Harriet struggled for a second, then nodded. He was speaking of one of the many cats their housekeeper in Caveley had owned during the years they had been in residence. Hartley had been an adventurous beast, and having made his way out of a window on one of the upper stories of the house, had slipped on the damp roof slates and fallen to the yard. Stephen had found him while walking the grounds with his nurse. The cat had still been breathing, but was badly hurt and in pain. It had tried to bite Stephen when he attempted to comfort it, and Harriet had asked her coachman, David, to break its neck.
She stroked her son’s hair. “I remember, Stephen. It was very sad. Why did you think of that today?”
He fidgeted against her and tilted his head toward his chin. “Nothing,” he mumbled, “only there is a cat who lives in the Square reminded me.” He said nothing further.
Harriet drew in her breath. “Stephen, you know your papa is very ill at the moment.”
“Yes, Mama, that is why we must live here. So that he can be looked after by people who are almost as clever as Mr. Crowther.”
“That’s right, young man,” she said very carefully. “But you know, don’t you, Stephen, that Papa loves us still very much, and we love him. He is just not able to show it at the moment. Just like Hartley loved you and would come and sit on your bed in the mornings, but he could not show it when he was hurt.”
The little boy was silent. Harriet lifted his chin so she could look into his eyes. He was so like his father, yet there was at times a softness in him that did not come from herself, or her husband. He had plucked it from the sea winds when she sailed, big with him, feeling his kicks under her belly as the ship rocked, and bound it into his character.
“Your papa loves you,” she said. “And you liked Dr. Trevelyan, didn’t you? He is going to make Papa well again.”
He looked at her. “Then may we all go home?”
Harriet’s voice was steady as she replied, “Yes, my love. Then we may all go home.”
There was a light rap at the door and the housekeeper peeped into the room. “Excuse me, madam, but a gentleman has called for you and Mr. Crowther. He asked that you should be told. I’ll help get these off to bed, and there’s some supper laid out.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Martin.” Harriet kissed her son’s hair once more and lifted him off her knee.
She paused briefly at the pier glass in the hallway and touched her hair into some sort of order. For the first time since August she recognized herself in the mirror.
Catching hold of the banister, she ran down the stairs to meet Mr. Tompkins.
9
“Sam,” Jocasta said, when they had something inside them and Boyo was chasing rabbits in his dreams in front of the fire, “you made any friends since you left the workhouse? Other boys who might be keen to earn a penny or two is my meaning.”
Sam wrapped his arms around his knees. “Couple, I suppose.”
“Will you fetch them along in the morning, bright and early times?”
He nodded, then reached out his hand toward the coverlet that spent its days draped over Jocasta’s settee. “It’s pretty,” he said. “Did you patch it yourself, Mrs. Bligh?”
“I did, boy.”
“Like your skirt.”
“Like the skirt.”
“It’s so many colors. .” He shifted and settled on the floor with his hands under his head. Jocasta watched him. No one had ever waited for her before. She’d never, it seemed to her, in all the years she tramped through, been looked for and expected by another being. She sniffed.
“It’s patchwork. I’ve read cards enough for every draper’s girl in the Strand and they know my likings. However small an offcut, if it’s jewel-bright or patterned they’ll save it for me, and bring it along next time they need to know if their fella likes them. Then there’s the tailors and maids, and oftentimes if you know where to go, you’ll find some old thing a lady’s worn dancing about in the candlelight that’s worth paying for, for the bits in the folds that have not faded.” Sam’s eyes were open, and she saw that, as she spoke, his eyes were dancing across the patterns and colors of the coverlet. The bits of silk caught the firelight from the air and shivered with it, and the poplin and cotton seemed to glow with a pulse.
“Times I sit here,” Jocasta murmured, “and I think to mesel’, What things have you seen? to one square or other. Were you a dancing dress in a fine house, bunched up in a fat wardrobe with a dozen others, or were you stretched by the back of some sour red-faced old justice drooling after the next bribe to find, and spitting on the floor?” His eyes were closing. “Times I’m sitting here, Sam, I feel like a dragon in her lair sat on a great pile of jewels and stories. .”
His breathing was a sleeping pace now, and she turned and picked up a plain blanket from the end of her bed and dropped it over him. She sat a while longer in the dying firelight though. It seemed that when she had seen that pert little girl in the back of the wagon, her head all bloodied and her eyes closed, the world had cursed and roared at her. It reminded her of when, as a child, she had seen a man dead and watched another walking away from the body. She had told then, and been cursed as a storyteller. She’d been stubborn, but not stubborn enough. She earned a reputation as a liar that followed her around the valley, and never got a man or child to hear and believe her. She could still see the man in the green coat disappearing into the woods. It hadn’t helped that she’d been so scared she’d run up the fell and shivered an hour before heading back to her aunt’s house where she bided. The story of the baron’s death was being chanted outside every door in the village by then, and they thought she was just trying to draw eyes to herself. Not for all her weepings would they listen, and they hadn’t today neither, though she’d felt like a child again, crying against the storm, shouting and baying as if she could stop the world from turning. She was not a child now, however. There’d be a way, a way to watch and gather and patch it all together and make the seams strong. She’d make a noose of it all for Mother Mitchell and Milky Boy’s necks, and for all it was strung together with her sewing, it’d throttle them. Then she’d pluck that brooch from Mother Mitchell’s corpse and bury it in Kate’s grave with her.
PART IV
1
MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER 1781
Harriet had dreamed of her husband, of battles at sea, and of Manzerotti and Marin singing the “Yellow Rose Duet” on the deck of the Marquis de La Fayette, and woke somber and wondering in her mind, but with a dark energy curling through her veins that felt more like herself. It was unfortunate that Mr. Tobias Tompkins had spent the crucial hours of Thursday afternoon asleep over his books, and his visit had therefore been no more than annoyance, but nevertheless Harriet felt a sense of purpose in her blood this morning and was grateful for it.
When Crowther looked up from his newspaper at the breakfast table, he was glad to see her approach with a firm step, if a little concerned for his continued peace. Graves had the good sense not to speak during the breakfast hour. It was a habit Mrs. Westerman refused to learn. This morning, before she had even set down her coffee cup on the table she had declared her intention of quizzing them both about the race of the castrati. At this, Mrs. Service declared it was time Susan began her Italian practice, and Miss Trench, with a speaking look that her sister ignored, found it an excellent moment to go and consult with Mrs. Martin about a receipt for a burns salve she had recently been sent. Crowther could see the wisdom of Mrs. Westerman informing herself before their proposed meeting with Manzerotti, but he was not, as a rule, at his most brilliant at this hour of the morning, while when she was in health Mrs. Westerman always seemed to have an unnatural store of energy on waking. He wished it was as easy here as it was in Caveley for her to walk it off before they met in the mornings.
Harriet freely admitted she shared the suspicion of many of her countrymen regarding castrati. She appealed to the gentlemen for better information and Graves began by telling her of the remarkable musical trainin
g the castrati received from childhood.
“It gives their voices a power unparalleled,” he said. “They were used instead of women when the fairer sex giving voice on stage or in church was regarded as an offense against God, and they have been at the heart of Italian opera ever since.”
Harriet was impatient with the explanation and snapped her toast into indignant crumbs.
“But how could God be less offended by the practice of maiming His creatures in childhood?” she demanded. “Graves, you cannot approve of the fact that these children are operated on in such a way. It must be the ruin of their lives, whatever the success that some achieve. Though you may envy their training I doubt you would change places with them. And they become so. . strange as a result.”
Graves shifted in his seat rather uncomfortably at the mention of the operation.
“I believe, Mrs. Westerman,” he said, adjusting his coat, “that there is a polite fiction that these boys were damaged in their. . lower parts. . and that disease or accident rendered it necessary to. .”
On seeing Harriet roll her eyes and attack the preserves, Crowther put down his newspaper and took over.
“It is of interest what the removal of the testicles before puberty does to a child, though I agree that morally, it seems indefensible.” He had Harriet’s attention, but apparently she had also noticed Graves twist in discomfort again, and was amused. Crowther continued, “The voice does still alter as the subject ages, but retains its high register.”
“I have never heard a castrato speak, rather than sing,” she said. “Describe it.” Then bit down on her breakfast.
Crowther watched the movement of the muscles of her jaw for a moment before replying; “The speaking voice of a castrato is rather pleasant, if a little strange. It is rounder than a woman’s and not shrill, but rather has a sort of cooing. It recalls the pigeons in the Square outside here.”
Crowther had thought this information would suffice, but Mrs. Westerman did not seem to agree. Apparently she would shake all the facts out of him, as a terrier shakes the life out of a rabbit when it has it by the neck. Dabbing at her lips, she returned to her coffee, giving him a slight wave.
“Say on, Crowther. I have my prejudices, I know, and come to you for enlightenment. You cannot refuse a pupil.” It was an encouraging indication that having something more to occupy her mind than her husband’s recovery was improving her health and spirits already. However, a man is generous indeed who can take delight in such things so early in the day.
Crowther knitted his fingers together as he gathered his thoughts. “Physically, the operation has several effects that are not yet fully comprehended,” he began. “Development is hampered and altered as the child becomes adult in ways other than those that affect the vocal cords.” He coughed slightly. “I had the privilege of attending the autopsy of a renowned castrato in Milan some years ago. He serves as my example.”
Harriet interrupted: “How came you ghouls-sorry, gentlemen of science-by such a body? I thought any known castrato must have money enough for a lead-lined coffin and a man or two to stand guard by his grave while he rotted in peace.”
Crowther was not disposed this morning to find Mrs. Westerman entertaining. He snapped, “The gentleman in question was a man of means, indeed, and a great friend of one of the professors of anatomy at the university. He suggested that his friend would like to examine his corpse long before he died, and repeated the offer on his deathbed in front of other witnesses. He was glad to be of use to his friends at a time when mortality has normally robbed us of the pleasure of doing service.”
Harriet wrinkled her nose. “Very well. Though I cannot imagine making a similar offer myself-even to you, Crowther.”
“No matter, Mrs. Westerman. I doubt the examination would produce any scientifically significant results.” Harriet, in spite of herself, looked a little put out at that. He continued smoothly on. “Many of the castrati grow unusually tall-why, we cannot say. The bones of the gentleman I examined were sound, however, so their height does not seem to weaken them physically. Their thyroid cartilage does not grow as pronounced as in ordinary men. .” He paused on seeing her raise an eyebrow. “Their Adam’s apple is small, madam.” Again she gestured him to carry on, then renewed her attack on Mrs. Martin’s jam. “And of course they have a tendency to collect soft matter in a manner unusual for their sex, and somewhat more like a woman. The gentleman I examined was unusually fleshy around his chest and hips, though that of course is not guaranteed by the operation. Manzerotti is, as we have seen, rather slender, for instance. In summation, the effect can be highly unusual. I remember walking into a drawing room where a castrato was present among the fashionable crowd. To see this mountain of a man, some six feet tall perhaps and covered in soft fat under his finery, holding forth in that strange fluting tone was. .” he paused and looked up at Graves’s ceiling rose for inspiration “. . odd.”
Harriet considered the picture he had drawn for a moment. “I have heard questions as to their temperament,” she said, making Crowther consider his fingernails.
“It would be a foolish man who would venture a concrete opinion on the results the procedure has on the character of a growing boy. We are formed, I think, by a mixture of many factors, though such a violent operation and its aftereffects are likely to have complex consequences.”
At that moment, Graves stood and began to prepare to leave for the shop in Tichfield Street, gathering up the sheaf of papers that had been his study over breakfast.
“I have met a number of castrati in my time in music,” he told them, “and have found them as mixed in character, I think, as any group of men. Some have been all that is good and generous; others have been like violent children and thoroughly unpleasant to deal with, vain and demanding and very tiresome.” He shrugged. “But whether that is because of some physical effect of the operation, or because their fame and talents tend to mean they are so thoroughly indulged. .”
Crowther was still watching his fingertips as he replied, “I suppose these beings are kept by the operation in a sort of half childhood, never allowed to mature physically along the path nature intended for them, never forced into adulthood by having children of their own-though they can still enjoy intimate relations. Perhaps it is to be expected they can remind us of infants at times.”
Harriet shuddered. “It is a monstrous practice.”
Graves was still juggling his pile of papers. Some slipped onto the floor, as many objects that Graves tried to carry tended to do. He bent to pick them up then became very still and looked up at his companions.
“I would agree. But those voices, Mrs. Westerman-the voices of the best of them, at any rate. They are a blend of boy, man and woman. I do not think there has ever been a sound on earth quite like it. When I heard Manzerotti sing on Saturday evening, I was sure that such is the voice an angel might have.”
Harriet watched him quizzically, his young face still lit by the memory. It was an expression she associated normally with those of a religious bent. “It is strange you mention angels, Graves. The only time I thought of angels in the opera house was when we glanced in at the scene room and saw that strange gentleman dressed in brown.”
Graves at last had control of his belongings and stood again with a jerk. “You mean Johannes? The new genius of the stage machinery! The man who makes yellow roses bloom, water turn to gold dust and the Furies to fly. He is a castrato too, you know, and a particular companion of Manzerotti: they always travel together. Every production where Manzerotti has been primo umo, Johannes has been in charge of the scenery.”
Harriet’s toast paused halfway to her mouth. “But he does not sing,” she said.
Graves shrugged. “Not every boy who has the operation develops a voice like Manzerotti’s, Mrs. Westerman. Many become shrill and unpleasant. It is a horror, I think. To make that sacrifice, or have it forced upon them, then to discover it was for nothing.” He rubbed his chin. “They are often given o
ther musical training; in Johannes’s case, he simply turned his hand to the trade of theatrical illusion. It is making him almost as famous as a voice might have done. He does not like to speak, however; he communicates in whispers where possible, so the oddity of his voice is less noticeable.”
His papers assembled, Graves began to look for his gloves. Worried that the search might dislodge his load again, Harriet picked them up from the side table and handed them to him.
“Thank you,” he said. Then: “Who can say? I think there is a growing fashion against the use of castrati in the current age. We are beginning to prefer it when our romantic heroes look and sound a little more like real men. Perhaps in time Johannes will be the most gainfully employed of the two.”
2
It was a little early to call on a gentleman. Harriet and Crowther were forced to wait in Lord Carmichael’s drawing room for almost half an hour before Manzerotti made his appearance. If the home that Graves had leased for the children in Berkeley Square was rather more opulent than he might have wished, it still looked no more than quietly genteel in comparison with Lord Carmichael’s home.
This was designed as a place to entertain and impress. No surface was without a display of elegant china, no niche without some antique head or fragment of some ancient Colossus. There was a profusion of molding. Above each door hung golden festoons of plaster fruits and above them, oils of Gods and Monsters. Each room therefore had its crowds of the celebrated and worshipped sneering at each other before any living beings entered. Harriet peered at the marble head of a young woman caught, her lips slightly open and now shyly turning her face away from Lord Carmichael’s guests for as many years as he chose.
Anatomy of Murder caw-2 Page 16