to his word. We were kept in perfect isolation for that first week. I wasn’t worried for myself. It’s easy for a woman to pretend to be an idiot. I had a couple of hysterical fits at the guards, I made my handwriting childish, and I wrote like I’d never really thought of much except nice china, and no one seemed to think that was incredible.
But I was worried about the others. In the desk of the Kingdom’s map table, Charles’s designs for the lighthouse were tucked away for anyone to find – the architectural plans, and the specifications for the engine and generator. I spent most of the week trying and failing to remember if he had signed his name to them. I doubt the name Stevenson means anything to you, but the Stevensons are, in my time, an empire of engineers, and Charles’s particular speciality was lighthouses.
Even if Charles had not put his name to the plans, Herault would know that one of us was an engineer. Even in those first days, the possible consequences of divulging modern science to somebody a hundred years early were chilling. Any moron could have seen that, even then, in that silent, disbelieving, panicky first week.
Our fears were only confirmed when, seven days later, at exactly noon, the soldiers came to take us to the beautiful observatory again. Herault was there. The day before, his men had collected the papers we had written, and now, on the chalk board along one wall, he had written out a neat timeline, stretching from 1797 to 1891. He had used a ruler, even though the line was ten feet long, which I think tells you a lot about him. He had noted the significant things he had learned from our accounts. He had also labelled them with our names. I remember something about those labels made me uneasy, even before he explained why they were there.
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