Kit (20 page)

Cursing, she turned back and dragged him to the aqueduct. Once she’d launched him on the water like a great barge, she turned him on his back so he could breathe. The ground shook with a thousand footsteps and Kit’s heart sank; but the column who now swarmed round the aqueduct were red not blue; De Vaudémont’s men. A scout ran to her side. ‘It’s Colonel Gossedge,’ she shouted. His commander came at a run – a noble-looking fellow with a hooked nose: De Vaudémont, Savoy’s deputy; a man denied entry to the city, trapped on the wrong side of a broken bridge, and forced to walk around the walls. ‘Rejoin your regiment, boy,’ he said, ‘we have him now.’ He laid a hand on Kit’s shoulder. ‘Well done.’

She ran down the aqueduct, keeping as low as she could, feet frozen blocks of ice in her boots, gasping and retching with fear. Behind her the artillery had begun – cannon booming and muskets cracking from the walls of Cremona. For the first time since she had left Ireland she felt alone, and being alone made her afraid. She could have cried. Now she had no one, not her father, not Maura, not Richard. No Captain Ross, no Southcott or Hall or O’Connell. She would die here, in this freezing ribbon of silver, on these Roman arches. ‘I never did find Richard,’ she said to herself, and tears of pity fell and froze on her cheeks.

Then, ahead of her, she saw a red figure, hatless, with a poll of dark hair. His hand was at his brow, shielding eyes that she knew to be blue. A musket shot rent the air and she dropped to the ground, face in the freezing mud, grit and dirt in her teeth. She stayed down until the volley of musket fire had passed, and when she stood, he was gone. He had not waited. No one had.

On she ran, racing to reach the priest’s house and the horses picketed in the orchard. She wanted to smell the apples underfoot, to feel Flint’s velvety muzzle tickling her palm, to put her arms about the mare and lay her cheek on the warm velvet neck, and close her eyes.

She tripped over something soft and solid, and fell. Captain Ross lay half in, half out of the aqueduct. The musket ball that had missed her had hit him.

With all her strength, she rolled him over the low balustrade and down the short drop to the grass beneath, and jumped down after him. She dragged him over the tussocks under the shelter of one of the old arches. Kit cradled Ross, crushing his dear dark head to her breast. When she looked at him next his eyes were open, but her delight was tempered by the sound of marching feet growing closer. In another moment the feet marched overhead along the aqueduct, and the water that they displaced fell like rain. She raised a finger to her lips, afraid that Ross would begin raving, but he closed his eyes and opened them again in a sign that he understood. She had been right to hide, for the marching men were French, but, singing at the top of their voices. the enemy column would not have heard a trumpet blast.

‘What are they singing?’ Ross’s voice was breathless.

She strained to hear above the boots and the splashes.

She put her mouth to his ear. ‘By the favour of Bellona, and a happiness without equal, we preserved Cremona, and lost our general.’

He smiled faintly and strained to say something.

‘Hush – don’t talk,’ she said. When she opened his coat, his shirt was as red as his jacket.

‘Can
you
sing, Kit?’

She looked at him, hopelessly, and nodded gently, so as not to spill the tears that had gathered in her eyes.

‘Do it, then.’

She could think of no other song but one and she was afraid of her sweet high voice giving her away, but when she looked at him, and saw the colour of his face, so sickly green and white it did not look as if it belonged to the rest of him, she knew there would be no harm in it, for he would not be telling anyone anything any more.

He did not watch her but looked at the sky above. She choked and stuttered to a stop. His eyes were closed anyway, perhaps he hadn’t heard. But the blue eyes fluttered open and he looked at her at last. ‘You have a sweet voice, Kit.’ Then his eyes closed again.

She held him there, as the sun rose higher; she closed her eyes too and, worn out with battle and sorrow, slept for the second time in his embrace. It was thus that Atticus Lambe, field surgeon to Her Majesty’s Dragoons, found them.

Good morning, good morning the sergeant did cry …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

Kit had reached the lake at last, the lake she had seen in a glimpse from the mountains when she rode with Ross. But now as she rode along the foreshore she could think of nothing but Ross’s eyes the second before they closed. She had become closer to him then than she had ever been to anyone save Richard, save her father. She did not know whether she thought of her captain as a father or a lover, but she could not but think of him – and she could not rejoice at Richard being alive if Ross was dead. She turned her eyes away from the blue lake, to think of Richard, but she could not. She tried to count the hundred days she had been without her husband, but could get no farther than one. A hundred days without Richard. One day without Ross.

She had heard nothing of the captain since Lambe had taken him away. The Scots Greys, under the temporary command of Sergeant Taylor, were stationed in the mountain town of Arco, safe again in the embrace of Imperial lands, but the surgeon and his cart were nowhere to be seen. All divisions which had retreated from Cremona were to be billeted at Arco, and were even now snaking through the mountains, but Kit was torn between her desperate need to find Richard, and her anxiety for news of Ross.

On her first morning in Arco she had just set out from her lodgings to see whether she could discover the captain’s whereabouts, when she was hailed by one of Marlborough’s runners.

‘I am to escort you to the Palazzo Marchetti,’ he said. Kit, bemused, followed the ensign to a large, low, timbered house, the residence of the town mayor. Marlborough was seated at a desk in a painted chamber. To her surprise he stood and came around the desk to greet Kit.

‘Ah, the Pretty Dragoon,’ he said heartily. ‘Good and bad at Cremona, eh? We made some inroads but they are still clinging on. At Luzzara, we’ll be doing things my way, and you shall see a difference, eh? Good, plain British attack, and no skulking around. You’ll be at the forefront, I’ll wager? I’ve heard much that is good of your conduct at Cremona.’

Kit did not reply; there was little chance to speak in Marlborough’s presence. Marlborough, accustomed to young cadets being cowed to silence, carried on regardless. ‘I hear you carried a man to safety. Brave boy, skinny thing like you. He was no feather that one. Pity he died; he was a good man.’

The room darkened, Kit’s knees weakened, she felt she might fall. Ross was dead. Somewhere, Marlborough was still speaking.

‘And for this service to Her Majesty and myself, I reward you with five pistoles.’ Marlborough dangled a purse in his fingers. Kit stared at the purse, swinging like a pendulum. The little bag began to blur.

‘Sir … My lord … Your Grace … where is he buried?’

‘By the river, I think. We sent his medals to Lady Gossedge.’ The duke turned to his ensign. ‘We did that, didn’t we?’

Kit could barely speak. ‘No … no, sir, not Colonel Gossedge, Ross. Captain Ross. Where is Captain Ross buried?’

Marlborough gave a little shout of laughter. ‘Well, we thought it best not to bury him, for he is not dead.’

‘Not dead?’ A wave of relief flooded over Kit.

‘He’s in the field hospital. They’ve put it in the church, I think. He’ll be back to berate you soon enough. I’m told you had something to do with his rescue too. So you shall have …’ he turned to his ensign, ‘what is the name of the castle above us?’

‘Castello Arco, sir.’

‘That’s it. I give you leave to search the castle before the divisions come. Here, take this.’ He scribbled a dispensation and sealed it with his ring. ‘Sole rights of plunder.’

She took the paper and tucked it in the purse. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Well, well.’ The great duke seemed discomfited by simple gratitude. ‘Off you go.’

Outside in the bright morning, Kit clasped her purse and took a lungful of freezing air. Ross was alive, she had five pistoles, and a castle to plunder too – her life with Richard could begin again in comfort and prosperity. But before she climbed the hill to claim her prize there was a visit she must make.

She went straight to the little white church and was stopped at the door by Atticus Lambe, wearing a butcher’s apron spattered with blood. Her heart sank. ‘Please, Doctor …’ She was not sure how to address a surgeon.

‘You may call me Mr Lambe.’

‘May I see Captain Ross?’

‘You may not. He is resting.’

‘Just for a moment?’

‘On no account.’

‘Is he recovered?’

‘He is much improved; I have removed the musket ball from his side. But he is still an invalid for all that and as such may not be visited. The Lord only knows what evil miasmas you carry on your person.’

He looked at her with a disapproving gaze.

‘Will you tell him that I sent him good wishes?’

‘Certainly not. I am not a post horse.’

Kit shrugged and turned away. Nothing could dent her feelings: the sun was shining, there was a breath of spring and the mountains were beautiful. As she climbed to the castle, heavy key in hand, she scattered the cabbage butterflies, sniffed the rock roses and picked late brambles from the hedgerows. She was cock-a-hoop. She was a soldier, she had acquitted herself bravely, and she had been rewarded by her commander. She had been given the key to the castle. She could ask for nothing more in the world. Her captain was alive, and Richard would soon be here.

The castle stood at the top of the hill. She had expected it to resemble the great barbican of Rovereto, but long-ruined towers reached into the sky like a jaw of broken teeth. Kit had thought to stuff her pockets with the coins and treasure that would doubtless be scattered on the floor, but in fact a wrecked wagon had been upended in the broken doorway and secured by a chain. She unlocked the chain and drew it through the wagon wheels with a rhythmic clinking clatter, rolled the cart aside and entered the castle that was hers for the day.

It was a broken place. Ruined stairs led to nowhere, two shattered towers reached into the sky like surrendering hands, and windows were open to frame blue skies and mountains. She wandered from chamber to chamber, wondering what these rooms once housed; one had a huge stone fireplace, still blackened with the smoke of ancient feasts. Kit’s buoyant mood sank into a nameless foreboding. The French had gutted the place and left their detritus behind; powder packets, ramrods, an old saddle, a broken stool. The remnants of a fire, a privy smell in the dark corners. She made her way back to the roofless great hall and then stopped as she heard a scrabbling sound. She froze, her hand flying instinctively to where her sword should have been. She picked up the broken stool and retreated into the shadow of a fractured doorway.

A pig came trotting into the middle of the cavernous room, as if it entered a forest clearing. Kit remembered Signor Castellano and his parable of the pigs in the mountains. All at once she was consumed with a hunter’s instinct. She would have this pig, and she would take it back to her fellows and they would roast it and perhaps, perhaps, Richard would come marching up the hill in time to sup with them. If this was the only booty here, very well: it was hers.

It was an epic chase, around and about the broken walls, up and down stairs, into the ancient earthworks that lay beneath the broken floors. Once she had the pig at bay in a dungeon, but he dashed through her legs and out into the light again.

A freezing rain began to fall, turning the hall to mud so that Kit’s boots slid around. At last she cornered the pig in the blackened fireplace. She threw a stool at his head and he dropped and lay there stunned, a gout of blood like a blackberry behind his ear. She wound her stock about his neck and tied the loose end to a stake, and sat in the oozing mud, elbows on knees, exhausted.

She felt a prickling at her back. Sergeant Taylor was sitting on a spiral stair that led nowhere, watching her. ‘I’m the King of the Castle,’ he sang. ‘And you’re the Dirty Rascal.’ He laughed drunkenly.

She stood slowly, backing away, shielding the pig. Taylor took a pull from a clay bottle, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘Marlborough himself gave me sole plunder of this place,’ she said. Taylor flinched at Marlborough’s name. ‘If you challenge me you must answer to your master.’

‘Plunder?’ spat Taylor. ‘You fled up the bell tower like a rat up a rope while the rest of us were fighting. And then, when it was all over, you pulled a fat old colonel from a wall like a cork from a bottle. That pig should be mine. I got my hands good and dirty in Cremona.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not again.’ He’d taken her bell at the monastery of San Columbano, he would not take her pig.

‘Thank you for the bell, by the way. I sold it by the lump to a Jew. Got a pretty price. And now you’ve caught this pig for me. Didn’t look easy. Better than the shuttlecock, watching you chase him like that.’

He stood, tossed his clay bottle down, and started towards her down the steps. Kit’s skin started to prickle. He had a wicked little dagger in his hand, and she was unarmed. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the pig waking, staggering to his trotters and testing the extent of his tether.

Taylor came at her. She grabbed the dagger instinctively, and it nearly sliced her little finger through. Shifting her grip, her hands slippery with rain and blood, she fought furiously over the blade. Blood poured from her finger and down her sleeve, and her arms buckled, black spots mingling with the rain before her eyes. She could feel Taylor’s sour breath on her cheek as they grappled. Blind rage took her. She was not going to let this man destroy her life. Ross was alive and she was about to see Richard again. She screamed in his face: ‘The pig is mine! Mine!’ Taylor blinked in surprise and she realised she could use her rage as a weapon to overpower him. Slowly, slowly the wicked silver blade turned and with every muscle straining she forced the needle-sharp point towards Taylor’s eye. His gaze flickered in horror as she pushed with the last of her strength and felt a pop and a rush. Taylor fell back, his body slack, and she almost fell on top of him as he dropped to the ground, screaming, clutching the dagger that had pierced his eye. The pig began to scream too; the animal squeals mixing with Taylor’s until it was impossible to tell them apart. At last Taylor, writhing in the mud, found some words.