Kit (12 page)

‘Dropped from above,’ said Taylor, and Ross nodded curtly. Kit looked up to the crags, to the little onion church. Who would cast a child from a mountain? And why? She looked at Ross, but he said, ‘Dig five graves, deep enough to be safe from animals, away from the path where they may rest in peace.’

Taylor spoke, not noticeably diffident or respectful. ‘Sir, we should rather go. We may be overlooked from the peaks, and they’re only babes.’

Ross rounded on him, his eyes very blue in a ghost-white face. ‘Bury them. And that is an order.’

The bells of the onion church had tolled eight times before the babes had been committed to the ground. Captain Ross dismounted and sat on a nearby outcrop, knife in hand, savagely whittling sticks. Kit laid the child she had found in its grave herself. She ran her finger tenderly down the tiny nose. Then she covered it up gently in a dark blanket of earth, as if she was tucking it into its cradle. She felt numb. Nothing in her training had prepared her for this. She knew that she might be called upon to fight, and would do it too, in order to reach Richard. She would scythe down grown men like grasses if need be, grown men with beards on their faces and the free will to enlist. But could the French really be making war on children?
The Gravediggers
, she thought, the common name for Kavanagh’s pub. Now she had turned gravedigger too.

As the last sod of the five graves was in place, Ross stood and buttoned his jacket. ‘Fall in,’ he commanded. ‘Stand to attention. Coats on, hats in hand.’

The Scots Greys obeyed, and watched as Ross placed the five little crosses he’d been whittling into the mounds. Taylor tutted under his breath. Ross stood, his face unreadable.

‘
Behold, children are a gift of the Lord
,’ he intoned, his voice ringing about the valley. ‘
The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate. Amen
.’

All but Taylor said the Amen, and mounted upon Ross’s order. No one, now, needed to be told to be silent. Ross rode ahead, still white as paper, his dark brows drawn together, his lips pinched to a tight line. No man dared speak to him until the valley of the foundlings was many leagues behind them.

Kit was shaken by the grisly discovery. The babies haunted her, and in the night, when she was dropping, half asleep in the saddle, their little forms, insubstantial and glowing, seemed to follow her. They would circle her drooping head, plump and bewinged like church-wall cherubs. By day, the babes were gone, and Kit straightened up. If she could be a man in her heart like the others, then she could ride on and leave the babies behind. If she could be a man in her mind, she would not mourn for the last breath of another fellow’s child. It would not trouble her that the mountain blackthorns had pierced the infant flesh, like Christ’s thorns, Crucifixion and Nativity cruelly compressed.

She could tell herself such things, but Ross gave them the lie. This perfect soldier, the kind of fellow they sang about in ballads,
cap-a-pie
in his appearance as if he’d stepped from the page of the chapbooks they sold on street corners, was more affected by the valley of the foundlings than anyone else. For days he seemed dazed with shock, his blue eyes glazed, his manner irritable.

Ross had barely blinked when they’d found a lake full of soldiers in Mantova, but for those tiny unshriven souls he had risked a hundred lives, tarried in a place of danger and spent a brace of hours making sure the children had their proper respects. Ross, single-handedly, had taught her that emotions, deep and searing, did not just live in the female heart, but were a male province too. Kit began to watch him, and once she had started, she could not stop.

And a crown in the bargain for to kick up the dust …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

Under Captain Ross’s command the dragoons wanted to be better soldiers. In his company they stood a little straighter, spoke a little louder, rode a little harder. Ross himself never raised his voice but expected his orders to be followed without question. Every day they heard his common phrase – ‘No man of mine’. ‘No man of mine rides without a hat.’ ‘No man of mine is ignorant of how to light a fire.’ And once, when Kit forgot to doff her hat to a passing goodwife, ‘No man of mine neglects to salute a lady.’

No one minded these corrections, or that they were couched in terms of ownership. The dragoons were Ross’s men, and proud to be so – to be numbered among the Scots Greys was a badge of honour. He would speak of the red coat reverently, as if it was a mantle of office as worthy as a judge’s robes or a bishop’s cope. When in uniform they must act at all times in a manner that did honour to their coat. That humble red felt was the queen’s cloth, and it bound them to each other, close as brothers. Ross’s devotion to his men was clear; they were his charges and his family and he loved them. Kit could see, now that she chose to see, that they loved him back. She admitted too what she had always known since he had pushed them into the brine, that he was amusing – he did not enjoy vulgarity but would take pleasure in japes and sallies, and his own taste in wit ran to clever wordplay or the ridiculousness of the human condition. She never once heard Captain Ross swear; ‘I leave,’ he would say, ‘Billingsgate language to women and cowards.’ Kit did not know where Billingsgate was, but she certainly knew the sort of language to which he referred, and was embarrassed to think that she had begun their acquaintance by spitting such words in his face. Ross managed to convey, without expressing it in so many words, that such language was good enough for the company of foot, but not quite the thing for the dragoons. And so Kit’s language, which had plunged to the very depths since her education at sea, began to elevate itself once more. She still swore, but less frequently and violently, and certainly not in her captain’s hearing.

Now that she could see Ross in a different light – not as a lofty, entitled English gentleman but as a man to admire – he seemed to warm to her too. He sought her company as they rode – he on his favourite grey Phantom, and she on Flint – and it became a habit with them to ride together. Kit recognised that he was taking the trouble to educate his greenest, youngest recruit. And it was working. As the days passed, and the calendar of notches on her musket stock grew longer, his speech no longer seemed so clipped and gentlemanly to her, and she knew her own speech had become more like his. Her Dublin brogue was softening and she began enunciating more clearly, finding her vowels shortening, her consonants hardening. Sometimes she caught herself pronouncing something in the English way, and wondered what Richard would say when he saw her again. At nights along the road she would bed down later and later, preferring to stay at the fireside until there were only one or two hardy souls awake with Ross and her, and sometimes, on rare occasions, she would be alone with her captain. At those times it occurred to her, fleetingly, that she would miss his friendship when she was reunited with Richard – she rehearsed the notion of the two men, husband and captain, becoming acquainted; Ross striding into the snug at Kavanagh’s and ordering a jorum of port. But she dismissed the fantasy almost at once; the two men would have nothing whatever to say to one another.

Once Ross asked her about the marks on her gun. The stock was now stippled with notches, tallied with four and one across, like miniature versions of the gates on her father’s farm. Kit thought for a moment. ‘They mark how many days since I began my journey,’ she replied with perfect truth. And indeed, her life without Richard was quite a different path to the one she had trodden before. She journeyed with Ross through entirely unfamiliar terrain. She acknowledged that Ross could tell her things that Richard could not. She enjoyed the captain’s society, not just for the balm of friendship, but also for the fact that he was a man of information. Ross was a man of possibilities, he had travelled widely for one so young, and been promoted far beyond his years. He was a man who could be described in that one tantalising word that she’d always loved; that wonderful, troublesome word that had brought her here. He was a man of Adventure.

It was Ross who enlightened her on the whole business of the war. They were sitting by the fireside, their seventh night in the mountains, a week since they’d found the children. She and Ross sat awake the longest, long after the other dragoons had wrapped themselves in their blankets, watching the dying of the fire. Ross did not, for once, seem inclined to talk, but Kit was anxious for news. They had climbed a steep gradient all week, ever since the valley of the foundlings, and she knew that the higher she climbed the nearer she came to Richard. ‘Are we near to Rovereto, where Captain Tichborne awaits?’

He raised his eyes as if it were an effort. ‘We should reach there tomorrow, or the next day, perhaps – we are very near the Imperial borders.’ He sounded tired, but Kit would not be discouraged. ‘Have you fought in many lands, sir?’

‘Too many,’ said he. ‘And after a time they begin to resemble one another. But I learned very quickly that everywhere has a horizon – ride towards that before the enemy gets you, and you’ll be all right.’

She digested this. ‘You said we approached the boundaries of an empire. Do we then leave Spain for Imperial lands?’

He sat up straight, his brows drawn together. ‘Spain? What do you mean?’

‘Well – if we are reaching a mountain border, have Tichborne’s regiment already left Spain?’

Ross clasped his hands together. ‘Let me properly understand you. You are asking me if we are about to leave Spain?’

Kit’s voice was small. ‘Yes.’

He laughed, throwing back his head, and the dragoon nearest him grunted and shifted in sleep. She felt a little uneasy and foolish, but was glad to see him laugh, for he had not even smiled since they found the babes. He wiped his eyes and shook his head. ‘Christ, boy, you think we’ve been in Spain all this time? Since Genova? You think those great cities, Genova, Mantova, Villafranca, that they are in Spain?’

She shrugged unhappily. ‘Is not Parma in Spain? I could’ve sworn … someone said the name in an alehouse once …’

‘Well, you’ve bested me there, Mr Walsh. Palma is in Spain. Parma is in Lombardy.’ Kit, who didn’t know the difference, held her tongue. A pox on all educated gentlemen.

‘And since we are at war with Spain, they would have trussed us like chickens and snapped our necks had we landed at Palma.’

‘Wait.’ Kit was confused. ‘That is … I thought … the French … do we not fight the French?’

‘Aye, them too.’

She ceased to enjoy his mirth, and grew sulky.

‘Forgive me, Walsh.’ Ross sobered with an effort, straightening his face. He shuffled forward on his log. ‘See here – what’s your given name?’

‘Christian, sir, but most folk call me Kit.’

‘See here, Kit. A young fellow like you should have
some
grasp of the rudiments of geography. Didn’t you have any schooling?’

Kit thought of Aunt Maura, kindly, laboriously teaching her her letters, telling her stories, doing her best. For a girl who thought she would never leave Dublin, it had seemed more than adequate. Now she realised that she knew more of mythical kingdoms than real ones. Tir Nan Og disappeared, abruptly, into golden dust. ‘Not enough.’

‘Well, I had too much. And no man of mine shall enter into battle without knowing why he fights, or
where
he fights.

‘Look …’ He threw back his blanket and cast about for a stick, his face animated, a different man to the one he had been. He kicked stones and clods away, clearing an area of smooth mud, and began to draw with the point of the stick. He drew, first, an outline that looked for all the world like one of her own boots. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘is a collection of states that shares a common language. At the top, here’ – he drew a cross at the top left of the boot – ‘is Genova, which is in Liguria. Then we crossed to Lombardy, skirting the city of Milan, for the Duchy of Milan is now controlled by the Spanish, and Mantova, as you saw, has been taken by the French. Then we crossed the Veneto, where we met Gardiner’s company in Villafranca, and we are now in Savoy, heading to Rovereto in the Tirol.’ He drew smaller blobs moving up the boot. ‘This,’ he drew a larger block at the top of the boot, ‘is the Habsburg Empire, whose frontiers we now approach. Here is France,’ he drew a star-shaped nation, ‘and her neighbour, and ally, Spain.’

Kit concentrated on the map, trying to memorise the borders, appreciating now just how wrong she had been.

‘Well. Earlier this year, King Carlos of Spain, the second of his name, died. He was so deformed that he was known as “The Bewitched” and the particular deformities of his body, coupled with his dreadful appearance, prevented him from providing Spain with an heir. Crucially, he was the last Habsburg king of Spain. The Habsburgs are …’

‘… The family of the Emperor,’ broke in Kit, anxious to redeem herself.

‘Precisely.’ Ross paced around his map with his stick under his arm. ‘So: Carlos, a Habsburg, dies without an heir. Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, naturally supposes that he, a Habsburg, will inherit the kingdom.’

Kit nodded. ‘Seems fair.’

‘Yes – except that before his death Carlos willed the crown of Spain to Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, the King of France.’ On the mud map he scrubbed out the border between Spain and France with the toe of his boot. ‘This would effectively unite the kingdoms of France and Spain under a single crown. Now.’ He began to draw again, a map apart, an island across a sea, floating alone, with just a narrow channel of water separating it from the continent. This shape seemed familiar to Kit. ‘This is England,’ said Ross, ‘Wales, Scotland, and,’ he glanced at her, ‘Ireland.’

She stared at the little clump of mud that was Ireland till her eyes smarted. ‘Please,’ she said huskily, ‘where is Dublin?’

He pressed into the mud with the point of his stick. ‘Here.’ Kit looked at the little depression – in that muddy little hole lived Kavanagh’s, Glasnevin cemetery, the Customs House, the harbour, Patrick’s church, the Wicklow mountains, Killcommadan Hill and everything she’d ever known. How small it was, that old world of hers. How insignificant. How important. Her eyes blurred in the firelight and flashed with gold.