Kit

by Marina Fiorato

  ‘Your voice?’

  ‘My singing voice. In Florence, where I was born, the practice is common. There is a shop by the Duomo with a sign above – “here we castrate boys”.’ He plucked a scarlet flower from a shrub and began to shred it, as he walked, with his long white fingers. ‘Your Protestant faith has not reached us in Florence; we are Catholics to the bone and are ruled by the law of the Church. The Pope, God guard him, decreed that no female should sing in a Church choir. So the Church recruited boys, boys with sweet girlish voices. These boys, Kit,’ he turned to her, ‘these boys can sing fit to pierce your soul, they can describe, in one soaring, sustained note, the ultimate solitude of God.’ He walked on again with his short footsteps. ‘But boys lose their voices when they gain their beards. So, if you are poor, and your son has a promising voice, you can make your fortune. I cannot blame my father.’

  Kit struggled to follow. ‘Your father?’

  He shrugged, like a man. ‘We were poor, and I had a promising voice.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He took me to the backstreets, to the shop with the sign. They put me in a warm bath, and fed me opium until I was drowsy. Then they took a huge pair of iron pliers, black as a crow’s beak. They are called castratore.’ He bit his lip, stopped. ‘They stitched me up, but I still bled for a sevennight. I was nine years old.’

  Kit was silent, appalled.

  ‘But,’ he went on breezily, ‘my voice was preserved. It is a substantial gift. And now I thank my father every day for what he took from me, and what he gave me.’ He glanced at her, proudly. ‘I am an artist. Lucio Mezzanotte is celebrated all over the world. I sing in the greatest opera houses – La Fenice. La Scala. Even your own opera house in London.’ As he strutted and crowed Mezzanotte reminded her of the white peacocks. ‘That is where I met Fitz. I was presented to the queen.’

  ‘But,’ Kit said hesitantly, ‘there must be other … lacks.’

  She did not know how to frame the question – was he like a woman, down there, or was there anything remaining of the man he had been?

  ‘You are speaking of the act of love? One can still participate. There are ways. But I cannot perform the man’s part in that particular performance. And, of course, I cannot have a child.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said Kit, feeling the loss once again like a blow. She had no woman’s part, he no man’s. They were both halfway creatures.

  ‘But we can still love,’ said he.

  ‘Yes,’ she said fervently, unguardedly. ‘And hate.’

  There was a silence as they rounded the yew walk, and the bittersweet scent of the leaves enveloped them.

  ‘Do you hate the French?’ It was Mezzanotte’s turn to question her.

  She considered. ‘No.’

  ‘But you fight them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because you have been told to? Because your commanders do?’

  Marlborough. Ross. Ormonde. ‘I suppose that is so, yes.’

  ‘I want them all dead.’

  She considered this brutal statement, so at odds with the view they enjoyed.

  ‘Not because I hate them. But because I love my country. And I want it back.’ He cast the shredded flower he held on the gravel walk. ‘Love is the best reason to fight, not hate.’

  She thought of Dublin, of Kavanagh’s. ‘I love my country too,’ she said, heartfelt.

  ‘England?’

  ‘Ireland.’

  ‘Ah, Ir-e-land.’ He gave the word three syllables. ‘Like Fitz.’ Mezzanotte flicked a glance at her. ‘Perhaps you love it here, on this enchanted island? Do you?’

  She considered. ‘Yes,’ she said. And it was true.

  ‘Then fight for that,’ he said.

  Kit worked with Mezzanotte every morning, in the ornate music room on the piano nobile, which she came to love more than any other room in the house. Mezzanotte, ordering Pietro about as if he were Ormonde himself, caused the instruments to be uncovered so Kit could admire the carved and enamelled spinets and harpsichords, crouching on their golden legs like an exotic menagerie. He had the place filled with flowers from the garden, and ordered that the great glass doors that opened out on to the sun terrace should be thrown open, so that they could overlook the lake.

  The castrato was excellent company; witty, kind and prodigiously talented. He sat Kit down with him on the scarlet upholstered stool by the harpsichord, and took her hands. ‘Do you love music?’ he asked, searchingly.

  Mezzanotte seemed to deal in absolutes – love or hate were his business with nothing in between. Kit answered promptly, remembering Ormonde’s question of the night before. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘What kind of music?’

  Kit did not name her favourites as she had for Ormonde, for she was sure those Irish tunes would be unfamiliar to a Florentine. ‘Jigs, hornpipes, ballads.’

  ‘You sing?’

  ‘I used to sing a catch or two in the alehouse.’

  ‘Sing to me now.’

  Uncertain, her voice small, she sang a verse of ‘Arthur McBride’. She did not think of her father but remembered instead singing it to Ross, in the aqueduct at Cremona.

  Oh me and my cousin, one Arthur McBride

  As we went a walkin’ down by the seaside

  Now mark what followed and what did betide

  It being on Christmas morning …

  She choked and stopped. Mezzanotte patted her arm. ‘Good. There’s something there we can work with. Emotion is no cause for shame – emotion drives the performance. Use it.’

  He strummed a chord on the harpsichord, his long white hand spanning an octave of notes with ease. ‘Unfortunately your repertoire cannot help us; the songs with which you are acquainted would be wholly unfamiliar to a French countess. Now listen: I will teach you one simple song to play, to accompany yourself on the harpsichord. This is “O cessate di piagarmi” by Alessandro Scarlatti.’

  He struck the keys with artistry and ease, and what she heard made her ashamed of her homely ditty. She looked at the castrato, wide eyed. ‘I could never play like that!’

  ‘Such a standard will not be expected of you,’ said Mezzanotte with his characteristic lack of modesty. ‘But La Comtesse Christiane would doubtless know how to play a little. It is most suitable for a high-born lady to learn such an instrument. One can sit straight backed with decorum – and since the hammers pluck the strings in the belly of the instrument, there is little exertion. Myself, I don’t really like the instrument – there are no dynamics to be had – hammer hard or soft at the keys, you will hear the same result. But pipes and violoncellos are not suitable for ladies to play. Nothing in the mouth, and nothing between the legs.’ He winked lasciviously and Kit smiled and relaxed.

  But in the course of the morning her tongue recalled almost all of her army swearwords as her fingers fumbled, slipped from the keys and made crashing discords. Rather run down the hill into battle than this. ‘It is impossible,’ she said, but Mezzanotte was philosophical. ‘Never mind,’ said he. ‘We have time.’

  And they did. Kit now rushed through her toilette every morning, and hurried to the music room. Half of her morning was taken up by Mezzanotte playing for her, and testing her on the names of composers, pieces and arias. Then they would take iced sherbet on the sun terrace, and talk companionably. Afterwards they would work on the Scarlatti and Kit’s singing. Mezzanotte soothed her doubts. ‘In all likelihood, you will never be asked to play,’ he said. ‘But if you are, you must be able to give them a piece.’

  ‘And if they ask for another?’

  ‘They will not. Young ladies are far too delicate to play more than once.’ He winked. ‘To play twice might quite overcome them.’ Kit smiled to think of what she had been through in the last year, and what Bianca had endured, and to think that there were some ladies in the world who must be protected from straining their voices or delicate digits.

  ‘Besides,’ continued Mezzanotte with ill-disguised scorn, ‘there will
be plenty of other young ladies panting to delight the company.’

  Slowly the palace was being peopled, for Mezzanotte had brought with him a string quartet from Venice, where he had lately been performing. After a day at the harpsichord he began to bring them to the music room. Kit admired their dedicated, serious professionalism and their unquestionable skill.

  She began to develop her own preferences, and favoured the new composer Antonio Vivaldi above all. Mezzanotte saw it and was pleased. ‘You will become a true connoisseur in time,’ he said.

  On the third day Mezzanotte met her at the music room door. ‘No music today,’ he said. ‘Time to dance.’ He led her down the great stone stair to the ballroom. The parrot greeted them at the foot. ‘Silly slut!’ he screeched. Mezzanotte did not miss a step. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said drily, ‘he’s talking to me.’

  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.

  Dove sei, amato bene!

  Vieni, l’alma a consolar!

  Sono oppresso da’ tormenti

  ed i crudeli miei lamenti

  sol con te posso bear.

  Where are you, beloved!

  Come to console the soul!

  They are oppressed by torment

  and my cruel laments

  alone with you I can bear.

  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?

  Chapter 30

  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.