Kit

by Marina Fiorato

  The bathhouse by the lake was a little paradise – mosaic tiles in blue and green and gold wreathed around the walls like steam, and a sunken square bath in the Roman style waited for Kit filled to the brim. Kit sank into the water up to her eyes. She had not been in a bath for over a year. She took the lump of tallow and scrubbed herself into a lather, soaping her shoulders with a linen cloth. She washed everywhere, all the time looking out at the glorious summer lake and mountains and not quite believing where she was. She washed herself three, four, a dozen times until her skin was rosy red and squeaked to the touch. Then she completely submerged herself in the bath, scrubbing and rinsing her hair, first with soap, then with lemon and alum. Rising from the water, Venus renewed, she squeezed the water from the dark red mass of her hair, and wrapped herself in the long linen cloths. She saw a grass-green gown, the brocade glowing in the sun, draped across a chair like a shed snakeskin. She left it there for now and went to sit, just as she was, in the late morning sun, with a heavy comb of carved ivory in her hand.

  The blunt fringe she had cut across her eyes in her chamber in Kavanagh’s was quite grown out now, and the hair curled in long tendrils about her face. The locks had grown back in swags and hanks and curls, now clean and bright as copper, every filament snatching at the sun. She sat on, when she was done, letting the warm wind dry her hair, listening to the music of the bees, and the strange alien cries of the peacocks. When the little church at Stresa began to ring the angelus she got up reluctantly and went back to the bathhouse.

  With the aid of a large looking glass she piled her hair on the top of her head with half a dozen jade combs that she found in an inlaid chest, leaving one long length under her left ear, curling the lock round her hand. She examined the effect – her hair now glowed with the colour of carnelians, her eyes were as jade as the combs, and she smoothed her dark brows into fashionable arcs. Her cheeks were, it was true, a little ruddy from her soldier days so she rubbed a little of the oil of olives into them, and slicked a little on to her lips, which she bit to redden them.

  Then she put on the grass-green gown, a ‘work gown’, the duke had called it. Indeed, it was simple, but it was still a thing of wonder. It was heavy with brocade, and she laced herself into it with difficulty – no wonder the quality needed a maid – pushing her breasts upward so they sat fashionably, two pale half-moons, under her chin. She examined herself in the glass – her reflection resembled her no more than the ragged girl she’d seen on the Venetian stair. She threw a towel over the mirror, and went to wait outside. Unable to sit comfortably now, she stretched out on the warm stone, luxuriously, until Pietro’s shadow fell across her.

  On the terrace, the duke sat under a shaded awning, the table before him piled with pyramids of fruit and crystal glasses, and, in a salver of ice beside him, a pile of oysters.

  The Duke of Ormonde looked at Kit wearing an expression she could not read.

  She stood in front of him, her confidence draining. Then she asked, ‘What do you think?’

  Then he smiled. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you will be of more use to the cause than any soldier in Marlborough’s army.’

  Chapter 28

  We take great delight in our own company …

  ‘Arthur McBride’ (trad.)

  By nightfall Kit was the Comtesse Christiane St-Hilaire de Blossac.

  After their luncheon by the lake the duke took Kit to the very top of the palace, where no one could overlook them but the lake gulls. Above the windows sat a gallery, which could be reached by sliding wooden ladders, and all around the gallery a regiment of books lined the open shelves. The place smelled like a schoolroom.

  Ormonde sat her at the secretaire, before a scroll of paper and a quill and inkpot.

  ‘Have you letters?’

  ‘Yes. I can read and write. My Aunt Maura taught me …’

  She did not finish the sentence, for he pressed his forefinger to her lips. ‘No. She does not exist. There is no Aunt Maura, no alehouse in Dublin, no missing husband. Forget all that, and Ireland too. You have never set foot there.’

  ‘Then who am I going to be?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I do not understand you.’

  ‘The best falsehood is the truth. Who are you?’

  ‘Kit Kavanagh.’

  ‘Farther back.’

  For the first time in years, she used her christened name, the name her French mother had given her.

  ‘Christian. I’m Christian.’

  ‘In French, Christiane,’ he said. ‘It’s a start.’

  He paced to the window. A little fishing smack was tacking across the blue lake. ‘When I said that the best falsehood is the truth, did you understand what I meant by that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If I call you Liliane or Marie-France, and someone calls that name in a crowded room, you will not answer, nor even turn your head, however carefully you have been prepared. But if your name really is Christiane, and someone calls you by it, you will reply. If you are asked to sign your name to a document, the unwary will begin to write the first few letters of their own name, not their alias, before they remember. But you, you are Christiane, so you will write Christiane. Equally, it is easer to lie about a past that marches closely with your own.’ This she understood, for she had done just this when she had lied to him about her past year. ‘So I am going to construct your identity from your own life. Now: let us consider your mother, and your French heritage.’ He clasped his hands behind his back. ‘I want you to cast your mind back; remember all you knew of her.’

  Kit, her eyes on the little boat on the lake, thought about her mother in fine detail for the first time in years.

  ‘What was her name?’

  She breathed out as she spoke the name. ‘Heloise de Blossac.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘An enameller’s daughter from Poitiers. She met my father when he was on a French campaign, and followed him home to Ireland. By then she was with child.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Me.’ The parallels were striking. Her mother and her, following a man across the sea.

  ‘No more children?’

  ‘None. She didn’t even want me.’ It did not hurt, now, to say what as a child she could not have uttered. ‘She hated me.’ Perhaps it was a blessing if she could not have a child – better not to bring a daughter into the world, to bring her up alone. ‘She just wanted my father.’ Kit realised she was speaking of her mother as if she was dead, but for all she knew, her mother was still alive, well into her middle years and living … where? On the farm still? Or had she gone home to France, now that there was nothing left of Sean Kavanagh but the blood that nourished the grass on Killcommadan Hill?

  ‘And your father died?’

  ‘At the Battle of Aughrim.’

  His eyes flickered briefly. ‘And you hated your mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, now she’s going to help you. We will have you as a native of Poitiers. It is provincial enough and far enough away from Versailles for the court not to be closely acquainted with your bloodline. Now, what do you know of the town?’

  ‘Nothing. Except for the fact that they must make enamel – she had a jug of my grandfather’s, one of the only things she brought with her. It was a lovely thing.’

  ‘Your grandfather’s name?’

  ‘Jean Christophe Saint-Hilaire de Blossac. He was rich; his trade did very well, and the family became gentry.’

  ‘And your grandmother?’

  She thought hard. ‘Marianne. Marianne Valmy. A curé’s daughter.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll work on the rest. For today, a comtesse would know about politics.’

  He told her, in far more detail than Ross had – and this time with the aid of books and maps, instead of a stick and a puddle of mud – the origins, notable battles and strategies of the War of the Two Crowns. Following his pointing finger, she could see at last exactly how far she had travelled abo
ut the boot-shaped peninsula, back and forth over the mountains and lakes, and could see how crucial the northern cities – Milan, Mantova, Turin – were as counters in the game. They stood sentinel, ranged like outposts along the border, keeping France at bay. ‘Do you see?’ said Ormonde. ‘If they break through this line, the forces of the Two Crowns could gain the whole peninsula, and overrun the Empire.’

  He told her of the major players on the chessboard; of how enemies Louis of France and Eugene of Savoy were raised together at the Palace of Versailles, inseparable boyhood friends. ‘Louis refused to give Eugene preferment to the army, so Eugene went to fight for his uncle the Emperor, and now they are on opposite sides. Eugene’s first language is French,’ said Ormonde. ‘So he will know at once if you dissemble.’

  Kit swallowed. She could not tell Ormonde that she had once stood with the prince, no more than an arm’s length apart, on the tower of the cathedral in Cremona – that he had taken her prisoner from her grasp and thrown him to his death.

  ‘He is the finest test for you,’ Ormonde declared. ‘If we take you to his name-day ball and he recognises you for a fraud, then nothing is lost – you would be a birthday jest from an eccentric English milord. If he takes you for a French woman, we know that you are ready to go to the French court at Mantova, and meet Philippe d’Orléans, nephew to Louis of France, and Villeroi himself.’ Kit swallowed nervously. She cared not for Philippe d’Orléans, for he would not know her from Eve; but Villeroi – how much had Villeroi seen her? She had been there at the maréchal’s capture. He had looked on her, but had he seen?

  Of Marlborough, Ormonde was dismissive. He referred to him as ‘Jack Churchill’. ‘He is all brawl and bombast,’ he said. ‘He will crack a walnut with a battering ram. But Villeroi, he is a different matter. They say he talked himself out of captivity. He is of formidable intelligence.’ She remembered the maréchal negotiating with Captain Ross even with a knife to his throat.

  ‘And I am to deceive him?’ she asked plaintively. ‘To pluck out his strategy?’

  ‘No, never in this world.’ Ormonde shook his head.

  ‘But … you said that I am to find out what the French intend!’

  ‘But you do not ask,’ said the duke firmly. ‘You never ask. Your only office is to be charming and beautiful, and show an interest in these men, and show as much animosity to the forces of the Grand Alliance as you can convey without arousing suspicion. Information will come to you, but if you dig for it, you are mining a barren seam.’

  Kit spent the following morning, as she had been instructed, on her person – she slept late, bathed in milk, dressed her hair and oiled her skin. Then after luncheon she climbed to the tower, and found Ormonde surrounded by open books, maps and reams of paper closely written in his flourishing hand. He sat her down at the secretaire and coached her in her new bloodlines, the region of Poitou-Charentes, the house where she’d lived since her marriage and, of course, her imaginary husband. Once he’d been through her history, telling her the story of her own life as if he were Aunt Maura telling her a tale, he tested her, correcting her and prompting her, until she was word perfect.

  ‘Which river flows through Poitiers?’

  ‘The Clain.’

  ‘What was the name of your townhouse?’

  ‘The Hotel Poitevin.’

  ‘To which saint is the cathedral dedicated?’

  ‘Saint Pierre.’

  ‘Walk me home from the cathedral after mass.’

  ‘From the square, you take the left way into the rue Chasseneuil, past the Jardin des Plantes. The hotel is on your left.’

  He nodded. ‘Good. I would take you to Poitiers myself if I could; but even with my carriage and a change of horse it is time we don’t have. Savoy’s name day is in just under three months.’ Kit’s stomach lurched – there didn’t seem time to get prepared, to assume an identity in such detail. But then she remembered another self, the Kit who had simply cut her hair and put on a suit of clothes. She had been a man before she’d gone down the stairs, with no such tutoring.

  Ormonde, ever businesslike, pressed on. ‘What is the name of your husband’s military order?’

  ‘The order of Saint Louis.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘At the house of my Aunt Hortense at Angoulême. He taught me to shoot with a bow in her pleasure gardens.’

  ‘Where did he serve?’

  ‘Cadiz and Vigo Bay.’

  ‘And there we are on a firm footing, for I served there too and can furnish you with more details than I care to recollect.’

  This was a new Ormonde to Kit. She wondered whether his experiences in battle had set him on this path to clandestine warfare, to prefer the battles that were fought in ballrooms and salons, with words and whispers.

  ‘Is everything clear so far? We will go over everything again, each day; but do you have any questions?’

  ‘Just one.’

  He inclined his head, like his parrot.

  ‘What is my husband’s name?’

  ‘Remember what I told you. Truth is the best falsehood. What is your real husband’s name?’

  She felt a small pang. ‘Richard.’

  ‘Ri-shard.’ He said it the French way. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Why perfect?’

  ‘Because of the Lionheart. Richard I of England, a native of Poitiers. What better name for a Poiteven? “The Vicomte Richard Saint-Hilaire de Blossac”.’ He spoke the name like a herald. ‘It sounds well. You should have a motto, too. What shall it be?’ The duke spoke to himself as if he did not expect Kit to be of any use in the matter of Latin epigrams. But she spoke up at once.

  ‘I have one.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Shall we use it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Truth is the best falsehood.’

  ‘Don’t shrug,’ he admonished. ‘It is not the gesture of a lady. Tell me your motto.’

  ‘Virtus Ipsa Suis Firmissima. Truth relies on its own arms.’

  There was a pause. ‘Well, that certainly fits,’ said Ormonde. ‘We’ll take it.’

  Ormonde would ruthlessly interrogate Kit not only on the subject of her own bloodlines, but also on those of Louis of France. ‘A French countess would learn these bloodlines at her mother’s tit. Let us begin again.’ He took up a great book and paced behind her. ‘The House of Capet.’

  ‘Hugh Capet, Robert II, Henri I, Philippe I, Louis VI, Louis VII, Philippe II, Louis VIII, Louis IX, Philippe III, Philippe IV, Louis X, Jean I.’

  ‘The House of Valois.’

  ‘Charles Comte de Valois, Philippe VI, Jean II, Charles V, Louis I Duke d’Orléans …’

  ‘… Jean, Count of Angoulême …’

  ‘Jean, Count of Angoulême, Charles, Count of Angoulême, Francis I, Henri II.’

  ‘The House of Bourbon. The bloodline of the current King Louis himself.’

  ‘Robert Comte de Clermont, Louis Duc de Bourbon, Jaques Comte de La Marche, Jean Comte de La Marche, Louis Comte de Vendôme, Jean VIII Comte de Vendôme, Francis Comte de Vendôme, Charles Duc de Vendôme, Antoine de Bourbon, Henri IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV.’

  ‘Yes. And finally the House of Orléans.’

  She looked up, askance, suspecting a trick. ‘Only Philippe d’Orléans, the first branch of his tree.’

  ‘Precisely. The very prince who holds court at Mantova; enough.’ Ormonde shut the book and threw it among the papers on the secretaire. ‘We must do what we can to stop the French marching all over the map.’

  But despite Ormonde’s hostility to the French, his tutelage on the subject of her home and family worked a strange magic on her. Though she felt fully Irish, she was half French. She’d paid no mind to that other half she carried with her always like the obverse of a coin, but now she thought of the people of Poitiers, that far-off unknown town. Did they know that this war was being fought in their name? She had no quarrel with them, they had not injured her, those citizens going about their business, making their ena
mel. She did not hate the French; but she had chosen her side, had killed for the Grand Alliance more than once. Then a thought occurred.

  ‘Fitzjames?’

  ‘Christiane?’

  ‘What of my husband? My … counterfeit husband?’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘Well – am I to say he is back in France? Or must they suppose he is in the French forces, behind the lines?’

  ‘No. He will be dead.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘Will be. Remember your future tense.’ Ormonde was a stickler for grammar, insisting that a comtesse would speak with exactitude. ‘He is not dead yet.’

  He would say no more, so she had to be content.

  Ormonde’s education was all-encompassing. He covered every detail. He would open his strongbox and scatter a fortune in stones willy-nilly on the secretaire: tiaras, jewelled collars, sparkling orders hanging from their ceremonial ribbons like mini-constellations. She could not put a single jewel back in the box till she had learned its value and described the cut of the stone, the nature of the setting. At these times he would show her a sparkling diamond collar with a matching bracelet and earrings like two miniature chandeliers. ‘These diamonds are from Versailles,’ he said. ‘They belonged to Anne of Austria, who was …’

  ‘Louis XIV’s mother,’ supplied Kit, wondering, if that was the case, how Ormonde had come by them.

  ‘This set will be yours,’ he said, ‘if you succeed in your mission.’

  She looked up at him, her hands full of the bright jewels, suspecting a jest. But his deep-set eyes, all colours and none, were in earnest. ‘Truly,’ he said. ‘They are currency around the world, wherever you choose to go. Their tender is accepted everywhere. But for now, tell me the cut and cost.’

  On one of the only rainy days of that summer, Ormonde invited her to sit with him in the small parlour on the piano nobile. They sat either side of the empty fireplace in the glorious little room, enamelled with white and gold, and in between them was a little table, holding nothing but a long box. The box was a pale rose in colour, edged in gold, and wedge shaped, tapering slightly at one end. ‘Take it in your hands and open it,’ he said.