Kit (5 page)

‘Want to be knocked up at dawn? For the ship?’

She had not thought of this – of course she would need to be woken, she couldn’t miss the tide and the chance to see Richard. Agreeing readily, she eyed the barkeep. ‘I forgot,’ she laughed, ‘where are we bound?’

He smiled. ‘Get over,’ he said, and turned to serve another customer.

He’d thought she was joking, rightly assuming that only an idiot would join a ship without knowing its destination. She pushed her way through the noise. The drinkers were all new recruits, but she dare not talk to another soul until she’d made her preparations. The green young soldiers were busy drinking their brand-new guineas away, forging friendships and finding, in good company, some courage for the voyage ahead. There was no such comfort for Kit. Alone, she mounted the stairs. There was much to do.

Her room had a truckle bed, a jug and basin and a small looking glass. Kit lost no time in shedding Richard’s clothes and trying on her uniform. The material was heavy and felted, here and there showing the moth’s tooth. The bright red coat was missing two of the gaudy gold buttons and the once white facings were dirtied with a russet brown stain.
Blood
, she thought, with sudden misgiving. The shirt was threadbare and grubby about the collar. One of the scuffed brown boots was parting company with its sole, and the black tricorn was trimmed with faded lace. Kit wasted no time but got to work. She wiped the facings with a shred of damp cloth, brushed the hat, sewed the sole of the boot with stout thread, and moved two less visible buttons from below the collar to the stomacher of the coat. When she had done all she could she put everything on and examined her soldier-self in the glass.

She had had no great confidence in the uniform fitting well, but in this she did a disservice to the tailor, whose experienced eye had guessed her dimensions fairly accurately. One thing he had not guessed, though, was the form of her body beneath Richard’s clothes. She could barely see the swell of her breasts under the brave buttons, nor the curve of her hips below the fall of the skirted coat, but she was not taking any further chances. She had fooled the cooper and the ensigns, but she could not risk discovery.

She took everything off again bar the shirt and settled down on the bed with her needle and thread. She made a long bandeau to tie tightly around her breasts like a bandage. She then quilted her waistcoat about the waist to thicken it slightly and further de-emphasise her bosom. Then there was the problem of her money. Besides the guinea from the army she had a full purse of silver from Kavanagh’s. But as it was forbidden by the customs men to take more than five shillings from the country she had to think of a way to conceal the money – she had no notion of how much it might cost in drinks and bribes to find Richard and she was not going to risk penury. She hit upon the idea that she could solve two problems in one; she made a purse stitched on to a long broad hammock of fabric that she could hang between her legs. It was lamplight before she’d finished, and by the light of one poor candle she tried the entire uniform on again. She took the looking glass from the wall and perused her reflection from all angles, much satisfied with her new masculine outline. Her purse made a subtle swelling at her groin which, she hoped, would convince others that she had what she lacked. She walked to the window and looked out at the ships, a silver fleet in the dark blue night, a new moon making a shimmering path between herself and Kit, leading to the horizon. And beyond that? Where was she bound?

Suddenly afraid, Kit shed her new skin, and stood naked in the patch of moonlight, peeled and white and original. She ran her hands over her body, her woman’s body, shivering slightly as she grazed her bone-white breasts and buttocks, caressing the curves that were henceforth to be covered. This is what she was beneath the ugly bulky clothes, the clothes that flattened her here and fattened her there. This is what she would always be. She would always be Kit underneath. Something crumpled below her foot like a leaf – it was her tally of the days without Richard. It stood at forty, forty days and forty nights. She crumpled the paper and set it on the nightstand. Enough of the wilderness. That Kit was gone – leave her there wandering among the thorns.

She washed from head to foot with the water from the basin – for who knew when she would wash again? She pulled on one of the new Holland shirts over her damp red hair, settled into bed and huffed the candle out. But before she settled herself she took her new dagger, silver in the moonlight, and, keeping her left hand clear of the coverlet, made a small cut across the back of her hand. For a blade that cuts you once can never harm you again.

As she lay down to sleep the words of ‘Arthur McBride’ came once again, unwanted and unbidden, to her mind. The sounds and bustle of the dock rumbled outside in counterpoint to the sharp sweet cries of the seagulls.

The rowdy recruits seemed in no hurry to be abed; she could hear singing from downstairs and shouts from the wharfside, and their carousing and the scampering words of the song kept her awake for the greater part of the night. Dead eyed and heavy limbed, she rose just before dawn to don her new persona, and before the landlord’s knock Private Christian Walsh was ready to sail.

Into the tide to rock and to roll …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

On a bitter and rain-lashed morning, Kit boarded the caravel that waited in Dublin harbour to take the new recruits to God-knew-where.

She had no knowledge whatever of vessels of the sea but could see that the ship was a good size and seemed sturdy. The ship’s figurehead was a white-robed lady with golden hair rendered as if it were streaming back against the prow, holding aloft a burning torch in her white hand. The torch and the hair were painted in gilt, and the enamelling on her face had cracked from the elements so that her face looked older than the rest of her, like the wrong Mr Walsh. The same gold of torch and hair picked out the ship’s name along the bulwark. Kit spelled out the words as she climbed the gangplank, her pack heavy on her back.
The Truth and Daylight
. It seemed an inauspicious name, when she remembered just how much she had to conceal.

Kit did not have the leisure to learn whether she was a good sailor or not, because the moment they were clear of the deeps of Dublin harbour and out in the open sea, they were caught in the eye of a storm. The storm offered a doleful choice between the soldiers’ quarters, where the hammocks swung crazily and the floors were awash with piss and vomit, or the deck, where she was knocked from her feet by the stinging wash of seawater. She’d thought the deck preferable, but the wind rushed past her face so furiously that she could barely catch breath. She dodged the busy sailors, anxious not to get in their way, as they scuttled about, clinging to ropes and forecastle, performing their needful, incomprehensible tasks. Sails collapsed to the deck, the ship’s wheel spun, and the crew shouted to each other in their secret language. Kit clung to the balustrade and gazed with horror at the looming dark and mountainous seas. These were dragon waters. No ship, however doughty, could survive such a swell. Kit felt a firm grip on her upper arm, and turned in time to see the wind snatch the tricorn of the wrong Mr Walsh. ‘For God’s sake, boy,’ he bellowed, ‘lash yourself to something or the sea will take you.’ Dragging her to the bulwark, he tied her wrists firmly between two lines as if she were a loose cannon, putting his boot against the forecastle as he hitched the knots tight. ‘Take heart,’ he cried. ‘Hold tight and we’ll soon be through the worst. It’s the channel winds. They blow straight from the devil’s arsehole.’

Kit did not know how long she was lashed there, gazing at the heaving waves. It seemed that the ship was going down such a steep incline that she stared directly into the deeps. As the ship hit the deepest valley of the pewter ravine, the bows kicked up an almighty splash which almost drowned her, and as she coughed lungfuls of seawater back into the brine, she felt a great bubble of laughter rising up with the vomit. She laughed harder and harder as the ship lurched, poised on the crest of the wave and then tipping once again into its sickening drop. She was laughing at that one moment, more than a month ago –
Forty-three days without Richard
– when she’d stood in Kavanagh’s bar on a quiet Friday and longed for adventure. ‘Well, here it is!’ she yelled at herself, at the elements. They were the first words that she’d spoken on the ship, and they were snatched and silenced by the screaming winds. ‘Here’s your adventure!’ She knew she was being punished for that idle thought all those weeks ago, but surely God would not take down a whole ship to punish her for a momentary desire in an idle moment? She was a fool, for Richard was safe in some harbour, and she, by following him, had placed herself in more danger than he. For hours she was battered by the elements, watching the towering seas through streaming eyes. She knew she had been forgotten – of no more consequence than the single loose cannonball she watched rolling uselessly about the deck. She wished she were Finn McCool, the giant hero of one of Maura’s tales, who could cross the Irish Sea in just a few leviathan strides, with little ships riding in his hair like thorny crowns.

But at nightfall she saw the wrong Mr Walsh again. ‘It’s worse,’ he said. ‘Get below, or you’ll drown. Two seas meet here, and they’re both angry.’ He untied her raw wrists, grabbed the back of her soaking coat and all but threw her into the men’s quarters. Standing braced in the door frame, lashed by rain, he shouted to all the green, gathered men. ‘Make your vows and your prayers,’ he bawled above the maelstrom. ‘Confess your sins, make all right with your God, call upon your personal saints, for we may not see morning. Lamps out, for we don’t need a fire as well.’

Kit curled in a corner, in the dark, crowded but alone, making herself as small as possible. Some of the men were praying aloud, barely to be heard above the screaming timbers, some hardy souls even tried to sing hymns, but most were mouthing silently into their clasped fists. Kit shut her eyes as the sea shunted her painfully between two timbers, bruising her shoulders even through the heavy felt of her coat. She tried to think of an appropriate saint who would get her through this storm. Her frightened brain scuttled through the candlelit side-chapels of her childhood and recalled those burly bearded men in golden halos and wind-whipped robes who held back mosaicked waves with one lift of a saintly hand. But would St Brendan the navigator or St Finian who’d sailed to England know what to do in these foreign waters? ‘The Madonna della Fortuna,’ shouted a Genovese sailor, as if in answer to her unasked question. ‘She is the only lady with the power to help us. We must all pray to the Madonna – her shrine is at Genova where we’re bound, and she’ll bring us safe home.’

Slowly, stupidly, she realised what the landlord back in the Liberties had told her in that raucous bar. Not ‘Get over’.
Genova
. They were sailing to Genova, wherever that was; and she’d found out where they were bound just as it seemed sure they would never reach it.

It seemed fitting, though, at her last hour, to pray to a woman; to Mary mother of all, to feel that sisterhood at her last. Genova’s Madonna would do as well as any other incarnation at this pass. Kit closed her eyes tightly; she knew what she had to promise. ‘Madonna della Fortuna,’ she prayed, ‘please let me live and find Richard, and I will never ask for adventure again. I will be a good wife and be happy, and contented, and make a home with him, and children, and I will never leave Kavanagh’s again.’ It was not likely that she would be overheard, but she was past caring – she just wanted to save her skin, whether it be male or female. Kit prayed for the rest of the night, making the same promise over and over again. The Madonna della Fortuna did not answer at once; perhaps she too could not hear her above the howling winds and screaming timbers. But slowly, slowly, over the next dark hours, the roll of the ship lessened; Kit’s poor shoulders were buffeted less, and by the time the grey dawn seeped into the hold, the ship seemed to be holding level. Slowly, slowly, the grey-faced soldiers emerged into a grey world; the sea was a dun silver looking glass, the sky sullen and flat, but the storm had passed.

Kit found the boredom of a sea voyage almost as trying as the excitements of the storm. She had expected vaguely, from stories she’d heard of seagoing in Kavanagh’s bar, to be swabbing decks and hoisting sails. But of course, the ship had a regular crew and the soldiers were merely cargo, three score and ten of them crammed into the keels like so many cattle. Now the wind had dropped there was nothing for them to do except collect their meals of salt pork, sour cabbage, ship’s biscuits and beer from the quartermaster three times each day – the same victuals for each meal. When their first rations were handed out after three days of storm with no food or water, Kit was ravenous, and wondered why the other men were tapping their biscuits on the deck before tucking in. When she did likewise, her stomach growling, she saw a pair of weevils fall out upon the planks and calmly walk away. That first day she could have eaten them too.

Once she was sated, she waited eagerly for instructions, but they were given neither orders nor information. She saw the wrong Mr Walsh again, but he seemed too busy with the officers to pass the time of day with his counterfeit kin. When land was called nameless coastlines sailed past – she had a vague notion that they were rounding Spain, but there was nothing to divert the eye in the miles of arid beaches beyond the odd windmill.

And the calm brought the further problem of discovery. In the storm there was no risk of detection – the men were too concerned for their skins to notice her. But as soon as the storm had passed and Kit started to eat and drink again, a significant problem presented itself – one which she had never even considered when she’d blithely donned Richard’s clothes and gone to enlist.

During the maelstrom sailors and soldiers had urinated where they stood, lashed to mast and bulwark; but now that normal sailing had resumed Kit wondered how she would be able to relieve herself in private. She was not in suspense for long, for their lieutenant, a cold fish by the name of Mr Gardiner, came down to quarters to enlighten them. ‘Sanitation,’ he declared, ‘is very important to the English Army. We are not savages. We had a bad start, but now that the waters are calm, there will be no more easing yourselves in the quarters or the hold. Typhoid and fever carry off as many men at sea as storms do, so you will clean these berths thoroughly, and henceforth use only the “heads”, which are the water closets at the beakhead of the ship. Anyone found guilty of unclean behaviour may expect a flogging. If any man is sick or has broken bones, he may request a covered bucket from the carpenter for his necessary occasions.’ He left as if there was a bad smell under his nose, which, of course, there was.