Kit (29 page)

She took Flint’s rope head collar and led her past the unconscious guard. The sight of his boots, down at heel and leaning together by the door jamb, made her pause. Of all the accoutrements of a man she missed her boots the most. When Richard had asked her what she’d wanted she had not thought to ask him for the boots from his feet. But here were a pair of army-issue boots, down at heel, leaning together at the doorpost. They fitted remarkably well. She thought of leaving Bianca’s button boots in their place, picturing the foolish Fulford’s face as he groggily tried to push his toes into them; but she did not want to jeopardise her flight. The jest cheered her though.

To take the horse and the boots gave credence to the story of her desertion – Dragoon Kit Walsh, who escaped a flogging by dressing in the clothes of the mother of his child, and stole his grey and a pair of boots to aid his flight. Once safely outside the stable she mounted Flint with some difficulty, but once she dug the scuffed heels into Flint’s sides, they were away, and nothing had changed. She galloped across the Forbato bridge for the last time and, without turning to look in Richard’s window, threw Bianca’s shoes in the river.

It was nearly dawn. In her cell, Bianca would be thrown her breakfast at the change of the dawn guard, and taken up for her flogging. ‘I hope he is worthy,’ Bianca had said of Richard. Had she, too, seen Richard with his widow? Had she changed places with Kit not so that Kit could achieve her happy ending, but break with a man who was
not
worthy?

Guilt sat like a stone weight in Kit’s stomach. In her hurry to get to Richard, she had not thought enough of what would happen to Bianca. What if the soldiers kept her as a plaything to be passed around the castle? Kit could not betray Bianca’s sacrifice by putting herself in danger again, but as dawn broke she rode across the river and up the hill above the castle. There, sheltered by trees, she watched two of Captain Caradew’s men enter the castle to collect her from her cell. Then a general commotion, a ringing of bells, and suddenly Bianca was at the gate. Holding on to her gaping uniform, she was flung into the dirt by two guards, followed by a gob of spit.

Kit waited until Bianca had picked herself up, and hurried, head down, into the same alleys that had hidden Kit the night before. Bianca was free too. Then Kit turned Flint’s head down the valley, kicked her sides and galloped away from Rovereto and Richard.

As she rode away from the camp, she began to relax. She had no real idea in what direction she was going, and seeing a cart approaching on the winding road ahead, she started to slow down to ask. But soon, far sooner than her eyes could make out the features of the figure on the box, she knew the driver. He was wearing a grey hurricane cloak and a slouch hat, and his pale hands held the reins of the black coach pair like the figure of death himself. Dr Atticus Lambe.

The road clung to the vertiginous mountain. Lambe could not turn at all in his bulky medical cart and she could not turn back now without drawing attention to herself. She rode on, drawing her hood over her eyes. As they grew closer, closer, she could not help seeking out the grey pale eyes with the black pin pupils that she had looked into so often.

But Atticus Lambe’s eyes swept over her without a flicker of recognition. She was a woman, and she was beneath his notice.

She breathed out with relief. She was a free woman and could ride wherever she wanted. She was truly alone for the first time in her life, and she didn’t think she had ever been quite so unhappy.

In the finest of clothing he’s constantly seen …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

Venice was a place that had to be seen to be believed. It shone in the setting sun; a cluster of fantastic palaces crafted from stone as delicate as lace, domed churches like upturned grails and bell towers like jade-topped spears. All this booty was huddled on islands split by silver canals, to be reached only by a looking-glass lagoon. Venice was as beautiful and insubstantial as a dream.

But Kit was bound for the less salubrious harbour at the Arsenal, a crenellated haven guarded by stone lions, their gape-jawed faces gilded by the dying light. By the time the ferry made landfall the sun was low in the sky, a great red ball sinking into the lagoon.

As Kit guided Flint on the slippery planks of the wharf, the city turned from rose-gold through bronze and copper to the base metals of night; the last act of the alchemist sun. The harbour was abuzz with activity: soldiers, tradesmen, whores, rope-makers, caulkers, carpenters, mudlarkers. Here too she saw ostlers and horse traders, buying and selling. Flint followed her obediently but with shaking legs, glad to be on firm ground at last. Kit paid a lad to mind the mare.

Venice, as she knew from Ross, was a neutral power, so she’d expected ships of all colours in the haven; but the cross-trees seemed to be flying the standards of France. Undaunted, she switched to her mother tongue and enquired about a passage at a schooner called the
Banc D’Arguin
. The ship sat low in the water but looked sturdy enough. It was tricked out in the blue and gold of the French colours, and had a mermaid for a figurehead. She talked to a shipman hanging on a rope like a monkey.

‘Where are you bound?’

‘Plymouth,’ he said briefly.

It would do. ‘Have you a berth to spare?’

‘If you’ve cash to spare.’

She swallowed. ‘How much?’

‘Fifty francs, thirty schillings or two guineas.’

Her face fell. ‘
Merci bien.
’

‘
De rien, madame.
’

In the hours that followed she walked up and down among the skeps and nets as the light fell and the tar torches were lit, the acrid smell poisoning the air. Desperate to distance herself from the painted jades, she made proper enquiries to each shoreman and boatswain; but the gravity of her situation soon became clear. Passages from this golden city were as costly as the city itself. Even the quality were anxious to leave the war-torn region; on one jetty she saw a whole family in jewel-coloured silks, standing patiently on the dock in size order like nesting dolls. They had enough money, clearly, to go wherever they wanted; the passages Kit could afford went only as far as the next port.

With a sick feeling she faced the fact that she did not have nearly enough in her money belt to take her home, let alone to buy a berth in the hold for a horse. She sat on the seawall, watching the ships unfurling their sails for the evening tide, the great hulls moving out on to the red water until their giant forms became tiny specks in the sun’s scarlet path. The wealthy family processed past her and up the gangplank of the
White Hind
, a caravel bound for England. Kit watched as the walkway was taken up and she was left behind.

She sat on, the stone still warm under her skirts, and rued the money she’d lost. Those coins that clustered in a warm metallic jumble in her waistcoat or in the money belt which had jingled between her thighs where her balls should have been. She regretted now, bitterly, that she had not asked Richard for a purse. She cursed that she had spent her family’s treasure on this year-long fool’s errand. For a moment, watching the red coin of the sun disappear into the lagoon, she even rued the purse from Marlborough that she’d given to Bianca for Christiana’s keep. Five pistoles could have bought her a passage to Dublin in style – she could have bought her own sloop – but she could not set her own comfort against the life of a child.

Men had beggared her. She had spent a fortune seeking Richard, and she had taken on Taylor’s child. She vowed there and then, in the port of Venice, never to be the dupe of a man again. She was strong, she was resourceful, she was a trained soldier. She was still Kit.

The transaction was difficult and protracted; but after much wrangling she had a good price for Flint from the Venetian ostler. The trader was as hard as stone – eyes like jet and a bristle on his cheek like filings of iron. Her efforts were hampered by her scant knowledge of the Veneto dialect and more so by her deep reluctance to let Flint go – her last link with the army, with Ross, and her constant companion. Kit did not kiss Flint, or stroke her velvet nose; she turned away, and could not look back.

As she blinked back the bitter tears, she felt a pricking at her nape. She had felt, ever since she donned a gown again, that she was somehow more noticeable than when she hid under an anonymous uniform. But this was different.

She stood still at the centre of the bustling wharf and then turned on the heel of her boots. Could someone have followed her? Sergeant Taylor vowing revenge? Or the pale spectre of Atticus Lambe? She shook her head to dislodge her fears. She would take the money from Flint to the schooner she had applied to first, and beg to make up the cost of the passage aboard by doing needlework or cooking or cleaning. But as she turned to go, she caught a white flash out of the corner of her eye.

In the crazy shadows of the torchlight was a golden carriage, its gilded paint alive with reflected flame, curlicues and carvings vital and animated, cherubs seeming to puff their cheeks and move their wings. Four black horses, steaming and stamping, stood obediently in the traces. But it was the passenger who held her gaze.

A fancy gentleman, plump and bewigged, leaned from the carriage. His beckoning hand wore a glove, and the snowy fingers spun a gilt coin dexterously between them. A little golden sun in a glove as white as cloud. She was back at Killcommadan Hill, back fourteen years, back to a time when adventure meant a roll down a green hill and a sovereign proffered by a white hand. As if in a dream she walked forward; to see the same face under a different wig, a wig in the latest fashion. And something else was different too. The fancy gentleman addressed her in French.

‘You need money, Bess?’

Here was a man offering her money; a man who had changed her life for the better once before.

‘I am a respectable woman.’

‘Respectable women need money too.’

Warily Kit dropped her hand to where her sword should have hung, but he tucked the coin away, folded his white hand over the door, and regarded her with great interest.

‘Are you leaving or arriving?’ he asked, still in perfect French.

She answered him in kind. ‘Leaving. As fast as I may.’

‘Pity. I myself have just arrived. My work here has just begun.’

‘And mine is ended.’

‘You need a passage?’

She nodded.

‘Where to?’

‘Plymouth.’

‘You’re English?’ he said, in that language.

She was stung. ‘Irish,’ she said, very Dublin.

‘I too! Better and better.’ He leaned a little farther out of the window. ‘I will tell you a secret; I hate the English almost as much as I hate the French; and I love the Irish, naturally, for they are my countrymen. Don’t tell.’

‘Who would I be likely to tell?’

‘The Queen of England.’

Kit snorted. ‘You are trifling with me.’

‘I am in earnest, I assure you. She and I are closely acquainted.’

She looked at him doubtfully.

‘Shall we be friends? Why don’t you sit in my carriage, and then we may take our ease.’

She raised her chin a little. ‘We cannot be friends when we are not properly introduced.’

He clapped his hands. ‘Quite right.’

Kit considered. She did not want to go by the name Walsh any more – let Richard’s widow use it. She decided to try the gentleman’s memory. ‘Kit Kavanagh.’

He did not display a flicker of recognition. ‘You looked as if you were choosing your name.’

‘I was.’

‘You have many names, Bess?’

Kit Kavanagh. Christian Walsh. Kit Walsh. ‘Three to date. Four with your addition of Bess.’

‘I too. I am James Fitzjames Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, 13th Earl of Ormonde, 7th Earl of Ossory, 2nd Earl of Butler.’

She inclined her head.

‘So, we are introduced. Now will you sit in my carriage?’

The four black stallions were buckled to the traces, ready to go; the reins were taut, the drivers, in full livery, ready on the box. ‘Uncouple the horses first,’ Kit said.

‘Now, why would I do that?’

‘Because you might be a slaver, or worse. I only have your word that you are a nobleman. If you want to talk, let’s talk. But uncouple the horses first.’

She expected him to be angry, but he spoke again, although not to her. ‘Pietro. Stand the horses aside.’

His man climbed down from the box. ‘What shall I do with them, Your Grace?’

‘
I
don’t know, man,’ said the Duke of Ormonde testily. ‘What does one do with horses? Give them some oats or something. Then hand this lady in.’

Kit watched as the horses were released and wooden chocks placed behind the gilded wheels. If she’d still had pockets she would have put her hands in them. The silent coachman handed her into the carriage. The interior was another riot of gilt, and the cushions saffron yellow, like the yolk of an egg. She settled herself. ‘What do you want of me?’

‘I want you to have dinner with me.’