Kit looked down at a tiny but perfect child, wrapped in a filthy grey shawl. She looked up at the beggar woman, expecting some trick for coin, and was stunned to recognise Bianca Castellano.
The girl was skeleton thin, the violet eyes that had been so striking now seemed deranged. Her black curls, once so lush and neat, were as greasy and tangled as a bellwether’s fleece. ‘This is your child,’ insisted Bianca, tears in her voice, as Kit gazed at her, horrified. She reached out a thin hand, childlike itself, and tweaked back the shawl from the baby’s crown. There, fiery and unmistakable, grew a tuft of red hair.
The dragoons cheered and laughed, barracking and jostling Kit. She could have laughed too if it wasn’t so sad. She, a woman who could never have a child, now, incredibly, held a babe in her arms that could be her own, with porcelain skin and red hair, reaching up to her face with a tiny starlike hand. For one moment of madness she almost believed it, then reality asserted itself. She stood, holding the child carefully, and drew Bianca away from the jackals at the table. ‘What happened to you? Where are you living?’
Bianca looked at her with hollow eyes and Kit understood. She was living nowhere. ‘Come,’ said Kit.
She crossed the tavern with her cloak covering the baby and Bianca in the crook of her other arm. ‘Landlord,’ she called. ‘A room for this lady.’
The burly landlord did not raise an eyebrow. ‘That’s one way to celebrate becoming a sergeant, Mr Walsh,’ he said. ‘Two pfennigs an hour, a schilling for the night.’
Kit dug in her pouch. ‘A sovereign for a week,’ she said.
Upstairs, she seated the girl on the bed, and stood before her, still holding the baby. ‘Bianca. What happened? What do you mean by coming here to me?’
‘This is your child,’ the girl insisted. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Think, Bianca,’ Kit urged. ‘I never lay with you.’
‘You did.’ She was crying now. ‘You came to my house. You paid court to me – you came when my father was from home – you paid me sweet compliments. You talked with me, about our future, and then we … you … lay with me in my parlour. It was as beautiful as paradise. And now we have been blessed with a child. A red-headed child, the image of you.’ She nodded to the little bundle Kit held. ‘Now you must marry me – you will, now, my Kit?’ Her claw-like fingers reached to Kit’s coat and clutched a handful of the cloth.
Kit wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation – but Bianca’s distress was too palpable; and the story was so terribly sad. She knew she could absolve herself in a moment, by removing her jacket, but she had already been discovered once by Atticus Lambe, and was now more jealous of her disguise than ever. ‘I did visit you,’ she said slowly. ‘And I did come when your father was from home. But I never tempted you with even a word, Bianca. We never so much as kissed.’ Kit looked in the eyes that had once sparkled with promise, and now were flat and fathomless and dead like the orbs of a skull. The girl nodded sadly. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘You are right.’
The child began to keen a little, and Kit gave the bundle back to Bianca. Bianca cradled it tenderly, and offered it her breast. She was horrifically thin and wasted. A phrase the potmen at Kavanagh’s used to use came to Kit: ‘even the tide wouldn’t take her’.
Kit walked to the window to confront her own reflection. What she saw made her turn back. ‘Red hair,’ she said. ‘Taylor. The child is Taylor’s.’
Bianca looked up, fear and relief written on her face. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is.’
Kit sat next to them, on the bed. ‘What happened?’
Bianca lowered her voice. ‘I went to seek you, that last night, to take my leave. I wanted to tell you that I would wait. I saw a redhead, in the uniform of the dragoons, but when he turned it was Taylor. I told him that I was seeking you, and he became enraged. He dragged me behind the church and …’
Kit sat in silence, remembering how she’d envied Bianca once, with her gowns and jewels and her fond father. Now she knew that women were not safe in their fortress of petticoats. Taylor had laid siege to her, stormed the citadel, and left her in tatters.
‘I do not know what to do,’ whispered Bianca. ‘I am at the end of my wits. I saw you at my father’s today – I go each day to see if he will see me, or … or her.’ It was the first time she’d mentioned the baby’s sex. ‘But he always turns me from the door. There is nothing for us. I am ruined.’
‘How have you lived?’
‘I have begged from house to house, sometimes from the regiment, sometimes the eating houses. Once I started to show they put me on the turning stool, you know – and after that my disgrace was universally known and no one would help me.’
Kit was horrified, remembering the dreadful trial she’d seen on her first day in Rovereto, nine months ago. ‘Could your father not prevent it?’
The enormous eyes looked up, surprised. ‘He was the one who elected me for the turning. I thought I would lose her.’ She held the child close and Kit shook her head at the inhumanity of it. Bad enough to sit on the stool alone – but with a child in the belly … ‘I’d been sheltering at the church, but when the baby came the priest turned me out.’ Kit remembered the church at Arco where Mr Lambe had stitched her together again. So the church would shelter soldiers but not a mother and child. Sanctuary indeed. ‘So we sleep in the open, for now, but when winter comes …’ There was no need to go on.
Kit was appalled. She had not given Bianca Castellano a single thought for the many months away from Rovereto, until Captain Tichborne had suggested a local woman might sew on her stripes. She had blithely gone to seek Bianca for her own ends. She had not given any credence to the depth of Bianca’s feelings – she had assumed that because she was not a real man Bianca’s was not a real attachment. Kit had used her, hurt her and used her again. It was time to be called to account.
Kit felt in her waistcoat and brought out the purse that Marlborough had given her, soft leather in royal blue, with Marlborough’s arms stamped upon it in discreet gold. She handed the purse to Bianca, who emptied it on to the bed.
‘Five pistoles!’
‘Yes,’ said Kit. She still had her coins from Kavanagh’s and her pay and Richard’s would be enough to get them home to Dublin.
‘I cannot take this.’
‘Yes you can.’ Kit took a breath. ‘The child is mine.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘She would not be in the world were it not for my selfish actions. So she is mine. Let it be universally known. I hereby swear that I will bear the living of her.’
‘Are you sure? This is a great undertaking.’
‘Yes.’ She knew, now, there would be no child for her and Richard. She thought for the first time of what this might mean.
And there would be one benefit in her acceptance of paternity – although she was not proud of this private and selfish motive. Such an admission, publicly known, would prove beyond doubt that she was a man. It would work against the dark alchemy of Mr Lambe if he chose to start some rumour before she could complete her search for Richard.
Kit ran down to the bar and ordered some soup and stew for Bianca and then carried it up the stairs herself. Bianca placed the babe on the pillow to sleep, while she ate ravenously. Kit could not watch her hunger, and turned again to the window. ‘Taylor,’ she said. ‘Have you been to Taylor?’
Bianca looked up from her plate, mouth dripping with sauce.
‘Of course you have. That is why you came to me.’
She turned and looked at Bianca, Bianca looked down and bit her lip. Before the eyes dropped Kit read something dreadful there – a new shame. ‘Did he … dare to insult you again?’
‘Yes,’ said Bianca dully, ‘while the child cried in the gutter.’
Kit felt an all-consuming rage. Yes, she could walk away now, having housed and fed mother and child. She could ignore Taylor’s transgressions, find Richard and go. But then Taylor would go unpunished. Bianca would b
e sport for him, sport he did not even have to pay for, not like the plump whores in the taverns with their flashing satins and inviting eyes, who would not lie with a soldier unless he pushed a coin into their bosom. Kit spoke before she could change her mind. ‘In the morning I will make a reckoning with Sergeant Taylor.’ Taylor’s time had come. All his million little offences to her, the bell, the pig, the thousand insults and petty hardships to her and her fellows, paled next to the dark crimes he had visited on Bianca and his own child.
‘No,’ Bianca said quickly. ‘You may not challenge him – you will be arrested.’
‘Not now. I am lately made a sergeant, and may challenge one of my own rank. Rest easy,’ Kit said grimly, ‘I will avenge you.’
She tucked Bianca into the only bed, next to her sleeping baby, as if she were a child herself. The girl’s great eyes were already closing. The food and warmth had done their work. Bianca spoke sleepily, slurring her words. ‘Did you ever find your brother?’
‘No. I know he is here in Rovereto somewhere.’
‘If you do this thing for me, I will find him for you. I can go anywhere in this town from sewers to palaces – I have become invisible.’
Kit could well believe it. ‘Sleep now,’ she said tenderly.
She leant and kissed them both. The baby’s cheek felt like a peach under her lips. Bianca looked up as she received her salute, with the ghost of a smile about her lips. ‘Our first kiss,’ she said, so sadly that Kit could not meet her eye.
The baby shifted in her sleep, and uttered a little cry. ‘Does she have a name?’ Kit whispered.
Bianca was silent, and for a moment Kit thought she might already be asleep. But the whisper came back. ‘Not yet. I did not dare name her in case …’
Kit thought she understood. Bianca was afraid to love her daughter, in case she was forced to let her go. She knew then that Bianca had faced the horror of abandoning the baby, like the foundlings in the valley, probably tens or hundreds of times. ‘You should give her a name,’ she said. ‘She is safe now.’
Bianca lifted her dark head. ‘What is your given name?’
Kit hesitated. ‘Christian.’
‘Then I shall call her Christiana.’
Kit lay back on the little rug on the wooden boards and laid both hands on her barren stomach. She looked out at the starless dark. There was now a child in the world who bore her name.
Chapter 20
For if you insult me with one other word …
‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)
In the morning, before it was even light, Kit sewed on her sergeant’s stripes by the candle’s end, as mother and child slept in a close circle on the bed.
She strapped on her sword by first light, and stepped out into the street. As she walked through the market square she passed by the silk post and a shout stopped her in her tracks. ‘Sergeant Walsh.’
It was Captain Ross, framed in the doorway like an avenging angel, his eyes burning blue. ‘A word.’
Kit followed her captain into the timbered counting house with a sinking heart. Ross paced the office, his hands clasped behind himself over the skirt of his coat, the knuckles white, as if he were too angry to leave his hands at liberty.
‘I thought to congratulate you on your promotion today, but I find I now must address you on another subject.’ He stopped pacing and fixed her with his eyes. ‘It has come to my notice that you are now a father. Is that true?’
Kit fastened her gaze on the door jamb, to the left of his face. She could not look at him, but nodded curtly. When she had agreed to shelter Bianca she had not anticipated this particular interview.
‘I heard that you insulted a young woman last time we were billeted upon this town, and she has now given birth to a daughter. Still correct?’
Now she must speak. ‘Yes.’
Ross shook his head as if reeling from a blow. ‘You disappoint me, Walsh.’
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
‘In my mind there is a healthy case for your stripes to be taken away, before they are even sewn. But I am told I am in a minority – I am told that these things happen in the army, to likely young fellows such as you, when a large number of young men are billeted on a town. And I am sure you did not mean to compromise the lady?’ There was a question in the statement – a plea for her to mitigate her behaviour, to absolve herself.
She was silent – there was nothing she could say.
‘I must say, Kit, that your silence does not become you. I say again – you have disappointed me; you have disappointed me gravely. I know you have no father to teach you better, but I had thought – hoped – that I myself had given you some guidance.’ Kit shifted her feet. This was horrible. ‘I assume you intend to support the child?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you offered the lady marriage?’
‘No.’
‘I see. Well, I cannot guide you further. You are a grown man. Have you considered the lady and her position? Do you have any notion of what life holds for her now?’
She could not be angry with him for his defence of Bianca and his censure of the careless young buck that had ruined her bound her to him more than he could ever know. She was mortified that they must now be so estranged. ‘You have a shining army career ahead of you, if you will grasp it. I will say only this by way of advice. A wife does not have to be a burden. A wife can be the greatest blessing ever afforded to a man.’ His voice broke a little; she made the mistake of looking at him now, and for the desolation of his expression she bled for him.
‘I cannot offer her marriage,’ she whispered, ‘however much I wish to.’
‘I see.’ His face was stone. He pulled his coat straight. ‘Well, then, there is nothing left to say. You are dismissed.’
There was nothing she could say. She had agreed to support Christiana, and that was that. Let Ross detest her; it was better that way; as soon as she found Richard she would be forced to desert her post anyway, and would disappoint him even more gravely. But the disapproval in the blue eyes brought tears pricking at the back of her own. She swallowed hard, and went to seek Sergeant Taylor.
She found him at the Gasthof, washing his breakfast down with a drink. She watched him for a moment through narrow eyes. He ate and drank with relish, like a man with nothing on his conscience. He wore an eyepatch now, to cover the injury she had given him, and it added to his air of menace. He drained his cup and banged it down, resting his arm along the table. Kit walked forward, drew her dagger and stabbed it down into his sleeve. The drinking hand was now trapped. Taylor looked at the dagger and slowly, slowly up at Kit. ‘Walsh,’ he growled. I’m celebrating. Won’t you join me?’
‘I am certain,’ said Kit coldly, ‘that no actions of yours deserve such celebration. Unless you plan to acknowledge your responsibilities, and the blessings of a new life?’
‘Ah, so she brought her whelp to you. Clever little bitch.’
‘Do not,’ said Kit though her teeth, ‘describe Signorina Castellano in such terms.’
‘Well, she is clever,’ protested Taylor equably. ‘The red poll gave her the idea, I suppose. Besides, the brat could easily be yours – you were sniffing her skirts last winter, as I remember. And you owe me something; your handiwork ruined my beauty.’ He indicated his missing eye. ‘The jades are more reluctant to lie with me now, but the little Castellano will always be grateful.’
‘Stand up,’ said Kit, yanking her dagger from his sleeve. ‘Stand up, damn you.’
Sergeant Taylor stayed where he was but swivelled on his stool, regarding her with his single eye. He bared his teeth and barked like a dog.
Through the long interrupted night while Christiana had keened and cried, and slept again, Kit had imagined how Taylor would react to her challenge, but had not once imagined him barking at her.
‘As a child in Manchester,’ he began in his flat North Country voice, ‘for years I could not sleep for the neighbour’s talbot. It barked from dusk till
dawn, from one year to the next. My dad was a grocer, had a keen knife, and one night I could take it no more. I got up and slit the dog’s throat, and threw the body in the Irwell.’ He spoke to his half-full glass, never once looking up. ‘I wouldn’t have been more than eight. I’ve slept well ever since, until you came along, Walsh. You bark around my feet wherever I go like a little talbot pup. No – for that’s a good English breed; a little Irish terrier, that’s you. Now give me your message and be gone.’ He swallowed the last of his drink with relish, and held the glass high for another.
‘I bring you a challenge, and nothing else.’
‘You really are a tiresome cur, for we’ve had this conversation before. You may not challenge a superior.’
Kit pulled him to his feet with an effort – he was a stocky, solid fellow. She shoved her shoulder, with the stripes upon it, in his face. ‘That may be; but I’m damned sure that Sergeant Walsh may challenge Sergeant Taylor.’
Taylor eyed Kit’s stripes. A fiendish grin spread across his face. ‘Ah,’ he said, bowing as one would to royalty. ‘I did not know. I congratulate you.’
‘Save your compliments,’ hissed Kit. ‘Just name your time and your place for us to meet.’
Taylor spat and kicked his stool away. ‘I’ve always thought the day would come when I must shut you up. I’ve nothing better to do now,’ he said, ‘and I’ve had my breakfast.’ He retreated into the snug for a while, and spoke low voiced to some of his fellows. Arranging his affairs, no doubt, thought Kit, twitching with impatience, and wishing she’d done the same. She had given Bianca her purse, so she and Christiana would be well for a twelvemonth or so; perhaps she should have left instruction for her coin, and her sword, and a letter to Maura, and something to tell Richard. But she wished also, with a tiny pang, that if she had indeed spoken her last words to Captain Ross, they had not been in anger. ‘Come on, Sergeant Walsh,’ said Taylor, almost genially. ‘Time to silence the barking.’
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