‘Because it’s better for you that you don’t remember,’ she said, and squeezed Kite’s hand as he went by.
Kite froze as though the Empress had touched him. When he unfroze, his shoulders sank and he went down on his knee to kiss her hand, and Joe saw he wasn’t going to get a single word out of them now.
All through the night, the ship lifted and fell. In his hammock, Joe curled up under a blanket and someone else’s jacket, which Fred had found for him in the stores. There was a bullet hole in the lapel that made him suspect that the someone had died in it, but the air was so cold that he was just grateful for the extra layer. Now that he was lying down, the seasickness was gone. It was bliss.
Clay had turned off the lamps, but light spilled through the glass double doors from the deck. Shadows went to and fro outside, and voices called down from the quarterdeck – right above them now – and the topmen up in the rigging. It should have been hard to relax, but it was good to have other people in the room, and good to hear that the ship was always awake.
Just across from him, Kite slept like he’d collapsed and died, flat on his back, his hands resting on his breastbone. Joe felt envious, but then greatly to his own surprise, he fell asleep straight away. The motion of the ship gave him dreams of merry-go-rounds. It was the best night’s sleep he could remember.
19
Joe’s watches alternated between Fred Hathaway and, thankfully, Agatha, who made a point of stealing him to scrub down the infirmary if he ever began to take on too much of a Fred-overloaded look. Before long, the ever-shifting watch system made sense. Completely unexpectedly, he loved it. You did six or three hours, and then you passed out somewhere. Because it was nothing like as long as a normal working day, it was easy to push through. Even better, as his watches began to shift deeper into the night, the strict hierarchy of who was allowed to do what job loosened, and Fred decided it was about time Joe try his bulletproof cure for seasickness. It was steering the ship.
The rule was that someone woke you up fifteen minutes before your watch. If Joe was lucky, it was one of the older midshipmen, who just gave him a nudge and then vanished; if he wasn’t, it was Fred, who banged in and yelled his good mornings, even though there was nothing good about them, or, in the pitch-dark, anything especially morning-like. He would do it even if Kite was asleep, and he did on the day he bounced in to collect Joe for a navigation lesson.
Fred was lighting lamps. The fizz of the matches sounded loud in the quiet. Kite curled up tighter in the other hammock. Joe was sure he had only just fallen into it.
‘Fred, put those out, he’s trying to sleep,’ Joe whispered. ‘You oblivious little gosling.’
Fred gasped as if he’d hurt himself, but in fact it was a new burst of enthusiasm. ‘I know a goose joke! What do French geese say?’
‘Fred!’ Joe hissed.
Fred was busy writing on Kite’s logbook. When he held it up, it said, HONQUE.
Joe choked, because he hadn’t expected to laugh. ‘Right, good, mate, now fuck off before someone kills you and I’ll be out in a second.’
‘What,’ Fred said, ‘do Indian ducks call white ducks?’
Joe hauled himself up properly and went to see if there was any water left. Not only was there water in the kettle, it was hot, just boiled on Clay’s tiny stove; Kite must have put it on for them just before he went to bed. Joe glanced back at him, feeling much too grateful. Hot water wasn’t something he’d thought about at home, but it made a continent of difference at three in the morning. He made himself a cup of coffee. There was a lot of coffee on board; the free colonies in Jamaica supplied it. Sugar too; but no tea.
‘Go on then, what do Indian ducks call white ducks?’ he said, so that at least Fred wouldn’t reel off onto anything stranger.
Agatha looked around from behind the screen where the washbasin was, in case it was more spelling.
‘Quackers!’ Fred beamed.
‘We could leave you with the French,’ Agatha reflected. ‘It would be an experiment in mental warfare.’
‘Like when Le Monde published all that stuff the French did to Lord Wellington, with all the hot pincers and things, and then they sent four thousand copies to Edinburgh!’
Joe glanced at Agatha, wanting to ask if that was true. The part of him that was still raging decided that a dose of hot pincers would do Kite a universe of good.
‘Thank you for the light, Hathaway. Now wait outside,’ Agatha told him.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Fred said, and clattered off.
There wasn’t enough water on board for anyone to wash properly, and Joe was too seasick even to shave, so getting ready was just a matter of clambering into borrowed cold-weather gear by the light of Fred’s candles. There was a heavy, well-lined coat that was standard issue among the officers, and a safety harness that went on over the top, with sturdy clips that could fasten you to anything close by as the ship ducked and tipped.
The second Joe was ready, Fred, who had hung around just beyond the glass doors buzzing with impatience, seized his sleeve and pulled him out into the frozen night. At the prow, leaning on ropes just above the figurehead, sailors held out lamps over the water to spot anything dangerous in the sea.
Fred hurried him across the deck, too excited to keep quiet. When he was especially happy, he sang. He couldn’t sing. It was more like the droning noise Clay’s cat made if it wanted to be fed.
‘Mr Hathaway, there are
