereagh. ‘Jem was your husband? But you said …’
That Kite had killed him.
Kite ignored him. ‘The Kingdom was never recovered. It’s nothing to do with you,’ he said again, and this time, Agatha didn’t argue. She’d given up on whatever she had wanted, before. She was sitting straight and brittle, and it looked like only an iron effort of will that was keeping the tears underneath her eyelashes, not falling. Joe had never seen anyone fight so hard not to cry. He couldn’t tell if she was fighting because she didn’t want him to see, or if she couldn’t stand the idea of showing that weakness in front of her brother. He wanted to say she had a pretty good grip on her brother.
‘Why won’t
