Kit (34 page)

She saw his eyes spark in brief anger like the flint of a matchlock, then knew no more.

And the same to you gentlemen, we did reply …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

When she awoke, Kit’s head pounded. Her mouth was dry as sand, her eyes grainy and slow to open. She stumbled to the window and threw open the shutters, gulping the mountain air.

Just as she was, in her nightgown, she walked out through the gardens, the gravel of the yew walks hurting her feet through her silken slippers. She welcomed the pain. Anything to take her mind off her roiling stomach and throbbing head.

She would go to her favourite spot at the headland, a great fountain with numerous grottoes carved out of it, harbouring stone seashells and cherubs and dolphins spouting water. It was a place where Kit Kavanagh could go unobserved, before she resumed her labours as Christiane St-Hilaire de Blossac. But to her annoyance, someone already sat there.

It was a lady, but a lady of singular appearance. She wore a coat and breeches of dark gold silk, buckled kid shoes, and her powdered hair was caught back in a neat queue tied with a black bow. She was dressed, in short, as a man.

The lady turned at her approach, and spoke in English. ‘I cannot decide,’ she said with a heavy accent, ‘whether it is too grotesque to be beautiful, or too beautiful to be grotesque. What is your opinion?’

‘I
think
it is beautiful,’ Kit ventured, practising her new broken English, ‘but surpassed by the vista beyond.’ She gestured to the view that could be seen through the cataract – the lake, the mountains.

‘There we agree,’ said the lady. ‘I keep telling Fitz he should rip these fountains out, but he always says he does not want to offend the Borromei family.’

Kit was more and more intrigued.
Fitz
. She studied the lady. She was very pale and not unattractive, but she had an oddly shaped skull with a domed forehead, and a pronounced overbite to her jaw which gave her a faintly canine look. The lady unfolded her long limbs and stood. She was uncommonly tall – taller than Kit, taller than Ross. She held out a hand.

Kit was about to shake it heartily, then remembered, just in time, that she should offer her hand to be kissed. The lady saluted her proffered fingers in the proper fashion. Kit, as a countess, opened her mouth to present herself first, as was proper for one of superior rank. But she did not get the chance.

‘Lucio Mezzanotte,’ said the stranger.

‘La Comtesse Christiane Saint-Hilaire de Blossac,’ said Kit faintly.

The lady smiled. ‘Bravo. You remembered. But with me, you can be Kit Kavanagh if you please. Fitz has told me everything. I am here to teach you music.’

Why did Ormonde go to such lengths to maintain secrecy, if he was to blurt all to this beanpole of a woman? ‘But I thought that my lord duke – Fitzjames – said he was to be my tutor in all things.’

The lady snorted. ‘Fitz can barely play the spoons. He needed a master, and here I am.’
A master
. Kit smiled to herself at the identification ‘Shall we repair to the music room? I cannot hear myself think by these infernal fountains.’

Kit stole sideways glances at her new tutor as they strolled back to the palace, past the flower beds and the sauntering peacocks. She was so slender, with snake hips and a swinging gait. Her cheek was smooth as a babe’s, her lips and cheeks rouged, her brows were plucked into two high half-moons and a heart-shaped patch rode high on one cheek. But what betrayed her the most was the necklace at her throat, some sort of pendant of glittering glass in the shape of a raindrop, a long curling tail coiling about the ribbon that held it. A silly mistake.

‘As we are now so much in each other’s confidence,’ Kit began tentatively, ‘I wonder if I might make a suggestion.’

‘Of course,’ said the lady. Her voice was like Bianca’s, the same accent of these lands, the same high and piping timbre.

‘This is a personal matter. It is just that once I dressed as a man … for a mumming,’ Kit said hurriedly. ‘I would pad my waist a little to hide my slim shape, and rub a little potash on my jaw each morning, to give the impression of the beard that I lacked. And I left off my jewellery.’

The lady stopped and turned, turning dark eyes upon her, squinting slightly through her long lashes against the sun. ‘I have not the pleasure of understanding you.’

‘I do not mean to offend. Remember, I, too, dissemble, and to assume another character takes time; Fitzjames is teaching me how to best present myself, over many weeks, to better work my deception.’

The finely plucked brows drew together. ‘And what is my deception?’

‘That … that you are a man.’

For an instant Kit thought she’d angered her; then she laughed, throwing back her head, opening her mouth to show very small white teeth. ‘But I
am
a man.’

Kit studied him, her mouth agape. Everything about him was womanish – he had no more beard than she, and the telltale knot of muscle at the throat, the lack of which she had always been at pains to disguise under her army stock, was entirely absent.

‘But,’ she blurted, ‘you
can’t
be.’

‘I am, though.’ He collected her confounded expression, and relented. ‘I am not being entirely fair. I am not wholly a man, but I am no woman either. I am a
castrato
. I was castrated in my youth to preserve my voice.’

‘Your voice?’

‘My singing voice. In Florence, where I was born, the practice is common. There is a shop by the Duomo with a sign above – “here we castrate boys”.’ He plucked a scarlet flower from a shrub and began to shred it, as he walked, with his long white fingers. ‘Your Protestant faith has not reached us in Florence; we are Catholics to the bone and are ruled by the law of the Church. The Pope, God guard him, decreed that no female should sing in a Church choir. So the Church recruited boys, boys with sweet girlish voices. These boys, Kit,’ he turned to her, ‘these boys can sing fit to pierce your soul, they can describe, in one soaring, sustained note, the ultimate solitude of God.’ He walked on again with his short footsteps. ‘But boys lose their voices when they gain their beards. So, if you are poor, and your son has a promising voice, you can make your fortune. I cannot blame my father.’

Kit struggled to follow. ‘Your father?’

He shrugged, like a man. ‘We were poor, and I had a promising voice.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He took me to the backstreets, to the shop with the sign. They put me in a warm bath, and fed me opium until I was drowsy. Then they took a huge pair of iron pliers, black as a crow’s beak. They are called
castratore
.’ He bit his lip, stopped. ‘They stitched me up, but I still bled for a sevennight. I was nine years old.’

Kit was silent, appalled.

‘But,’ he went on breezily, ‘my voice was preserved. It is a substantial gift. And now I thank my father every day for what he took from me, and what he gave me.’ He glanced at her, proudly. ‘I am an artist. Lucio Mezzanotte is celebrated all over the world. I sing in the greatest opera houses – La Fenice. La Scala. Even your own opera house in London.’ As he strutted and crowed Mezzanotte reminded her of the white peacocks. ‘That is where I met Fitz. I was presented to the queen.’

‘But,’ Kit said hesitantly, ‘there must be other … lacks.’

She did not know how to frame the question – was he like a woman, down
there
, or was there anything remaining of the man he had been?

‘You are speaking of the act of love? One can still participate. There are ways. But I cannot perform the man’s part in that particular performance. And, of course, I cannot have a child.’

‘Nor I,’ said Kit, feeling the loss once again like a blow. She had no woman’s part, he no man’s. They were both halfway creatures.

‘But we can still love,’ said he.

‘
Yes
,’ she said fervently, unguardedly. ‘And hate.’

There was a silence as they rounded the yew walk, and the bittersweet scent of the leaves enveloped them.

‘Do you hate the French?’ It was Mezzanotte’s turn to question her.

She considered. ‘No.’

‘But you fight them.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because you have been told to? Because your commanders do?’

Marlborough. Ross. Ormonde. ‘I suppose that is so, yes.’

‘I want them all dead.’

She considered this brutal statement, so at odds with the view they enjoyed.

‘Not because I hate them. But because I love my country. And I want it back.’ He cast the shredded flower he held on the gravel walk. ‘Love is the best reason to fight, not hate.’

She thought of Dublin, of Kavanagh’s. ‘I love my country too,’ she said, heartfelt.

‘England?’

‘Ireland.’

‘Ah, Ir-e-land.’ He gave the word three syllables. ‘Like Fitz.’ Mezzanotte flicked a glance at her. ‘Perhaps you love it here, on this enchanted island? Do you?’

She considered. ‘Yes,’ she said. And it was true.

‘Then fight for that,’ he said.

Kit worked with Mezzanotte every morning, in the ornate music room on the
piano nobile
, which she came to love more than any other room in the house. Mezzanotte, ordering Pietro about as if he were Ormonde himself, caused the instruments to be uncovered so Kit could admire the carved and enamelled spinets and harpsichords, crouching on their golden legs like an exotic menagerie. He had the place filled with flowers from the garden, and ordered that the great glass doors that opened out on to the sun terrace should be thrown open, so that they could overlook the lake.

The castrato was excellent company; witty, kind and prodigiously talented. He sat Kit down with him on the scarlet upholstered stool by the harpsichord, and took her hands. ‘Do you love music?’ he asked, searchingly.

Mezzanotte seemed to deal in absolutes – love or hate were his business with nothing in between. Kit answered promptly, remembering Ormonde’s question of the night before. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘What kind of music?’

Kit did not name her favourites as she had for Ormonde, for she was sure those Irish tunes would be unfamiliar to a Florentine. ‘Jigs, hornpipes, ballads.’

‘You sing?’

‘I used to sing a catch or two in the alehouse.’

‘Sing to me now.’

Uncertain, her voice small, she sang a verse of ‘Arthur McBride’. She did not think of her father but remembered instead singing it to Ross, in the aqueduct at Cremona.

She choked and stopped. Mezzanotte patted her arm. ‘Good. There’s something there we can work with. Emotion is no cause for shame – emotion drives the performance. Use it.’

He strummed a chord on the harpsichord, his long white hand spanning an octave of notes with ease. ‘Unfortunately your repertoire cannot help us; the songs with which you are acquainted would be wholly unfamiliar to a French countess. Now listen: I will teach you one simple song to play, to accompany yourself on the harpsichord. This is “
O cessate di piagarmi
” by Alessandro Scarlatti.’

He struck the keys with artistry and ease, and what she heard made her ashamed of her homely ditty. She looked at the castrato, wide eyed. ‘I could never play like that!’

‘Such a standard will not be expected of you,’ said Mezzanotte with his characteristic lack of modesty. ‘But La Comtesse Christiane would doubtless know how to play a little. It is most suitable for a high-born lady to learn such an instrument. One can sit straight backed with decorum – and since the hammers pluck the strings in the belly of the instrument, there is little exertion. Myself, I don’t really like the instrument – there are no dynamics to be had – hammer hard or soft at the keys, you will hear the same result. But pipes and violoncellos are not suitable for ladies to play. Nothing in the mouth, and nothing between the legs.’ He winked lasciviously and Kit smiled and relaxed.

But in the course of the morning her tongue recalled almost all of her army swearwords as her fingers fumbled, slipped from the keys and made crashing discords. Rather run down the hill into battle than this. ‘It is impossible,’ she said, but Mezzanotte was philosophical. ‘Never mind,’ said he. ‘We have time.’

And they did. Kit now rushed through her toilette every morning, and hurried to the music room. Half of her morning was taken up by Mezzanotte playing for her, and testing her on the names of composers, pieces and arias. Then they would take iced sherbet on the sun terrace, and talk companionably. Afterwards they would work on the Scarlatti and Kit’s singing. Mezzanotte soothed her doubts. ‘In all likelihood, you will never be asked to play,’ he said. ‘But if you are, you must be able to give them a piece.’

‘And if they ask for another?’

‘They will not. Young ladies are far too delicate to play more than once.’ He winked. ‘To play twice might quite overcome them.’ Kit smiled to think of what she had been through in the last year, and what Bianca had endured, and to think that there were some ladies in the world who must be protected from straining their voices or delicate digits.

‘Besides,’ continued Mezzanotte with ill-disguised scorn, ‘there will be plenty of other young ladies panting to delight the company.’

Slowly the palace was being peopled, for Mezzanotte had brought with him a string quartet from Venice, where he had lately been performing. After a day at the harpsichord he began to bring them to the music room. Kit admired their dedicated, serious professionalism and their unquestionable skill.

She began to develop her own preferences, and favoured the new composer Antonio Vivaldi above all. Mezzanotte saw it and was pleased. ‘You will become a true connoisseur in time,’ he said.

On the third day Mezzanotte met her at the music room door. ‘No music today,’ he said. ‘Time to dance.’ He led her down the great stone stair to the ballroom. The parrot greeted them at the foot. ‘Silly slut!’ he screeched. Mezzanotte did not miss a step. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said drily, ‘he’s talking to me.’