‘We cannot fail. Please be assured. There is no danger. The Duc de Vendôme has made a counterfeit sortie south, to Castiglione, and the Alliance is pursuing him, leaving Turin defended by only one regiment of cavalry – the Scots Grey Dragoons. The city is ours for the taking.’
Kit’s head spun. Ross and his dragoons stood alone between Turin and forty thousand men. But in order to save him, she must first leave this city alive. ‘And if Mantova is no longer defended …’
‘But you will not be in Mantova,’ said the Comte de Marsin. ‘You are to be conveyed to Genova tomorrow, and from thence to Poitiers. You shall embrace your daughter again, I swear it.’
Kit dipped her head and kissed his hands, and the tears in her eyes were genuine. Relief, sheer relief.
As she raised her head she saw her lady-in-waiting approaching. Livia walked along the foreshore, the great castle rising at her back, in a halo of torchlight.
The maréchal rose and bowed. ‘Rest easy tonight. I will take my leave of you early tomorrow.’ He handed her to her feet; she bowed to him and walked as calmly as she could by the side of Livia Gonzaga, bursting to tell the true princess of this place that she and the ghosts of her family would soon have their city back again.
In the morning Kit looked about her apartments one last time, checking each armoire and drawer, even though Livia had packed for her. There should be no trace of her left here, nothing that remained of her mission to Mantova save the one anonymous corpse in the Santa Barbara. She glanced from the window one last time, and what she saw stopped her heart.
There, speeding across the causeway as fast as an arrow, was a tiny figure of blue and gold on the fastest horse in the French army. Jean-Jacques. The messenger. She had almost forgotten him.
Kit turned and ran down the stairs, pell-mell, through the courtyard and into the waiting coach. She took leave of the Comte de Marsin almost too swiftly for politeness, snatching her hand from his lips, and pressing it to her own, letting her eyes fill with hasty tears. ‘Forgive me, Maréchal; you have been so kind. It is the emotion; I think I must just leave you now – no farewells.’
He nodded and stood back, but his hand still rested on the door of the coach. ‘I understand. I wish you the joy of your reunion with Christiana.’
She looked up, confused in her hurry and panic. ‘But I am Christiane.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Your daughter,’ he prompted gently.
She pried his hand gently from the door. ‘My dear Maréchal, if you have any parental feeling, let me go now so she may be in my arms all the sooner.’
He let go of the door, and bowed his head. She kissed her hand to him as the coach turned about the courtyard, agonisingly slowly. As the four stepped out on to the drawbridge she could actually hear the hoofbeats of the messenger’s horse on the causeway, galloping towards them. She shrank back in her seat but her eyes were drawn inexorably to the carriage window; she could see Jean-Jacques now, thundering closer, closer, till the hurtling carriage actually passed him. As they swept away across the lake and she looked back at the floating city she had left, he was pounding at the gates.
Now she turned away, to the road, grim faced. The carriage had picked up speed, but it would not take Jean-Jacques long to tell De Marsin how he had been tricked. While they were on the eastern road she was in danger.
Time was of the essence. She knew there was a heavily wooded copse between the lake and Castellucchio, the little town where she had been given her counterfeit husband. Once the carriage fell dark with the cover of trees she sprang up. Fumbling with the lacings at her waist with shaking hands, she freed herself from her voluminous skirts and petticoats and shed them like a skin. She clambered out of the window in her stockings and bodice; the rushing wind tore down her hair and blasted the powder from her face in little white puffs. Grabbing a handful of the coachman’s coat she pulled him from the driver’s box, and he fell tumbling to the ground with a cry and a sickening crunch. Clambering into his place, she tugged on the tangled reins with all her strength. She had never driven a four before, and it took her some time to rein the team to a jog, then to a stop, and she tied the reins hurriedly – too many reins – to the pommel. She jumped down and ran back to the unconscious coachman and stripped him as quickly as she could, struggling with his dead weight. He was a burly fellow, but his clothes would have to do. She stripped in the freezing forest down to her pantaloons, and pulled on the coachman’s shirt and breeches and coat, her frozen fingers remembering the male buckles and ties and fastenings. Then she reached up to her hair, tearing the horsehair pads from her coiffure, flattening down her own locks stiff with powder, and scraping them back as she’d used to. She crammed the coachman’s tricorn on her head and ran back to the coach, clambering up on to the driver’s box and gathering the reins again.
She had no idea what to do. What if the horses would not go for her? What if they stood here, grazing, till the maréchal and his men came? Heart thudding, she raised the heavy leather straps and brought them down on the back pair’s rumps, shouting, ‘Yar!’ The four stallions took off like racehorses, and she nearly toppled back over the box. Gradually, muscles straining, she steered them to Castellucchio. Then, instead of taking the road to Genova, she drove the horses on to the Brenner Pass, the lakes and the Palazzo Borromeo.
Chapter 36
And bade it a tedious returnin’ …
‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)
‘Turin? When?’
Kit stood before the Duke of Ormonde, in the great marble hall of the Palazzo Borromeo.
The palace seemed different now to its summer self – the lake outside was grey as pewter, the mountains silvered with the first snows. No pleasure trippers tacked on the rilling water, and even the peacocks in the gardens were mute with autumn sullenness.
Only Ormonde was unchanged. He sat in his gilded chair like a king, Kit before him in her coachman’s coat and tricorn like a lowly supplicant.
She calculated. It had been three days since the Maréchal Comte de Marsin had told her the French would besiege Turin in a week. ‘In four short days they will begin the attack. But perhaps sooner.’
Ormonde stroked his chin. ‘Why sooner?’
‘A messenger came from France as I was leaving, bringing information that would unmask me as a spy. They know I know, so they may mobilise sooner.’
Ormonde shrugged. ‘It is no small thing to mobilise an army. They need time.’
‘But they need the currency of surprise.’
‘Yes,’ he said, measuredly. ‘Yes, they do.’
She stood, awkwardly, shaking out her aching arms. This was not at all how she had imagined this interview. Would she be rewarded now, and dismissed? Would she be offered safe passage to Dublin, or given leave to go where she wanted? Would she be free to find Ross and reveal herself?
She had expected congratulations, perhaps even an embrace. She had expected a flurry of activity, of dispatches, of summonses for Panton, Tichborne or even Marlborough. But Ormonde stretched like a cat. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘And now I imagine you would like to bathe, eat, and take your ease. Change into some pretty clothes. Coachman to countess, what?’ He laughed but the laugh did not chime true. She was unsettled by his ease.
‘What will you do? Tell Marlborough?’ She could imagine how Ormonde would enjoy it – bringing the duke here, telling him that he had managed to discover with the aid of one woman what Marlborough’s ten thousand men had not.
He tapped his teeth with his fingernail. ‘I will consider.’
‘Do not consider overmuch. It will not take them long to find the owner of these clothes in the woods.’
‘Leave it with me,’ said Ormonde, dismissively.
‘But …’
‘Kit. Leave it with me.’ She was jolted by the use of her true name.
She raised her chin. ‘So I am to be Kit Kavanagh once more?’
‘Oh, I think so. I think the Countess Christiane has served her purpose,
don’t you?’
At dinner she felt a little better. She had bathed, dressed in a copper brocade gown and eaten her fill. She also sported the diamonds that had once belonged to Anne of Austria, to remind Ormonde of what was due to her, now she had done as he’d asked.
From Mezzanotte she had received the congratulations and embraces so markedly lacking from his lover. Dinner was relaxed and the three of them talked easily of anything but the approaching siege. Kit told herself that this must be because Mezzanotte was present, but she did not wholly believe it. Ormonde had always shared his secrets with the castrato.
Still, she waited till Mezzanotte had begun to sing, before she questioned Ormonde. Her voice hung in an odd limbo between the countess and Kit. She no longer knew who she was, her accent odd; now Poitiers, now Dublin.
‘Where is Marlborough at present? How quickly could he get to Turin with his forces?’
‘Very quickly, if he was so minded. He is on the Superga hill, overlooking the city, taking command of his latest mistake: the general retreat to the Po valley.’
‘I see.’
‘What do you see?’
She was silent.
‘We do not need to put away our candour,’ he said, ‘now that our mission is ended.’
‘I understand why you are manifesting little urgency. If Marlborough is already sitting on top of the city he can reinforce it as soon as he may.’ It was all right. Ross and the dragoons would be safe.
Ormonde ran his finger around the rim of his glass. ‘Kit. I am not going to tell Marlborough.’
‘Not?’
‘No.’
‘Someone else, then? Panton? Tichborne? I understand you don’t want to hand the credit for the salvation of Turin to your enemy, but …’
‘Kit,’ he said again. ‘I am not going to tell anyone. Not a single member of the Alliance forces. Not a general, not a dragoon, not a foot soldier, not a drummer boy.’
She listened to the exquisite song, her world crumbling. ‘Why?’
‘Come, come,’ said Ormonde, drumming his fingers gently on the linen tablecloth. ‘You know why. I have taught you well. You tell me.’
‘Because,’ she said slowly, ‘if the Alliance has no warning, the French will take Turin.’
‘And then?’
‘Marlborough will be blamed.’
‘And?’
‘Relieved of his command.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Then you will petition the queen, and take his place as commander-in-chief of the Grand Alliance.’
Ormonde sipped his champagne, his eyes veiled. ‘A very interesting conjecture, Kit. I cannot, of course, confirm these fantasies.’
‘But they are true, are they not?’
He regarded her. ‘Think, Kit. Do you really want me to say yes?’
She did not. She didn’t want to know such dangerous information. She was reminded of Atticus Lambe, in the hospital dungeon of Riva del Garda, revealing his addictions and peccadilloes. Suddenly afraid, she rose from the table, and opened the double doors, Mezzanotte’s heartbreaking aria pursuing her.
Dove sei, amato bene!
Vieni, l’alma a consolar!
Sono oppresso da’ tormenti
ed i crudeli miei lamenti
sol con te posso bear.
As she left the salon she felt a prickling at her back, the prickling of Ormonde watching her, convinced that his comfortable candour was derived from his certain knowledge that she would not leave the palace alive.
She shivered under the coverlet, her teeth chattering. She was cold with horror and dread. The thought of Ross, of all the dragoons, those good men, her friends, defending the citadel of Turin alone, sickened her. She could see them in her mind’s eye, surprised by attack, fighting valiantly, failing, falling, cut down by the French. Another crushing defeat that made the ground slippery with blood; another Aughrim, another Mantova. Sean Kavanagh. Richard Walsh. Enough. You don’t have to wait to be rescued, Aunt Maura said in her head. Go and rescue him. And this time it was Captain Ross that she meant.
Kit got up and lit her candle, and, in the warm light, she dressed herself as best she could. Now unused to the task, her shaking fingers fumbled with her lacings. She needed elegance but also practicality; so she chose a brocade carriage dress in saffron velvet, and a heavy travel cloak. She had no time to dress her hair, so she scraped her own clean hair back and chose a powdered wig from her wig stand. She fastened the diamonds at her ears, wrists and throat, for her credibility would depend on her magnificence, and besides, they were rightfully hers. Rapidly, remembering the artistry of Livia Gonzaga, she made up her face with white alum, with ceruse on the lips and cheeks. There was no time for a patch. She picked up the fan that had been her prop and stay, and set it down – it was useless to her now. She wished she had a sword instead. She wished she had her uniform again. She had dissembled every day that she wore it, but now that suit of clothes seemed more honest than a gown. She longed for her heavy felted coat, for the facings and lacings and boots. The wish reminded her.
She fell to the floor and looked beneath the bed. There they were – her dragoon’s riding boots, which had been waiting there, patiently, for her to remember them. She pulled them on gratefully and they were well hidden beneath her skirts.
There was a faint knock at the door. She froze for a moment. ‘Just a moment!’ she called breezily, as she threw her heavy cloak behind the bed, tore off the wig, hauled the coverlet over her pack and threw her night chemise over her travel clothes. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door a crack.
It was Lucio Mezzanotte. He walked in and took her by the shoulders. ‘Christiane. Kit. You should leave this place.’
She stripped off the chemise.
‘Ah.’ Mezzanotte closed the door behind him, and sat down on the bed. He watched her as she replaced her wig and collected her cloak. ‘You have anticipated me. Christiane … forgive me. Kit.’
‘It does not matter what you call me,’ she said, her voice hard. ‘Whoever I am, I am not a fool.’
‘He is going to kill you,’ said the castrato.
Kit stopped packing. Started again. ‘I know.’ But still it was chilling to hear it stated like that.
‘Where will you go?’
Kit fastened her pack, hesitated. How much should she tell Mezzanotte? ‘I don’t know.’
She turned back to him – he looked at her, amused. ‘Take this.’ He waved a silver flask at her. ‘It can get cold on the mountain, and it might take you some time to find Marlborough.’
She stepped forward and took it gratefully. ‘And what will you do? Surely you must leave him now?’
Mezzanotte looked up, his eyes enormous in his long pale face. ‘Why? I love him.’
Kit shook her head. She could not articulate the reasons, if he did not know them already.
‘He has done worse than this,’ said Mezzanotte. ‘Before I even met him. I always knew what I loved.’ He fingered the Prince Rupert’s drop about his neck, the glass greedily imprisoning the lamp flame. ‘He told me once that when he was a young general in Ireland he fought the Jacobite infantry for King William.’ Kit leaned back against the door, suddenly weak. She fixed her gaze on Mezzanotte where he sat on the edge of her coverlet, just as Maura used to do when telling a tale. ‘He had the rebels completely exposed and surrounded. The Jacobites surrendered, and they started to run. They threw away their weapons in order to run faster. But Fitz fell upon them with his cavalry and slaughtered them all as they tried to get away. He said the grass was slippery with blood. He said that, to this day, this place is known locally as the “Bloody Hollow”. All because of him.’
Kit went still. ‘Where was this?’ but she knew the answer.
‘Oh, I don’t remember. Some hill near his estates in the east. Some funny long Irish word.’
‘Killcommadan?’
‘That’s it.’
Kit closed her eyes, feeling the ridges of the door against her
back. Ormonde. Ormonde had killed her father. Sean Kavanagh had been one of those fleeing Jacobites. His sword – her sword – was one of the weapons that was thrown down in surrender. Sean Kavanagh’s blood had made the grass slippery in the Bloody Hollow. Was that why she had met Ormonde on Killcommadan Hill that day, when she was little more than a child? Now she understood too that his infernal parrot had, all this time, been repeating his master’s boasts. Damned Jacobites. Like rats in a trap.
She could not speak for her white-hot anger. But Mezzanotte did not seem to notice. ‘Fitz said he made his fortune that day,’ he went on. ‘He says if he had not done what he did, he would not have been brought to court, and he would not have been at the opera with the queen, and he would never have met me.’ Then the castrato registered Kit’s expression. ‘He is not a bad man.’
She pushed herself away from the door and grabbed her pack. ‘I am going. Let him try to stop me if he will.’ She felt as if she could kill him with her bare hands.
‘He will not even wake.’
His voice, weary but certain, stopped her in her tracks. ‘How do you know?’
‘Juice of the poppy. Opium. I told you they fed it to me in Florence when they took my manhood. I have been using it ever since.’ She turned to look at him and saw an expression she recognised in his eyes. His lids were heavy and hooded, his pupils enormous. She had seen that same look on Atticus Lambe. ‘It has been my constant friend,’ confessed Mezzanotte. ‘And tonight, it is his. Fitz sleeps in a poppy field. You have until dawn at the least.’
Kit’s simmering anger abated somewhat. ‘What will he do to you?’
‘I? I know nothing of your flight. I will wake beside him, none the wiser.’
Kit could not leave Mezzanotte like this. ‘Tomorrow he may spare you. But he will smash you one day,’ she warned. ‘You’ll shatter under his hand, like that drop you wear.’
Mezzanotte grasped his pendant. ‘I know. But I would rather die under his hand than live under someone else’s.’
Kit tiptoed down the great stone stair, and past the parrot’s cage. In the dark he was just a grey parrot, the gaudy feathers leached of hue, dreary and dun; headless at present – his head tucked under his wing. She thought she had got past without a final insult but the bird took his head from under his wing and screeched, ‘Damned Jacobite!’ She winced, hoping the screech did not penetrate the sleep of the poppy. ‘And proud of it,’ she hissed.
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