The Black Opera (5 page)

“Seeking immortality—twitching severed limbs—creatures in the Arctic!”
the Do
minican Canon-Regular muttered, quickly and quietly enough that Conrad was not sure he caught the words correctly. “Infant science, indeed! It should have been aborted! Along with that Shelley bitch!”

Viscardo got to his feet, staring down with an expression best suited to an entomologist. It was a considerable psychological disadvantage not being on his feet, Conrad thought.
I know I'm a few inches taller than he is.

“Signore Scalese, I would be false to the robes of my Order if I allowed you to walk around free. You are a dangerous plausible man, and the sooner your words are taken out of the public ear, the better.”

“That's exactly my opinion of you!”

Words are shimmering, enticing structures, and Conrad has built such structures in the past. Perhaps for this reason, his belief in them always has reservations.

He choked on bitter laughter. “I may write operas, but I don't pretend they're anything but stories. Theology is just a matter of the mind getting drunk on the power of words!”

Viscardo seemed caught by that, gazing down from between shining black wings of hair. “Not words, signore. The reality of the power
behind
the words, that we strain to express… Because how can short-lived mortal beings ever really understand the omnipotent God who is, was, and shall be?”

“Now he's the omnipotent deity who can't be understood. A minute ago he was the father mourning the son he sacrificed. If I ask how he can be both incomprehensible and human at the same time, you'll tell me it's a mystery, right?”

“What's a mystery to me,” Luka Viscardo said tensely, “is how you have the Luciferan pride to think you understand everything about the universe, and can therefore tell me I'm wrong!”

Conrad snorted. He managed to struggle up onto his knees. “I don't need to know
everything
to know that a logical contradiction is a logical contradiction!”

“There's
your belief—the primacy of human reason. I think… that you were right, signore. You
don't
have Faith. Your reason blinds you to it. I pity you more than I can say. And it makes me furious to admit that a man is beyond saving!—but, to be saved, you'd have to let go of that human reason, and humbly turn to God. And you never will. Complete the binding.”

Light glittered darkly from something coiled and slung over another of the Dominican's arms. The heavy burden crashed to the floor. Sunlight reflected from the metal links of a chain.

The reality of it—here in this room where he is used to the sunlight reflecting off the polished wood of his desk, while he wrestles with metre and rhyme and plot—curdled Conrad's stomach.

He wrenched, but failed to break their grip on him. The priests moved with
practised, mundane precision. One of the taller Dominicans bent over and threaded the steel chain through the hasps of the cuffs, that had worked up under the wrists of his coat; and the shackles around his ankles; and—while another two of them held Conrad motionless—through the hasp of the collar around his neck.

Straining, Conrad gritted out, “Is this what the Church authorises for innocent men!”

Canon Viscardo took the free ends of the chain from his junior priest with a nod. He opened his other hand, and Conrad saw he had a single open link: shining steel as thick as his little finger. The Canon's dark eyes seemed more intent than it required as he threaded the ends of the chain over the open link, and closed his hand around it.

Without looking away from the steel, Viscardo spoke. “You're not innocent, Scalese.”

“Is that decided, then!”

“I was at the Teatro Nuovo last night for your blasphemy. ‘La morte di Dio'! The death of God!”

“What do you expect in an opera set in the Enlightenment!”

A capella
singing filled the lodgings, suddenly; the Dominicans beginning at some unseen signal. Loud and beautiful:
“Dominus Deus—King of Heaven—”

Recognition made Conrad choke.
That is Signore Rossini's ‘Little Mass'!

And, no matter how he claims he wrote it as Church music, this part is exactly the same tenor cabaletta that I heard at La Scala, Milan. I suppose it was too good to lose…

Canon Viscardo opened his fist. The sunlight that filtered in through the drawing-room windows gleamed back from the steel link—now sealed into a closed oval ring.

Momentarily, it was unimportant that the binding was complete—an unbroken chain, running through the hasps of his cuffs, shackles, and collar, so that he might be chained to a post like a dog or horse or bull. Conrad stared, hypnotised, at the seamless surface of that final link.

Nothing visible to prove it had ever been open.

Unbroken, too, to the touch of his bruised fingers.

Is it some metallurgist's trick?
Or some conjuror's distraction and switch?

The Canon-Regular smiled with equal amounts of frustration, smugness and venom.

Hands under Conrad's arms hauled him bodily up. One muscled Dominican friar steadied him on his feet.

Conrad glanced at that man, just as the friar exchanged looks with a younger, pale-haired Dominican. Both men focused on Luka Viscardo, and for the briefest
moment, Conrad saw a wary concern on their faces. And—shame?

So they don't all consider him godly
… He seems an unpleasant man, full of spite; I suppose he might be exactly the same if he worked for the most revolutionary of societies desiring Atheism and Liberty.

Viscardo, short of breath from the singing, gasped, “When God desires you bound, you're bound beyond the power of man to escape.”

The barrier between his thoughts and his mouth had vanished, Conrad discovered. “A blacksmith and a file, or two minutes with a cold chisel, and I think I could prove you wrong!”

A snort came from Tullio's direction.

One friend in the room, at least!

“God is not mocked, Signore Scalese. But there: even daily miracles won't convince an atheist of your calibre, will they? What's your excuse for disbelieving in this?”

Conrad wrenched his shoulders free of the friars' grip. He shook the chain, sliding his thumb over the cold tempered metal. “You call it a miracle as if that
explains
it! If something is against the apparent natural laws of science and philosophy, it's no use hiding it under the name of ‘miracle'—you need to examine it, see what really causes it!”

“You have the truth there in your hand! How much more plain could it be? I ask God to bind the wicked, and He binds you. Holy Mother! can't you see what's in front of you?”

“I see what you see.” Conrad held the compelling black gaze. “I see the same phenomenon—I just don't accept that it's accounted for by superstitions and dogma.”

Viscardo looked away and signalled. All but two of the friars left Conrad alone as if he were contagious, and commenced packing up the documents and papers strewn across the floor.

Conrad turned the steel links in his hands, fascinated despite himself. “If I see something that appears to contradict the current explanations of science—if I see steel become plastic at such a low temperature, and without burning my skin—then I want to set up experiments to find out why this is. It demands investigation! Not blind ‘worship.'”

“God Himself comes nowhere into your blasphemous science. You make a false idol of your science: that it holds the incontestable truth—”

“Incontestable! Have you read
nothing
that's been published in England? Germany? France?—Davy! Berzelius! Lamarck!
Darwin?
—the disagreements? If a present explanation is wrong, another theory can be proposed and tested—there's never any shame in saying ‘I don't know.'”

Viscardo's eyes shone.

Because this was a particularly stupid time to speak my mind?

Anger won't make him listen—but will anything?

No one has entry to the cells under the Cardinal's palace except the Inquisition. They answer to no law except their own. They can imprison a man for years if they choose. And they often choose.

Conrad realised, as he stared challengingly back, why the Dominican's gaze was so dark. His irises were a brown colour deep enough that they could barely be distinguished from the pupil.

Like a dog's eyes
. What's that old pun about the Dominicans?
“Domini canes
”—“the Dogs of the Lord.” The Hounds of God. This one's a mastiff: he won't let go.

The Canon-Regular shouldered past Conrad and gave out orders left and right. Conrad trod on the coils of steel chain, and almost fell. A bruised and dusty Tullio—on his feet now—gave Conrad a wry look.

Conrad scooped up an armful of chains, and bundled their chill weight between his cuffed hands. “Tullio—if you get the chance, run. I don't think I can protect you.”

Tullio attempted a stern glare, but was interrupted.

“Move!” Canon Viscardo's order snapped out briskly enough to have the other Dominicans gathered in a moment, documentary evidence under their arms, and two men each to guard Conrad and Tullio. One man slammed a punch under the ex-soldier's sternum that made him sway in their grip.

“Let Rossi go!” Conrad scrambled for a justification of his protest. “He's just a servant. He's illiterate!”

“Chosen for his illiteracy, I expect.” Viscardo looked up from a two-year-old libretto from the Paris Opera. “Because of the blasphemy he might read here. But he still has ears and eyes—at the moment—and he can tell us what he's seen and heard you do.”

Hands hauled Conrad out onto the main second-floor landing. He grabbed up another armful of chain and stopped himself tripping headlong down the stairs.

Two of the Dominicans locked their clenched fists in the shoulders of his coat. A crash made him twist around and look back. A friar efficiently nailed boards across his closed door, fixing the Seal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition to them.

Is it possible this is the last time I'll leave these rooms?

He was unaware he had stopped dead at the top stair until the accompanying Dominicans seized him, forcing him forward and down. A cluster of robed men waited on the next landing, a tall familiar man in their midst.

“Merda!
JohnJack, I'm sorry—” Conrad started.

The nearest priest, a Mediterranean-coloured man barely older than a boy,
slammed a fist into Conrad's kidney. Conrad gasped for air and collided with the stair-rail, supporting himself on it, breathing hard.

JohnJack Spinelli hauled Conrad up by an elbow, despite his own cuffs. “We'll sort it out, don't worry.”

Five minutes ago the stairway might have been deserted, full only of cool brown shadows and green Roman tiles, the tenement deceptively barren. Now, the muffled laughter of the two very pretty girls who lived together on the fourth floor echoed down the open stairwell, and Conrad heard a choked-off enquiry by their male guest. Half a dozen wives bundled out together, one floor above, in a cloud of dark eyes gone brilliant for scandal. An old man, who had always had time to talk to Conrad, banged his stick against the hand-rail. The high-voiced, painfully honest enquiries of small children began.

Conrad shut his ears to it, deliberately not looking up the stairwell to see who might be hanging over the railings.

The Canon-Regular raised his voice. “Bring them. Keep them quiet!”

Dominicans hustled Conrad down the final flight of stairs, Tullio Rossi behind him, JohnJack Spinelli in front.

“Have Brother Marcantonio bring the closed coach round—”

A loud, slow knocking interrupted Viscardo. The whole group of Dominicans shuffled to a halt behind the Canon-Regular. Conrad, stopped on a higher stair, had the height to see over most of the hooded men, but not all.

He leaned out, over the rail, squinting at the foot of the stairs.

The door to the street stood open, sunlight spilling into the foyer of the tenement house.

Against the brightness, Conrad made out a figure in police uniform—a tall, sleek-haired young man with a cockade in his hat, who rapped his knuckles against the lintel of the door.

“It was open,” the newcomer murmured, “so I thought I'd come in…”

The sunlight shifted and his silhouette became recognisable.

Conrad gave a surprised exclamation, his bruised stomach muscles catching him. “Luigi?”

Luigi Esposito, Chief of Police for the Port district, posed like a tenor given a particularly fine entrance. The sunlight brilliantly sparked off his belt-buckle, gorget, and the hilt of his ornamental sword. He occupied himself in pulling off his white leather gloves, one finger at a time, until every one of the priests there was staring at him.

He looked up with a singular sweetness at Conrad.

“I do hope you're not trying to avoid our chess game, Corrado? How much is it you owe me now?”