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| About the Book |
Author: Katherine Mezzacappa
Publication Date: 14th January 2025
Publisher: Histria
Pages: 288
Genre: Historical Fiction
Any Triggers: Some scenes of violence, including judicial killing; rape.
‘I am dead, my Mary; the man who loved you body and soul lies in some dishonorable grave.’ In County Down, Ireland, in 1767, a nobleman secretly marries his servant, in defiance of law, class, and religion. Can their love survive tumultuous times?
‘Honest and intriguing, this gripping saga will transport and inspire you, and it just might break your heart. Highly recommended.’ Historical Novel Society
'Mezzacappa brings nuance and a great depth of historical knowledge to the cross-class romance between a servant and a nobleman.' Publishers Weekly.
The Ballad of Mary Kearney is a compelling must-read for anyone interested in Irish history, told through the means of an enduring but ultimately tragic love.
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| Read an excerpt |
Excerpt 4: Neighbours
“A letter for me?”
“Yes, Mary, open it and read it.”
“Tis an invitation to us to visit Mountlyon. It is signed Lady Lyon. Why does she write to me? I do not know this lady.”
“I do, and now she wants to make your acquaintance, too. That is the form, lady to lady. Her husband is a decent fellow, abominably rich, and Mountlyon has been much improved as a result. We will be taken around it and must say we admire it whether we do or not, and afterwards we will be rewarded with a good dinner when we will be lively in our reminiscences of the London season. And after a short interval has elapsed, you must invite them here.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here to Goward Hall. Mary, you look like a rabbit transfixed by a stoat. There is nothing to fear except possibly boredom. You have joined the Quality and now the Quality wishes to know you.”
One splendid room opened into another. Mary was exhorted by Lady Lyon, a thin, querulous woman in her fifties with a habit of peering down her nose, to admire the Zuccarelli landscapes. “So like the view across our demesne, don’t you agree?”
“They are fine views all, both the painter’s and yours, Lady Lyon. But yours have no pretty peasants, and his do not behave like peasants. They seem to have no work to do,” replied Mary.
“Impertinent,” thought Lady Lyon.
“Certainly I would not permit our tenants to pass across my view. For what use is a ha-ha otherwise? I do not imagine that you allow it either, Lady Goward, but perhaps I am mistaken. Are your ideas more democratic perhaps?”
Mary scented a coming insult, and chose her words carefully.
“Our tenantry approach the house by means of the Offices, Madam,” she said truthfully. What she did not add was that the house servants now crossed before the house whenever it made sense to do so, and Mary did not believe that they spoilt the aspect. She would not tell her own brother and sister to stay out of her field of vision, and so would not instruct the other servants to do so.
“I am in any case usually too occupied to be looking out the windows,” Mary added, and it was Lady Lyon’s turn to be offended, though no offence had been intended. That lady simply stared, then drew Mary’s attention to other acquisitions.
“This is Mr. Gainsborough’s work.” She pointed at a portrait of Lord Lyon looking like what he was, a genial middle-aged country gentleman, his spaniel at his feet and the plans of the new Mountlyon unfurled in his hands.
“And this is Mr. Reynolds’s of myself, in his best Grand Manner. I am of course Hebe.”
“Why did he show you as Hebe, Lady Lyon? Could you not just have been yourself?” blurted out Mary, mystified by the portrait’s swirling draperies, sandalled feet and bare arms. “And why do you carry the pitcher, or is the big bird wanting to drink from it?”
“Oh my dear, you are so droll,” tittered Lady Lyon. “Those of course are the attributes of the goddess of eternal youth, and I am cup-bearer to the gods.”
“But Madam, you are so much younger than this goddess. Mr. Reynolds has not done full justice to the original,” interjected James, dextrously guiding a mortified Mary towards Lord Lyon, who took Mary’s hand and patted it.
“I shall take you to meet Skip, if you like? I think Mr. Gainsborough got a very good likeness, though the poor beast found the sitting—which was all about standing— as tedious as I did.”
“Our son has a dog just like him,” said Mary, looking up at him with tears of gratitude in her eyes.
At dinner, Mary’s first mistake in Lady Lyon’s eyes was when she glided round the
table and cut up her husband’s food.
“We have servants for that!” exclaimed the hostess, adding maliciously, “But of course it is a servant’s work.”
“We have simpler ways at Goward Hall,” said James gallantly. “Mary knows without my saying what I have difficulty with and what I can manage with my left hand, for what I can still do, I prefer to do.” This little exchange was repeated downstairs in the servants’ hall, to universal approval.
Mary gradually brought out her little store of London observations: their visit to the newly-built Adelphi, and to Lord Burlington’s villa at Chiswick. “Mountlyon is so much of their style,” she added, eager to please. This earned a begrudging smile from Lady Lyon, who had been looking forward to further displays of Mary’s ignorance, and who steered the talk towards painting, in the hope of seeing her blunder again.
But Mary was now on her guard. “James took me to the Academy at Somerset House, and to the gallery of the Foundling Hospital. This I liked more, and to think that the painters gave of their time and effort to raise funds for those poor children. At the Academy I thought Mr. Reynolds’s picture of Mrs. Pelham with her hens enchanting, though I must confess he is not so good at the painting of the fowls. They were all so little. But Mrs. Pelham was so pretty and charming in her muslin.”
“Yes, I expect you did find such a subject appealing—farmyard hens rather than eagles. You see, my dear,” continued Lady Lyon, “people of Quality do not really go to look at the paintings. I believe that only the painters themselves do that. I know you are new to this world, Lady Goward, but you must understand that people of fashion go to these places to observe each other, and to be observed—”
“Damn’d tedious it is too,” muttered her husband.
“Or at most, to decide which of these daubers is to have the honour of one’s patronage with a portrait. You do not say that you have been painted, my dear? Mr. Gainsborough of course has done such charming pictures of simple country folk. I think he must prefer them to his fine ladies.”
There was utter silence in the room. Mary looked down at her plate, crimson with humiliation, and pulled her lower lip under her teeth to hide its trembling. She breathed in hard, fearful that her nose was going to run. Instead, a fat tear splashed onto the remains of her dinner. She could not look up. Lyon spoke first, in a voice fractured with anger.
“I think, that is to say that it is my considered opinion, that whoever has the honour to paint Lady Goward will have the most difficult task to do her justice: the most limpid of complexions, the softest curling dark hair and most expressive liquid eyes, woodland pools in which a man might bathe and feel truly refreshed. Harrumph! I get too poetical in my advancing years and I do not wish to embarrass you, my Lady, but Goward, you are a lucky dog.”
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Mount Panther: The ruins of Mount Panther, County Down (the original of Mount Lyon) Image: Bixentro. Wikimedia Commons |
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Author Bio:
Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but currently lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She wrote The Ballad of Mary Kearney (Histria) and The Maiden of Florence (Fairlight) under her own name, as well as four historical novels (2020-2023) with Zaffre, writing as Katie Hutton. She also has three contemporary novels with Romaunce Books, under the pen name Kate Zarrelli.
Katherine’s short fiction has been published in journals worldwide. She has in addition published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory. She has been awarded competitive residencies by the Irish Writers Centre, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators and (to come) the Latvian Writers House.
Katherine also works as a manuscript assessor and as a reader and judge for an international short story competition. She has in the past been a management consultant, translator, museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member. She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Novel Society, the Irish Writers Centre, the Irish Writers Union, Irish PEN / PEN na hÉireann and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for the Historical Novel Review. She has a first degree in History of Art from UEA, an M.Litt. in Eng. Lit. from Durham and a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church. She is represented by Annette Green Authors’ Agency.
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