Kit (53 page)

Yours etc, Sir William Windham, High Commander of Her Majesty’s Army

She looked up, her face aglow. ‘It is a commission.’ She read the paper over. ‘For
both
of us.’

He nodded, his blue eyes wary.

‘You did this! Last night, when you ran from me.’ She should have trusted him – he spoke with actions, not words, as a soldier should. When he’d left her at the courtroom at San Michele he’d gone to fetch Marlborough. Last night he’d gone to petition the High Command.

‘Not I. I merely made the request. It was the queen who made it so. And here – I had the measurements from your tailor.’ He passed her a heavy bale, wrapped with paper and string – she cut the twine with her paring knife and her new uniform sprang forth from its bonds, as if it was alive and could not wait to be worn. She hugged it to her, eyes shining.

‘We ride at dawn,’ he said. ‘But for tonight,’ he smiled, ‘we shall stoke our last home fire with your detested hooped petticoat. I think the cane will make a capital blaze.’ He could not finish the sentence, for his wife launched herself at him and, as they embraced, the letter and the uniform fell to the floor.

At dawn two cavalrymen reported to the Hyde Park Barracks, to ride for Almansa to augment the forces of the Duke of Galway. Both wore the red of the dragoons, both were mounted upon grey mares. There was little to choose between them. One was perhaps a little taller than the other, and although the taller wore a shining new blade, the shorter wore a sword whose metals were dimmed with age, and whose blade, though keen, seemed to be smithed in the old style. Only the most observant bystander, peering closely beneath the tricorn hat of the shorter fellow, might have his attention caught by a set of very comely features, by the subtle curve of the body beneath the coat, and the coil of red hair tied at the nape; and remark that there rode a very pretty dragoon.

The two men mingled with the company, and were lost to sight as they greeted other dragoons who appeared to be as dear to them as brothers. Somewhere someone played a violin, a merry air from Galway, in honour of their commander. Then the herald sounded, the banners streamed and the outriders rode forth.

At the vanguard Kit and Ross turned to each other at the sound of the trumpet and shared a smile of pure joy. Perfectly in accord, perfectly happy, they spurred their horses towards another horizon.

When Kit saw herself, quite clearly, crossing the Figure Court, she knew that she was very near the end now.

Most days now the quadrangle of the Chelsea Hospital would be peopled with the dead, walking on the neat green squares of grass, or down the loggias, or under the cupola, but she’d never seen herself before.

So many old friends she saw there who had passed into the hereafter; Marlborough, in his flowing wig and his half-armour, Marlborough, who’d been attainted by Parliament for embezzling army funds, disgraced by the Whig Party, but was mourned by the whole of England when he died.

Sometimes she even saw Queen Anne herself, hobbling about the precincts of the hospital with her gouty gait, long dead and succeeded since by two King Georges. And Ross, of course, her Ross whom she’d lost two years ago, after a lifetime of happiness. She saw him often, riding on his old horse Phantom, trampling the manicured lawns. She always saw him riding away from her; young again, dark haired, laughing over his shoulder. She saw him as she had first known him; Ross before the wig and the gout and the colonelcy and retirement to the Chelsea Hospital. But she saw him riding away. Always riding away.

She never saw the Duke of Ormonde, Ormonde, who had achieved his desire to replace his great rival Marlborough, as the commander-in-chief of the army. But he could not quit his scheming – attainted for treason, and stripped of his titles, he’d fled to Spain to plot his next design. He’d outlived Marlborough, and the queen, and would outlive her too. She smiled – she’d forgiven Ormonde long ago. If he had nine lives, like the cat she’d always thought him, then she wished him the joy of them.

She knew her own life was ending as soon as she saw herself walking the lawns – her own figure, in a saffron gown, and no bonnet on her red hair. This woman had her stance, her way of walking, and her hair had just Kit’s curl to it as she stopped one of the old, scarlet-coated soldiers and he pointed to her rooms.

Kit watched her younger self walking up the Long Ward. She had not walked like that for years – now she could not manage ten yards without help. Her ghost approached. She was not afraid. She was ready. Ross, she thought, I’ll be with you soon. But when the spectre knocked and entered, Kit was surprised to see that the figure did not, after all, have her face.

The woman took Kit’s old hand in her younger one. On closer inspection she was not so young as she’d looked at a distance. Her hands were worn, and a starburst of fine lines radiated from the outer corners of her green eyes, and wrinkled in an attractive manner when she smiled.

‘I have come a long way to find you,’ she said in an accent Kit recognised from somewhere, some country where she’d been, and fought.

‘Who are you?’

The red-headed woman untied the ribbons of her cloak and laid bare her throat. There she wore a collar of diamonds, with some of the stones gone like missing teeth. Kit vaguely recognised it.

In return, Kit showed the lady Sean Kavanagh’s sword, now old and rusted. She wanted her to know what she once had been. She recited the names of the campaigns she and Ross had fought together like a litany (she had never been one for prayer). She liked the music of the words: Carpi, Cremona, Luzzara, Turin, Almansa, Oudenarde, Malplaquet.

Then she showed her guest the ‘Great George’, the collar of the Order of the Garter in its faded box, the corners softened and worn with age. She looked again, at the saint on horseback, invited her to touch the little gold figure. She remembered Ross touching it thus. ‘So might our son be one day,’ Ross had said. He’d said the same when she’d worn it each year at the Garter ceremony at St James’s, or on her name day, or at Yuletide. Until, one year, he’d ceased to say it, and never said it again. ‘I never had a child,’ Kit said, tears choking her voice.

The red-headed woman took her hand. ‘Yes, you did. You have always had a child. I am your daughter.’

Kit smiled. ‘That cannot be.’

‘Don’t you know who I am? You should, for I bear your name.’

Kit looked at the lady with her old eyes – and saw her tiny, wrapped in a shawl with only a kiss curl of red hair. ‘Christiana?’

She reached out and cupped the lady’s cheek. Christiana took the hand and pressed it to her flesh, to her bone.

‘Christiana,’ repeated Kit, her tears falling now. ‘I never thought to be a mother.’

Kit could feel the smile under her hand, the cheek she held bunching to the shape of an apple. ‘Say a father instead – for you supported me by placing yourself in daily danger. You paid for my childhood with a diamond collar, my adulthood with an army pension. You may not have suckled me, nor wiped my nose, but you raised me as much as any other man did, and for that, Kit Walsh was my father.’

‘How is your mother?’

‘She is a little infirm these days, but well in essentials. She lives in Venice, in a house she bought for us with your diamonds. She married a salt merchant, is now widowed.’ Kit nodded. Bianca the butcher’s daughter, now a dowager of salt; the princess of victuals.

‘And are you happy?’

‘I married an Englishman. A quartermaster in the navy. We have lately moved to Portsmouth. He is in London buying sail canvas in Spitalfields. I begged to come with him.’ She smiled. ‘He calls me Kit.’

Kit smiled too and nodded, suddenly deathly tired. She closed her eyes. Christiana rose quietly. She stooped and kissed the old lady’s papery cheek.

‘I’ll come again,’ she said.

Kit watched Christiana walk away and looked beyond her to Ross, riding away from her as she always saw him. There would be no need for her to come again.

For today it was different. Another figure rode beside him – a red-headed beauty, young and lithe, a red pigtail flowing out beneath her tricorn.
There’s a horizon everywhere you go
, he’d always said. And as they rode, over the hills and far away to where the earth meets the sky, Ross held out his hand, and Kit took it.

THE END

For a while I had a vague awareness of a remarkable female soldier who had fought as a man, but I only really became acquainted with her many names and her story when I read Daniel Defoe’s book
Mother Ross: The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, Commonly Called Mother Ross, on Campaign with the Duke of Marlborough.
This contemporary account opened my eyes to Kit’s extraordinary experiences in the British Army, and was an invaluable source for my novel. I had great fun reading
Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English
by Geoffrey Hughes, and was able to pepper my book with some good barracks language! I learned a great deal about sailors’ votive shrines in Genoa from an article in
The Oxford Historian
Issue XI entitled
Spectacular Miracles
by Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser. The other source which deserves a mention is a work of fiction;
Shield of Three Lions
by Pamela Kaufman was one of my favourite books growing up, and, as it features a heroine who dresses as a boy to go on Crusade, deserves a mention as the inspiration for this book.

There were other sources for this novel besides written ones. I must mention two films;
Farinelli
(1994) which is so informative on the experience of the
castrato
, and
Le Roi Danse
(2000) which allowed me to see the
Ballet de la Nuit
as it would have been performed, when the young Louis XIV danced the role of Apollon. Both films were directed by Gérard Corbiau. I must also mention Dublin-based band
Lad Lane
, who, through both their recorded and live performances, opened my ears to the lively loveliness of traditional Irish music.

Thanks also to Cecil Sharp House, home of the English Folk Society. It was in the library there that I managed to track down
Arthur McBride,
the folk song which is the touchstone of this book.

I needed many names for my dragoons, and at a Remembrance Day ceremony at my local war memorial I had an idea. So all the dragoons in this book – bar Ross, Kit and Taylor who are real characters – are named after the fallen on the war memorial at St. Mary’s Church, Abbey Road. A very small tribute to a very great sacrifice.

And finally, my thanks must go to all the lovely people who helped me with this book. Martin O’Grady was very helpful in giving me the Dubliner’s history of Kavanagh’s – the Gravedigger’s pub. And I had the great honour to meet a real-life Chelsea pensioner, IP Derek ‘Yorky’ Layton, who was most informative about the Chelsea Hospital’s first female resident. At Hodder I must thank my editor Kate Parkin, who was there at the inception of the book and gave the go-ahead for Kit’s story to be told, and was there too in the final stages to give me the benefit of her fantastic editorial skills. Thanks also must go to Francine Toon for managing the production of the novel and Ian Paten for his eagle-eyed copy edit. As always, I am indebted to my agent Teresa Chris for her unfailing guidance and support.

And, last but never least, my thanks to Sacha, Conrad and Ruby, who are always on my side.

Kit Kavanagh (also known as Christian Walsh, Christian Davies or latterly Mother Ross) was a real person. In this novel I have augmented and embellished her adventures but her own life was no less remarkable.

She was born in 1667 and ran an alehouse in Dublin with her husband Richard. When he was pressed into the British Army she followed him to war dressed as a man, and enlisted in the army too. Initially she was shipped to the Low Countries, where she further disguised her appearance by having a false penis made out of silver.

Kit served as an infantryman and then as a dragoon in the Scots Greys. She fought several campaigns under the Duke of Marlborough. She was known to the duke personally, and he rewarded her for her bravery in action. She accepted the paternity of the daughter of a woman she met on her campaigns, rather than admit her true sex. Kit eventually found her husband Richard, but he was already married to another woman. Kit continued to fight, but her sex was revealed when she took a musket ball in the hip and was operated on by the field surgeon. Upon her return to England she was commended by Queen Anne, who gave her a handsome pension and a pledge to give a commission to Kit’s first-born son.

Kit married Captain Ross and every man in her regiment made a contribution to buy her a wedding gown. After her marriage she enlisted again as a sutler in the army and served for many more years. She ended her days in London’s Chelsea Hospital – the first woman to be admitted there as a pensioner. Kit died in 1739 and was buried at St Margaret’s church Westminster. Some years later the Duke of Ormonde was buried next door in Westminster Abbey.