Kit

by Marina Fiorato

  She took Marlborough’s hand, and let him lead her out to the courtyard, where Ross and Flint waited for her. The dragoons had not been idle – they were busy dismantling the scaffold and smashing it to matchwood. Marlborough put Kit’s hand in Ross’s, and called his servant. His man helped the duke to mount his white charger, but before he spurred his horse Marlborough reached into his saddlebag. ‘We met a knave along the way, masquerading as the Duke of Ormonde. It transpired that he’d neglected to settle his bills with you. But between myself and the good captain here, we persuaded him to pay the reckoning.’ And he threw down a glittering handful of diamonds in a graceful arc, falling upon her like the snow. She caught the stones in her skirts like a milkmaid and laughed up at him.

  ‘If you speed your nuptials,’ said the duke, ‘I will officiate at the wedding.’

  ‘Wedding?’ Kit asked, a laugh bubbling through the word.

  ‘Well? There is no profit in delay, is there?’ He pointed at Ross. ‘I shall need a man like this back by my side soon, so take your honey month while you may.’ He smiled, doffed his gold tricorn and rode through the great gate.

  Kit looked at Ross shyly. He looked at her hands. ‘You once said your wedding ring was your most prized possession.’

  ‘That was a lie,’ she said. ‘It was base metal – a false ring for a false husband, worn by a false countess. But I swear I will never lie to you again.’

  ‘I have nothing to give you, base or otherwise.’

  ‘We will have a ring wrought in Genova,’ she said, smiling to herself. ‘I know a silversmith there.’

  ‘But for now …’ He plucked a strand from Flint’s mane and twisted the wiry hair about her first finger. She looked at it as if it was made of diamonds too. ‘But I do have something to give you, or rather, to return.’ Ross took Sean Kavanagh’s sword from his sheath with a metallic ring. She held it to the light – old-fashioned in style, heavy in the hand, but the blade still keen.

  ‘You once told me it was your dearest possession,’ she said.

  ‘That was the truth.’

  She handed the blade to him. ‘Then take it back again.’

  ‘But it is yours.’

  ‘Ours,’ she corrected. ‘We will hang it over our hearth.’

  He smiled and handed her up on to Flint’s back, vaulting up behind her. He gathered the reins.

  ‘No,’ she said, turning her head to smile at him. ‘She knows me. I’ll take the reins.’

  Ross returned the smile, handed over the reins and took her about the waist.

  ‘Hold on tight,’ said Kit.

  Chapter 44

  And always lives happy and charming …

  ‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

  Kit and Ross were to be married the next day on Superga hill, before the little marble chapel.

  The snow had left off, and the sun shone, and Turin, stronghold of the Empire, shone below.

  The bride had been given the use of the Duke of Marlborough’s own tent in which to ready herself. She had no fresh linens, not even a shirt or a sheet to make a shift. She wore the tattered and soiled travel gown she’d worn since she’d fled from Ormonde, made worse for wear by her days spent on the road and nights spent in a cell. Her wig was long gone – she had washed her face and hands in Marlborough’s ewer, had rinsed her hair and combed it as best she could with her fingers, but could do not more. She had her diamonds but when she fastened them in her ears and wrists with the help of the small vanity glass in Marlborough’s pavilion, they looked ridiculous next to the shabby gown. ‘Like pearls in a pigpen,’ she said to her reflection. She took them off again. Kit studied herself. Her face was very pale, her freckles very pronounced, her eyes very green. She looked, with her wild red hair and shabby gown, like a lunatic woman wandering abroad. She shook her head at her reflection. How could Ross take her thus?

  She paced, biting her lip, waiting for her summons as if she awaited the battle bugle. When Ross came to fetch her, she ignored the large parcel in his arms and launched herself on him.

  ‘Is it right?’ she asked. ‘I am not long widowed. Everyone knows my story now. Everyone knows I came to seek a different husband and he is not long cold. Will they not say that the cow that lows most after her calf goes soonest to bull?’

  He held her cheek in his hand. ‘Not long widowed,’ he said, ‘but your husband has been gone from you a long time.’

  She kissed the hand. It was true. Richard, her Richard from Kavanagh’s, had not been hers for some years. He belonged to the widow from Rovereto; he was hers to mourn.

  ‘That is the past. Time for the future.’ He handed her the bundle that he held, wrapped in brown paper and string, and she nearly buckled under the weight of it. She tore off the paper to reveal a bale of red cloth. She shook it out; it was not a uniform, but a gown. It was dragoon red and trimmed with snowy white fur. There was a tricorn too, trimmed with a plume of white feathers, fastened with the dragoon cap badge of the eagle and laurel. Ross pointed to the full skirts. ‘See; the tailor’s paper is still pinned there.’

  ‘So it is.’ She drew out the pin, and took the paper from the folds.

  ‘Why don’t you read the bill,’ urged Ross. ‘It will gladden you, I’m sure.’

  She opened the folds and read the bill over. ‘Received with thanks – 100 guineas.’ Private Southcott – one guinea. Private Hall – one guinea. Privates Book, O’Connell, Wareham, Swinney, Rolf, Noyes, Crook, Page, Dallenger, Kennedy, Lancaster, Farrant, Gibson, Laverack, Rees. One guinea, one guinea, one guinea for each. One hundred names, one hundred guineas.

  Kit looked up from the paper, tears pricking her eyes. ‘They paid for it. They all did.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘with their army wages.’

  She could not speak. Ross kissed her gently on the forehead. ‘Better hasten,’ he said. ‘The Duke of Marlborough waits.’

  As the chapel bells rang Kit emerged from the tent, resplendent in the red gown.

  She had no maid to help her, so she had dressed her mass of red hair as best she could, plaiting a trio of braids to wrap around the rest as she had done in the alehouse, leaving the long curls to tumble to her left breast. She wore the red hat cocked to the right as the dragoons wore theirs. The gown fitted as if it was made on her. Now she looked quite different – her mass of hair coiled neatly, glowing carnelian against the red of the gown and the white of her bosom, her cheeks pink with pleasure, her lips deep rose where she’d bitten them until the blood came. Now she could fix Anne of Austria’s diamonds in her ears and at her wrists – now they fitted the picture. Her neckline was bare – she touched the place between her heart and her throat where the diamond collar should sit, and smiled secretly at her reflection.

  Outside in the low winter sun Ross waited for her, resplendent in his dress uniform, his shadow a dark knife-strike cutting the crown of the hill. Marlborough stood with him, back in his armour, fidgeting from foot to foot as if he could not wait to be gone and take up swords again. The duke performed the function of a priest, standing before them and taking a hand apiece.

  She took Ross’s other hand and smiled – he squeezed her fingers and her horsehair ring pressed into her hand; her doubts vanished. Marlborough took two golden swords from his ensign and laid them crosswise on the frozen grass as if they were to dance the Mattachins. He straightened, and waved his regiment’s kerchief above his head, signalling the commencement of the camp marriage. ‘Jump, rogue!’ he shouted, and Ross jumped nimbly over the two swords, his boots hopping between the blades.

  ‘Follow, whore!’ cried the duke, and Kit hoisted her skirts and hopped likewise, taking the ritual in good part. Then she stood with Ross again, he buried his hands in her red curls, took her in his arms and kissed her hard, and the dragoons cheered themselves hoarse, casting their tricorns into the air.

  In Marlborough’s vast pavilion of billowing crimson silk, Kit sipped at her marriage cup of genever. The sack-posset had been eaten, the stocking th
rown; the duke himself had left directly after the marriage, anxious, she knew, to assume his position on the chessboard. For hours it seemed she had drunk and talked, been hammered on the back, been obliged to recount her adventures over and over again to the men she had fought beside. She had seen them treat her with chivalry and deference at the beginning of their discourse and, by the end and another cup or two, revert, unconsciously, to their former camaraderie. She was glad to see it, glad to see that though her clothes had changed she had not changed in essentials. And for as many dragoons as she greeted, she must tell her story again to certain of Marlborough’s officers, who found her story incredible, and prompted her to repeat the particulars of her adventures again and again. At length she had a chance to stand in a private corner with her husband and clink her goblet with his; she had been generous with her time, as had he, for they knew that tonight they would be together, and every night after that.

  ‘Renewing old acquaintances?’

  ‘And making new ones. But there is one man to whom I have not yet been properly introduced.’

  ‘And who is that?’

  She laughed up at her husband. ‘You! I still do not know your Christian name.’

  He looked down at her fondly. ‘Would you like me to own it?’

  She considered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You will always be my Ross. Quondam captain, present husband. And henceforth I shall be Mother Ross – it will suit me very well.’

  He smiled. ‘Another name for your collection. Yet you will always be Kit to me.’

  ‘Just Kit.’

  ‘Not just …’

  He studied her closely, touching her constantly with lips or fingertips.

  ‘I am real,’ she assured him, ‘and I am yours.’

  But he could not leave off his inventory. He traced each eyebrow, ran a finger down her upturned nose, counted each freckle. He pushed at the miniature diamond chandeliers hanging at her earlobes, so they swung back and forth. His fingers moved down to caress her collarbone and the notch a musket had once made.

  Then he frowned. ‘What became of the diamond collar? Did that rogue Ormonde keep it?’

  ‘I sent it to a friend,’ she said. She had sent it, by Marlborough’s fast-rider that very morning, to Bianca Castellano in Rovereto for the care of herself and Christiana. The price of the gems alone would keep mother and babe in comfort for the rest of their days. She pictured Bianca, in the Gasthof, opening the canvas roll at one of the little wooden tables, the necklace falling out on to the pine, Bianca reading the letter rolled with it with gaze widening, the bright gems reflected in her eyes.

  ‘It does not matter, does it?’

  ‘To me, not at all,’ said Ross. ‘Besides, when we are in England we will find something to adorn you here, so my Lord of Marlborough tells me.’

  ‘England?’

  ‘London. For a very particular reason.’

  She sensed that he was teasing, but a little in earnest too. ‘What might that be?’

  ‘I told you,’ he said playfully. ‘To fit you with a necklace.’

  She shook her head. ‘I may now be a woman, but I have no need of necklaces, and the other accoutrements of fine ladies.’

  ‘You will be the first lady to wear a necklace of this sort.’

  Chapter 45

  When a trusty shillelagh came over their heads …

  ‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

  Kit felt the cold metal necklace settle on her collarbones.

  She lowered her eyes from the glory of St James’s court, looked down and touched the collar with her fingertips – the metal warmed quickly to her skin. Fine gold knots alternated with enamelled medallions showing a rose wreathed by a garter. From the collar hung a golden pendant of a knight on horseback battling a dragon who was wreathed about his horse’s legs. This was St George. He looked like a dragoon.

  Then she looked up at the queen – Queen Anne, infirm, bloated, her face so full as to have not a wrinkle upon it, smooth as a babe despite her age, but as full as a melon. Her teeth were worn snags, her eyes sunken, her expression earnest, as if she had much to say to Kit.

  The yeoman of the guard whispered in Kit’s ear that she was to fall upon her right knee, and repeat the vow of the Garter – she spoke the vows but could not remember a word of them either then or afterwards. For a moment she could not rise, whether from the emotion of the moment or the old wound in her hip she could not be sure, but she found herself assisted by the queen’s own gloved hand. Infirm as she was in other particulars, her Majesty’s grip was firm and strong.

  ‘Arise, Mistress Ross,’ said the Queen, ‘Lady Companion of the Garter.’

  Kit smiled shyly – of all the names she had assumed in her life, this was one she could never conceive of getting used to.

  ‘And now we have done with the happy business of the day, I have something of a more private nature to say to you. In recognition of your extraordinary service in our army, it will be my care to provide for you, in the same manner in which I would look after any retired officer of the male sex.’ Kit felt such a pang at the term ‘retired’ that she almost missed the pertinent points of the queen’s benefice. ‘Therefore you may apply to the Earl of Oxford at the exchequer for the order of fifty pounds, which I am pleased to give you as a pension; in addition my Lord Treasurer Oxford shall pay you a shilling a day subsistence for life.’

  A handsome sum. The fifty pounds would keep her well, in addition to Ross’s fortune and income. The shilling she had no need of, but she had a happy thought; she would direct the treasury to send it to Bianca each month for baby Christiana. The thought pleased her so much that her gratitude was effusive. ‘I thank you, Your Majesty, with all my heart.’

  ‘And furthermore,’ said the queen, ‘I would like to make you a promise. I hear you are recently married, for which I congratulate you. If you should be delivered of a son, I will give him a commission to the army as soon as he is born.’

  Kit smiled involuntarily, and heard herself thank the queen, but the pang she already felt spread through her core. Her overwhelming sadness, that there would never be a son to receive such a commission, was tinged with pity; pity for the great lady who stood before her, for it was well known that the queen had worn out her body with seventeen pregnancies and seventeen stillbirths. That Anne of England had the grace to make such an offer to another woman was truly touching and made Kit admire her very much.

  The queen gestured to her footman to take her arm. She turned once, looking back as if her neck pained her. ‘Come and see me, Mistress Ross,’ she said. ‘Come and see me and tell me your histories.’

  ‘I will, Your Majesty,’ Kit promised.

  ‘You see,’ said the queen, low voiced, ‘I know a little about a woman in a man’s profession.’ She smiled wistfully, and hobbled from the room.

  Outside, the sunshine on the Mall seemed dimmer than the gilt of the throne room. Ross, smiling proudly, touched the little gold figure at her throat. ‘He’s a dragoon!’ he said, just as she had thought. ‘So might our son be one day.’ He bowed from the waist and missed her frozen expression, then offered his arm. ‘Might a humble captain escort you, my Lady Companion of the Garter?’ She covered her cares with a smile and a curtsy. ‘Gladly,’ she said.

  They walked home to Ross’s house in Charles Street by way of the park, enjoying the pleasant afternoon sunshine, and the children with their hoops on the paths and their boats on the lake, the gentlemen with their smart horses and their even smarter carriages, the calls of the birds and the piemen. Kit felt, all of a sudden, that she was now a part of those paintings she had seen in the palace – those scenes of pleasure gardens or pastoral fantasies where people were secondary to the landscape. Just dots, commoners. Kit was nothing now – she was a smear of paint in the larger scene, the canvas that was London.

  Some fellows in regimentals saw the collar, recognised it, stared. She smiled and walked on, pleased and proud, feeling that perhaps she was not invisible after
all. Their conversation turned, as it always did, to the past; and soon she and Ross were reminiscing about their campaigns with the Scots Greys. Where other newlyweds would discuss the future, and build their fantasies of what their lives together would hold, they did not; and nor did they, at that time, realise that anything was amiss.

  At the barracks in Green Park, there was a great muster, and Kit and Ross stopped to watch. ‘Viscount Galway’s men, from the banners,’ said Ross. ‘Heading out to Spain as soon as they may. Almansa, in the east.’

  Almansa, thought Kit; it sounded so exotic, so exciting, like a clash of blades.

  ‘Galway fights to keep the Bourbons out of eastern Spain. Yet another battle front for the endless Wars of the Spanish Succession.’

  Kit said nothing, but she remembered meeting Philip of Orléans in the Palazzo del Te in Mantova. The prince who chewed on a chicken leg under a fresco of grappling giants, offering her his priest to say mass for her dead husband. It seemed another world, and she’d been another person. She’d been at the centre of the conflict; now she was at the edge, looking on.

  They could see the battalions gathering, the soldiers, the pioneers, the engineers, the sappers, the workmen; the cavalry horses lining up, rearing and skittering. The equipages of guns and cannons, their iron and brass noses glinting in the setting sun, squatting next to seige machines that stood tall like giraffes. Pyramids of cannonballs, boxes of shot in their wool wadding, glittering flints tied on strings like shark’s teeth. The fascines, the gabions, the tents, the palisades. All the accoutrements of Captain and Mistress Ross’s former life.

  They watched, silent, smiling wistfully, their expressions oddly alike, until it was quite dark.

  At home Kit took off her hat and rang for a dish of tea. But instead of taking her place by the fire, as she’d done every evening since she had become mistress of this smart townhouse, she stayed standing, touching her father’s sword where it hung over their mantel. The blade was warm from the fire, as if it had just been taken off, as if it still spent its days hanging next to a warm body. Then she took the heavy collar from her throat and placed it carefully in the box the palace had given her, with a blood-coloured velvet cushion. She arranged the gold knots and the medallions in a neat circle, and in the centre little St George, who looked so like a dragoon. Then she closed the lid on him.