from the dampness steaming off them. Every set of bedding and every hammock was occupied. Some people had made tables out of old planks and kegs. There were men playing dominoes, cards, dice, but mostly, they were making things. Tiny boxes were taking shape by the candlelight, and over the low murmur of talk was the rasp of files on wood. Right next to Joe, a man was arranging single strands of straw into a perfect picture of the castle, piece by meticulous piece.
Joe took a step away from the door and almost fell over a boy who had been sitting just behind it. He was holding a chisel. Joe thought he had been trying to chip at the hinge and escape, but he was just carving a picture in the oak. It was a ship, with three masts. He was putting on the rigging now.
‘That’s good,’ Joe said numbly in French.
The boy’s eyes ticked over Joe, quick and nervous. Joe was still covered – sprayed – in blood that had dried to butchery brown.
Not knowing what else to do, he eased his way through, in the small hope of reaching the fire. No one paid him any attention as he stepped between the pallets. He had to go down on his hands and knees to get below a cluster of hammocks where seven or eight men were playing cards. When he came up again, a splash of warm water hit his arm from the laundry tub where two boys were struggling with too heavy a load. Someone else told them to watch it.
The closer to the fire he came, the more the air smelled of people and stale straw, and fresh wood, and the closer the men were packed. He got within sight of the grate but no further. Next to him, a man in ordinary, clean clothes was explaining to somebody that he would like the box to be six inches wide, with an inlay of flowers in the lid, particularly irises, which were his wife’s favourite. The prisoner he was talking to nodded carefully, but paused over irises and asked with a heavy French accent what that was. The Englishman looked at a loss, so Joe chipped in and explained, and then watched as the Englishman handed over a canvas bag of wood, a tiny jar of lacquer, and six heavy silver coins. He and the Frenchman shook hands, and then he slipped away back the difficult way Joe had come, looking pleased.
‘Damn sight cheaper for people to buy from us than craftsmen with shops and rent in town,’ the French carpenter explained. He gave Joe the same anxious look the boy had, then pointed behind himself, to where five others were making an exquisite model of a battleship. Someone was painting its unicorn figurehead. ‘For the King,’ the carpenter said, with a touch of pride. ‘We’ll have six pounds for it. Six! We shall be able to set up nicely, once we’re out.’
Joe sank down on his knees to watch them work until his knee hurt and he noticed he was kneeling on strands of straw. He brushed them aside. Someone else picked them up and added them to a carefully arranged sheaf, and climbed away again.
Now that he wasn’t panicking or busy, he began to feel how cold and tired he really was, and how filthy, and how all the muscles down his back and stomach hurt. There wasn’t room to do anything but lean slowly forward to shift his weight. He wanted to look at his watch to see how much time there was left before Kite’s hour was up, but he wasn’t so tired that he couldn’t recognise what a silly idea it would be to take out a modern pocket watch in front of a whole room full of people who scraped half a living from the arrangement of scavenged straw.
Kite was going to leave him here. The Admiralty would want engines, ironclads, machine guns. Kite would be telling them now that it was all possible, and Joe would be here until he agreed to do exactly what they wanted. No; even after. There was every chance he was going to be here for years.
The corner of Madeline’s letter prodded his hip. Joe took it out slowly. At least he wasn’t at sea any more; at least he could read. He found his place. The Kingdoms had arrived at that half-abandoned mansion, and Herault had given them their orders.