An Appetite for Violets (23 page)

He turned to my mistress, looking like he might happily throttle her in her bed. ‘My Lady. Permit me – is this some jest?’

‘She is going to fetch the key,’ Lady Carinna said, as cold as a cucumber.

‘
She
is? Why, I could—’

My mistress’s voice interrupted him, very flat and steady. ‘He’s expecting her. Me. A woman.’

‘Perhaps, My Lady, if you told him you were indisposed?’

‘He’d come and search me out.’

His colour had flooded upwards from his chin – he stiffened like a bull, nearly bursting with rage. ‘Not Biddy, My Lady. Surely you can’t send
her?
’ And he poked his finger in my direction like I was nothing but a pile of muck.

My lady shrugged. ‘She will pass scrutiny, you know.’

Mr Pars meanwhile was in a fit of outrage, yet painfully bound by the need to at least appear polite to my lady.

‘Listen, he’s expecting me at two,’ my mistress harried. ‘I tell you, Biddy is an uncanny mimic. And even you—’ and at that she scoffed cruelly, ‘were fooled for a full minute.’

He looked at me again very sharply and walked right around me, scrutinising every fingernail and flounce. Then he came very close and fiddled with the ruffle at my throat. ‘I thought there was one I could trust,’ he murmured, so low that the others could not hear it.

‘But Mr Pars, sir,’ I started up, wanting to explain that this shammery was nowt to do with me. But he turned back smartly to my lady, bowed low in her direction, then strode off before I could say a word. The door closed and we were all knocked back into silence.

My mistress yawned and said, ‘It’s nearly time, Biddy. Now fetch that key, do you understand? Don’t even think of playing the fool.’

‘My dear, I should never wish to disappoint you,’ I said in my top-rank voice. And I didn’t even bob her a curtsey, just walked down the stairs ramrod straight and had Mr Loveday hand me up into the carriage.

XXV

Villa Montechino

Being Lent, March 1773
Biddy Leigh, her journal

Viperine wine

To make a potent brew to prolong life and promote vitality drown several vipers in your wine and drink as you require.

A Receipt of Count Carlo Falconieri of Montechino, 1773

Once the villa was out of view I knocked on the ceiling and told the driver to halt. In a twinkling Mr Loveday had clambered down from his footboard and come inside to sit with me.

‘I must talk to someone,’ I said as the carriage moved off again. ‘Now I reckon Mr Pars thinks I’m plotting against him or some such tomfoolery.’

Mr Loveday nodded and said, ‘Mr Pars, he no peace inside of him.’

‘Aye, he were breathing down my neck something horrible.’

I glanced out of the window and saw we were going at a fair pace. There was no stopping my fate in its tracks now, for the carriage began to climb up a smooth road, and signs of a neat farmed estate opened up on both sides of us. I started to fuss over my fancy dress and ribbons; I felt I might never be able to catch my breath again while those stays squeezed the life right out of me. All too soon we swept around a driveway and I saw a most fancified building set on the crest of a hill, the windows seeming to watch me from scores of glass panes. Falling away before the villa were layers of stairways all garnished with twisting statues and gushing fountains and other gimcrackery. It was all very rich and very fashionable and very frightening.

‘Oh Mr Loveday, you must help me,’ I said, but the next moment we jolted to a halt and a periwigged flunkey swung back the carriage door. I managed to follow the fellow into a vast church-like hall where the sudden gloom made me giddy. Those skirt hoops were bothering me too, for I was not used to having two bloody great baskets swinging from my waist that all the time knocked into doorways and banisters. Still, I managed to get up the stairs with some trouble, and, breathing horrid shallow breaths of fear, was shown inside the count’s salon. He was waiting at the far end of the room; a lively puckered old man in a gold coat and ribboned shoes, who stood to meet me with an oily smile fixed on his face.

The footman held Mr Loveday back so I was all alone. I think those steps across that vast shining floor in that swaying gown were the worst I ever took in my life. I could see the count at the other side of the gilded room, standing with his withered arms stretched out to – what? Shake my fingers? I couldn’t think straight. At last I reached him and he lifted my hand to his lips. His kiss was as wet and snuffly as a piglet. I had a great desire to wipe the tingle of spit away on my skirts, but I did resist it.

‘Carinna,’ said he, in a voice rich with buttery charm, ‘sit, sit. Dear girl, what a joy to behold you. You will take a little refreshment?’ He rang a silver bell and the flunkey approached, and then left with a bow. The count may have been old, but his face was as lively as a jay’s as he feasted his beady eyes all over my person.

‘Your Excellency. You are too kind.’ I bowed my head a little. Lord, under his fierce gaze I was suddenly as hot as a stoked oven, and reckoned I must exactly match my scarlet dress. So I reached in my bag for my fan, but was that flustered I couldn’t open the tricky catch.

‘May I assist you?’ He started to fiddle with it, all the while hovering very close and giving my hand a clammy squeeze.

‘Oh, never mind it.’ I tugged it away and then remembered to be civil. ‘Why thank you, sir.’

‘Not sir,’ he scoffed. ‘While you are here I stand in place of your beloved uncle.’ He jiggled the fan and it opened, so then I had to give it a bit of a flap. ‘Why, I feel I almost know you,
carissima.
Only Quentin did not tell me you were such a – an adorably unsophisticated creature. Now, I know you ladies speak a language with your fans. What is that message you are conveying so passionately?’

I brought my fan to a dead stop.

‘Pleasure,’ I said brightly. ‘At our meeting at last.’ And I dropped the fan like a hot iron and folded my hands together.

A flunkey set coffee stuff down on a little table. There was a silver pot wrapped in a white cloth and a tray of paper-thin flowered china, and I thought, God help me, is this my first test, to pour a genteel dish of coffee? Then of course the servant got on with it and I just had to sit there, as stiff as London pewter and be waited on.

‘Ah, the Arabian fruit,’ exclaimed the count. ‘Do you not adore the reviving ambrosia?’ He flothered on about the coffee for a while, so I looked about me at the gold-framed panels that covered every inch of the walls and ceiling. They were painted with naked bodies mostly, big rumped doxies and hairy men. I nodded and sipped the coffee. It was so strong it nearly flayed my mouth raw. Oh, for a proper cup of tea any day.

‘You find it stimulating to the nerves?’ said my host, his wrinkled little face nodding. ‘Ah Carinna, it gives me such pleasure to welcome you here. I have prepared the Pink apartment for your use.’

‘But sir— Your Excellency—’

‘Dearest girl, call me Carlo.’ He pressed my hand with his fingers and left them there, quite trapping me.

‘I can’t be— Carlo.’ I struggled to drop my voice from fishwife panic to courtly lady. ‘One of my poor serving women is ill. I cannot leave her all night.’

‘A servant?’ He winced. ‘Do not concern yourself with servants, Carinna. Get rid of her. Get another one.’

And that truly did flummox me. So there it was, straight from the horse’s mouth. We mattered as little to them as a broken cup, to be thrown out on the dust heap and replaced.

*   *   *

Mr Loveday was right in his judgement of the count as a flowery talker, for he wanted only simpers and smiles from me. After he’d given me a right load of whiffo-whaffo about his vastly expensive villa and how astonishingly noble he was, he started to twitch the red brocade mules on the ends of his feet and said we must take a turn around his park. So then I had to take his twiggy arm, only that meant I jostled him with my hoops, which nearly made me snort with laughter. I thought it safer to walk behind him, watching his bandy stockinged legs scurrying along, and the back of his white wig bobbing this way and that as he pointed out all his treasures. Next I had to traipse up and down the terraces and into the grotto, a sort of cave, where drips hung off the ceiling like petrified tripes. Now that at least was interesting, for inside lay squares of ice big enough to dine off.

‘For ices?’ I asked.

‘Indeed they are. They are the
specialità
of my cook, Renzo.’ Then taking advantage of my being half-stuck in the narrow cave, he suddenly slid his arm about my waist. ‘I have a most delicious supper in preparation for you Carinna,’ he murmured in my ear, with breath as musty as a mouldy box. ‘And after that, a bed of soft silks—’

‘Sir,’ I said, unwinding myself so I could face him, ‘if you would give me the key? I must take leave of you.’

The old fellow stood his ground, his twinkling eyes undimmed.

‘You cannot live in that dreary place,’ he protested, pulling his face like a spoiled child. ‘I will entertain you here. And I assure you,’ he said in a nasty coaxing tone, ‘I have retained all the necessary powers to entertain a young lady.’ And the little fellow looked straight at my up-thrust bosoms.

‘I think not,’ said I, shaking myself free. ‘The key, if you please.’

‘Ah Carinna, resistance only stiffens my resolve.’ He grinned like a tiresome puppy. Then he lifted his finger to trace a saucy line straight up my ruffled bodice towards my bubbies. I slapped it straight down.

‘I see you will be a cruel mistress,’ he said, as if he welcomed the challenge. I swung myself away and did my best to lift my great skirts back up the grotto steps. That little count, it turned out, was a right poxy rake.

*   *   *

Next on our tour was the count’s kitchen, a vast white dungeon under the ground. The walls glittered with rows of steel knives and hooks bearing crimson corpses. I thought it the horriblest kitchen I’d ever seen, quite counter to a homely, womanly kitchen. A dozen serving men bowed to the count and then returned to their tasks with flashy gusto. Their chief was a hulking young fellow whose conceit was such that he could barely be fagged to look up from his fancy knife work. True, his knife could scarcely be followed with the eye as he sliced and chopped like a swordsman at a fair.

‘The greatest wisdom of the classical age is Pliny’s treatise on the properties of viper’s meat,’ the count said, baring stumps of brown teeth. ‘Your ailing servant would do well to drink my viperine wine. It is a most beneficial cordial. Renzo, make up a bottle for Her Ladyship.’

To my surprise the cook gave a surly nod, and I wondered if he’d understood us.

The count grinned again. ‘Ah, Renzo also speaks some English. I tempted him with a vast bribe from the Duke of Clathemore. It was a favour, was it not, Renzo, to rescue you from those primitive English spits and pudding cloths?’

The cook looked up with a twisted grin; the rogues were evidently used to making sport of English fare. I took an impatient circuit about the kitchen, spying a number of ingenious machines. But before I could enquire about their purpose I heard the insufferable cook scoff in a schoolboy tone, ‘—English. I must recollect how to burn the meat.’

The
bombastinado!
The count then called me over to inspect a great metal vat; inside were the most horrid squirming and tangling serpents making dreadful leaps to escape their prison.

‘Are you not frightened of my voluptuous beasts, dear Carinna?’ the count asked with a wheezy cackle.

‘Frightened? No, I am disappointed,’ I said smartly, ‘if that is your cook’s notion of good food.’

I caught that cook ruffian giving me a bold measuring glance. I thought him the most coxscombical rogue I had ever met.

‘Renzo! Tonight you will not forget to serve my vipers?’ said the count as we left.

‘They are foremost in my mind, Your Excellency,’ the cook exclaimed with sudden energy. ‘You will never have tasted them dressed more exquisitely.’

And what of me, I thought? Will I also like those slithering serpents? Yet without the key, I had no choice but to attempt them.

*   *   *

Our supper
intimay
as the count called it, was served in a windowless chamber all tricked out with a garden of flowers fashioned from coloured wax. To my dismay, just when Mr Loveday appeared, the count again dismissed him.

‘Servants are such pests. We have no need of observation,’ he said. ‘Tell me, do you like my latest toy?’

He pointed at his ‘dumb waiter’, a sort of blind window filled with a revolving shelf. I merely simpered, for I thought it an insult to all us servants who are blessed with the power of speech. When he rang a silver bell the tray withdrew on a rope to the basement and minutes later returned laden with food.

I confess I was all in a fret at the table. Sit straight, do not mump nor mince your food, act genteel, I rehearsed to myself from
The Cook’s Jewel.
The settings were lavish: gold cutlery, burning incense, and ingenious metal boxes with hidden candles to keep the food warm. God’s garlands, I was just about to take a sip from a dish of water by my goblet when the count rinsed his fingers in his and dried them on some linen.

Now it did not take me long to discover the theme of our bill of fare. The first course was oysters, quite raw from their shells, with my first ever glass of nose-fizzing champagne wine. My companion made lewd observations about the chilly kisses of the oysters and their ungarnished nakedness, licking the salty juice from his lips and offering to do the same to mine. The old ninny! Next was a turtle soup from a vast tureen shaped like a naked girl, then a sturgeon fish. As any noddle would quickly have deciphered, this banquet was meant to have what is called a
provocative
effect. And what rot such notions are, for I never felt more chaste.