Joe nodded. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he managed, though that seemed amazingly unlikely. He was sure she was lying about the infirmary being safe. The hull was thick here, but he had seen those crates of chain shot when he went below to Clay’s room. They would slice through any thickness of wood in the same way a hot knife was never going to be defeated by even gallons of butter. ‘You should see the accidents we have in the engine yard.’
She clapped his shoulder. ‘Good. Your main job is not to have hysterics. You’ll do wonderfully.’
Above them, the guns thundered, and the wooden ceiling squealed its protest.
There was an almighty crash. In a second of perfect silence, he heard Kite’s voice call clear and calm at the officers to walk and not run.
Men burst through the door, torn to ribbons. Agatha lifted someone on to a table and told everyone what to do, in the tone she would have given directions to the post office. She had a knack for making it normal. Alfie, the little boy with the sand bucket, showed Joe how to tie a tourniquet. All of Joe’s nerves were shrieking to get such a tiny child away from everything, but there was no away to get to.
He soon realised Alfie was working on the safe side of things. Not long later, the first children were brought down, the ones who worked feeding powder to the guns. They were as wrecked as the men and women. One girl observed politely that her arm seemed to be missing and would he mind cauterising the wound so she could get back up to where she was needed while the shock was still a good anaesthetic. He started to argue, but Agatha took over, did exactly as the girl asked and then sent her back up with an approving shove.
Joe stared at the ladder where she’d disappeared. He had never heard people talk like that, not even slaves with the nastiest masters and the blackest humour.
As people poured in he caught scraps of news. There had been a direct hit to the gun deck; a cannon had exploded, powder and all. The French were raking the quarterdeck with chain shot and Kite was immortal, as usual. It was hard to hear over the noise of the guns and before long he stopped trying. He didn’t have to care. All he had to do was live through the next twenty minutes.
Vane, the man who’d been declared Cock of the Week, swung round the doorway.
‘Doctor! There’s men in the water, we’re bringing them up but they’re burned, I don’t think we can get them down here.’
‘I’m coming.’ Agatha caught his shoulder when he started away again. ‘You stay down here, you know how to sew, don’t you? Joe, you’re tall. Come with me, there’s going to be some lifting.’ She snatched up a gun and took the ladder at a run.
Joe went after her automatically before he understood what they would be walking into. The noise was worse up the hatchway ladder and everything was smoke.Agatha snatched him out of the way as a gun shot backward, almost right into them, more than a ton of fizzing hot iron. The noise made his ears sing and he couldn’t hear anything for ten long seconds, although he saw the ghosts of other guns sling back too, six feet, eight, gunners jolting away from them the second the fuses were lit. In the haze were tiny floating embers, just drifting; they were burning rags of cloth and human hair.
Under all of it, the deck heeled insanely as the ship turned what must have been a clear right angle towards the harbour. Somewhere, a drumbeat kept the gunners loading in time. It was the nearest he had been to hell, and the most grateful he had been to find a ladder that led up into open air. But even the top deck was smoke-hidden. The masts and the men were only partly there, and all there was to confirm that they were real were the officers’ orders, the howls, and the terrible drums.
Agatha tugged him. He had no idea how she knew where she was going, but just along from them were men propped against the side. They were soaking wet but covered in burns.
There was a collective yell from somewhere below, and the Union flag floated down just past Joe, the edges orange and burning. A midshipman tore by and snatched the flag, and ran to climb a rope. He managed to fix it back up, but a sniper shot slung him backwards.
The smoke cleared just enough for him to catch a glimpse of the quarterdeck. Kite was standing at the rail, unmoving even though it was him the French snipers were aiming for. He wasn’t there for any pressing reason – it was too loud to shout to the gunners – only to see that they were going in the right direction and what the French were doing. He didn’t move when the railing beside him exploded upward. Other people were looking at him too, to see if it was time to panic yet. Joe wanted to shout at them that Kite was never going to panic.
Agatha tapped his arm and nodded downwards to make him help with the first of the burned men. She could have carried them on the flat, but not down the hatchway. They straightened up together, carefully with the man between them.
‘It’s nothing to fuss about, doctor,’ the man was trying to say. ‘I had a good dousing, the sea put me out.’
‘I think we’ll have to see about that downstairs, sailor. Joe, take him.’
‘Where are you going?’ Joe asked, really afraid now. Somehow it had been all right while he was with her, but even
