Kit (35 page)

Ormonde waited for them under the great chandelier. He greeted Kit warmly, and she was relieved, for she had not seen him since the night when she’d puked over him. He and Mezzanotte were clearly intimates, for Ormonde greeted them both with the same warmth.

Mezzanotte’s quartet gathered and tuned their viols, and Ormonde and Mezzanotte stripped each other’s coats, as if they were about to duel. Then the viols struck up, and the lesson began.

It was a strange ball for three, and they danced until they were flushed – even Mezzanotte’s pale skin took on a rose colour beneath the rouge. Kit was pulled and pushed through the stately, ancient dances; the minuet, the pavane, the gavotte, then dances of the latest fashion; the sarabande, the
rigaudon de la paix
, the
gigue à deux
.

Her partners were as different as they could be – Ormonde stately and solid, but rhythmic and quick to the change; Mezzanotte supple as a willow, hopping lightly from foot to foot. ‘It is well that you have such disparate partners,’ said Ormonde, ‘for if you learn to dance with me and this silly slut, you can dance with anyone.’

Kit looked to Mezzanotte, but he smiled and cuffed Ormonde affectionately, setting his wig back upon his forehead.
The parrot
, thought Kit. Silly slut. She wondered how many times the castrato had been here to this palace by the lake.

They watched her in turn – whoever did not partner her walked about the couple, tapping a length of cane on the floor in time to the music like a dancing master, correcting a stray foot or arm with a tiny tap, calling out the change. In the aptly named
folie d’Espagne
, Ormonde took Kit to task in a manner that had her wondering whether he had guessed her past. ‘You are marching like a soldier. Take sliding, mincing steps.’ ‘Stay on the balls of your feet, the heel should not touch the ground; you are not on parade.’ ‘Shoulders back, you are not carrying a musket.’

Mezzanotte was more tactful; his concern was not deportment but musicality. ‘Feel the rhythm – your toes should touch the parquet on the off beat.’ ‘Take your time in the turn – you should face your partner by the end of the sustain.’ ‘Your movements should mimic the dynamics, at the crescendo, make the gestures bigger – at the diminuendo, smaller.’

For her part, Kit watched them. They seemed the firmest of friends, finishing each other’s utterances, an intimacy that seemed born of long acquaintance. Once she happened to mention the court of Mantova, when she enquired after the likely number of couples who would be gathered at the French court. Recollecting their secrecy, she looked quickly to Ormonde, but he nodded to her and answered her unspoken question. ‘Mezzanotte is safe. He is bound by the strongest bond of all.’

That night, as his quartet played and as Kit and Ormonde drank their champagne by the terrace, the fine muslin curtains billowing in the breeze, the stars studding the night outside, Mezzanotte sang for them for the first time. The notes, pure and clear as a chime, strung together like priceless jewels, floated over the water, soaring higher than the mountains. The words of the aria, as simple as the tune but written with untold artistry, pierced Kit’s heart.

Mezzanotte was singing of Richard, of Ross, of his own beloved Florence, of his manhood, of everything that had ever been loved and lost. Kit had to hurry from the room, holding her head high so the tears would not fall until the door closed behind her. She found her way to one of the downstairs terraces and let her tears fall into the lake. Each one silvered as it fell, swelling and stretching like the glass drop that Mezzanotte wore.

When she had recovered she went in search of the castrato, to tell him that she had not understood before. To tell him he was indeed an artist. The dining salon was quiet and dark – her companions must have retired. Kit crept past the parrot and to the foot of the stairs, but the bird never missed a trick. ‘Like rats in a trap,’ he remarked.

She climbed the stairs softly to Mezzanotte’s room, the oriental chamber on the
piano nobile
. The door was ajar and she pushed at it gently – it swung wide. There lay Mezzanotte, naked, prone across the tangled bedclothes, fast asleep.

The bone-white lengths and curves of his body were so pale as to make the very sheets look dun. One hand was crooked behind his head, the other reached out, in sleep, to his companion. Rooted to the spot, her eyes were drawn inexorably to his groin, and there his white manhood lay across his thigh, tiny as a child’s, with two sad empty pouches, useless and flaccid, hanging below. Another man, naked too, sat on the side of the bed in contemplation. Mezzanotte’s outflung hand touched his side. He was hunched, looking out though the window at the silver lake. This man was stockier, the rolls of his naked flesh settling down his body like candle grease. His hair was black and grey like that of a brindle cat, and shorn short to be worn beneath a wig with comfort. Kit backed away, and as her slipper struck the door frame, he turned and looked at her. It was Ormonde. She was never sure, afterward, if he even saw her; but she flinched as if struck, turned and ran. She did not run from the debauchery; but from the look of utter desolation on Ormonde’s face, like that of a soul in Hell.

Safe in her own chamber, Kit went through the motions of her night-time routine, the strokes of the comb through her hair, the polishing of her locks with a silken cloth, the oiling of her skin, the careful placement of her day clothes in the armoire. She stood for a moment, naked and silvered, by the window, as she’d once done in Dublin, the night before she’d donned her soldier’s coat. So Ormonde and Mezzanotte were lovers. But what could be the nature of their love? The first time the duke had seen her, all those years ago at Killcommadan Hill, he’d asked to see her tail. Perhaps Ormonde loved men, but loved the bodies of women, and Mezzanotte, in his halfway state, fulfilled all of his desires? Ormonde had never shown her the least interest, so he must have Atticus Lambe’s predilection for men, and yet Mezzanotte was not fully a man. Perhaps it was true: love was attached to a person and not a gender. If so, would Ross still love her now the boy had become a woman?

You’ve only the lend of them as I suppose …

‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

Ormonde never spoke of Kit’s discovery, but the castrato seemed to feel free to talk of ‘Fitz’ with her in a way he had never allowed himself to before. It was in her mind to tell him of Ross, but something always prevented her. Besides, nothing could stem the flow of Mezzanotte’s confidences. He told of how he had met Ormonde in London, of how they spent as much time together as Ormonde’s campaigns would allow, and always summered here in Italy. When Mezzanotte told her how he suffered when Ormonde returned to his wife and children Kit wondered whether men were capable of a parallel love for men and women both; or whether, for a man of Ormonde’s position, a marriage to Emilia Butler, Countess of Ossory, had just been an expedient way to secure his titles and produce his heirs.

‘Fitz came to every one of my performances in London,’ said Mezzanotte fondly. ‘He did not miss a single night.’ He fixed his dark eyes on Kit. ‘For that is when he first loved me,’ he said simply, ‘when I sang.’

‘He loves you, then?’ she asked, with the same candour.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘He does not want to love me, and his love makes him cruel. Sometimes he uses hard words to me, beats me even. That is because he struggles. He is a duke, he has his sons, and
her
.’ That single syllable was all he would say of Lady Ormonde. ‘But he gives me little gifts to make amends. He brought me this from the Royal Society.’ Mezzanotte held forth the glass drop he wore about his neck. The shape of a tear, with a long tail curling about the ribbon on which he wore it, its bulb shone as if it had a tiny star trapped inside it.

‘It is beautiful,’ said Kit.

‘Yes. It is not art but science, and science is rarely beautiful, don’t you find?’

‘What is it?’

‘It is a Prince Rupert’s drop. Molten glass, dropped in a pail of cold water, makes this raindrop shape. It has a hard exterior – you may beat the bulb with a hammer to no avail – but the inside is unstable because of how it was formed in the water – the outside cools more quickly and hardens but the inside is a mess of contrasting forces. It holds a secret – as we all do.’ He winked. ‘Its secret is, that if you clip off the tail, the drop will shatter and disintegrate into dust.’ She looked at it – it seemed to capture the sun. ‘Fitz gave it to me for he said it reminded him of me – that a man is nothing without his tail.’

Kit was shocked, but Mezzanotte smiled at the drop fondly. ‘You see? He is a mess of contrasting forces too. Even when he gives me a gift he has to hurt me. A kiss and a blow.’ He centred the Prince Rupert’s drop over his heart. ‘Fitz is like a child. You cannot indulge him by becoming upset. I hung it on this ribbon and wear it every day to show him that I am strong, tail or no.’

That summer on the Isola Bella passed swiftly and pleasantly. Kit changed, but the change came hard. She’d been a woman for nineteen years and a man for one, but oddly it seemed those periods weighed the same when hung in the balance. It took her time to unlearn to be a man, and learn to be a woman again. It took her some weeks to cease to spit, and smoke, and swear, and shrug, and thrust her chin forth combatively when she spoke. It took practice to learn to blow her nose on a kerchief instead of her sleeve and to walk with small steps, instead of pounding the ground when she walked.

And now, Prince Eugene’s name day, the day for her new persona to be tested, loomed sickeningly close. Kit lay awake, burning with nervous excitement in the warm summer night, her eagerness to see Ross again tempered by fear of giving herself away.

With one week to go, Ormonde met her at the foot of the stairs, took her arm and turned her about. ‘I have something for you. It is in your chamber.’

Kit followed Ormonde through the airy passages and the great empty salons. At her chamber he stood aside and let her open the door.

At first she thought there was someone in the room, but as she approached she could see that it was a gown, dressed upon a wooden mannequin, a beautiful dress of duck-egg blue silk rimed with diamonds that glittered like frost, with a froth of white lace at the throat and a waterfall of the same lace at the sleeves. The silk was so stiff with embroidery and crystals it could have stood on its own, and so wide that the dress seemed to take up all the considerable space between the bed and the armoire.

‘It is a Rockingham mantua,’ said Ormonde into the silence. ‘One of the costliest gowns in the world. It is made of Oris tissue, and woven with real silver thread. You will wear this to Savoy’s name day, and you will wear it tonight.’

She walked around it. There were blue silken ribbons all down the back of the bodice, tied in a complicated cross-weave. She gently lifted the skirts and saw a cane frame below the petticoats to make the skirts stand out. ‘It looks impossible to put on.’

‘You have hit upon the very point,’ said Ormonde. ‘You cannot put it on alone. Clothes for the nobility are specifically designed so that they may only be donned with the help of servants. They like it. It makes them feel rich.’ He walked forward, and flicked the bodice lace with his beringed fingers. ‘Six women are coming to dress you. Henceforth they will be your personal maids.’

Servants. Kit played with the ribbons. ‘You have taught me to mix with the quality; but how do I behave with servants?’

‘That is the least of your concerns. Behave exactly as you like; the worse you behave, the better it is. You do not need to make any allowances, or consider their feelings.’ Ormonde spoke as one who had grown up with such attitudes. ‘When the time comes to put on the mantua, they will undress you. Just stand naked as you did for me. Do not cover yourself. They are not people, so there is no need to feel shame. They will do the rest. They are all from Stresa across the water, but speak enough English to do your will.’ He turned to leave.

‘And, saving your mother’s nation, if you do anything peculiar, they will naturally ascribe it to your being French.’ He closed the door behind him.

Kit was left alone, with the gown. She stood behind the thing and looked in the looking glass. She looked like a countess. The dress was a ridiculous, wonderful thing, but it scared Kit. It was her new soldier coat.

The Rockingham mantua, which was to be worn for the name day of a prince, had its first outing for the benefit of a very different man indeed.

Ormonde had received a letter at breakfast which he read over twice before pocketing it. All day he looked pent up, distracted and twitchy. He did not concentrate on Kit’s dancing or her afternoon tutelage, and she was left to recite the bloodlines of the royal houses of France and the streets of Poitiers by rote, while he stared from the window, fidgeting, expectant.

In the late afternoon he abandoned her and went down to the ballroom, to sit in his favourite chair. ‘Church Hill!’ squawked the parrot at his master, and she knew then that it was Marlborough the bird had meant all this time.

Ormonde sat in his throne until nightfall, requiring no refreshment or company. He stroked his chin, and waited. Kit and Mezzanotte played a hand of bezique, talking in the hushed murmurs that seemed to be required. After dark there was a knock at the great doors and Pietro opened them. A man in full military uniform entered and marched to the gilded chair. He wore the uniform of a brigadier, but his face was blackened with gunpowder, his clothes rent, and he bled at the knee.

The duke sat a little straighter and removed his fingers from his chin. He regarded the man without speaking, until the soldier bent his knee and bowed. ‘My lord duke,’ he mumbled.