Kit (47 page)

‘Is this true?’ The Elector turned at last to Kit.

There was little profit in denying it. ‘Yes, my lord.’

The Elector took up his quill. ‘French mother,’ he said aloud, as he wrote. He looked up again, this time at Ormonde. ‘And where had the accused been immediately prior to your meeting?’

‘She told me she had been at Rovereto, in Trentino. She believed her husband was stationed there, and she had followed him thus far from Ireland.’

The Elector turned back to Kit. ‘Did you seek your husband at Rovereto?’

‘I did.’

‘But you did not find him?’

Kit thought about the little house at 17 Via Ranier, and Richard sitting hand in hand with his widow, a jug of wine between them, the little white dog at their feet. Then Richard, dead and cold with the same white dog howling on his grave. What use was it now to besmirch his memory with the stain of bigamy? He was dead, let him rest. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No sign of him.’

‘So, my Lord Ormonde,’ said the Elector. ‘You bought the accused dinner.’

Yes, Fitzjames
, thought Kit.
What will you say now? The cat is in a corner.
She felt confident for the first time. She had something to hold over him. She could tell the court that he had recruited her as a spy, to overturn Marlborough – he would be disgraced. She would be freed.

‘And?’ prompted the Elector.

‘I made her an offer,’ said Ormonde.

The soldiers jeered again, and Ormonde’s face was suddenly still.
Aye, my lord
, thought Kit,
they would not treat Marlborough thus
. The Elector held up one hand. ‘Am I to understand, my lord, that you solicited Fraulein Kavanagh for bedsport?’

Ormonde smiled now. ‘No, my lord. I am a married man.’

‘The brothels are full of married men.’

‘Perhaps I should have said, then, that I am a man of honour. I made her quite a different offer.’ The court was now silent – you could have heard the drop of a tailor’s pin. ‘I asked her to become a spy.’

Kit looked up, mouth agape.

‘A spy for the Grand Alliance?’

‘Of course. I was of the opinion that the war in these lands had reached a stalemate, and I decided that I would aid my noble successor the Duke of Marlborough.’

Kit snorted, and earned herself a stern look from the Elector.

‘How did you plan to aid the duke?’

‘By gaining certain information that would further his cause. I was always fighting the war, always in my own way.’

Kit could remain quiet no longer. She leapt to her feet. ‘Lies!’ she shouted. ‘Ormonde was working against Marlborough all along – he wants to be commander-in-chief of the Grand Alliance and works only for Marlborough’s disgrace! Ask him! Ask him!’

She was wrestled back to her bench before she could say more, and the Elector fixed his sea-grey gaze upon her. ‘Fraulein Kavanagh. If you cannot keep quiet during the testimonies, then you will be returned to your cell and the trial will take place in your absence. You will have a chance to speak in good time, but by God, if you do it out of turn, I will take that chance away.’

Kit sat back, her heart racing.
Truth is the best falsehood
indeed. Ormonde had followed his own motto – he had told the truth as far as it went but with a vital twist – he had claimed to be fighting
for
Marlborough, not
against
him. And for that one crucial detail, it was his word against hers.

‘Go on, my lord duke.’

‘I offered Miss Kavanagh a deal – I would educate her, feed her, clothe her. She would assume the persona of a French countess, and infiltrate the French court at Mantova to discover the strategy of the Two Crowns. If she did this for me – and for Marlborough – I would free her with a fortune.’

‘Is it your belief that when you first recruited Fraulein Kavanagh she had every intention of doing what you asked?’

‘I believe she wanted to make her fortune. So yes, I believed she would follow my orders as far as they went.’

‘And it is your belief that, after a time, she changed her allegiance from the Alliance to the Two Crowns?’

‘It is.’

‘In your opinion, when did that happen?’

‘She left my care briefly, just after the siege of Mantova. Information from one of my deputies, Brigadier Panton, led her to believe that her husband may have died at the siege. She left my house that night, against my wishes, to seek him on the battlefield.’

‘And did she find him?’

Ormonde blinked twice and looked down with respect and regret; the consummate actor. ‘Regretfully, I believe she did.’

‘And yet she returned to your house?’

‘Yes.’

‘What change had her dreadful discovery wrought within her?’

‘I believe a very great change. She was out of sorts, hostile where she had once been amicable, full of malign humour.’

‘And did her character remain fixed in this attitude?’

‘No. She then became tractable once more, and we resumed our studies.’

‘To what reason do you attribute such behaviour?’

‘I believe now that that is when she had decided that she would change sides. I think she felt that her husband had been let down badly by the Alliance’s strategists, and that her own journey and her travail had come to naught. I believe she decided that she would revert to her mother’s blood and throw in her lot with the French.’

‘When she saw her husband’s body at Mantova?’

‘Precisely then, my lord.’

‘When she returned to your house, were you angry with her?’

‘Very, my lord.’

‘Did you take any action against Fraulein Kavanagh that you think may have hardened her position against you and the Alliance?’

Ormonde hesitated.
Now
, thought Kit,
now he will lie.

‘Yes, Honoured Judge. I freely admit that I beat her for her disobedience.’ Ormonde looked at his beringed hands where they lay in his lap, the hands that had struck her. ‘I see now that I should have treated her with kindness. I was just so angry.’ He drove a fist into his palm. ‘I felt she’d jeopardised an opportunity to break the dreadful stalemate in the peninsula, and that more men, men like these’ – he gestured about the court – ‘would perish because of her.’ There was a sympathetic murmur from the assembled soldiers, and Kit felt their ranks of hostile eyes upon her.

‘I think we can all sympathise with your position, my lord,’ said the judge. ‘You had the greater good at heart.’

‘Always, Your Honour,’ said Ormonde, sincerely.

‘To recapitulate,’ summarised the Elector, ‘your contention is that you trained Fraulein Kavanagh to spy for England, and after her first visit to Mantova and the discovery of her husband’s body she decided to spy for France.’

‘Yes.’

‘What next, my Lord Ormonde?’

‘I decided to take her to the name-day ball of Prince Eugene of Savoy, at the Palazzo Reale in Turin.’

‘An odd place to take someone who is a friend of France.’

‘Forgive me, Honoured Judge, I was not clear – these events have only become crystallised in my reflections in recent days – if I cast my mind back over our whole acquaintance, I can only see
now
how and when the change was wrought.’

‘I see. So you took Fraulein Kavanagh, in her alias as the Comtesse Christiane Saint-Hilaire de Blossac, to the prince’s ball.’

‘Yes.’

‘Now tell me – and I want you to think very carefully about your answer – was she in your employment that night?’

Ormonde frowned slightly. ‘I do not understand the question.’

‘I am happy to elucidate,’ said the Elector benignly. ‘In fact it is my duty to ask you this question with great care for your answer will be germane to this case. Did you charge Fraulein Kavanagh, that evening of the prince’s name day, to
work
for you at that ball; was she told to gather any information that night?’

‘No,’ replied Ormonde. ‘Why would she? All those gathered were our allies; the Prince of Savoy and his noble deputies. It was, more than anything else, a practice; a mere outing for her persona, if you will.’

‘Let us have clarity –
all
those gathered were allies.’

‘Yes.’

Kit heard the emphasis with misgiving – where did such pointed questions tend?

‘We now come to our first piece of evidence; and now I believe I must offer a little explanation to the court.’ The Elector held up an object with the air of a conjuror completing his trick. ‘This fan was found in your cell upon your arrest.’

Kit looked at the fan and her heart gave a leap.

‘No … no … that’s not right,’ she protested. ‘I left it in my chamber in the Palazzo Borromeo – upon the dressing table …’

‘So you admit it is your fan?’ asked the Elector.

‘It is the fan that was given to me by the Duke of Ormonde.’

‘Let the court understand that I have it upon the testimonial of two Imperial guards that the fan was found on the floor of the prisoner’s cell.’

‘It must have been planted there! I swear that …’

The Elector interrupted loudly, talking over her. ‘You have already sworn once and once will be sufficient. Remember you are constrained to tell the truth in the name of God. Please limit yourself to answering my questions and my questions only. Look at the reverse of the fan.’

Kit’s heart began to thump with dread.

‘Is this your writing?’

‘Yes.’ It was a whisper.

‘Would you please read to the court, loudly and clearly, what is written on the reverse of the fan, beginning from left to right?’

She held the fan before her face in order to read the faint pencil scrawl. In the language of fans that Ormonde had taught her, she was telling the observer that she was being watched. And she was – every eye was on her, every ear straining to hear what she would say. Her hand shook, fluttering the fan slightly. Reluctantly, but in a clear voice, she read what was written there.

‘Victor Amadeus of Sardinia – Became Duke of Savoy aged nine. Remodelled the Palazzo Reale. Put down his rebellious citizens in the “salt wars”. Persecuted the Vaudois (Savoyard Protestants). Married to Anne Marie d’Orléans.’

‘Go on,’ urged the Elector.

‘Prince of Anhalt Dessau – ninth of ten children, introduced the iron ramrod to the Prussian corps, married to Anna Louise Fohse, an apothecary’s daughter from Dessau.’

‘What else?’

‘Count Wirich Philipp von Daun – born in Vienna, son of Field Marshal Wilhelm Graf Daun, one son named Leopold.’

‘That will do.’

She folded the fan slowly, handed it back to the clerk and glanced murderously at Ormonde. What a quicksilver mind he had! How clever he’d been to find the fan in her chamber and use it against her! He sat forward, feigning shock; his fingertips pressed the corner of his kerchief to his mouth, a waterfall of lace falling to his lap.

‘My Lord of Ormonde, you knew of this writing?’

‘No,’ he said, wide eyed. ‘Not a word.’

‘Can you think of a reason why Miss Kavanagh would have collected information on
Alliance
generals, rather than the French?’

Ormonde spread his hands wide, one of them still clutching the lace kerchief.

‘Lies!’ shouted Kit. ‘You tutored me like a schoolmaster and they were my subjects. I learned about the Alliance generals as a practice – you said so yourself! You said that if I was safe at Turin I would be safe in Mantova.’

The Elector brought his hand down upon his lectern. ‘The accused
shall
stay silent unless directly addressed, or she shall be clapped in chains.’

Kit sat down, her heart racing, her blood boiling.

‘So,’ continued the Elector, ‘after Fraulein Kavanagh had passed the evening in Savoy’s company without detection, you thought she was ready to enter the French court.’

‘I did think that, yes, Honoured Judge.’

The Elector raised his hand – a paper fluttered in the fingers. ‘I have here a signed and sworn testament from the aforementioned Brigadier Panton. He writes of a visit to the Palazzo Borromeo immediately following the siege of Mantova. He says that following the failure of that siege and the heavy losses sustained by his men, he agreed to help you to feed Fraulein Kavanagh into the French court. He details the somewhat
unorthodox
’ – he spoke the word fastidiously – ‘method of infiltration, which involved a corpse playing the part of the Vicomte de …’

‘Not a corpse!’ Kit interjected. ‘He breathed right enough before Panton killed him.’

‘Fraulein Kavanagh, for the last time, there will be no interjections from the accused. Your turn will come.’ Then the Elector checked himself. ‘You are suggesting that an officer of the crown murdered an innocent in your cause?’

‘Not in my cause, Honoured Judge. But in Ormonde’s, of that I am sure.’

‘It is true the unfortunate man was very lately dead, my lord,’ interjected Ormonde smoothly. ‘He was an English foot soldier, who had been killed by a French outrider that very morning.’

‘An Englishman, you say?’

‘Yes, Honoured Judge. We could not risk a French body, lest someone in the French court of Mantova recognise the man.’

‘Did this poor unfortunate have a name?’

‘I’m sure he did, Honoured Judge, but I never learned it.’

Kit snorted. So this man, her counterfeit husband, who had made the supreme sacrifice for Ormonde’s cause, was to remain nameless.

‘But Fraulein Kavanagh, you actually believe that a brigadier in the English Army would murder one of his men in cold blood?’

‘I know he did,’ said Kit stubbornly.

‘Did you see this dreadful crime committed?’

Her colour rose. ‘I, that is, not directly,’ stammered Kit. ‘Panton had pinned me in the carriage and was blocking the window with his back.’

‘Then I suggest you do not pursue this matter further, unless you want to compound your charges by accusing the brigadier of murder?’

Kit’s heart sank. Everything she had planned to say, about Panton and the corpse, had already been supplied. Ormonde and his creature had well and truly stolen the wind from her sails. She pursed her lips and shook her head.

‘And now to Mantova. And here, I suppose, we must hear from the accused. Fraulein Kavanagh, is it the case that during your stay at the court there, you discovered the French plan to lay siege to the city of Turin?’