The Black Opera (105 page)

He let the King think. And realised,
Yes, he
did
think that, as if being dead were like leprosy, to be shunned.

He glanced over at Nora, as he had been used to do when they were together, and exchanged a look of silent understanding.

The dead who have Returned are those who
want
the world…

“The Teatro San Carlo should still be the best. If Nora's there, it would be—” Conrad sought the word. “—Would be shameful, for her not to be heard.”

The silence that succeeded could not have been more than two minutes long. Conrad felt every heartbeat of it.

Ferdinand's bland features gave away nothing of what he was thinking—whether he was wondering if forbidding this might not be an additional and better punishment for Leonora Capiraso. His eyes momentarily closed.

“Set the Governor's offices up in the Palazzo Nuovo—” Ferdinand's eyes snapped open. He seemed both sardonically amused, and sad. “—Naturally the old Angevin castle appears to have survived better than the Palazzo Reale. If you choose your officers well, Governor Capiraso, you may have one season of the year free of your duties to sing. Christmas to Lent, or the summer season; your choice.”

Leonora stumbled, sank down into a chair by the balcony, and looked up with her expression raw. “Sir—thank you—”

Conrad said something at the same moment. He could not have told what he mumbled, if it was not the same thing.

A similar rumble at his elbow was Roberto Capiraso, features white and startled.

Ferdinand sighed. “I would not withhold that voice. I think, too, the dead of Naples will wish to hear it. If the Count di Argente and Signore Scalese agree, I
dare say both of them will write for you, as Rossini wrote for Colbran.”

There was a light in his eye that proved not even the monarch of the Two Sicilies immune from the enthusiasm for opera that involved every man, from
lazzaroni
to Count and Cardinal.

“You sing for them,” Ferdinand added, “not for you.”

Leonora had the proud look on her face that was Nora's shield against the world. Behind it, Conrad recognised, was gratitude.

Not for being allowed to sing
.

For being given a way to make up for those lives she transmuted from living to Returned Dead.

“If there's more, we'll complete it tomorrow.” Ferdinand smiled. “I'll make the announcement officially tomorrow, but if I know the court, it will be known now—say, within a half-hour… We'll have a reception in your apartments here, Donna Leonora, since at least that way we can control any rumour and gossip; always a concern… Shall we say, in two hours?”

The King closed his manila folders. He reached out his hand towards the bell—and paused, before ringing it.

“Corrado, I would have said this as your friend, in any case. Now I add Leonora, and you, Roberto.”

Ferdinand inclined his head with some civility to the Conte di Argente.

“Since it's now a matter that includes the efficient functioning of my Governor-General in Naples… I have no preference for how you do it, but I perceive it's necessary that it be done. For preference, before you, Donna Leonora, leave for Napoli.”

He gazed sternly around.

“The three of you—
regularise your private lives.”

T
he few corridors between the King's apartments and the quarters of the King's new Governor in Naples passed in tight-lipped silence, breath inhaled through the nostrils and let out with almost audible huffs.

Conrad followed the other two in.

We could go down to my quarters, but I think Tullio and Isaura are in; as for
Roberto—

“Where
are
you staying?” he asked, before he caught himself.

The Conte di Argente shot a burning glare at Conrad, and then at the entrance to the apartments occupied by Leonora.

“If his Majesty had left me my pocket watch and rings, I'd be hiring rooms. As it is, one of his gentlemen-in-waiting is permitting me to share his cupboard, on the grounds that the Palermo opera house may offer a conductor an advance—always supposing Palermo
needs
a conductor!”

Conrad dropped back a pace as the servants opened up the rooms ahead. “So, yes, let's meet on Nora's own ground,” he muttered.

The servant stood aside as they entered, with a respect that told Conrad rumour of the new Governor had already spread.

“You!”

Conrad looked up as the doors closed, hearing utmost venom in Roberto's voice. He expected it to be directed at him.

Startled, he discovered Roberto staring across the room at Leonora.

“You.” His tone was no less venomous for being quiet.
“You
made me join the Prince's Men! And now my reputation is dog-shit, and you're betraying me with another man—”

“You joined
il Principe
before I even died!” Leonora's pale hands clasped together, knuckles white from pressure, if not loss of blood. “You followed your brother into the society—”

“—
Not
the inner circle!—”

Conrad walked around the edge of the drawing-room, pushing the shutters open. White sunlight streamed in. Too hot, too bright, perhaps; but after the eruption-pillar spreading across the sky above Naples, he found himself twitchy when there was no natural light.

A warm breeze blew the gauze curtains in, and he faced around.

“You
—” He ignored the composer, pointing his finger directly at Leonora. “You abandoned me in Venice where we were husband and wife—
yes, we were!
All but the ceremony—to go off with a rich man. Just because I had to pay off my father's debts—”

“And didn't
that
make a wonderful excuse not to marry me!”

Conrad stared across the room. “I would have married you.”

“Would
you?”

Roberto brought his chair to a halt where the servants had left his pair of crutches. He got himself deftly up onto them while Conrad was still squelching his inexplicable desire to offer help.

“You still care more about what he says—” The Count hitched himself closer
to her, all his weight dependent from the crutches. “—About what happened six years ago!—”

“You brought me back from the dead!” Her mouth momentarily lost shape. Her heels rapped on the terracotta tiles as she paced. “Yes, I think I came back because I wanted to, but… Roberto—how do I know that what
you
did didn't make all the difference? I'm still not sure if I love you or hate you for that. How can I pay off such an obligation?”

The composer stopped, more than an arm's length away from her. “It's not a debt!”

Conrad watched the emotions that altered her features. The shifting light from outside called up purple highlights in her blue eyes, and gold highlight in her undistinguished brown hair. The line of her shoulders slumped.

She slumped down on a satin-covered chaise-longue, nothing mannerly in her posture, “I don't know…”

Her head came up; Conrad realised—his heart missing a pulse-beat—that she spoke to him.

“…I didn't know
then
… I have no idea how to love someone when I don't know if I'll be out on the streets tomorrow. I'm ashamed that I ran away from the opera life at the same time that I ran away from you—I wasn't brave enough for either.”

Conrad opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. He turned, on the point of reaching out for the door-handle. In the corner of his vision, he caught sight of Roberto Capiraso.

No, why should I leave
him
here with her?

“As for you,
signore
—” Even boiling with hatred, he could not infuse the word with the same contempt that Capiraso would have managed. Conrad was infuriated. “As well as taking my woman, you betrayed
L'Altezza azteca
every day we worked on it! And I'd come to think we were friends—”

The admission was sour on his tongue; he burned with more humiliation than when he had had to beg for money for Adalrico di Galdi.

“—Yes, I admit it! You had me fooled too.”

Roberto Conte di Argente supported his weight heavily on the padded crutches. He lifted his head, in the path of warm air blowing from the open shutters, as if he too needed to see the sky in its natural state.

“I know.” He glanced away from the open air, his irises seeming black as the pupils. “It's been wearing on me since the first weeks we worked together.”

“But.” Conrad found he couldn't manage another word.

“When Adalrico and his son put their plot into action, I half hoped it would push you back to a distance… but then you came out of prison, and work
pushed us back together.” His mouth quirked in his clipped beard, in an expression of sardonic humour. “There have been great partnerships in the
mondo teatrale
before: Persiani and Donizetti, Romani and Bellini…”

Conrad noted the stain of pink high on the man's cheekbones. He thought, amazed,
Roberto is ashamed
.

Faced with that, he could do nothing but be honest.

“You still love Leonora,” he said.

Roberto's smile twisted into pain. “Yes, I love her. You love her, too. Despite everything. And since I'm now the one who can't support her…”

Conrad felt every muscle tense. He held himself back.
“You
don't get to call her a whore, Roberto!”

“I'm sorry, Corrado, I'm sure I've heard
you
say the very same thing—”

“Che cazzo!”
One of the balcony shutters was drifting closed; Conrad slammed it back against the wall hard enough to flake off the plaster.

“Ask her!” the dark man demanded. “You have a stipend as director of the scientific institute. I have nothing! She said it herself, a minute ago—Ask her which one of us she's going to choose!”

A high-pitched scream of anger split the air. Leonora sprang to her feet, the chaise-longue screeching back over the tiles.

“Neither!
I choose neither of you fucking idiots!”

Conrad opened his mouth to shout.

The drawing-room door banged open.

Luigi Esposito strode through.

“Oh thank
God!
The 'thirty-eight!”

The Returned Dead police chief was holding a wine glass, Conrad saw. He swept over to the side-cabinet, and seized a bottle.

“Anatoile Vercel, bless him,” Luigi breathed, lifting the bottle, and filling his glass at eye-level with the yellow wine. He didn't look at any of the three people in the room. “Ah, there's nothing like wine made from savagnin grapes and aged in oak casks…”

Conrad managed to recover his voice. “Luigi—”

“I had to find a bottle of the 'thirty-eight. Maria will kill me, otherwise.” Luigi favoured them—all three of them—with a dazzling smile. “When she and my second wife got together about me, they sent me out to buy wine and spent the entire night with this, trying to drink the other one under the table… And every hour until dawn, I came home, and I found Adelaide and Maria stone-cold sober.”

Roberto eyed Luigi Esposito with what Conrad thought, at first, was distaste—and then realised was an odd fascination.

“You have two wives?” Roberto said.

“I have three, now.”

The police chief took a sip of the wine, and closed his eyes, either in appreciation for the Vercel wine, or lost in memory.

“All the children play together,” he added, proving it to be the latter.

“Three
wives?”
Conrad blurted. “And they all know…?”

“None of the children call me ‘Uncle.'—Stefania is from Palermo, so I suppose we shall live in the house here, now, since our sovereign monarch wants me to be his liaison between the Naples and Palermo police forces. And in Naples, let's be honest, there's a
lot
of rebuilding to do.”

Luigi opened his eyes, his innocent gaze gleaming.

“You'll excuse me; Maria and Stefania and Adelaide will kill me if they don't get their share!”

He tucked his empty glass into the hand that held the first bottle of the Vercel, returned to the cabinet, acquired two more wine-glasses, and picked up two bottles by their necks.

“…What this wine needs is a fine quality cheese… By the way, you have guests.”

Not having a hand free, the police liaison between Palermo and Returned Dead Naples backed his way out through the doors.

There was a silence.

A long silence.

“So.” Conrad hoped his voice didn't betray him. “So… What should we put on at the San Carlo next season?”

Roberto hurriedly said, “I'd thought about a comedy?”

Nora lifted her head to look at both of them. “I can have the rebuilding completed by November?”