Kit (31 page)

Kit took a sip of wine, her hand shaking a little. ‘How exactly will I be tested?’

Ormonde steepled his hands together, and touched his fingers to his full lower lip. ‘There is to be a great ball in the city of Turin, in three months’ time, for the name day of Prince Eugene of Savoy. He holds the ball every year and is determined to hold it this. It is to be a display of Allied power and opulence, and our confidence that we shall hold the region. At the ball will be the Duke of Marlborough,’ she detected a slightly cool tone when the duke mentioned Marlborough’s name, ‘also the Landgrave of the Hessians, and every officer of the Grand Alliance.’

Kit choked a little, mid-swallow. Princes and counts and landgraves and dukes, all were as nothing to his last utterance.
Every officer of the Grand Alliance.

Ross. She would see Ross again. Her cheek paled, and warmed again to a blush.

‘I’ll do it,’ she said.

‘I thought you would.’ The duke raised his glass and drank with his eyes never leaving hers.

Says Arthur, I wouldn’t be proud of your clothes …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

Kit threw open the shutters, and the sunlight streamed in.

She had lain in bed late, and while she had been sleeping spring had fled and the dog-days of high summer were here, warm and balmy and bearable because of the cool breath of the mountains.

She had had three nights in a feather bed – Ormonde had kept that part of his promise already – and not for the first time she pitied poor Madame Berland, who had been turned around at Venice and shipped back to Paris.

Kit and the duke had spent that first night in Venice, then travelled for a day and a night in Ormonde’s coach, with Flint cantering behind. Kit would have ridden, but Ormonde seemed inclined to become better acquainted with his new asset.

She blessed, now, her first instinct to conceal her soldier past from Ormonde. If he knew that she had met Marlborough and Savoy at close quarters he would not risk placing her in a room with them, and would summon back poor Madame Berland on the next ship. It was not so unlikely that her disguise would work; it was not so great a leap to hope that the female Kit could kiss hands with Marlborough and even Villeroi unrecognised. So she kept her peace, and invented, instead, a history for herself which had more than a kernel of truth.

She told Ormonde of her life at Kavanagh’s, and her new husband, and Richard being pressed into the army. How she had followed him to Genova, and sought him in Rovereto, Cremona, Luzzara, Riva del Garda and Rovereto again.

‘And did you find him?’

She did not have to counterfeit; her eyes filled with tears. ‘No. I heard he was to join the regiment of Brigadier Panton in the siege of Mantova, but more than that I could not discover. All I know is,’ she chose her words carefully, ‘the husband that I married was nowhere to be found in Rovereto.’

‘Take heart,’ the duke said easily. ‘He may survive this yet, if you do your office well; and then you may take a pot of gold back to Dublin for him.’ He looked at her with approval. ‘I made a good choice,’ he said, as though her quest was to his credit and not hers. ‘You have to be brave indeed to follow camp, and come so close to conflict.’ She thought of her mother – had she been brave, too, to follow Sean Kavanagh from France to Ireland? ‘It benefits our cause, too,’ Ormonde went on, ‘that you are so acquainted with the campaigns and manoeuvres of our forces.’

They had arrived at their destination at night, driving for what seemed like hours along the shore of a vast silver lake. At the little lakeside town of Stresa, the carriage drew to a halt on the foreshore and the final stage of the journey was undertaken by boat. Pietro silently conveyed Kit and Ormonde across the lake. Too tired to speak, Kit had first seen the Palazzo Borromeo through half-closed eyes, a great torchlit frontage perched on a rocky island in the middle of the dark water.

Now, in the first light of day, she could see the true glory of the place. This was the Isola Bella, a beautiful island indeed. The palace was perched atop at least ten terraces of gardens, green parks set in white marble balustrades, covered with carefully tended flower beds and hanging baskets, and shaded by shaped and clipped trees hanging with jewel-like fruits. White peacocks strutted on the lawn, arranging their snowy feathers to spread and air in the sunrise. The sound of gently plashing fountains reached her ears and a wonderful scent rose to her nose; myriad flowers opening in the morning sun like the peacock tails. Beyond the terraces the slopes of the mountain met the serene blue lake like the silken fall of a bishop’s cope. Above their peaks a perfect V of geese flew across the buttermilk sky, honking. Kit laughed with them; it was incredible.

There was a knock at the door. Pietro stood there. ‘His Grace’s compliments, and would you join him on the terrace?’ She looked down at herself, fingered her lace nightgown. ‘Like this?’

His face was immobile. ‘Like that.’

She padded obediently after him, her bare feet chilling on the marble.

As in Venice, apart from Pietro, there seemed to be no servants in the place at all. This told her more eloquently than the duke ever could just how secret their undertaking was. She had become so convinced that the place was deserted that when a raucous voice called to her at the foot of the marble stairs she actually jumped. A golden cage stood at the bottom of the grand staircase, and a large multicoloured parrot clung to the gilded bars with his pliant, ugly feet. ‘Silly slut!’ he shrieked.

She smiled. Pietro did not. She looked at the bird. The parrot cocked its head at her and blinked its beady black eyes. ‘Oysters?’ he asked kindly. ‘Not for breakfast,’ said Kit. The gaudy bird looked gratified, and pressed home his advantage. ‘Church Hill,’ he said. ‘Damned Jacobites. Like rats in a trap.’

Kit, the Jacobite’s daughter, felt suddenly cold, and walked away, following Pietro to the lakeside terrace. The duke was leaning on the balustrade with both hands, the curls of his wig brushing the stone. A china cup stood next to his right hand, and he took sips from it without using the handle. He turned at her approach, smiling, brimming with barely concealed excitement as he dismissed Pietro.

‘You like the place?’

‘It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen.’

He inclined his head. ‘It was named after Isabella, whose husband, the Count of Borromeo, built the palace for her. Ironically, she was a dog-faced slut; fortunately her namesake surpasses her.’

His language made her feel oddly at home, as if she was back in the regiment. She walked over to the balustrade, the sun already warming her through the flimsy nightgown, but he drew her back.

‘Come away from sight,’ he said. ‘You do not yet exist. Come inside.’

He took her into a vast hall, cool after the heat of the morning, and guided her to the middle of the polished floor, positioning her in the centre of a many-pointed star tricked out in marble. Far above her head hung a vast chandelier. The morning sun struck the brilliants, teasing the unlit candles.

Ormonde walked around Kit, as if she was a horse he would buy. He did not speak for a while; then he said: ‘I will be frank with you; I have never attempted such a deception before. But I am confident that you are just the raw material we need. Your looks, your courage, your natural intelligence …’ Kit had never received so many compliments with so little warmth attached; it was hard to feel gratified by his remarks.

‘You will put yourself entirely in my hands,’ the duke declared. ‘You may ask me as many questions as you wish. I am your tutor, but I am not your master. You are not my creature. I am not your better. At dinner we will converse as equals, as a duke and the countess you will become. We are partners in this. And if you do what I ask of you, we will both achieve our heart’s desire.’ She wondered, intrigued, what his was; she knew her own.

‘I will strip you down, take away everything you are and build you up into an entirely new person. Only by this will our scheme succeed. But make no mistake. I am not your friend. I like you, Bess, I do. You remind me of myself, and I prefer my own company to anyone else’s. But if you fail,’ he stopped before her face, ‘I will not shield you. I will deny you more times than Saint Peter – we never met, I never knew you, you never came here. Equally, if you are captured you may deny all knowledge of me. I will offer no censure, nor take any offence. We will walk away from each other without a backward glance. Do you understand?’

She nodded, not cowed by his honesty: at last, a man who spoke straight. She liked the arrangement. She believed that if she did as Ormonde asked he would do right by her.

‘But we must build on a foundation of total candour. The story you told me in the carriage. Was it a complete account of your adventures? Did you leave anything out?’

Her stomach shrivelled. But she met his gaze. ‘No.’

‘Do you have anything to ask me before we begin?’

‘Yes. What do I call you?’

‘Remember, from now on we are equals. You will call me at all times by my given name, which is Fitzjames. Let us try it.’

‘Fitzjames,’ she said shyly.

‘Good. Now, come here. Time to be a newborn babe.’ He placed his hands on the facings of her nightgown and tore it from shoulder to hip.

It fell to the floor, leaving her completely naked. She stood stock still, as if on parade, determined not to flinch. She did not even move to cover herself. She did not think that he would force himself upon her. He echoed her thoughts. ‘Do not be uneasy; I am not going to fuck you. I have no interest in your body whatsoever. These,’ he flicked her nipples, and tugged at the red fleece of hair at her groin, ‘are my tools. I am merely taking an inventory.’

He looked at her skin, touching her with a fingertip as if she was alabaster. She did not flinch. ‘White as bread underneath the grime.’ He touched one stiff nipple. ‘Brown as ale.’ He squeezed her upper arm. ‘Too muscular.’

Would her muscles give her away?

‘Worked your passage to Genova, did you?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Too much swabbing. These arms need to relax, and soften.’

Kit breathed out in relief, and felt a brush at her ribs.

‘Too thin.’ He touched her cheek. ‘Dry, and a little weatherbeaten.’ Then he touched her hip, but gently, where an ugly starburst of a scar sat upon her hip bone. ‘What happened here?’

She thought fast. ‘I sustained an injury. A stray musket ball in the hip as I followed the camp.’

‘At Cremona?’

‘Luzzara.’

He nodded. ‘Trouble walking?’

‘Not now.’

‘Can you dance?’

‘Never tried, but for the town hop.’

‘Never mind. You will.’

The duke raised his eyes higher. ‘Hair. God meant it for red, I suppose; hard to see beneath the veneer of grease. Smells like a fleece.’ His frank assessments hurt her no more than his earlier compliments had pleased her.

‘Well.’ He lifted her gown from the floor and draped it about her shoulders again, as if covering a statue for the winter. ‘Good. Now I am not your tutor but your physician; and here is my prescription. You must bathe in water today, and scrub with tallow soap to cleanse your skin and hair. I have directed Pietro to purchase lemon and alum for lice – we do not need pests about our person. Thereafter you will bathe in milk daily, to restore the lustre to your skin. Have you heard of Cleopatra, Bess?’

She had not.

‘Another queen – a great beauty. She bathed in asses’ milk. I cannot offer you that, but these hills are lousy with kine, and they will provide. You must clean, comb and polish your hair, and dress it as best you can. Is all this clear?’

She nodded. ‘Then you will join me for luncheon in the morning room by the lake, and there you will eat your fill as you will three times a day in all. Buttermilk, cheese, fowl – cream on your porridge and all things rich and healthy. All my produce comes from these fertile slopes of the mountain.’ He waved his hand to the vista with a proprietorial air. ‘We must have you plump as a partridge – fill your breasts, so they may fill your gowns. And when our outward shows are achieved, we must work upon the most crucial organ – your mind. But that is for later.’ He rang a small silver bell. ‘Pietro has run a bath for you in the bathhouse by the lake. Everything you need is there, and a work gown to dress in too. You will notice there are no servants here except Pietro. For now, you must wash and dress yourself, but once my servants return you will never have to dress yourself again – never tie a shoe, never fasten a button. Your life will change utterly.’

The bathhouse by the lake was a little paradise – mosaic tiles in blue and green and gold wreathed around the walls like steam, and a sunken square bath in the Roman style waited for Kit filled to the brim. Kit sank into the water up to her eyes. She had not been in a bath for over a year. She took the lump of tallow and scrubbed herself into a lather, soaping her shoulders with a linen cloth. She washed everywhere, all the time looking out at the glorious summer lake and mountains and not quite believing where she was. She washed herself three, four, a dozen times until her skin was rosy red and squeaked to the touch. Then she completely submerged herself in the bath, scrubbing and rinsing her hair, first with soap, then with lemon and alum. Rising from the water, Venus renewed, she squeezed the water from the dark red mass of her hair, and wrapped herself in the long linen cloths. She saw a grass-green gown, the brocade glowing in the sun, draped across a chair like a shed snakeskin. She left it there for now and went to sit, just as she was, in the late morning sun, with a heavy comb of carved ivory in her hand.

The blunt fringe she had cut across her eyes in her chamber in Kavanagh’s was quite grown out now, and the hair curled in long tendrils about her face. The locks had grown back in swags and hanks and curls, now clean and bright as copper, every filament snatching at the sun. She sat on, when she was done, letting the warm wind dry her hair, listening to the music of the bees, and the strange alien cries of the peacocks. When the little church at Stresa began to ring the angelus she got up reluctantly and went back to the bathhouse.