The Black Opera (62 page)

The early part of Monday morning was lost to il Superbo protesting that he wouldn't violate his music in accordance with this new libretto, and another
hour when—instead of giving the Conte di Argente a blunt response—Conrad fell asleep at the table listening to him.

The rest of Monday made Conrad think of Sunday as a slack and indolent twenty-four hours. Between the
recitateurs
taking the singers through the new verses, and perfecting the new stage blocking with Isaura, and delegating
someone
to inform Michele Angelotti that his volcano was reduced to mere exotic scenery—Princess Tayanna would take refuge from danger (and sing) some way up the step-pyramid… Conrad was not surprised to find himself eating standing up in one of the underground mines, hounding Roberto Capiraso into making his music as breathtaking as possible.

He fell asleep again for an hour in the afternoon. The singers, chorus, musicians, and stagehands all had their scheduled breaks, so that they should not arrive at tomorrow stumbling with exhaustion and sung-out, but Conrad oversaw all of them, sequentially.

When the curtain goes up tomorrow, I'm done; I don't have to sing, play, or conduct
.

One of Alvarez's men took him down into underground Naples at some later time; it was not clear under whose orders. Conrad didn't care. He fell fully-dressed onto his camp-bed and slept—too tired to dream—and woke with his pocket watch telling him it was eleven.

“Eleven o'clock Monday night, sir,” the next one of Alvarez's men said as he arrived.

Conrad's stomach warmed up from icy, which it had become when he feared that he would find it eleven on the morning of the fourteenth.

Still Monday. Still a few more hours we can use
.

He got himself an escort back up to the San Carlo.

Abandoning the musicians and chorus to Paolo, Conrad stayed with the principal singers, easing them through rehearsal after rehearsal of the new last twelve minutes, until the words began to come by instinct rather than a panicked search through memory.

Sandrine, Giambattista Velluti, JohnJack, Lorenzo Bonfigli, the Amazons (albeit with Hippolyta's son fast asleep in the care of his father, a tenor from the chorus)… all passed in order. Again, they took rest where they could—though there was not much of that, the finale scene requiring all of them on stage.

“Death can be quite relaxing,” JohnJack Spinelli murmured, dozing off in a chair after the fifth time of being dragged away after Chimalli's rebellion failed.

Conrad looked up automatically, and only slowly realised that he was looking for the figure missing from the San Carlo: the composer's Returned Dead wife.

He would have punched JohnJack for a joke in bad taste, if the man hadn't instantly slid into sleep, and Conrad doubted he'd even thought of Leonora when he spoke.

At three in the morning, Conrad called a halt to rehearsals.

“Was it
Norma?”
Sandrine wondered aloud, sounding thick with sleep. “Started life with singers dazed by rehearsals up to six hours before the curtain… Ah! Signore Rossini's
Cenerentola
!”

“Both, I think!” Lorenzo Bonfigli laughed. “Maybe it's as well we're not doing this for the reviews in the
Giornale
.”

The
Giornale
should be the least of your worries
, Conrad thought, but stopped himself from saying out loud.
If they've got their confidence, no need to undermine it.

The Conte di Argente went as far as to offer Estella Belucci his arm, since the blonde woman swayed where she stood. “If all goes well, we can revive
L'Altezza azteca
in the future.”

“With a cast that need not be awake at three-thirty in the morning…” JohnJack stifled a massive yawn, which Conrad thought was ironic seeing the bass had had the most rest during the evening.

Of course, back in his underground dry cistern, Conrad found himself unable to fall asleep.

He was too tired to make sense of the fears and imaginings that turned his mind to an Arctic cold, knowing only that they concerned the Prince's Men.

Ferdinand is right
. There's something we haven't seen; some danger from the Prince's Men that we don't yet suspect—

Something is wrong.

Something more than the possibility that the black opera is better, more polished, more effective than
L'Altezza azteca
?

Conrad found his eyes closing despite himself.

I'm at the heart of a citadel. Even if it isn't visible.

More than this underground sanctuary—there are two or three regiments on duty at any time; there are Enrico's police. And secret police, agents, spies. We have every possible protection. The members of the opera are guarded beneath earth and stone, kept away from danger.
Will
be guarded, again, when we go up to the Teatro San Carlo in the morning…

Danger still manages to get through. Ask Tullio.

Something's wrong.

And I don't know what it is
.

Conrad sat down to eat with Luigi Esposito, finding that his early waking on Tuesday coincided with the end of the captain's shift.

“Anxious for the performance?” Luigi mumbled over the rim of a cup of Turkish coffee.

Anxious
, Conrad admitted to himself.

But not as much as when I'm beset with night-terrors.

“I'm concerned about Tullio,” Conrad admitted. “No report of the ship?”

“Did you ever know a count, lord, king, or emperor who could make an appointment on time?” Luigi waved a careless hand, slopping his thick black coffee. “We wait for them, that's their view.”

“Well, there's that.”

And won't his Imperial Majesty be shocked when
L'Altezza
starts exactly on time? We can't afford to miss high Earth-tide.

Conrad finished eating, and was escorted back up to the theatre by a squad of Luigi's men. It was not quite six. The sun was not up, outside. A few gas-lamps glimmered in the dark, on these populous high-class streets. The rest of Naples was a heaped sleeping beast. On the flank of Vesuvius and the eastern hills, only the slightest difference between land and sky showed.

The backstage area of the San Carlo was currently more draughty than stifling. Conrad didn't bother to take off his greatcoat as the escort ushered him in. He signalled his gratitude to the departing officers, and pushed one of the doors closed behind him; heavy, and felted on the side that faced the stage. The singers had formed loose groups, apparently idly talking or examining the stage flats that represented Princess Tayanna's serpent-decorated boudoir.

In fact, Conrad abruptly realised, every eye was fixed on il Superbo.

Roberto, Conte di Argente, stood downstage; head thrown back, cropped beard jutting, his voice raised to Giambattista Velluti.
“You insolent lackey!”

Velluti drawled, “You
amateur!”

Conrad folded his arms and snickered.

At his elbow, Paolo muttered, “Let them sort themselves out!”

It was an argument with no malice, Conrad saw. Both men relieved their tension and the previous forty-eight hours of frustration by shouting.

“…Everybody says ‘let Paolo do it,'” his sister continued to rant under her breath. “I say, let them hog-tie il Superbo and dump him on a ship bound for
New York or
Buenos Aires
! Signore Velluti can go to the bottom of the Tyrrhenean Sea, or the top of Ætna!”

“You need a few minutes away from here,” Conrad observed.

He took Isaura by the arm and left the theatre, walking down to the Royal dock with a corporal and four men of one of the island-Sicilian regiments with them. The sky was just distinguishing grey from black when they left the Palazzo Reale. By the time they stood on the white stone dock, the eastern sky had a glow of pure lemon light, deepening with the oncoming Sun that was still below the horizon.

Behind the round bulk of the Earth
, Conrad thought, trying to adjust his concept of it so as to be prepared for later in the day.

As if she read his mind—or his glance at the luminous sky—Paolo said, “We've done it. We start in nine hours.”

“No.” He looked down apologetically at her. “We've brought ourselves to the position where we
might
do it.”

A glance showed him the corporal and his troopers spread out along the dock, making enquiries from sailors and fishermen, and not within earshot.

“The counter-opera begins at three, and the black opera must start close to the same time, or miss the line-up of Sun, Moon, and Earth. It's the two or three hours
after
three o'clock that'll tell us if we've won, or they have.”

Paolo-Isaura gave a thoughtful nod. She might have said more, but the approaching corporal distracted her.

“No news yet, signore. None of the sentries on the islands or headlands have signalled back any sightings, so it's doubtful you'll see the
Gennaro
much before midday.”

Conrad slipped the man a few
calli
and nodded. He and Paolo-Isaura stayed for a quarter-hour more, while the sky fluoresced into an aureate glow, and the Sun rose, too bright to look at without eyes watering.

Paolo walked ahead as they came back to the San Carlo, visibly anxious to get inside and prevent the last run-through of difficult verses from turning into a bloodbath. Conrad let her go, one of the soldiers with her.