The Black Opera (52 page)

“It had leopard-skin on it. And a crest,
and
a plume.”

There was no use in attempting to defend the his Horse regiment; the Two Sicilies' comic-opera uniforms were notorious throughout both the Allied and Northern armies, and the only adequate method of defence was a startlingly effective showing in battle.

“Angelotti wants to see you,” Tullio added, after he and Luigi had mocked all they could think of regarding Alvarez's soldiers.

“Che cazzo…!”
Conrad succumbed to the urge to put his head in his hands. He heard Luigi Esposito let loose his tenor laugh.

“I wouldn't have your job for all of the King's treasury!”

Conrad flipped through his notes, finding the instructions to the stagehands and construction crew. “Come in, Michele.”

It was somewhat superfluous, since without a door to the stone study, men walked in and out much as they wished. The dusty blond figure of Michele Angelotti was no exception.

Angelotti stepped forward and fixed his gaze on Conrad with more dignity than a man usually has when his hands and clothes are covered with Plaster of Paris. “Master Rossini he once told me, all impresarios are bald before they are
thirty, from tearing out their hair. All masters of works crews in opera, they are bald before the age of
twenty!
From impresarios and scriptwriters asking the fucking impossible!”

He spoke strongly accented Neapolitan, and unlike JohnJack Spinelli—who sang it well in one-act Neapolitan comedies—rarely used a purer Italian. On the occasions when Angelotti did, as with his last few words, his tenor voice penetrated clear to the back of the excavated mine, and echoed off down the dry aqueduct tunnels.

Conrad managed to interrupt him. “Tullio, could you get us some more bread and wine? Michele, you'll have breakfast with me while we talk?”

Angelotti folded his arms over his leather apron, and then evidently realised that an ancient stone mine was not a boss's drawing-room. He gave a curt nod.

“Get enough for all of us?” Conrad dug in his pocket and handed Tullio a fistful of
calli
.

“I'll bargain 'em down!” Tullio vanished off into the lamp-lit gloom outside the chamber, heading for the archaic wooden steps that climbed to the bedroom of the baker's family, in the Mercato district. The shaven-headed man automatically touched his forehead as he passed one of Alvarez's officers.

“We'll only need one full staging rehearsal,” Conrad said optimistically.

“Cazzo!”
Angelotti worked himself up to full flood again. “You want a stage for a horse to enter up top; we manage it. You want balconies,
banda
—two different
banda
, seen offside the stage—and we manage that. We build the beginnings of your volcano!”

Conrad opened his mouth to say that he had seen the wooden framework, with metal braces bolted to it, and it swayed unnervingly. He didn't get the chance.

“You want a volcano for the pretty lady maybe to throw herself in, and then the man-like-a-lady to throw himself in after. That's what you say! That's what you get. Now you want a pyramid, only's not a pyramid, but a tower of steps. And you want this upstage
without
blocking the god-fucking-damn volcano!”

He reached piercing levels of sound again, and Conrad couldn't hold back a wince.

Paolo-Isaura wandered in, presumably drawn by the noise. She raised her eyebrows at Conrad, but didn't get a chance to interrupt the gang-boss.

“—And you want a volcano she
erupts!
Smoke, fire, lava, boulders, collapse! You get collapse, I'm telling you.” Angelotti reached forward and poked Conrad's waistcoat, leaving a plaster fingerprint. “You get more than collapse, when the stage it catches fire!”

“Someone must have passed along the wrong instructions,” Conrad cut in,
and stepped heavily and surreptitiously on Paolo's shoe. He astonished himself with the easiness of a bare-faced lie. “The decision's still in committee. As to whether we have the erupting volcano, or the step-pyramid struck by lightning in a thunderstorm… I'll get back to you by five o'clock today.”

Meaning we have to commit ourselves to the end of Act IV's staging
.

Paolo cut in with bubbling enthusiasm. “That's why the King was determined to get you and your stage crew for this, Signore Angelotti! He knew you're the best to handle this work at the very short notice we have.”

The fair-haired man snorted, but less confrontationally than Conrad thought he might.

“My assistant here, Paolo, will take notes on your plans for each spectacle.” Conrad bowed, and moved away, not catching Gianpaolo's eye as he went.
If he wants to be in opera, she can take the good with the bad!

Conrad made fists of his two hands and stretched out his arms, muscles cracking; shoulders back, scapulae almost touching. He gave a
wuff!
, felt himself more awake, and took the opportunity of Luigi wandering out after Isaura to sit down to uninterrupted work.

It was quite some time before Conrad realised that Tullio hadn't returned.

Conrad found Isaura in the main rehearsal cave.

“Probably found a mate to drink with,” she remarked. “I haven't seen him since this morning.”

The police chief, who had been showing a keen interest in Paolo-Isaura's conducting of Act IV Scene II, picked up his bicorne hat.

“I'll go find him, shall I?” Luigi offered. “I ought to check the patrols are doing their work properly and not sitting around in taverns gambling.”

“Take one of the dumb riflemen with you,” Conrad advised Luigi.

The man's departing mutter would have made him laugh on another day. It did not penetrate the fog of fear that Conrad felt settling on him.

Roberto Capiraso shouldered in past Luigi, deaf to nuances of atmosphere. “What's this about confirming the staging
today?”

Isaura fixed him with a confrontational eye. “You mean when it should have been confirmed two weeks ago? If we didn't have a crew as good as Michele's they'd have quit!”

It took a quarter hour to calm the composer down.

Conrad caught sight of Luigi striding back through the mine-caves.

The police chief was pale, some emotion shrouding his features like snow covering a landscape. All Conrad could think was,
Something has happened
.

His mind made lightning connections. The piano-stool scraped the stone as Conrad shoved past it, grabbing Luigi Esposito's arm. “Where is he?”

“The soldiers have rushed him to their surgeon.”

Luigi reversed the grip and caught Conrad's sleeve. Conrad, surprised, was brought to a halt.

“Listen
, first, Corrado! He went out with an escort. The rifleman was found dead, knifed, in the alley leading to the baker's entrance. They didn't get a chance to use their pistols; no shots were fired. I found Tullio, unconscious, propped up against the shop-front. He had this note pinned to his coat.”

Conrad took the dirty piece of paper.

The lights were too dim, or Conrad's eyes too blurred.

He held the paper up into the beam of an oil lamp.

“This could be Giambattista Velluti—or any one of the cast of your opera. Stop while you still can.”

C
onrad folded the paper, creased it along the folds, and passed it back to Luigi Esposito. “Show it to the King. First, take me to Tullio.”

Barely conscious of being up out of the tunnels and into a bright morning—as the time turned out to be—Conrad sat for what seemed hours beside Tullio's bed in the infirmary of the Little Sisters. Waiting for a doctor, for anyone, to tell him if Tullio would live.

Luigi Esposito returned later in the morning, pulling up another chair and sitting down, and studying the bruises and stitching on Tullio Rossi's face.

Deliberately encouraging, Luigi said, “He's had worse some Saturday nights. He'll be fine.”

Conrad ignored that, although the doctor had concurred. “We got careless. Despite the escort, he was almost beaten to death because he was recognised as ‘one of the servants' who go in and out of the catacombs. The Prince's Men—”

He took a breath, conscious of the oppressive silence of the infirmary, along with the stink of faeces and sickness.

“—The Prince's Men saw him as just another servant, a thing they could use to deliver a message to us.” Conrad steadied himself with difficulty. “I could almost
forgive them if they attacked him because he's Tullio Rossi and invaluable to putting on the counter-opera! If he dies—”

Luigi grasped his elbow. Conrad forced his voice to quietness, holding down the rage and pain so as not to disturb the unconscious man.

“—If he dies, I'll finish this opera, and then I'll start with Adalrico Silvestri, and after that, I'll take any one of the Prince's Men I can reach. And I'll make them
hurt
.”

Isaura came quietly into the infirmary before midday, and stood beside Conrad, gazing down at Tullio's unconscious body.

“We need you.” Her tone was unapologetic, but Conrad heard the slight crack in her voice. “Corradino…”

It was, he realised with some surprise, still Tuesday. The seventh day of the month. Seven days left before the first night.

He left his chair without making a sound, and stood beside his sister.

“Tullio would slap me if I messed this up because of him.”

“He would—” Paolo-Isaura broke off.

An infantry sergeant of indeterminate age wandered up to the unconscious man sprawled in the hospital bed. Ignoring Conrad—clearly of too high a social station to be concerned with the patient—he leaned over, and muttered, “Rossi, you bad-tempered bastard, what are you up to
now?”

Conrad drew Isaura aside by her elbow.

“It's one of the island-Sicilian regiments of Foot.” Conrad recognised the insignia. He knew the Teatro San Carlo backstage area was almost ready, final stage furnishings having been added daily, and stood under heavy guard, now. Ferdinand had brought in two new regiments.

“And?” Paolo glowered.

Conrad made an effort to explain that Tullio Rossi was protected by the infantry's informal “he may be a bad-tempered bastard but he's
our
bad-tempered bastard.” Which is as good as most men's sworn court oath.

After that, it was not such a strain to leave for a few hours.

And the time has come
, Conrad realised,
when people have to be warned
.