Kit

by Marina Fiorato

  Kit tried her best – her very best – to fold herself into the society in London. The coffee house, the play, the Vauxhall pleasure gardens. Thanks to the Duke of Ormonde she had all the knowledge of manners and music and social niceties that the beautiful wife of a handsome young officer could require. She and Ross were a popular couple, invited everywhere. Her celebrity and her story made them universally welcome, and in the recounting of her histories, with fond interjections from Ross, she was able to spend most of her evenings back on the field of battle with him. It was at those evenings in their mutual reminiscence, and the nights in their hot sweet bed, and the days riding Flint and Phantom through Hyde Park, that they were happiest. (The truth was that even riding in Rotten Row was too sedate for them, and the thrusting young couple garnered many a disapproving glance as they galloped across the turf at an indecent speed, and even jumped the manicured hedges of yew and myrtle.)

  The rest of society’s pleasures left Kit cold. Once she saw Lucio Mezzanotte performing at the Covent Garden; as she listened to him in the honeyed dark, his voice transported her back to the Palazzo Borromeo on Lake Maggiore. She could see, from her seat in the circle, that he still wore the Prince Rupert’s drop about his neck. He was still a lapdog on a leash. She looked about the gilded theatre for his master, but could not see him. Perhaps Ormonde kept to the shadows, as he always had. The duke had not the power to fright her now; not when she had so powerful a protector as the queen herself.

  The couple took pleasure trips that spring, to ease the relentless social round. They went to Dublin to visit Aunt Maura, and found the redoubtable lady running Kavanagh’s as she always had – a little whiter of hair, a little more crooked of back, but still strong. She was delighted to see her Kit safe and sound, nodded sagely when she heard of Richard’s fate, and, against Kit’s expectations, became fast friends with Ross. Kit realised that, charmingly, Ross was treating her aunt as he might one of his fellow officers – he had decided, apparently, that running an alehouse was not unlike running a regiment. ‘You chose well this time, girl,’ said Maura, as she bade her niece goodbye. ‘That look you always had in your eye, he has it too.’ Maura stoutly refused their help. ‘I wouldn’t give the bar back to you now, Kit, if you fought me for it,’ she said. ‘I swear it is the only thing keeping me alive.’ They said their farewells under the swinging Kavanagh’s sign, with its motto Virtus Ipsa Suis Firmissima emblazoned under the lion and crescents. Truth relies on its own arms. Kit left with a barrel of stout and a link of Dublin sausage in exchange for a promise to visit as often as she might.

  Their visit to Ross’s Scottish estate was less successful – it rained relentlessly and in the cold grey manor the white-haired Lord of Ross and his lady looked down at Kit, long noses pinched with cold, sorrowing inwardly that their beloved son had married some army hoyden, with neither name nor property. Ross, in respect of his lady, cut the visit short.

  At home once more, Kit renewed her intention to be the perfect wife and content herself. She spent her first afternoon back in London baking pies, something she had not done since Kavanagh’s, and was pleased with the result. She laid the pies on a pitching board outside the door to cool for Ross’s dinner, but soon heard a commotion. She opened the door to find several young fellows taking the pies in their hands and kicking the board to the gutter. Without hesitation she took up a stick from the woodpile and chased them into the street, just as she was, with sleeves upturned and floury hands. She caught all three of them in the alley, and laid about them, young as they were, handling the stick like a sword. When they’d scattered, crying for their mothers, she marched back to the house, trying, without thinking, to sheathe the stick at her side. Recollecting herself, trying to slow her breathing and her heart, she thrust the stick back in the woodpile. She glanced at her father’s sword where it hung above the mantel, sidewards and shamefaced, as if she was not worthy to look directly at it.

  At another time she went to purchase one of the new-style hoop petticoats from the tailor’s. She had resolved to follow fashion and dress in the manner befitting a captain’s wife; although in truth she found nothing duller than her fittings at the tailor’s and could summon no interest in the accoutrements of women. Walking home from the tailor’s by Knaves Acre, she happened to walk through a narrow alley, and a fellow coming the other way accidently bumped her, by reason of her voluminous petticoat, and shoved her against the wall. Winded and shocked, she immediately gave the fellow an uppercut that felled him to the ground. She landed on him, knee to chest. It was easy – she was much the stronger, and had the advantage of surprise; he could never have expected such an adversary dressed as she was. She let him up, only to knock him down again, thrashing him with such force that the fellow begged to be clear of her. Breathing hard, she stood as he took to his heels, looking after him without seeing. Shaking, and white, and tingling in every muscle, she hurried guiltily home. She was horrified at her actions, and even more at the sensations she had felt. She had not felt so alive since she returned from the theatre of war. She sat herself on her fireside chair and tried to master her feelings with some lavender water; but soon she was up again, and pacing, and could not be still.

  Some days later a new uniform arrived for Ross along with a letter from the High Command. Ross pocketed the letter without a word, but Kit knew what it would say. She took the heavy bundle of red cloth upstairs and cut the string with the paring knife she kept, out of habit, in her shoe.

  She did not call for the valet but laid the clothes out herself in Ross’s wardrobe. The crisp shirt and stock, the jacket with the snowy white facings, the tricorn and the cap badge of the dragoons, and the coat – oh, the red coat – with the bright buttons. She laid it all out, and even stood the boots up before the wardrobe ready to step into. She stroked the fabric of the coat, feeling the familiar nap under her hand. She stood back and looked at the uniform for a long, long time. Then she shut the door.

  That night, over their night-cup, she asked Ross directly.

  ‘When?’ she said.

  He did not dissemble; or ask her, in mock confusion, what she meant. He cradled her cheek with his hand and looked at her with a pitying gaze she could not stomach. ‘Soon,’ he said.

  That night, she could not sleep. She rose silently from the bed, and pressed her lips to the warm curve of Ross’s back – just to be sure he slept. She lit the lamp and tiptoed to his dressing room. Then, slowly and methodically, she put on the uniform.

  Her fingers remembered what to do – they buckled the buckles, buttoned the buttons and tied the ties without thinking. The coat and boots were too big, the hat fell over her eyes, but when she pushed the mass of her hair into the brim it sat as it always had. She lifted the lamp and looked at herself in the glass. There she was. It was Kit.

  The door creaked behind her and she spun about, guiltily. Ross stood there, naked to the waist, his hair rumpled, his blue eyes hardly open. Then his gaze snapped wide. She read there a gladness, a recognition, as if he greeted an old and dear friend. ‘Kit!’ Then the gaze dropped. ‘What are you doing?’

  She could not reply, but took off the tricorn, and loosened the stock at her throat. She laid the things in the drawers again, carefully and deliberately. One sudden movement would shatter the fragile tension between them, like a Prince Rupert’s drop, and then everything would be in smithereens. But Ross spoke. ‘You miss it, don’t you?’

  She turned, defensive. ‘I’ll tell you that if you’ll tell me another. Do you miss him?’

  Ross pushed his hands through his bed-rumpled hair. ‘I do not understand you. Miss whom?’

  ‘Aye, you understand,’ she said, without heat, but with sadness. ‘Kit.’

  He looked back at her with an inscrutable expression, part love, part pain, part she knew not what. He did not reply but turned and left the room, just as he’d left the abbey courtroom when faced with a revelation he could not countenance. Frozen to the spot, she heard, a few moments later, t
he front door bang.

  Kit, wide awake on her pillow, heard him come home much later; but he did not return to their bed. It was the first night they’d spent apart since they’d wed.

  Ross’s commission papers arrived the very next day. And now she knew. He was going and she would lose him, and she would face life in this alien city, going alone to the coffee house and the play, while he fought on the fields of Spain, perhaps to fall in the mud for the last time, with no friend or lover to run to him, and turn his body over, and close his eyes.

  She would not be a coward this time – she would ask him, straight out. He opened the papers and she saw him smile a smile of pure joy. Her heart sank. It was no good his pretending – he could not wait to be abroad, and from her side. On horseback, in battle, that was where he lived.

  ‘Dearest,’ she said, ‘tell me what is in the letter.’

  ‘You may read it yourself,’ he said, cock-a-hoop; and passed the paper to her.

  By the Order of Henry de Massue, 2nd Marquis of Galway, and in the name of her Majesty the Queen, Captain Ross is hereby given commission to report to the barracks at Hyde Park to recommence his active service as Captain of the Royal Scots Grey Dragoons at dawn on the fifth day of April in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and seven.

  Furthermore, it is Her Majesty’s personal request that Mistress Kit Ross, quondam Sergeant of the Royal Scots Grey Dragoons, shall also report at that time, and shall be employed by the regiment as a Sutler, to be present in the lines for any and all such manoeuvres which shall be required of the division. She is to be equipped with the same arms and accoutrements of her fellows, for the Queen is well aware that there may be occasion for Mistress Ross to defend herself in the field, and Her Majesty would by all means prevent harm befalling such a well-beloved subject.

  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.

  Epilogue

  Royal Chelsea Hospital, London, 1739

  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.