Kit (15 page)

‘They will come tomorrow.’

‘Of
course
they will come.’

One by one they slept, bundled together once more; but Kit, afraid of her sleeping self, stayed awake. The fire died and her head dropped – until, through her half-closed eyes, a flame ignited once again, far below, drew closer, flaring and flickering. A horseman on the path below, the torch he carried lighting him like a link-boy. He wore a red coat.

Kit woke the captain first, and he and all the others stumbled to their feet. ‘Muskets to shoulder,’ commanded Ross.

Kit, heart thudding, drew behind the tall captain, and took aim at the approaching horsemen with the rest. She was so sure that this was going to be Richard that she began to panic that one of the dragoons would loose a careless musket ball, and kill her husband. But as the outrider came closer, the dragoons lowered their muskets at a word. It was not Richard.

But, curiously, it was someone she recognised. Sure now that she was still dreaming, she waited calmly for the rider to say the name that she knew.

The horseman reined his mount, the horse rearing a little and dancing on the icy path. ‘Captain Ross?’ he said. ‘I am Captain Kavanagh. I am charged to bring you to Captain Tichborne.’

It was Padraic Kavanagh – the cousin she had known as a tow-haired lad who visited the farm, and followed her uniformed father around with dog-eyed admiration, and who, as soon as he was old enough, enlisted for the army. As she mounted Flint and fell in behind Ross, listening to him recount their adventures, with all the wonderful, dangerous confidence back in his voice, she wrestled with a dilemma. Should she reveal herself to Paddy; invoke their childhood friendship and beg his help to find Richard? Or by revealing herself, would she sabotage her own search, having come so far? The choice was taken from her, for Ross’s tale had reached the events at the monastery. With the same dread and excitement with which she had watched the approaching rider, she heard him say, ‘… and then Mr Walsh here cut the bell.’ She felt Kavanagh’s gaze settle upon her, in the light of his torch, and raised her eyes to his face. But the blond captain turned back at once to Ross without a flicker of recognition. ‘Well, your Mr Walsh acted wisely, for the dastardly French are stationing many of these clandestine pockets of men in the mountains.’

Kit heard no more. Her cousin had seen her face, and did not know her. She was now truly a different person, not because of her changed clothes, but because of what she had seen on the mountain.

And now says the sergeant, I’ll have no such chat …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

As the Scots Grey Dragoons rode into Rovereto, Kit barely noticed the pretty church, or the painted houses with their flowered window boxes. A huge crowd had gathered in the principal square and were baying like a pack of curs.

Ross halted the company while Captain Kavanagh went to seek Captain Tichborne, and Kit scrutinised the hungry, rapacious faces, made ugly and pinched with cold. Some sort of punishment seemed to be taking place.

Beside her, Mr Van-Dedan, a trumpeter who had a smattering of Savoyard, leant from his saddle to converse with a local burgher. He straightened up to tell Kit his findings. ‘Vell, Mr Valsh,’ he lisped in his Hollander accent. ‘It seems that a local lady has committed adultery with a neighbour. She is to be put into a turning stool.’

In the middle of the square a strange contraption sat like a monstrous spinning top. Wrought of wood, the machine looked well used. Before it, like savages dancing before their God, a motley collection of players was gathered and two of their number mimed a variety of the copulatory acts.

At the height of their drama a woman was led from the crowd; she was an ordinary lady of middle years, not notably handsome or voluptuous. She did not look like a strumpet, nor did she look like a dangerous felon, yet she was bound hand and foot and obliged to shuffle forth to her penance. At her appearance the crowd bayed louder, rattling the cookpots and pans they had brought with them. Some struck their vessels with wooden spoons in a deafening kitchen cacophony that would almost have rivalled the battery of the dragoons.

Now a little gate was opened in the railings of the machine, and the lady was pushed inside and forced to sit on a stool. Two burly townsmen began to tug on two heavy hempen ropes, and the round cage began to spin like a child’s top. The unfortunate woman gripped the seat of her wooden stool as the heavy grey sky began to snow, tiny flakes falling like ash. She cried out as the contraption began to spin faster and faster, her face thrown against the wooden railings from the force of each turn, her skirts bellying and snapping like sails. She groaned as she emptied her stomach; her vomit spraying about her like a Catherine wheel as the crowd squealed and sprung back in delight. By now the woman had fallen, collapsed between the stool and the railings. Her flesh had a greenish tinge, her skirt was rucked up to show her smallclothes and a shadow of dark hair. One breast had fallen from her bodice. Still she turned, her humiliation complete.

Despite all she had seen in the last several days, Kit almost had to look away. She relived again the night she had spent in Ross’s arms; oh yes – it had been innocent and chaste; how could it be otherwise? She had been as close on her left side to another fellow as she had been to Ross on her right, Ross thought she was a boy; and yet, and yet. She, a married woman, had spent the night in another man’s embrace, just like this adulteress. Chastened, she swore that she would dedicate her every moment to finding Richard. Eighty days since she last laid eyes on him. It was enough.

Kit turned to Van-Dedan.

‘Which is her seducer?’

The trumpeter pointed. ‘There he sits.’

The man was a scrawny specimen with thinning hair, who sat a little distance away, unable to watch, his feet in a pair of stocks and his head in his hands.

Kit snorted. ‘He comes off easy.’

She watched as the adulteress was released from the machine, to collapse immediately to the floor. She was gathered up by a group of women from the crowd, who were pelted with rotten vegetables for their pains. Kit refrained from any further comment, for she could see that most of the dragoons considered this good sport.

‘Hmmm,’ said Van-Dedan, watching the sorry stumbling figure. ‘She will not find a husband now.’

‘Wait – she is unmarried?’

‘Yes. He is the one who is wed.’

‘And yet
she
is the adulteress?’

The trumpeter shrugged, his attention elsewhere; Ross was back in the square with Captain Kavanagh and another captain in tow. Kit fixed her eyes on the little man walking in Ross’s wake – this must be Captain Tichborne, Richard’s commander. Richard was here in Rovereto!

The dragoons rode in a swirl of snow to an ancient covered market with a timbered roof. Ross rode ahead with the officers, and Kit sensed, with a plunging heart, that she had been merely a distraction along the road, in preference to the crude society of Sergeant Taylor. Now better company was at hand. Ross was to dine and sleep with Tichborne, Kavanagh, the errant Gardiner, who, despite his transgressions in Villafranca, had beaten them there, and a new addition to their company.

A field surgeon by the name of Atticus Lambe, lately come from London in the company of the legendary Marlborough himself, stood a little apart – he was a chilly fellow with a young face but silvering hair, a tailcoat of greenish black Shadwell, and pince-nez set upon his nose. Mr Lambe gravitated at once towards Captain Ross and the two were soon deep in conversation.
Another educated man
, thought Kit with a curl of her lip; and wondered how long the surgeon would have lasted on the mountain. Then she scolded herself – she did not need Ross’s friendship any more; for she now had a task in hand. Having secured her tick and bolster in the old covered market, collected her rations from the quartermaster, and her pay from Tichborne’s ensign, she had a full belly, her pay in her pocket and was ready for the evening. This time she
would
go out on the town like the others. Most certainly. But she would be going to find Richard.

Rovereto was a very pretty mountain town, and in the benign evening it was hard to believe that they had had such an ugly introduction to the place. Though it was bitterly cold, candlelight streamed welcomingly from windows, and music could be heard leaking from the shutters of the taverns and eating-houses as the soldiers rid themselves of their pay. At every corner and in every red coat she passed, Kit expected to see Richard’s sweet and shining face, and she trembled with cold and anticipation, but as the night wore on her hopes began to fade. Rovereto was a labyrinth of streets, and Kit found herself wandering aimlessly, afraid to take the plunge into the noise and light of the taverns. But as the bells reproachfully chimed the quarters, chiding her, she took a breath and opened the studded doors of a tavern called the San Maurizio.

Through the candle smoke and the red coats of the company of foot, Kit spotted two fellow dragoons. Mr O’Connell and Mr Southcott were a couple of jorums ahead of her, and were happy to toast their ‘pretty dragoon’. She took it well enough, and stood the two gentlemen another round, but took her tankard to a neighbouring table, where some of Tichborne’s men were drinking. Kit toasted the company of foot, then asked whether anyone had seen or heard of her brother.

‘Richard Walsh,’ said one, downing his tot. ‘I think I remember him.’ Kit’s heart beat slow and painfully. ‘’Nother jigger might jog me memory.’

Kit raised her hand for another bottle and poured it round. ‘Yes,’ said the fellow, licking his lips. ‘Blond fellow. Short. Lazy eye.’

Kit, sighing, got up and moved to the next table. There she heard that although no one knew of a Private Richard Walsh, there was a gang of Irish boys who had formed their own little unit. ‘Regular band of brothers,’ said one. ‘Good little sappers. Tichborne left them at Cremona to dig a tunnel under the barbican.’

Kit’s spirits plummeted. ‘Where is Cremona?’ she asked.

‘Good bit down the river,’ said the first fellow. ‘Two days’ march.’ Kit gulped down her drink. How was she to find Richard if he’d broken from the main company? She could not tramp around the countryside as she pleased, and to desert would expose her to dreadful punishments.

‘You’re wrong,’ said the second redcoat. ‘Tichborne took the Irish up the castle above the town.’ This sounded more hopeful, but the foot soldiers did not seem certain and began to argue among themselves, about Cremona, the castle, Marlborough, and a jumble of other unfamiliar names.

Kit emptied her tankard, and rose unsteadily, for she’d had to drink a skinful in the course of enquiry. She walked unsteadily to the door and had just laid her hand on the latch when she felt a tap on her epaulette. ‘I say, horseman.’ She turned to see the small rat-faced foot soldier she’d seen at the first table. ‘Try the Gasthof by the church. Lots of the Irish lads drink there. Turn left out the door, and up the hill.’

She thanked him, opened the door into the night, breathed in the sobering cold, turned left into a narrow alley and was met by a disturbing sight. A man and a maid struggled together in the dark shadow. At first Kit thought to pass by, but she realised that this was no willing coupling.

The girl was defending herself but she was no match for the brutal bulk of the man. In the scuffle the girl’s lace cap had fallen to the gutter, and her dark hair tumbled down almost to the pavings. There was a ripping sound as the man rent her clothes to reveal a white crescent of her back like a sliver of moon. Now he had her turned around and folded over like a page as he bunched her skirts around her waist and fumbled with his own breeches.

As Kit hurried closer she realised that the aggressor was a dragoon. She remembered Maria van Lommen’s words:
I would never seduce a woman who does not want me – which is more than I can say for men.

Kit reached for the scruff of the cur’s neck. She pulled him off the girl with a strength she did not know she possessed, and threw him against the wall of the alley. It was only then that she recognised the bullish features of Sergeant Taylor, and by that time it was too late.

‘Look away, Walsh,’ he spat. ‘This is not your quarrel.’

Kit gathered his uniform in a bunch at his throat. ‘I see no quarrel, for that word has too much honour in it for what plays out here. I see a boorish man insulting a lady.’

‘She’s a dago slut, a
macaroni
. What do you care?’

What to say? That she could not bear to see another woman hurt today? Kit cast about for her riposte, and found it in the uniform they both wore.

‘It was Captain Ross himself who said that if you dishonour the dragoons’ coat then your actions are the quarrel of every man in this regiment. If I’m to be included in this insult, then I’m damned sure I’m worthy enough to chastise you for it.’

Now Taylor took her by the stock and pushed her to the opposite wall. ‘You little fucking prick. You prodigal, shit-mouthed cunt.’ Taylor’s broken-nosed brutal bulk was considerable; he was a barrel of a man and she could feel the strength in the fist under her chin all but lifting her slight frame from the ground. His victim had picked herself up and was retreating into the shadows. From the other direction the door of the tavern opened, light streamed into the alley, and Southcott and O’Connell stumbled out. Kit heard their piss slap on to the stones and saw the steam rise. She punched Taylor’s hand away.

‘I leave,’ said Kit, quoting Captain Ross again, ‘Billingsgate language to women and cowards. I have no wish to tongue-battle with you, Sergeant Taylor, but if you wish to use swords in place of words, I am your man.’

Taylor raised his fist, flicked a look to the dragoons by the alehouse door, and turned the fist into a finger, pointing, threatening. ‘You invoked the regiment, boy, but you’ve no idea of what you’re yapping about. If you did, you’d know that you may not challenge one of my rank. You like fancy fucking officer language? Very well, you have already
transgressed
by
striking
a
superior
.’