The Black Opera (13 page)

Ferdinand added lump after lump of brown sugar to a treacly second cup of Turkish coffee, replaced the tongs, and took a testing sip. Not changing his thoughtful expression, he said, “It's conceivable their Sung Miracle was only intended to cause Tambora and its immediate consequences.”

The Commendatore nodded easily, despite the tension suddenly present in the gallery. “And of course, if laying waste to a few islands in Indonesia was all they could claim—to be honest, it would be of no consequence to us.”

Conrad glanced up.
Does Mantenucci's expression match his tone?

Enrico's lined face was cynically compassionate. “Men tend to their own backyards. But, unfortunately, the Prince's Men are now in ours. There's…reason to suppose that Mount Tambora may have been a test.”

“A test,” Conrad echoed.

King Ferdinand said quietly, “To see if such an eruption were possible. As Enrico suggests, so far as Europe's concerned, Indonesia is a collection of savage islands, of no conceivable importance. If tens of thousands of people die on and around Sumbawa, that's soon heard and sooner forgotten. It's only by luck that we've discovered it has implications for us.”

Conrad collected himself. “And those are?”

Ferdinand rose to his feet and beckoned. “Look over here.”

Being on his feet relieved Conrad's need for action only a little. Approaching
the wall, he was overwhelmed by blue, green, gold, and in places white, where the artists had painted cumulus clouds casting a shadow on otherwise featureless sea.

Green hills, gold corn, pale castles…
The panel closest on his right was a topographic map of the peninsula of the Italian states, hill-shadows defining the mountainous spine. The panel on his left showed a closer map of Naples itself, and the Golfo di Napoli.

The shaded relief map showed up how very vastly the volcano dominated the area, and how far its foothills extended across the face of the Earth.

Conrad saw momentarily not the green mountain of Classical history, the landscape-view that defines the city of Naples, but a hollow black scab, tendrils of infection spreading out into the body.

Cold to the base of his spine, Conrad remembered,
On the terrace, the King couldn't take his eyes from Vesuvius.

“Sir,” he said. “Do they mean to make
us
a Tambora?”

No, surely not; Vesuvius has been dead since the ancient Romans
—

“I think they must.” Ferdinand's tenor sounded beside him. The King rested his hand on Conrad's dusty shoulder, not far from where the metal collar had marked his coat. “Look at the Two Sicilies.”

He moved his other hand, drawing it lightly down the face of the map.

“Ætna, on island-Sicily, the most restless of mountains.”

Ferdinand's finger traced the Aeolian Islands.

“Here is Vulcano, Vulcan's Forge. And Stromboli, a volcano reliable enough in its eruptions that men call it ‘the Lighthouse of the Mediterranean.'”

Enrico Mantenucci shifted lightly on his feet beside Conrad. “As for the whole Tyrrhenean Sea—I lose count of how often ship's captains report the growth of new volcanic reefs as ‘unknown dangers to shipping.' From the Straits of Medina up to Marseilles, it's notorious!”

Ferdinand pointed to Naples.

“And mainland Sicily. Even ignoring Mount Vesuvius for one moment—west of us, here in Naples, is the Phlegraean Peninsula, also called the
Campi Flegrei
and
Campi Ardenti
: ‘the Burning Fields.' There are over forty craters, though none mountainous except little Monte Nuovo. My Natural Philosophers speculate that the Burning Fields may ultimately conceal more lava than Vesuvius does.”

By the map-maker's art, Conrad saw it as if from the heavens. Sulphur pools and volcanic splits in the Earth ran westward from Naples, past the vent called Solfatara, all the way to the little port of Pozzuoli.

Every cultured man reads Pliny; every man of a certain class in Naples knows
how in AD 79 the mountain Vesuvius erupted in smoke and lightning, and surging flows of clouds that scalded hotter than a furnace. All give a moment's thought to it; the majority then bury it down deep where it can never trouble them.

Conrad remembered being a small child in Catania, under the shadow of Mount Ætna. Lulling himself to sleep by watching the bright threads of lava edge down the mountain's slope… By day, the winding cracks in the black ash gave off smoke and fumes. By night, they were a winding, spitting track of red fire; the red reflecting up into the vapours and illuminating them Hell-coloured.

He had walked far enough up the mountain as a boy to feel how hot the cracks in the Earth are, and see the slow push of lava. Coming to Naples, he remembered feeling glad that he would live in the shadow of the dormant Vesuvius, rather than grumbling and semi-waking Ætna.

Well, that didn't work out
.

Conrad took a step back so that he could survey both maps. Down the mountainous spine of Italy, and then from the Adriatic in the east to the Mediterranean in the west…

“Tambora's in Indonesia,” he thought aloud. “Why Europe? Why
here?”

Enrico Mantenucci snorted indelicately, as if Conrad were being dense. “If they could use
Church music
, then, yes, their geographical location wouldn't matter. The Mass can take place anywhere!”

The King restrained the police chief by a raised hand. “Adriano reports they deduced that their Manichaean heresy isn't suitable for a Sung Mass. Therefore they must use the other form of
musicodramma
—opera. So as to
why Europe?
and
why here?
… Here, because—although there have been notable contributions from the Germans and the French—Italy is the heart of opera. And Napoli is the heart of Italy. Since the Prince's Men desire the best possible chance of a
musicodramma
miracle, where else could they come?”

Conrad can think of composers in Vienna and Paris and St Petersburg who would quarrel with the King's assessment—but much as he enjoyed his own time in Paris, and how he values the German blood he inherits from his father, he has no intention of arguing with the King.
Never argue with any Italian state about the supremacy of their women or their own opera.

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily sighed, clenching and unclenching one fist as if he were unaware of his own tension.

“And as for why
this
one of the Two Sicilies—I believe the Prince's Men aim at us here because, although Ætna is more unstable, we in Naples alone have two volcanoes.”

Conrad looked wordlessly at innocent paint. At the image of the towering,
snow-covered black walls of the crater of Vesuvius. And the sulphur pools and fissures of those Phlegraean Fields that ancient Roman philosophers believed opened down into Hades.

“The danger is not to the Two Sicilies alone. My Natural Philosophers say that if the
Campi Flegrei
and Vesuvius suffer a sufficiently large eruption, then that may trigger the other volcanoes—may rip up the bed of the Tyrrhenean Sea as if it were merely the skin on a pan of milk, in one single detonation.”

Ferdinand brushed points to east, west, north and south on the painted map, as if he drew the Church's cross over the Two Kingdoms.

“It could destroy Italy, southern France, half the Mediterranean Sea; Istanbul, the Holy Land, North Africa… before we even think of the besmirched sky. How many ‘years without summers' might that make?”

Conrad slammed his mind shut on the frighteningly real visualisation of rock, gas, fire, and air, conspiring in one moment to wipe Naples and the Two Sicilies from the Italian earth. His mouth dry, he jolted out,
“But why?”

The King turned away from the wall maps. “Simply put, signore? Flood and famine and disease cause a greater number of deaths over time—but for
sudden
mass deaths, I don't believe humanity yet knows a weapon more violent than the volcano.”

Conrad sat back down heavily on the Baroque chair that the servants had set out by the map-chest.

Sitting without permission in the presence of the King is against every rule and custom. Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily did not rebuke Conrad for ignoring protocol.

“Sir.” Conrad said it clearly enough to re-establish a respect for royal authority. “Suppose you do know that's what these Prince's Men intend to do. That only answers ‘how.' It says nothing about
why
they should want such an absolute devastation!”

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily appeared amused. It was not a cruel expression. “The Sicilies lost a scholar in you, Conrad.”

Enrico Mantenucci thrust another hot coffee at Conrad and briskly took his own seat. “Use that famed atheist mind of yours to speculate, Scalese!”

Conrad drank down scalding liquid, shakily. “Signore, you're the Prince's Man, you tell me!”

Ferdinand walked back from the maps, leaning his hands on the back of Mantenucci's chair. “He has you there, Enrico! I suspect this next part is not best handled by Socratic dialogue.”

“No, sire.” Mantenucci's lips quirked, under his grey moustache. He glanced apologetically at Conrad. “Very well, let's say we're
not
Prince's Men… I don't know what's keeping Adriano, but I can summarise his reports. What we deplore
about the Tambora eruption—the wholesale loss of life—is, to them, the
point
of what they did. They may be heretics, but throughout all of human history, even heretics have understood the power of making a sacrifice to the Deity.”

Conrad spluttered.

Ferdinand cut in. “The ancient Greeks sacrificed a holocaust of bulls; the Jews, lambs; and the Celts burned their human sacrifices alive.”

The King's eyes appeared haunted.

“Even Christians, throughout history, have sacrificed the innocent to the Devil at a Black Mass, in the hopes that it will be the payment for what they want.”

Scientific inquiry—or natural bloody-mindedness—reasserted itself. “That may be their
belief,”
Conrad began.

“What else powers a miracle
except
belief?” Enrico Mantenucci folded his arms across his chest. “I throw your own arguments back at you, Signore Conrad. Does it matter who or what the Prince's Men are, or what they believe in, if the
methods
they use have been known to work?”

Conrad could only shake his head in agreement.

Ferdinand paced a restless few steps on the tiled floor. “They intend to perform a blood sacrifice. Their black opera—”

“‘Black opera'?” Conrad blurted.

“—A name I coined, by similarity with the Black Mass.”

Ferdinand halted, staring into invisible distances.

“At first we assumed they desired to compel the attention of God. That they intended their ‘sacrifice of innocents' to rouse the attention of the Creator-God, and so bring his attention back to his world here—”

“Cazzo!”
Caffeine, strain, and the last several hours obliterated any trace of Conrad's court manners. “Don't the Prince's Men believe we exist in the world of an
evil
Creator? You say their absent God was perfectly aware of human pain when He created this universe—He had the power to omit it, but chose not to! Who in their right minds could want to resurrect an evil God!”

Ferdinand straightened, his poise that of a man militarily trained since youth.

Conrad glared back, waiting for a rebuke.

The King gave him a look of satisfaction.

“I see I chose the right man to challenge them on their own terms. Yes.
We
failed to think that way because the Creator is of supreme importance to us. The Prince's Men… their Creator-God is gone, and they're happy to have it so.”

Conrad frowned. “What is it they do want?”

“We were right in assuming that the Prince's Men believe a blood sacrifice—of sufficient scale—can compel a deity… We mistook which God.”

The King stepped closer to the map gallery's closest window. He reached out
and slid one sash-window up. Conrad felt his skin prickle with alertness as the live wind of spring blew in.

Ferdinand said, “What the Prince's Men plan to do, with their black miracle, is to alter the constraints that have been in place since the Universe was created.”

The breeze blew the gauze curtains out and around Ferdinand, almost obscuring the intent gaze he fixed on Conrad.

“They want their Prince of this World released from those chains, to rule the world as it should be—with all the senseless pain healed, and the waste restored and made good. This is the future they believe in, beyond the flames of their blood sacrifice… They will use their black opera to summon up the Prince of the World.

“And, by their miracle—they will free Him, to reign over us all.”

“I
n short,” Enrico Mantenucci grunted, “they want to set their Devil up as our God!”