nodded to say he would wait, but Jem pulled him up by his elbow.
‘And you,’ he said.
‘But they don’t want to see m—’
Jem was already steering him down the corridor. ‘Hurry up, don’t keep the nice admiral waiting.’
So Kite followed them inside and tucked himself in an unobtrusive corner, but it wasn’t unobtrusive enough. The Lords of the Admiralty rotated between ports, and the gentleman behind the desk now was Lord Lawrence. Kite kept his eyes down, but he could feel Lawrence looking at him in the way most people looked at a hair in their dinner.
Lawrence was fully capable of throwing Jem in prison for espionage just to grind Kite under his fashionably high heel. But it was too late to warn Jem.
If Jem found lords of the Admiralty intimidating, or the cavernous office with its frescoed ceiling and leather-topped desk, he didn’t show it. He sat in the uncomfortable chair Lawrence pointed to, and smiled when Lawrence’s tiger cub came to investigate him. There was no sign of his nervousness from before.
Lawrence asked all the questions he must just have asked of Heecham. Where had Jem sailed from, what was the year, did he know anything of history that they might verify – Jem had thought of plenty now – and whether Jem had a profession. Kite thought he sounded brusque, even for him. He wished he’d never come in. He was rubbing off on Jem like mud.
‘Profession – not really,’ Jem said. ‘I sit in the House of Lords and interfere with other people’s professions.’
Kite looked across incredulously, wanting to ask how he’d managed to keep that under his hat on Defiance, and why. Heecham would have believed him instantly if he’d known.
Lawrence lit up. Kite saw him shift his grip on his wine glass, from the stem right to the base; someone must have told him it was more gentlemanly to hold the base. Kite hoped he spilled it.
Jem seemed to see at last that they were all surprised. He must have assumed they didn’t believe him, because he reeled off his lineage to four generations. There was a duchess and two governors of India.
Lawrence softened instantly. ‘Why didn’t you say so? That casts things in a different light.’
‘Does it?’ said Jem.
‘I can hardly go around doubting a peer of the realm, sir.’
‘Can you not? I do it regularly,’ Jem said, and if there had been one atom of doubt before, it vanished now. He had to be who he said he was, or he wouldn’t be talking to Lawrence like this, like he was nothing special and this room was on the poky side of ordinary.
All of Kite’s organs shrank inwards. They’d shoved Jem into bunks with the lieutenants. He should have had Heecham’s stateroom.
Lawrence laughed. ‘Well,’ he said again, more finally. ‘This is rather a difficult situation. I cannot simply let you go into the wider world; the French know, by now, that you exist – your shipmates aboard the Kingdom will have told them – and that you are with us, telling us useful things, just as your fellow Kingdoms will be telling the French useful things. There will be a price on your head. However, I do not wish to imprison you either. Would you be willing to enter naval service? At lieutenant. On the proviso that you inform us immediately of anything that might possibly help the war effort.’
Kite shifted, excruciated. Lawrence’s rank had gone to his head. It would have made more sense to shackle a racehorse to a milk cart.
Jem, astonishingly, looked relieved. ‘Delighted.’ He glanced back at Kite. ‘I was wondering how I should make a living here.’
Lawrence nodded. ‘Captain Heecham here tells me that the entire crew of Defiance witnessed the Kingdom’s pursuit and capture by the French. That is most unfortunate. Officers, of course, are bound by strict laws and may be trusted to keep secrets, but the men move freely from ship to ship, and indeed from fleet to fleet; some of your current crew will assuredly be working for the French or Spanish sooner or later. We’ve haemorrhaged men ever since the French banned flogging.’ He was speaking more to Heecham now. ‘We must therefore take measures to ensure that this does not happen.’ His eyes came back to Jem. ‘Which leaves you with a responsibility to take every measure to ensure your own safety. You must come up with some kind of history for yourself. I suggest you name a sufficiently distant, obscure