He looked pleased, and told us we had done well. It sounds cowardly, but I was relieved, even to the point of joy, that he wasn’t angry. One wants to imagine one would be staunchly impervious to feelings of one’s gaoler, but I’ll tell you now, that’s a fairy tale we tell to children to keep them brave. The feelings of one’s gaoler become more important than the feelings of God, given that he has a rather more immediate control over one’s fate than does the Almighty.
He motioned to the timeline.
An alarming amount was marked on. It was all in English. His English is immaculate.
Circa 1820, ascension of Queen Victoria
Circa 1830, first steam railways; method of mass transportation, run on coal combustion and hydraulics.
Circa 1850, advent of large ocean ‘liners’; ships with steam engines and capacity of 1000s.
Circa 1860, advent of the London Underground.
Circa 1870, invention of the ‘telegram’, a long-distance method of communication via wires.
Most of those bore Charles’s name. When I looked at him, he was staring at his shoes. He was plainly on the edge of weeping. I never liked him – men who have to show you all the time how much they know about everything are always tedious – but just then, I understood that it wasn’t a trait that he could help, any more than the length of his arms or the colour of his eyes. I tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t lift his head.
‘As you can see,’ Herault said, ‘much of this came from the excellent Monsieur Stevenson here. So, particular thanks are due.’ He shook Charles’s hand. Charles looked like he wanted to die. ‘Monsieur Stevenson will therefore be given a well-earned reward. He shall have full rations this week. The rest of you will subsist on one meal a day of barley bread and water.’
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.
