Kit (24 page)

It took Kit a number of heartbeats to recognise Signor Castellano. She remembered Bianca’s father all those months ago – groomed, fleshy and florid, his attire costly and correct in every detail. Now he was thin and gaunt, his skin had a grey pallor, his hair was unpowdered and greasy, escaping from his pigtail. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheek unshaven. When he recognised Kit his eyes narrowed with fury.

Kit’s insides shrivelled with misgiving, but she made her enquiry. ‘
Grussgott
, signor. Is Signorina Bianca at home?’

Signor Castellano breathed as heavily as a squeezebox. ‘There is no one here by that name.’

‘But …’

‘I know no one of that name.’

Kit took a step back. Had Bianca died? ‘My condolences, sir, if you have lost …’ Castellano reached out and grasped her by her stock, knocking the breath from her. He pulled her close to his face and she could smell his sour breath. ‘I told you once,’ he hissed through yellow teeth, ‘that I would cut you. Now get you gone from my door before I fetch my knives. I will chine you like a boar and sell your pluck in the market.’ He threw her into the street, and slammed the wooden door shut before she could say more. As she picked herself up and dusted down her uniform, she felt the strong instinct, born from months in the army, that she was being watched.

Perplexed and unsettled by the encounter with Castellano, she set out to trawl the taverns. There she was greeted by her fellow dragoons, who had been given the news that she was to be a sergeant. The approval was universal; to a man they believed her promotion would free them from the tyranny of Sergeant Taylor. They pounded her on the back, shoving a bottle of grappa under her nose. Kit downed glass after glass, and by the time all her fellows had bought her a drink, she was warm with happiness and hope. Then the thought that the last time she’d been in this tavern, nine months past, she’d stumbled across the nasty little scene played out between Sergeant Taylor and Bianca sobered her suddenly. A lovely young woman, too young to die.

Just then, the door opened and Kit looked up as a beggar woman entered, cradling a bundle. The landlord went to shoo her away and Kit turned back to her companions. But the beggar began to shout and claw at the landlord, pointing over his broad shoulder at the table of dragoons. She broke free from his burly grip, rushed over to Kit and thrust her rags under her nose. ‘This is yours!’ the woman cried, and dumped the bundle in Kit’s lap.

Kit looked down at a tiny but perfect child, wrapped in a filthy grey shawl. She looked up at the beggar woman, expecting some trick for coin, and was stunned to recognise Bianca Castellano.

The girl was skeleton thin, the violet eyes that had been so striking now seemed deranged. Her black curls, once so lush and neat, were as greasy and tangled as a bellwether’s fleece. ‘This is your child,’ insisted Bianca, tears in her voice, as Kit gazed at her, horrified. She reached out a thin hand, childlike itself, and tweaked back the shawl from the baby’s crown. There, fiery and unmistakable, grew a tuft of red hair.

The dragoons cheered and laughed, barracking and jostling Kit. She could have laughed too if it wasn’t so sad. She, a woman who could never have a child, now, incredibly, held a babe in her arms that could be her own, with porcelain skin and red hair, reaching up to her face with a tiny starlike hand. For one moment of madness she almost believed it, then reality asserted itself. She stood, holding the child carefully, and drew Bianca away from the jackals at the table. ‘What happened to you? Where are you living?’

Bianca looked at her with hollow eyes and Kit understood. She was living nowhere. ‘Come,’ said Kit.

She crossed the tavern with her cloak covering the baby and Bianca in the crook of her other arm. ‘Landlord,’ she called. ‘A room for this lady.’

The burly landlord did not raise an eyebrow. ‘That’s one way to celebrate becoming a sergeant, Mr Walsh,’ he said. ‘Two pfennigs an hour, a schilling for the night.’

Kit dug in her pouch. ‘A sovereign for a week,’ she said.

Upstairs, she seated the girl on the bed, and stood before her, still holding the baby. ‘Bianca. What happened? What do you mean by coming here to me?’

‘This is your child,’ the girl insisted. ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Think, Bianca,’ Kit urged. ‘I never lay with you.’

‘You
did
.’ She was crying now. ‘You came to my house. You paid court to me – you came when my father was from home – you paid me sweet compliments. You talked with me, about our future, and then we … you … lay with me in my parlour. It was as beautiful as paradise. And now we have been blessed with a child. A red-headed child, the image of you.’ She nodded to the little bundle Kit held. ‘Now you must marry me – you will, now, my Kit?’ Her claw-like fingers reached to Kit’s coat and clutched a handful of the cloth.

Kit wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation – but Bianca’s distress was too palpable; and the story was so terribly sad. She knew she could absolve herself in a moment, by removing her jacket, but she had already been discovered once by Atticus Lambe, and was now more jealous of her disguise than ever. ‘I did visit you,’ she said slowly. ‘And I did come when your father was from home. But I never tempted you with even a word, Bianca. We never so much as kissed.’ Kit looked in the eyes that had once sparkled with promise, and now were flat and fathomless and dead like the orbs of a skull. The girl nodded sadly. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘You are right.’

The child began to keen a little, and Kit gave the bundle back to Bianca. Bianca cradled it tenderly, and offered it her breast. She was horrifically thin and wasted. A phrase the potmen at Kavanagh’s used to use came to Kit: ‘even the tide wouldn’t take her’.

Kit walked to the window to confront her own reflection. What she saw made her turn back. ‘Red hair,’ she said. ‘Taylor. The child is Taylor’s.’

Bianca looked up, fear and relief written on her face. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is.’

Kit sat next to them, on the bed. ‘What happened?’

Bianca lowered her voice. ‘I went to seek you, that last night, to take my leave. I wanted to tell you that I would wait. I saw a redhead, in the uniform of the dragoons, but when he turned it was Taylor. I told him that I was seeking you, and he became enraged. He dragged me behind the church and …’

Kit sat in silence, remembering how she’d envied Bianca once, with her gowns and jewels and her fond father. Now she knew that women were not safe in their fortress of petticoats. Taylor had laid siege to her, stormed the citadel, and left her in tatters.

‘I do not know what to do,’ whispered Bianca. ‘I am at the end of my wits. I saw you at my father’s today – I go each day to see if he will see me, or … or her.’ It was the first time she’d mentioned the baby’s sex. ‘But he always turns me from the door. There is nothing for us. I am ruined.’

‘How have you lived?’

‘I have begged from house to house, sometimes from the regiment, sometimes the eating houses. Once I started to show they put me on the turning stool, you know – and after that my disgrace was universally known and no one would help me.’

Kit was horrified, remembering the dreadful trial she’d seen on her first day in Rovereto, nine months ago. ‘Could your father not prevent it?’

The enormous eyes looked up, surprised. ‘He was the one who elected me for the turning. I thought I would lose her.’ She held the child close and Kit shook her head at the inhumanity of it. Bad enough to sit on the stool alone – but with a child in the belly … ‘I’d been sheltering at the church, but when the baby came the priest turned me out.’ Kit remembered the church at Arco where Mr Lambe had stitched her together again. So the church would shelter soldiers but not a mother and child. Sanctuary indeed. ‘So we sleep in the open, for now, but when winter comes …’ There was no need to go on.

Kit was appalled. She had not given Bianca Castellano a single thought for the many months away from Rovereto, until Captain Tichborne had suggested a local woman might sew on her stripes. She had blithely gone to seek Bianca for her own ends. She had not given any credence to the depth of Bianca’s feelings – she had assumed that because she was not a real man Bianca’s was not a real attachment. Kit had used her, hurt her and used her again. It was time to be called to account.

Kit felt in her waistcoat and brought out the purse that Marlborough had given her, soft leather in royal blue, with Marlborough’s arms stamped upon it in discreet gold. She handed the purse to Bianca, who emptied it on to the bed.

‘Five pistoles!’

‘Yes,’ said Kit. She still had her coins from Kavanagh’s and her pay and Richard’s would be enough to get them home to Dublin.

‘I cannot take this.’

‘Yes you can.’ Kit took a breath. ‘The child is mine.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘She would not be in the world were it not for my selfish actions. So she is mine. Let it be universally known. I hereby swear that I will bear the living of her.’

‘Are you sure? This is a great undertaking.’

‘Yes.’ She knew, now, there would be no child for her and Richard. She thought for the first time of what this might mean.

And there would be one benefit in her acceptance of paternity – although she was not proud of this private and selfish motive. Such an admission, publicly known, would prove beyond doubt that she was a man. It would work against the dark alchemy of Mr Lambe if he chose to start some rumour before she could complete her search for Richard.

Kit ran down to the bar and ordered some soup and stew for Bianca and then carried it up the stairs herself. Bianca placed the babe on the pillow to sleep, while she ate ravenously. Kit could not watch her hunger, and turned again to the window. ‘Taylor,’ she said. ‘Have you been to Taylor?’

Bianca looked up from her plate, mouth dripping with sauce.

‘Of course you have. That is why you came to me.’

She turned and looked at Bianca, Bianca looked down and bit her lip. Before the eyes dropped Kit read something dreadful there – a new shame. ‘Did he …
dare
to insult you again?’

‘Yes,’ said Bianca dully, ‘while the child cried in the gutter.’

Kit felt an all-consuming rage. Yes, she could walk away now, having housed and fed mother and child. She could ignore Taylor’s transgressions, find Richard and go. But then Taylor would go unpunished. Bianca would be sport for him, sport he did not even have to pay for, not like the plump whores in the taverns with their flashing satins and inviting eyes, who would not lie with a soldier unless he pushed a coin into their bosom. Kit spoke before she could change her mind. ‘In the morning I will make a reckoning with Sergeant Taylor.’ Taylor’s time had come. All his million little offences to her, the bell, the pig, the thousand insults and petty hardships to her and her fellows, paled next to the dark crimes he had visited on Bianca and his own child.

‘No,’ Bianca said quickly. ‘You may not challenge him – you will be arrested.’

‘Not now. I am lately made a sergeant, and may challenge one of my own rank. Rest easy,’ Kit said grimly, ‘I will avenge you.’

She tucked Bianca into the only bed, next to her sleeping baby, as if she were a child herself. The girl’s great eyes were already closing. The food and warmth had done their work. Bianca spoke sleepily, slurring her words. ‘Did you ever find your brother?’

‘No. I know he is here in Rovereto somewhere.’

‘If you do this thing for me, I will find him for you. I can go anywhere in this town from sewers to palaces – I have become invisible.’

Kit could well believe it. ‘Sleep now,’ she said tenderly.

She leant and kissed them both. The baby’s cheek felt like a peach under her lips. Bianca looked up as she received her salute, with the ghost of a smile about her lips. ‘Our first kiss,’ she said, so sadly that Kit could not meet her eye.

The baby shifted in her sleep, and uttered a little cry. ‘Does she have a name?’ Kit whispered.

Bianca was silent, and for a moment Kit thought she might already be asleep. But the whisper came back. ‘Not yet. I did not dare name her in case …’

Kit thought she understood. Bianca was afraid to love her daughter, in case she was forced to let her go. She knew then that Bianca had faced the horror of abandoning the baby, like the foundlings in the valley, probably tens or hundreds of times. ‘You should give her a name,’ she said. ‘She is safe now.’

Bianca lifted her dark head. ‘What is your given name?’

Kit hesitated. ‘Christian.’

‘Then I shall call her Christiana.’

Kit lay back on the little rug on the wooden boards and laid both hands on her barren stomach. She looked out at the starless dark. There was now a child in the world who bore her name.

For if you insult me with one other word …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

In the morning, before it was even light, Kit sewed on her sergeant’s stripes by the candle’s end, as mother and child slept in a close circle on the bed.

She strapped on her sword by first light, and stepped out into the street. As she walked through the market square she passed by the silk post and a shout stopped her in her tracks. ‘Sergeant Walsh.’

It was Captain Ross, framed in the doorway like an avenging angel, his eyes burning blue. ‘A word.’

Kit followed her captain into the timbered counting house with a sinking heart. Ross paced the office, his hands clasped behind himself over the skirt of his coat, the knuckles white, as if he were too angry to leave his hands at liberty.

‘I thought to congratulate you on your promotion today, but I find I now must address you on another subject.’ He stopped pacing and fixed her with his eyes. ‘It has come to my notice that you are now a father. Is that true?’

Kit fastened her gaze on the door jamb, to the left of his face. She could not look at him, but nodded curtly. When she had agreed to shelter Bianca she had not anticipated this particular interview.

‘I heard that you insulted a young woman last time we were billeted upon this town, and she has now given birth to a daughter. Still correct?’