Kit (40 page)

It was Brigadier Panton. ‘I’m to ask you to sit tight,
Comtesse
,’ he said. ‘Not long now.’ And he turned his back to her, the broadcloth of his coat blocking her sight, deaf to questions.

She tried the opposite door of the coach but it was locked, and besides the carriage was parked so flush to the city wall that the door would not have opened anyway.
Like rats in a trap.
There was nothing to do but wait as she’d been instructed, fuming. A pox upon Ormonde; she’d always known at heart he could not be trusted. She wanted to kick the doors open, and knew she could do it too; but she forced herself to sit still and listen.

She could hear a commotion in the square, a man screaming in protest. Then heels dragging on cobbles, a sword drawing, a slash and a thud. Then the light streamed in the window again, the carriage door was opened, and a figure bundled in. But it was not Panton.

The passenger wore a uniform of French blue, complete with gold buttons, white stock and polished boots. He was of middle height and middle age. He was also very, very dead.

Kit scrambled from her seat, and pressed herself to the other side of the coach.

The brigadier appeared at the window again. ‘
Comtesse
, meet the
vicomte
,’ he said, with his characteristic sneering laugh. ‘My company will pursue you to the gates of Mantova, and our artillery will lay down some covering fire.’ He must have seen her face. ‘Do not upset yourself. My men have been instructed not to hit you. With the will of God and a following wind, the French will let you into the citadel.’

‘But …’

‘No time for discourse. Ormonde drilled you, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but …’

Panton slammed the door. ‘Yah!’

At his shout the coach and four took off, hurtling through the piazza and the town gate, and towards the lake with the city floating upon it. She passed the plains where she had buried Richard, and, holding herself braced against the sides of the carriage through the careening, speeding chase, allowed herself to look at her second dead husband.

He lay slumped in the corner of the carriage, his side slashed through his coat and through his skin to show the shambles of his innards tangled like blue snakes. His face was a dreadful greenish white. His lifeblood, leaking from his side, made no impression at all on the red velvet of the seat as it was the same colour. She looked at the dead face, the eyes as brown as hazelnuts. Was this man perhaps thirty? Younger? Did he have a wife and child back in France? Was he even French, or was he some poor English foot soldier who’d been selected to die for Ormonde’s scheme? She reached out in the rattling, lurching carriage, and as carefully as she could closed his eyes. The eyelids were still warm beneath the pads of her fingers. She put a hand to his heart. There was no beat. But there had been, till a moment ago. He was still warm. The slash, the thud. They’d killed him just now, in the street.

She hunched as far away from the corpse as she could, and gazed from the opposite window.

The gates of Mantova’s great castle came closer and closer. Now she could see the drawbridge, and the blue blobs on the battlements and at the vast studded gate resolved into soldiers. From somewhere behind, Panton’s thundering cavalry began to fire, the muskets deafening. The sound woke her up, as if she’d been in a dream.
You are a soldier
, she told herself. She sprang into action. Steeling herself and choosing the moat-side window in the lee of the gunfire, she leaned from the carriage as far as she could. She shouted in French: ‘For God’s sake, let me in! My husband is dead and they will kill me too!’

The soldiers now had faces, white blobs with gaping mouths, shouting and gesturing. The gates remained shut. She tried again. ‘In the name of King Louis and the Duc d’Orléans, open the gate!’ And then a miracle: the gates opened for her. Panton’s men ceased their fire, fell back and wheeled away to safety on the other side of the lake. The gates clanged closed behind. She was inside the citadel of Mantova.

And we have no desire strange places to see …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

On a grim October day, in the driving rain, a funeral procession crossed the rain-silvered piazzas of Mantova.

The procession was heading to the funeral of the Vicomte Richard St-Hilaire de Blossac, a noble fellow with a promising military career, who had been tragically killed in the company of his young wife, before he could join the French generals at Mantova. The sun dared not show his face – even the heavens were hung with black.

There were few mourners for the unfortunate
vicomte
; just a few military men, their voluminous black rain cloaks parting occasionally to reveal glimpses of their uniforms, splitting the dark, blue like lightning. To be truthful it was hard to notice them, for at the head of the cortège walked his widow. Of all the dreadful consequences of the
vicomte
’s untimely death – that he would never again see a sunset, or hear an aria, or taste a Chablis – the most grievous was surely that he had quitted the company of his young wife. She was a rare beauty dressed all in black, her waist greyhound slim, her plain satin gown scattered with jet and bejewelled with raindrops. Her hair was high and powdered white, a single long ringlet twining down the full décolletage. A tiny black veil, embroidered with tiny black stars, both concealed and revealed a face of transcendent beauty.

Erect and dignified, the widow St-Hilaire de Blossac led the small cortège from the Palatine church of Santa Barbara across the green grass of the Cortile della Cavellerizza, under the Porta Nuova and through the fractured rain-sheer reflection of the Palazzo Ducale, in the direction of the Castillo di San Giorgio.

The
comtesse
looked devastated by grief, but in actuality her grief was spent for the moment. Now she had but one concern uppermost in her mind – to reach the shelter of her new apartments before the rain washed the powder from her red hair.

Safe in her chamber Kit sank down on the chaise before the mirror, exhausted. It did not matter that the spots of rain had mottled her powder and given her russet spots, like an African cat. But still, she took up the powder and the horn and puffed at the rusty patches herself. She could not be easy showing her red hair any more – she associated it so much with Kit Kavanagh. The Comtesse Christiane had white hair, always immaculate. Only when she was satisfied that her hair was white once more did she survey the ruin of her face in the looking glass.

She’d been taken by surprise at the strength of her own grief. At the counterfeit funeral, she had collapsed entirely. She had listened, initially, to the priest’s intonation in formal Catholic French and Latin, but the words of the funeral service took hold of her, jostling with the other words in her head, the names of the generals at her shoulder, their wives, their sons, their birthplaces. Kit did not have her fan with her, so was relying on her overcrowded brain, and it was easy, at first, to keep her dignity. But the words of the funeral service insinuated themselves into her ears, and the altar boy who had been given a silver franc to sing the Te Deum had a sweet and soaring voice, recalling Lucio Mezzanotte to her mind. At the paternoster, she slid the wedding band from her finger, the mock wedding ring she had worn only for the last three months, and laid it on the cold marble tomb. And then she gave in.

She forgot about the Comtesse Christiane, and was suddenly herself, crying, really crying, sobbing uncontrollably. She cried for the unknown soldier, the corpse from the carriage and for his mother his sisters and his daughters and all those who had loved him; those that did not have a grave to visit and would likely not even be told about his secret and necessary death. Then she was crying for Richard, and she could see him as she’d known him, back in Dublin, when she’d loved him without reservation. She cried for the days when the handsomest maid in the village married the handsomest boy, when words meant what they said, when dances were hot and inexact and sweaty and bore no resemblance to the stately minuet. Feeling wrung out, and empty of tears, she took a deep breath. She felt, oddly, that it was Richard who had been given the rites he deserved. She felt much better, but looked much worse. She took up the alum paste and then set it down again. There was no profit in her trying to repair such a wreck herself – she had no skill with face-painting. She rang a silver bell for her maid.

Kit had been given a small, comfortable apartment in the Castillo di San Giorgio, one of the oldest parts of the Ducal Palace set upon the edge of the glassy green lake. As well as the many smooth and silent servants who were at her disposal she had been given a dedicated maid to wait upon her, a minor Mantovani noblewoman with good French named Livia Gonzaga.

As Livia painted and powdered, Kit thought over the events of the last week, unable to believe she had already been in Mantova for seven days. After her dreadful, precipitate arrival she had been helped from Ormonde’s carriage by a brace of guards and taken to these very rooms. She had been fed and rested, by a kindly Mantovani nun who gave her a black gown and the news that her husband was indeed dead. Placid now, and genuinely numb, she had allowed herself to be cleaned and dressed, and then a man came to her rooms, an erect and impressive man of middle years who introduced himself as Louis d’Aubusson de La Feuillade, Duc de Roannais and
Maréchal de Camp
of the French Army.

Louis d’Aubusson
, she recited to herself;
joined the French Army at aged fifteen, raised his own regiment of horse and fought in the Nine Years’ War, all before he reached his majority. Knows everything there is to know about the army. Be careful
.

Gently, he asked her about her husband, his family and his service record, and she was able to reply in detail and with a quiet dignity. He nodded throughout, and then he said: ‘And now, the delicate matter of your husband’s funeral. I implore you,
Comtesse
, to understand that in no way would I address you on such matters if the
vicomte
’s family were at hand. But as they are so far away in Poitiers the unhappy task falls to me to ask you about certain particulars. I assure you, madam,’ he went on, ‘that even though your husband passed away on foreign soil, he will be given all proper rites. The medals that were pinned to his chest – would you like to keep them or is it your will that they be buried with him?’

In the carriage she had barely noticed the medals pinned to the corpse as if it were a tailor’s dummy. Ormonde had been thorough indeed. But she was not put out of countenance – Ormonde had laid it down that Richard St-Hilaire would wear the Order of St Louis and had won the St Martin medal at the Battle of Catinat.

‘It is my will that he be buried with them,’ Kit said. Who knew where Ormonde had got them? Stolen, stripped from another poor corpse? Let that unknown soldier keep them to honour him in his cold grave.

Louis d’Aubusson nodded. ‘And now, if you are equal to the exertion, I would very much like to present you to the duke.’

Kit nodded, rose shakily and accepted his arm. The
Maréchal de Camp
escorted her deep into the belly of the palace, where a pair of twin golden doors opened to admit them into a painted chamber as big as a basilica. There were giants painted all over the walls; giants wrestling in epic bouts, huge leviathans wreaking havoc, titans toppling pillars of stone as if they were wicker canes, chaos in epic scale upon the walls.

Blue-coated gentlemen sat at long trestle tables set with golden candlesticks, nibbling tidily at their food, talking in polite undertones, accompanied by a string quartet. Thanks to Mezzanotte she recognised the piece – an air by François Couperin – and the quality of those who played it. The ball at Turin had been a grand affair, but Kit saw that the French did not stint themselves any more than the Alliance. The war, and Richard’s field of death, seemed a long way away, even though that grim plain was visible from the window. This was a feast fit for a king, and a would-be king sat at the head of it. This, then, was Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, nephew to the King of France.

Born at the Château de Saint-Cloud
, she recited under her breath.
He was paid two million gold livres to marry Louis XIV’s bastard daughter. His mother slapped his face in the full view of the court for agreeing to the marriage.
But now the man who had been the court joke at Versailles was a player in the game. Louis had chosen his nephew as his heir.

Resplendent in blue and gold, wearing a full-length wig of glossy chestnut curls, the pretender sat a little apart from the company on a golden dais. Servants in blue livery conveyed morsels to him from the board upon a golden tray. He waved his food away and held out his hand to Kit, his royal ring uppermost. She knelt and kissed the three feathers of the fleur-de-lis as Ormonde had taught her. ‘Rise,’ he said, and she stood before him, risking a look into the royal face. Philippe had a strong nose, ruddy cheeks and full lips. He would make, she supposed, as good a king as any other.

‘
Madame la Comtesse
,’ he said. ‘I grieve for your loss.’

‘I thank you, Your Grace.’

‘Our prime concern is for your comfort here, until such a time when you may be safely conveyed home. Your husband will be buried with all honours due to such a faithful servant of France.’

Her eyes began to prick.

‘I will instruct my own
abbé
to conduct the service for you. D’Aubusson will arrange everything.’

Kit curtsied low, and Orléans gestured to his man again, picking up the leg of a capon from the little gold tray and tearing at it with his teeth. It was a curiously brutal gesture, as voracious and destructive as those of the giants on the wall. Beneath the veneer, thought Kit, we are all animals.

Back at her apartments D’Aubusson settled her solicitously into a chair. ‘The
maréchal
will come to you tomorrow, madame,’ he said, ‘with news of the arrangements for your husband’s interment. My lord
duc
has agreed that he shall be given the honour of resting in the Mausoleum at the Palatine church.’