then they had begun to see a ghost ship following them.
Jem had thought something odd was going on ashore as well, because when they passed ports, the lights were too few and too dim – but it wasn’t until half an hour ago that they had any idea that anything really strange had happened. Not until they realised the ghost ship wasn’t a ghost ship at all, but a French battleship trailing them. The French had fired when the Kingdom tried to pull away.
While he spoke, Jem studied Heecham’s office. His eyes caught on the lamps fixed between the tilting windows, on their uniforms, the papers on the desk. They were remarkable eyes, an earthy shade of bluish-green Kite had never seen before, and which he wouldn’t have expected on someone so foreign-looking. But Jem wasn’t foreign. His voice was as English as Oxford silverware.
‘But why did you think it was a ghost ship?’ Heecham demanded. He sounded furious, which was how he always sounded when he was rattled. ‘We’re in the middle of a war, man; you’re hardly more likely to see a ghost than the French! And what the bollocking hell was that ship? What were those waterwheels, how were you running on no sail?’
Jem showed no ire, nor impatience. He only looked like he would have sold his soul to be anywhere else. ‘May I ask what year it is?’
‘What?’ Heecham snapped.
‘Seventeen ninety-seven,’ Kite said, with a strange spinning feeling.
Jem nodded. He seemed calm, but it was oil on water. He was still shaking, even though the cabin was hot now. ‘Captain Heecham – we left Scotland in eighteen ninety-one. There is no war then. We all thought the French ship was a ghost ship because … because we don’t have sailing ships any more. Modern ships run on coal engines.’ He smiled a fraction. ‘I suspect I’m rather lost, gentlemen.’
There was a moment of entire stillness. The only motion was the swing of the lamps on the ceiling, and the tilt of the horizon beyond the windows. Heecham shifted his weight from foot to foot and huffed his breath out. He wanted to roar that it was all rubbish, Kite could see that accusation coiled up in his throat, but they had all seen the Kingdom. There was nothing like it anywhere in the world. Kite had heard of engines, but only ones which worked the pumps in mines. They didn’t power ships. And there was Jem himself; extremely English and somehow foreign all the same, dressed with Puritanical plainness all in black and white.
‘Well,’ Heecham said finally. He seemed to deflate. ‘We are making now for Southampton, where, if you stick to this story, the Admiralty shall wish to speak to you in detail. In the meantime, Mr Castlereagh, you must consider yourself our guest.’
‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’ Jem sounded mechanical. Kite brushed his shoulder, worried he might be about to faint. He didn’t faint, but he caught Kite’s knuckles and squeezed them as hard as someone in the middle of an amputation might have. His skin was freezing, despite the brazier beside him. He was going into shock. Kite edged the brazier closer with the toe of his boot.
‘How is this even possible?’ Jem said softly, to all of them.
‘The fog, perhaps. Something eerie about it. One always hears stories.’ Heecham had turned angry again. Jem flinched. Kite tried to communicate only with his fingertips that there was nothing to worry about there, that Heecham wasn’t angry with him, only his own ignorance.
Everyone was quiet. The sounds of the deck came down to them; the thumps of footsteps, muted from the seamen who went barefoot, sharp from officers’ boot heels. Kite could feel the rudder pulling to one side as the helmsman steered away from shore.
Heecham sighed. ‘Tom,’ he said to the first mate, ‘get us back on course to Southampton.’
For the first time, Jem really seemed to hear what was being said. He frowned, and sat forward. Kite saw everything in him sharpen. It must have been a prodigious effort of will. ‘I beg your pardon, captain, but you must follow my ship. It wasn’t destroyed, I saw. They just blasted off one of the waterwheels, they were going aboard with grappling hooks. You must get it back. If those people—’
‘The French,’ Heecham corrected him. He didn’t count Frenchmen as people.
‘If they got the Kingdom in anything like one piece, they could back-engineer the machinery. And if they got the engineers alive—’