Kit by Marina Fiorato Read Free Book Online Page A

not in shipcraft or even soldiery, but in the art of being a man.
    She could not be discovered before she was reunited with Richard. So she watched and she listened, and she learned. She learned to plant her feet as if pounding the ground. She learned to shove her thumbs into her pockets or belt to prevent her from holding them delicately before her, as she used to. She abandoned kerchiefs and blew her nose on her sleeve as the others did till her red and gold cuffs were covered in snails’ trails. She noted how men spoke loudly, even when – especially when – they did not have overmuch knowledge of what they said. They talked with their chins thrust forth, their feet apart, their shoulders square. They would punctuate their speech with a jabbing finger to make their point. In her only private moments, while relieving herself at the heads, she would talk to herself in a low gruff voice, trying to perfect her new male tones. But men, she noted, were not always brash. She noted, too, their gentler moments. They would pass the days playing dice or cards, and beneath the bluster and banter she would see little kindnesses – a man pulled his mate’s rotten tooth and gave up his day’s grog to dull the pain. A mountain called O’Connell, who did not look as if he had a note of music in him, had brought a fiddle in his kit and played sweet airs by the mainmast in the starlight. Kit crept among the crowd about him and sat, her knees humped under her chin, as he played those achingly familiar tunes – ‘The Humours of Castlefin’, ‘John Dwyer’s Jig’, ‘The Maids of Mitchelstown’; all the old favourites that the regulars played at Kavanagh’s on their fiddles and squeezeboxes. Songs that were as merry as Yuletide, but had the power to wring tears from Kit, tears she didn’t dare let fall. She steeled herself to hear the inevitable ‘Arthur McBride’, but her father’s ghost let her be for now.
    At night, she rolled herself close into her hammock, and the canvas met over her nose. She would screw her eyes tight and try to stop her ears against the snores and sighs and the other noises too, noises both alien and familiar. Shufflings, and rhythmic rubbings and groans just like the groans that Richard sometimes let go when he and Kit were together. But these men were alone – they had no one to lie with. Kit could only imagine that they relived in their dreams the memories of their wives or sweethearts, and tried to curl the biscuit-flat bolster about her head to muffle the sounds.
    During the long days on deck some of the fellows, seasoned soldiers on their second or third commission, spent their days honing their swordplay. She watched them at their fencing matches, noting the new styles of thrust and parry, and saw how they challenged themselves to find their balance as the ship lurched and rolled. She did not have the courage to join in, but watched on, and the next day she instituted a regime of her own. She ran back and forth on the foredeck throwing her sword from hand to hand, twirling around the foremast and turning and feinting and parrying with an invisible opponent. She would hang from the ropes and swing, supporting her whole weight, and balance on the stairs of the forecastle, one foot in front of the other, sometimes with eyes closed, sometimes open. Sometimes her acrobatics invited comment, but she merely smiled and carried on. Once two recruits, by the names of Harris and Stone, pushed her over as she balanced on the beakhead. She sprang up at once, resigned to a beating. But the Marquis de Pisare himself, all royal blue facings and gold tassels, emerged from his day cabin at that moment and rebuked the sniggering men. ‘You two should learn a lesson from the boy,’ he said, ‘and practise your swordplay. For you’ll not be picking strawberries in Genova.’ The wrong Mr Walsh, who was at his commander’s elbow, was more explicit. He slapped both men smartly about the face. ‘If you want to