steady any more. He was right on the edge of tears. ‘Bang your head on that third slat there and you’ll get JC stamped on your face. I can’t stop. It’s stupid.’
‘Don’t sound so surprised about it,’ said Kite, shocked. ‘Look at what’s happened to you.’
Jem had taken Kite’s hand and he was wringing his wrist, like a very soft schoolboy burn. He dropped it. ‘Jesus Christ. I’m never like this, I’m not – I’m not a coward—’
‘No one said you were—’
‘Not really my most manly hour, though, is it,’ Jem said tightly. His voice broke before he reached the end of the sentence. When he cried, it was silent, but Kite heard the fabric of his shirt move as he pressed both hands over his mouth.
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