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the sight of the injured cat, her eyes widening as I pull the five kittens from inside my shirt.
    ‘Take your pick.’
    ‘What happened to her?’
    ‘She trapped herself on thorns.’
    ‘And so did you.’ Jeanne-Marie wipes blood from my chin.
    My face is a mess where I stretched for the twisting branches that trapped the cat; a long thorn dips under the skin of my wrist and reappears half an inch later. She watches intently as I pull it free and check for others. There’s a stream a hundred yards behind us and I wash myself there, splashing water on my face and rinsing my hands until blood stops welling from a dozen different cuts. I wash the cat’s back leg and she barely protests. All the flesh is gone from her sides and her hips are hollow, her teats sucked sore by starving kittens. As I lift her free, a single drop of milk spills onto my finger. It tastes of sadness and despair.
    ‘Food,’ I say. ‘She needs feeding.’
    Jeanne-Marie’s eyes are alight with an expression I don’t recognise. An inner light that makes her face glow and her expression soften. ‘Give me the kittens.’ She folds a mixed bundle of mewling fur into the front of her blouse, exposing the softness of her stomach, a softness missing the last time my hands passed that way. I put the cat over my shoulder and hold the creature in place with one hand. As is always the way, the return trip seems to pass more quickly than the trip out. The solid mass of the school rising in front of us.
    ‘What does she need?’
    ‘Eggs. Six raw eggs and chicken if you can find any.’
    Jeanne-Marie leaves me with the cat and the kittens and returns within two minutes, clutching a chicken leg, and with the eggs folded into her blouse where the kittens had been. She drops to a crouch and watches while I break an egg and feed the cat, which licks overflowing white and yolk from the bottom half of the shell. A second egg vanishes as quickly. Water, I think. I should give her water. I fill two half shells with water from a butt against the school wall and she drinks those down while Jeanne-Marie peers closer.
    ‘Which kitten do you want?’
    Jeanne-Marie squints at the squealing mass of half naked kittens and shakes her head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. She should keep them all.’
    I try hard not to sigh.
    We leave the kittens under a bush at the far end of a garden where the boys are not allowed to go and rest the cat beside them, her injured leg splayed in front of her. I break the remaining eggs and shred the chicken and leave both within reach, lowering the branches we hope will keep the cat and her kittens hidden. ‘You’re brave,’ Jeanne-Marie says, the glow still in her eyes. She steps closer and lifts her face for a kiss. Her mouth opens readily and our tongues touch in a tiny spark of electricity that has her shivering. Her breasts fall readily into my hands and she smiles as I grin. So beautiful. Sometime between the kissing and the touching my hand slips down and though she freezes for a second she lets me delve.
    I take two new tastes away with me. Cat’s milk and girl. Ones I’d never tried before.
    The next day my life changes and for unexpected reasons. Vicome d’Anvers and the colonel reappear, without the comte this time. I am sent for, examined and asked to explain the scratches on my face and hands. Unable to find a better answer I tell the truth. I leave out the where, the when and the who with. But the kernel of the event remains. For reasons that escape me, rescuing a trapped cat and her kittens from a thorn bush at the expense of my own skin appeals to the vicome and helps convince the colonel that I’m right for what vicome d’Anvers has in mind. I’m to be offered a place at the academy, studying artillery and explosives.
    ‘Almost like cooking,’ the vicome says.
    The colonel snorts but lets his comment stand unchallenged.

1730
Military Academy
    T he larger of the two cadets is Jerome, round-faced and pock-marked and as