afraid that’s out of our hands now. We have no means of chasing them in fog.’
Jem looked between them all. ‘Did you say seventeen ninety-seven before?’
‘Yes—’
‘In eight years,’ he said, intense now, ‘this navy is going to fight a battle that decides the fate of England. It will be at a place called Trafalgar. It stops a French invasion. But the engineers and sailors aboard the Kingdom know that, and I imagine someone will make them talk. You have to get the Kingdom back, or you will lose England in eight years.’
There was a little silence. Jem had the most incredible voice, strong as a singer’s and low from smoking, unwavering even though Heecham had turned puce.
‘Whatever the truth of that,’ Heecham said, dangerously quiet now, ‘I am the commander here, and I tell you it is not in my power to follow anybody in this fog.’ He stabbed his finger at the window, where the fog coiled. ‘We would run aground, sir, unless you have some wonderful fog-penetrating device about your person we might utilise?’
‘I am as you find me,’ Jem said, still and calm, and resigned. But the sharpness hadn’t gone from him. Kite started to suspect he might be very, very clever. The suspicion made him uncomfortable. It would have been easier to believe a stupid person without the imagination to lie.
Heecham seemed to be thinking the same, because he was staring at Jem hard now. ‘Lieutenant Kite will look after you. These other gentlemen and I will endeavour to think of a way to explain all this to the Admiralty in a manner that does not sound like insanity.’
Kite sketched a bow and waited at the door for Jem, who looked much more aristocratic than he should have been able to in Kite’s jacket. As they passed out into the fog again, Jem looked back towards the land, where the French ship and his own had disappeared, his teeth set.
Within a couple of days, Jem proved himself to be sharp as a pin. The sailors, fascinated with him, taught him knots, and he learned so fast he overtook half of them. He managed to get someone to explain how everything worked, every pulley and line, and soon he even had a copy of the lieutenants’ exam book and a notebook full of problems from it that he’d solved already. Kite watched him and said nothing, but he noticed the attention, and Jem’s unfailing affability with the men. If the French were going to get a spy aboard, they couldn’t have chosen someone more charming.
Only, there were a thousand less ridiculous ways to get a spy aboard an English ship. Anyone could sign up. There were plenty of Frenchmen in English service. Officers were tied to particular countries, but sailors were freelancers. They could serve in whatever navy they liked and most of the career men did just that.
Kite started to wonder if the only real explanation wasn’t the one right in front of him: that Jem was an extremely well-educated man from the future who had found himself, by some means or other, stuck in the past, and now was doing his utmost to survive life on a warship.
On the morning they were due to reach Southampton, Kite woke up at half past five, half an hour before his watch, to find Jem pressed flat against his chest, his fingers clenched over Kite’s sleeve. Kite undid them as gently as he could, but Jem still jumped.
‘Ah … good morning?’ Kite ventured.
Jem shook his head. Kite heard the vertebrae in his neck grind. ‘I’m sorry. I’m – I woke up, I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
‘It’s all right,’ Kite said, not sure how he could possibly look like a solution to that problem. He did not have a reassuring face.
Spray and cold air came down through the open hatch. Everyone agreed they’d rather be damp and breathing than dry and suffocating. Opposite them in the other bunk, the second mate was dead asleep despite being rained on, still in his jacket and coat after the midnight-till-three watch. He was barely an outline in the dark; even with the hatch open, the cabin was always pitch-black at night.
Jem sat up as much as it was possible to, his back against the bulkhead and his weight on his tailbone. It was a tiny space, though, and he had to bridge his knees over Kite. ‘I keep etching my initials on everything.’ His voice wasn’t