Kit (11 page)

At nightfall, when the sky above Mantova had become a saffron glow, and the castle watched them with fiery eyes, Ross and his deputies quietly gave the orders to mount. Silently the horsemen filed from the undergrowth. Kit’s moon was there again, shining as if nothing was amiss, and as they walked the greys around the frill of the lake Kit looked down to the water and caught what she thought was a reflection in the corner of her eye, a brave red coat and a white blob for a face. She turned her head and looked more closely. What she saw there made her throw her leg over the pommel and slide to the ground. She waded into the shallows and dragged at the body, impossibly heavy and waterlogged. The effort made her fall back and sit heavily on the shingle. A tall shadow fell over them, and Ross’s voice spoke above her. ‘Mount your horse, Walsh,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘He’s long gone.’ For a moment she could not move. She sat on the hard, wet stones of the foreshore, breathing heavily, looking at the white, water-softened flesh, the open eyes translucent as the pebbles, the sodden uniform so like her own. ‘Walsh,’ said Ross, with an edge to his voice. ‘I order you. Would you endanger us all?’

As they rode on, Kit saw many more bodies – some half in, half out of the water, some in a grisly swirl of blood, some missing limbs or eyes. She forced herself to turn away, to breathe in the night, and to look towards Richard’s mountains and the jagged line of moonlit silver dawn that described their peaks.

She thought about those bodies all night, and the first man, the man she’d held. She’d recognised him. They’d been on
The Truth and Daylight
together, vomited from the storm, pissed down the heads, eaten the same maggoty biscuits. And because he’d not caught the eye of the Marshal de Pisare, because he’d marched a week ahead, he’d met the French and his death. He was chaff, as she was wheat. Kit thanked the Virgin – not Mary mother of God, but the wooden Virgin of Genova – that Richard was farther in and farther up and in the mountains.

As they progressed into the lakes and then to the mountains, the fairytale landscape took on the dark hellish shadows of conflict. Now the ugly face of war leered at her from all sides. As they rode, Kit saw burning villages, homeless, grubby families wandering the roads, who, upon meeting the dragoons, would bleat ‘
pane, pane
’ in unison like so many goats. They would stare with eyes blank with hunger, and hold out their hands in pleading supplication. Kit did not understand this word she heard so often, until Ross ordered the bannermen to give out the crusts from the bread wagons. These crusts, so hard they would break teeth, were devoured at once; and members of the same family would fight each other for the privilege of eating them. Again, Kit learned to turn her eyes away.

At sundown they reached the town of Villafranca. ‘City of the French,’ translated Ross grimly. ‘I hope we beat them here.’ But the first coats they glimpsed in the town were red. The better part of Gardiner’s company of foot from
The Truth and Daylight
had scattered themselves about the little town under the lengthening shadow of a crenellated red castle. As the dragoons rode up the main thoroughfare, they saw the windows and doors of the houses pushed open, with painted women lolling from the casements. One foot soldier stood against a wall with his whore, locked in an embrace like mating curs. Another openly fondled a woman’s naked breasts. Kit glanced at her commander but Captain Ross held his tongue, the muscles of his jaw quilting with the effort of silence. Gardiner’s men were carousing as if the day had been won; but their celebrations seemed curiously joyless. Ross kept his peace until they happened upon several foot soldiers drunk and wearing half a uniform. Ross stopped three of them in the street by merely holding up his hand; his pristine presence, together with the hundred horse at his back, sobered them abruptly. ‘Where’s your hat, soldier? And your friend’s coat? And this third fellow seems to be missing the full complement of boots. Taylor.’ The red-headed sergeant was at his elbow at once. ‘Put these men on a charge. You. Where is Lieutenant Gardiner?’

The hatless man, who seemed less jug-bitten than the others, said meekly, ‘Directing operations from the castle, Captain.’

Captain Ross nodded curtly. ‘Taylor, with me. Also Walsh, Ingoldsby, Irwin.’

Night was falling fast, and the advance party rode swiftly to the castle, skirting the disused moat. A horse stood at the brink of the trench, its lip curled back above yellow teeth, while a dame held it by the head collar, her apron thrown over her head, as if there was something she did not wish to see. A redcoat stood on the high bank, breeches by his ankles, his face working with pleasure, his hands holding the horse’s wiry tail high, his loins thrusting at the glossy hindparts.

Ross acted at once. He dismounted and clubbed the man on the back of his head with the stock of his musket, dropping him to the ground. ‘Taylor,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘when this man awakens he should find himself in irons.’ Then, without hesitation, he shot the horse through the temple, took a purse from his belt and handed the money to the dame under the apron. Kit had to use all her skill to stop Flint from bolting at the noise and the sight of the mountain of horseflesh collapsing to the pavings. Ross spurred his mare to the drawbridge and she followed, sick at heart. Maria van Lommen had left this most detestable sin out of her roll call of sexual peccadilloes, and Kit wondered to what hell she had descended.

In the red courts of the castle Ross found Mr Gardiner. The ensign was sprawled drunk at the base of a fountain, his coat open at the throat and one sleeve in the water. When he saw Captain Ross he lifted his hand out of the water and fluttered it at him, in a half-wave, raining droplets on his breeches. ‘We met the French at Mantova,’ he slurred. ‘They’ve taken the city. Made … made a mess of us.’

This was perhaps more of a shock to Kit than anything she’d seen – chilly, correct Mr Gardiner, who had been so insistent about decorum and cleanliness the day after the storm, could hardly stand. Kit formed, in that moment, a grudging respect for Captain Ross, standing tall and scornful, buttoned and buckled, eyes blazing, mouth hard. ‘Where is the marquis?’ Ross demanded.

‘Within.’ Gardiner waved towards the castle keep. ‘He is writing letters to command – to get us out of this. We are riding to the grave.’

Ross cast a quick look at the trinity of dragoons behind him. ‘Silence,’ he hissed. ‘Where is Tichborne stationed?’

‘Above Rovereto.’

‘Then we shall ride ahead. We do not care to share your billet.’

‘Drink to the regiment before you go?’ Gardiner raised his other hand, which held a bottle, and shook it enticingly at Ross in the manner of a nurse showing a babe its milk.

Kit could see that Ross would rather choke – but since his regiment’s name had been invoked he could not demur; he barely touched the flask to his lips before handing it back. ‘The queen,’ he said.

Gardiner doubled up with laughter. ‘The queen!’ He laughed harder, as if it was the best jape he had ever heard. ‘The queen!’ and he collapsed backwards, completely immersing himself in the fountain, still laughing. Kit wheeled her horse and followed Ross through the gatehouse, wondering what Gardiner could have seen in the space of a fortnight that changed him so.

Ross emerged with a face of stone from a very short conference with the marquis, and led his hundred horse right out of the town without a word. Kit took pride that the Scots Greys were a breed apart; that they would not share a billet with Gardiner’s disgraced men; that they were a cut above. Her one regret was the fare they might have enjoyed in Villafranca; the food in camp was no better than shipboard fare, and all of it dried for being on the road. There was no leisure to hunt and kill and cook, and Kit’s stomach grumbled for fresh meat. Oh, for a tender haunch, roasting and dripping and crackling! The venison mess in Maria’s house seemed very far away.

And so the Scots Greys rode on, day after day, and at some point in those weeks on the road Kit became one with her horse. She merely had to turn her shoulders in the direction she wanted to go for this will to be directed to Flint. The mare would stand still for mount and dismount, flick her ears backward when Kit talked to her on the road, and nuzzle the buttons of Kit’s coat, huffing and blowing and whickering with friendship. And Flint was no longer her only friend; the dragoons now knew her well enough to tease her – and she felt the balm of their teasing, for she knew it was a hand of friendship. Mr Morgan, the Welshman, was teased about his accent; Mr O’Connell, who was missing a tooth and made a whistling sound when he spoke, was called Whistler. Kit, who was ever twitted for her whiskerless cheeks and full lips, was called ‘the pretty dragoon’. It meant she belonged. Pretty she could leave aside; what she loved was that she was called a dragoon. But she took warning, too, in the name; and determined there and then that she should conceal her true age – as a girl she might look twenty, but as a boy with no whiskers on his cheek she elected that she would lose four years and claimed thereafter to be sixteen.

Growing up, she had felt a pride in being called pretty; but now she had new pleasures. She loved the long lean muscles in her legs and arms, she loved the calluses on her hands where she grasped the reins, she loved that her formerly soft white thighs were now as firm as marble and that her legs and seat no longer ached after a day’s ride. She had not seen her reflection since the silversmith’s house, but she knew she was certainly changing. She knew her hair was growing for her fringe fell in her eyes – there was nothing she could do about it on the road, but she pushed the heavy red locks to the side, and crammed them under her tricorn to keep them out of her eyes. Her back hair she sheared off, now and again, with her bayonet. She didn’t care if it curled unevenly, she just couldn’t afford for her creeping locks to steal down her collar and give her away. Even when trimmed, she wore the lengths in a pigtail down her back, greased with wax to darken the colour, and tied with twine into a neat queue. Ross, whose dark hair had also grown in a month on the road, did likewise, but with a velvet ribbon as his one remaining concession to vanity.

After many days’ ride, Kit noticed that the ground began to rise and the terrain about her changed. The flat lands had boiled and risen into looming peaks which looked fit to topple and crush them all. Vertiginous valleys cleft through the rock, and clustered villages and little onion-spired churches clung to the lofty summits. The slopes were hard on the horses and the dragoons made less and less progress every day.

One morning, just after dawn, they made their way through a deep gorge. All was silent as the new sun peeped over the high crags, and Kit felt a prickle on the back of her neck, a heightened awareness and an unshakeable feeling that they were being watched. She gazed up at the heights with awe and dread and fear suddenly throttled her. If the enemy was waiting and watching to fall upon them they were lobsters in a pot, for there was only one entrance to the gorge and no possibility of escape up the steep verges. The valley was too quiet, the sun stealing down the scree until their stony path was illuminated. But no birds sang, no creatures were warmed awake to scuttle underfoot. Ross looked about him constantly, alert and watchful. The gentle chatter of the men seemed too loud in this eerie place and Ross called for quiet. Kit looked up sharply as the Scots Greys fell silent. Ross pressed his grey onwards in haste to be gone from this place. Kit kept her eyes fixed on her commander – no matter how much she disliked Ross’s arrogance, she trusted his instincts.

But Flint was of a different mind; the mare reared suddenly and without warning, nearly knocking Kit from the saddle. Kit slapped her smartly with the folded reins, but the mare reared again and turned in a circle, blocking the mounts behind her. Kit pulled savagely on the reins, then realised that the mare was genuinely unsettled. Ross turned back, exasperated. ‘If you’re having trouble with your nag, Walsh, dismount and lead her. I’ve no wish to linger here.’

Kit slid from the saddle, gentling the mare with a hand to the velvet neck. The nap of Flint’s coat was on end, prickling with fear. Kit slipped the reins over the mare’s head and led her forward; but when the horse reached a certain thorny bush she would move no further.

‘Come
on
,’ barked Sergeant Taylor, from the vanguard; but Kit had seen something in the bush. She dropped Flint’s reins, went to the bush and parted the thorns, dreading what she might see. She could never have predicted what nestled there.

It was a baby, so small as to be almost newborn, and curled up asleep in the branches. ‘Mother Mary,’ she breathed.

Ross rode back. ‘What’s amiss?’

She leaned in and regarded the child; so small and sweet and soft. It seemed a pity to disturb such a peaceful sleep but the child was not swaddled and the dawn had the nip of approaching autumn. She had seen a church at the head of the valley – perhaps a priest could take the foundling. She poked the babe gently with one finger.

It was cold. With a rush of chill horror, she drew the child out. A grisly cord clung to its distended little stomach, and its back was covered in scratches from the thorns of the bush. It was quite, quite dead. Unable to speak, she held the child aloft. Ross stopped in his tracks; some of the men crossed themselves. Before the captain could gather himself to speak there was a shout from the van and the rear almost simultaneously. ‘Captain Ross, there’s another one here.’

‘And here.’

The second child was halfway up the scree – too high, it seemed, to have bothered the passing horses. The other was ahead of them, right in the middle of the path.

Ross shortened his reins. ‘Dismount,’ he ordered grimly. ‘Fan out, and search the valley top to bottom.’

They found five in the end, two girls and three boys; all newborns, all naked. They had not lived long enough to be dressed. No one had cared enough to swaddle them, or to push little limbs into fondly knitted sleeves. The dragoons laid them tenderly in a little sorry row. Some, like the child in the bush, seemed untouched – two were battered and bruised and one had his little head stove in.