Someone had carried Kite out of the room, but he was walking now, one sleeve bloody. It was just his shoulder. Joe ran to catch up, put his arm around him, and nudged away the marine who had been helping before.
‘Back to the ship in twos and threes,’ Kite said quietly.
They did as they were told. Within a few seconds, everyone had melted away in different directions. Kite pulled Joe into a side alley.
Joe snatched him close and breathed in against his hair. Kite was the only clean thing he’d been near all week, and he smelled perfect. Linen and gunpowder and tobacco – Joe’s own tobacco. He’d left it behind on Agamemnon.
It must have hurt, but Kite didn’t complain and only rested against his chest. For the first time since they’d met, Joe realised that Kite was smaller than him. He could put his head against Joe’s neck without stooping. He managed to make it feel like he needed the shelter a lot more than Joe did. It gave Joe a hot rush of protectiveness, and the second that arrived, he felt stronger and less lost.
‘Thank you,’ Joe managed.
‘Very little trouble, as it turns out,’ Kite said. He was alabaster from blood loss, and his hands were cold. ‘Right. You know the way north?’
Joe didn’t know what he’d expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. ‘You’re letting me go,’ he said stupidly.
‘Let you go, I can’t get rid of you. Do you know the way? Better not come with us, we’ll be chased all the way to Edinburgh.’
‘I – yes. I’m from round here.’ Joe nodded to the left, and then had to cough. His throat felt like emery paper. ‘But Kite. You know me. How? I’m going to forget anyway, you might as well … for God’s sake, this postcard, it’s from you, I don’t understand …’
It was hard to tell if Kite had heard. ‘I think I’m going to faint.’
‘You have to … you can’t know what it’s like, to have children,’ Joe said, begging now, though he wasn’t even sure what he was begging for. Not information any more. ‘Look – if you need me. I don’t know where I’ll be, but find the Psychical Society. They’re at Pont du Cam. Cambridge, I mean. That’s forever money, they’ll outlast any changes we’ve made here.’
Kite nodded, but Joe still couldn’t tell if he had understood. Joe was about to say he’d better take him back to the ship, but Drake, the marine, must have seen how bad the gunshot wound was, because he was coming back now, hurrying towards them through the alley.
‘Sir, are you …?’
Kite looked like he wanted to speak, but he buckled into Drake’s arms.
‘Don’t you dare run,’ Drake said to Joe.
Joe didn’t want to. But Kite was as safe as he was going to be and Lily might have been disappearing while he hesitated, and although the panic pressure that had always come with trying to leave was still strong, it wasn’t paralysing any more.
Joe managed to get to the porch of a church with no windows before he had to stop, the world gone too blurry for him to walk.
47
Eilean Mòr, 1807
When Joe let himself into the lighthouse, it was exactly as he’d left it. He had thought he was tired and hungry, but he couldn’t sit down. Instead he spent the next half-hour tidying, then cleaning the brine from the windows and easing heat into the engine to unfreeze the pipes, all the while feeling more and more urgent, because he knew he had to go back to the mainland, but he couldn’t stop.
But then there was nothing left to do. He stood with his hands against the wall where the heavy-weather gear hung, his head close enough to them to smell the wax on the nearest jacket. When he lost the circulation in his fingertips and they needled, he straightened up, put the gear on and started the howling walk to the tiny harbour.
He took a hammer and chisel with him to the stone gate in the sea. He wrote Alice and Lily. The dust spiralled away on the wind. He touched the first few letters of Madeline. And under Madeline, Jem. It was all there; he felt like he had all the pieces, but he couldn’t match them up. He was never going to know. It was too cold to stay standing there. He took as deep a breath as he could, then