Mozart’s Blood (20 page)

When they had known each other for a few months, Cesare began to express concern over Ughetto's circumstances. He would tuck a little extra money into his pocket, or leave him a bottle of wine from a recent shipment. He embraced him each time he bade him farewell, and told him the date of his return. Ughetto began to look forward to those dates. And Cesare, though he never knew it, was the only one of Ughetto's customers allowed to kiss him.

Cesare wanted company for the concert near the Palazzo del Quirinale, but he could not openly bring a lover. “You will be my nephew,” he told Ughetto. “Those breeches are adequate, but I'll bring you a better shirt and cloak. Be sure your shoes are clean. And tie back your hair, or better yet, I'll give you money for a haircut.”

Ughetto wasn't offended by these instructions. On the contrary, he found Cesare's concerns rather sweet, and faintly amusing. He had chosen his shirt and cloak precisely because they gave him an impoverished look, and he was perfectly happy to change them.

And he wanted, very much, to go to the concert. He had heard of Francesca Caccini, a Florentine woman well known in Rome for her singing and her compositions. Everyone at the
scuola
knew of her. She wasn't allowed to perform in the churches, of course, but the fashionable
salons
in Rome vied with each other for opportunities to present her.

Ughetto did everything Cesare asked of him. He brushed his secondhand leather slippers until they glowed. He found a barber in Via Lugari, not so fine or so fashionable as the
parrucchiere
Anselmo had hired for him, but one who could cut his black curls into a respectable style for a young man of middling means. When he met Cesare in Piazza dei Fiori, his patron's brows rose and his smile was admiring.

“Ughetto, my dear. You wear those clothes as if you had been born to them.”

Ughetto struck a laughing pose, one hand held out, the other on his hip. “Perhaps I was, dearest Cesare. You must leave me a little mystery.”

Cesare laughed, and caressed Ughetto's cheek. “We will enjoy this, my young friend,” he said. “And then afterward…I know a little
ristorante
with a private room, where we can be comfortable. We will indulge ourselves, this one evening.”

Ughetto only smiled. He would see to it that Cesare had plenty to drink during the concert. And then more at dinner. It would all be easy enough to manage.

When they reached the house of Cesare's associate, they walked in through an elegant marble courtyard studded with sculptures. Some were new, but many, Ughetto saw, were ancient, from the Greek and the Roman Empire periods. A servant bowed them in through the door, took their cloaks, and announced them. Cesare introduced Ughetto to one or two people in the manner they had planned, and the two of them found chairs near the harpsichord. Cesare beamed, lifting a glass of good Roman wine, puffing his modest chest with pleasure in their surroundings, in the company, at the prospect of fine music.

Ughetto kept his eyes modestly down, bowing if necessary to other gentlemen, once or twice to passing ladies. He took care to drink sparingly, and he suppressed an urge to fidget with impatience as he waited for the musicians to appear. When at last they did, he gave up any pretense of conversation with Cesare and allowed himself to focus completely on the ensemble.

Caccini's only beauty was in her music. She was a woman of forty-three, with a long nose and an underslung jaw. Her hair was threaded with gray, and her eyebrows were thick. But her voice enchanted Ughetto. Her breath was naturally not so long as that of a
castrato,
and so her
fioritura
was not so dramatic. But her
legato,
and her phrasing, and the limpid way she passed from the chest voice into the upper register, was everything Brescha could have wanted. Ughetto found himself, after her first aria, staring at her with his mouth a little open, his heart beating fast with admiration.

He was so caught up in the moment that when Cesare's hand found his under cover of the applause, Ughetto startled and snatched it away. Coloring, he said in a rush, “Oh, I'm sorry, Cesare. I was…I was concentrating. She's a wonderful singer, don't you think?”

Cesare, frowning, said, “You're gazing at her like a man in love. Surely that's not the way your inclinations lie, Ughetto?”

Ughetto swallowed a rush of resentment that this should be anyone's business but his own. It was hardly fair. But then, little in his life had been fair. He leaned back in his chair, and manufactured a mischievous quirk of his lips at his patron. “Cesare, dearest,” he said softly. “Is that what you think?”

Cesare's brow smoothed, and he looked around the
salotto
at the other guests. “Well,” he said. “Perhaps it's best that you look that way. As you're my nephew, naturally you would be entranced by an accomplished young woman.”

Ughetto let his eyelashes sweep down against his cheeks.
“Sì, sì, carissimo,”
he said. “Naturally.”

Caccini went to the harpsichord, then, and settled herself on the bench. She announced that the ensemble would undertake one of her new compositions. The room quieted, and Ughetto closed his eyes to let the strains of the motet wash over him. The harpsichord had gone slightly out of tune from the heat of the room, but he didn't mind that so much. It was a very respectable piece. He was warm and had drunk a little wine. There was food to come, and a clean bed, with only a small amount of effort to be expended beforehand. Odd that such modest comforts had come to mean so much to him. Nothing limited a man's ambitions, he supposed, like a few hungry nights in the cold.

It was, until near the end of the concert, a perfect evening. When the ensemble left the floor for an interval, more wine was poured and trays of smoked oysters and garlic-stuffed olives were passed. Cesare chatted happily with his Roman acquaintances, and Ughetto nodded respectfully at everything he said, the picture of a devoted nephew. At one point a woman approached him, a tall, bony woman with narrow black eyes. “Do I know you?” she demanded.

Ughetto bowed to her. “I haven't had the pleasure, Signora. My name is Ughetto.”

“Ughetto. Where are you from?” She regarded him with an obsidian gaze that made him wish for Cesare by his side.

He made a deprecating gesture. “Such a tiny town, Signora. You would never have heard of it.”

She stared at him a moment longer, her features as set as one of the sculptures in the courtyard, before she then turned away in a swirl of black bombazine. Cesare appeared at Ughetto's elbow. “You've met the Contessa, I see,” he said.

“Have I? It wasn't exactly a meeting,” Ughetto said.

Cesare shook his head. “No, it wouldn't be. She's from the north somewhere, Prague, or Vienna. They say she's a great music lover.”

“She's rude.”

“Yes, they say that, too. Come now, Ughetto, the concert is going to resume.”

When Caccini came in again, with the ensemble at her heels, everyone sat down with a scraping of chairs, laughing and chattering as they arranged themselves into new patterns. Ughetto found himself separated from Cesare, standing at the back of the room near an arched doorway. Cesare looked up to find him, and Ughetto waved as a patter of applause broke out.

Caccini curtsied, then held up one hand for silence. “My friends,” she said. “I'm eager to present to you a new face, and a new voice, to sing a recitative and aria I composed last year. Please welcome one of the fine young singers of the Cappella Sistina. This is Leonino!”

A tall young man with the exaggerated limbs and long torso of a
castrato
swept into the room. He came to the harpsichord and bowed, then stood looking out over the audience, his head held high as if he were visiting royalty.

Ughetto stiffened.

Leonino's eyes drifted almost negligently over the faces before him, until they came to rest on Ughetto. There, they stopped. His lips curled and he inclined his head, ever so slightly.

Ughetto stared at his old tormentor from the
scuola.
Leonino stared back, a second longer than could be considered polite, before he turned to the composer and nodded. She struck a rolled chord, ending in a brief trill, and Leonino began to sing.

His dark soprano was rich in the middle register, and his
melismas
were long and flexible. His voice thinned, though, as it rose above the staff, and his sustained notes verged on stridency.

Ughetto disciplined his face into impassivity. Brescha would have had scathing criticisms of Leonino's technique, of the tension in his jaw and the offending arch of his tongue that choked his upper register. But Leonino was singing, which was more than Ughetto himself could say.

When Leonino finished, with a long trill and roulade, the applause was hearty. He bowed several times, then, with a gleam in his eye, started across the crowded room toward Ughetto. The ensemble began its closing piece just as he reached the doorway where Ughetto lounged, trying to look at ease.

“Why,” Leonino cried softly in his high voice. “If it isn't little Ughetto! All grown up now, aren't you!”

Ughetto straightened and held out his hand. “Hello, Leonino.”

Leonino shook hands, then ran his fingers through his hair, artfully tousling his coiffure. “So?” he said archly. “What did you think of my aria?”

“I thought it was fine.”

Leonino's eyes narrowed. “Fine? Is that all you can say?”

Ughetto shrugged. “It's a lovely piece, competently sung. What do you want me to say?”

Leonino leaned closer to him, bracing himself against the arch of the doorway with one long arm. “I know what it is,” he hissed. “You're jealous because you can't sing anymore.”

“That's perfectly true,” Ughetto said simply. “I am. But I still can say only that the aria was fine.”

Leonino pulled back, folding his arms and looking down his nose at Ughetto. “You were always an egotist, as I recall,” he said. “And now look at you! What are you, a servant? Someone's valet, perhaps?”

“No. I'm a guest here.”

Leonino laughed. “Do they know about you? What was it you were going to be called—Angelino, wasn't it? Or Floria. And now you're just…” He flipped a negligent hand and began to turn away. “Just Ughetto from Sicily. The botched job.”

Ughetto knew that he should let Leonino have the last word, let him turn away to his admiring public. But his barb had hit home, and it hurt. It hurt more than a mere physical pain that would pass in time. This hurt would grow deeper, planted in the soil of hope, nourished by disappointment and frustration. Ughetto couldn't help himself.

He said, in a clear, carrying tone, “As long as we're remembering the lessons of the
scuola,
Leonino, I should mention to you that you need to watch your upper register. It's growing shrill.”

Leonino whirled, his face dark with anger. Several people standing nearby turned, too. Even under the cover of Caccini's music, Ughetto's words had reached their ears, and their avid interest was like the flicker of candles on every side. The Contessa materialized on Ughetto's left, her black gaze brilliant.

“How dare you,” Leonino hissed. His elongated fingers seized Ughetto's arm, pinching his tricep between long fingernails. As Ughetto tried to pull away, Leonino's nails tore through the delicate fabric of the new shirt Cesare had bought for him.

Ughetto felt his lips pull away from his teeth, and a low growl escaped his throat before he could suppress it. The candles around him seemed to blaze up, as if the room had caught fire. His vision blurred, and a fierce itch crawled across his throat and his chest.

Leonino fell back, his eyes wide. The people around him caught noisy breaths, and some uttered wordless exclamations. The music died away in the sudden silence. Cesare, from across the room, lifted his head to see what was happening around Ughetto.

Before anyone else could move, the Contessa seized Ughetto's elbow with an iron grip. She steered him out through the arched doorway, into the lamplit marble courtyard, and beyond, into the blessed coolness of midnight.

 

“Now,” the Contessa said in her dry voice. Her face, with its sharp nose and long chin, was as ageless as the sculpture of Diana Ughetto had so recently walked past. Her voice was uninflected, without accent, a voice that could belong to any age, any country. Her eyes burned into Ughetto's as if they would delve directly into his brain. “Tell me about your family.”

Ughetto reclined on a long, low couch in the atrium of the Countess's villa. He stared at his fingertips, which still burned. The itching of his chest and neck had subsided, and his jaw, though it felt tight and swollen, had ceased throbbing. His fingers looked as they always did, the nails short and, on this night, clean. But the burning persisted, as if at any moment those claws would extrude, tear at the pale cloth of the couch, at the Countess's lean face.

“I don't understand,” he said. His voice cracked like a piece of thin glass. “What do you care about my family?” He struggled to sit upright, but the Countess's hard hand pushed him back. “What do you care about
me?
”

She held out a tumbler of water. “Drink this. You're still hot.”

“On fire,” he groaned. He took the glass and drained it.

As she took it back and refilled it, she said in that noncommittal tone, “Just tell me. You have sisters?”

He turned his head so he could see her face clearly. It held no expression at all. “I think you already know I have sisters. Why is that?”

With a faint, dismissive gesture, she said, “I'm going to explain it, Ughetto. But tell me.”

“Yes, I have sisters. Six of them.”

“All older?”

“Yes.”

“Brothers?”