The Black Opera (73 page)

Conrad held out the paper to her. “If we can have copies for everybody? They don't have to be calligraphy, just quick!”

Her mouth curved into a reluctant smile, and she nodded, already reading over the slanting lines, crossed-out scribble, with its boxes and arrows that directed errant words and directions into their proper places.

“Reconquista…”
Conrad widened his attention to take in the rest of the
principal singers and musicians, and raised his voice slightly. “We originally thought the Prince's Men would end with tragedy, being an easy emotion to evoke. Instead, the soprano Queen of Castile, Isabella, ends with her song of triumph over her enemies. And I realised—that doesn't matter. Only a few changes to our script, and we have an exact
opposite
to that vindictive triumph.”

Velluti looked unusually disgruntled. Conrad thought that would be because he had been denied his
rondo finale
.

“Meaning?” the castrato demanded.

Conrad voiced it softly:

“Forgiveness for all.”

JohnJack reached over Paolo's shoulder, as she followed the altered score, and made play of turning the page the other way up, and reading it that way.
“Porca giuda
, Corrado! How long did this masterpiece take you?”

“Less than ten minutes.” Conrad glimpsed words on Estella Belucci's lip and fixed her with a glare. “I've had my head full of this opera for six weeks, night and day! I've had more opera than I've had food and sleep! Now, each of
you
tell me what you think I've written, and I'll tell you if you're right!”

The blonde woman covered her mouth with her fingertips, stifling a giggle. She leaned over Paolo-Isaura's other shoulder.

“All right,” she said cheerfully. “All as before for Princess Hippolyta; I still leave the country… Ah, but the Aztec Princess Tayanna calls me “sister queen”! And we embrace: that's touching.
And
she requests that I bring the Amazon boy-Prince to meet his father now and again.”

Conrad turned from her shining gaze to the tenor. “Lorenzo?”

“I, ah, as King Carlo, I
forgive
Signore Cortez for his rebellion against the crown—” The diminutive tenor interrupted himself to add, “—Although I really don't know why I should—”

“Natural forgiving nature,” Conrad said blandly.

Lorenzo Bonfigli gave him a look of disbelief. “Says here, I understand the power of love, which even earthly rulers cannot conquer. And then Cortez and I, we embrace as brothers. Whether we want to or not.”

“Bonfigli!”

“We embrace as brothers, in a spirit of universal forgiveness.”

JohnJack looked up from his revised score with a snicker, subsumed into an enthusiastic beam. “‘Universal' forgiveness is right. I don't get killed, I get captured! Then I
defend
the Princess against
il Re
Carlo here when he tries to annex her kingdom—oh, and look: in the space of a couple of lines, Princess Tayanna forgives me for my rebellion, because love was at the bottom of it all, and sends
Chimalli off in exile to the frontiers to guard the Aztec lands—but I shall be able to come home when I've expiated my crimes.”

Conrad subdued sardonic reactions with a narrow glare.

“This
lieto fine
is
earned,”
he emphasised. “For each of them, there's as much happy ending as they deserve—after the punishment for their own stupidity has finished falling onto their heads!”

“Oh yes…” Brigida gave a surprisingly rich chuckle. “I have to forgive my Amazon daughter for falling in love with a male—and tell her that, after all, that's how
she
got to be here in the first place…”

“That's not more than six changed lines between all of you.” Conrad turned to the tall mezzo beside him. “Princess Tayanna's the one doing all the work. Double aria
rondo finale
cancelled, in favour of a new aria on the subject of love and forgiveness, that leads into the new sextet.”

“With revised music from our composer…” Sandrine dropped Roberto Capiraso a demure little curtsey, much as she would have done before the morning's revelations.

The others just still think “he's our composer,” Conrad reflected, the illumination coming to him suddenly with her expression.
But Sandrine actually forgives him. I wonder what she's done, in her past, that makes her so understanding?

Conrad clasped his hands behind him, feeling cold sweat in his palms.

One by one, the group around the forte-piano fell silent and fixed their attention on him.

They need to believe they can out-do the Prince's Men with a singer back from the dead; the Prince's Men with years to prepare; and who knows what other professional singers, what composer, or librettist…

“You're all professional singers.” Conrad found himself drawn up at attention, as Lieutenant Scalese of the
Cacciatore a Cavallo
might have stood. He looked from Sandrine to Lorenzo, from Velluti to Estella, JohnJack, Brigida… “We don't yet know if the way that Leonora sings even
works
in opera. We do know she's one voice, you're six. You can adapt. You're bel canto singers; you improvise as a matter of course! Use all the coloratura you know. Sing
with
each other, even where your
roles
are singing against each other, and it's going to produce something finer than any individual singer.”

Even Nora?
some sceptical part of his mind put in.

He managed to keep the doubt off his face.

Reassuringly loud chatter broke out as he stepped back. Paolo-Isaura had her head together with one of the
recitateurs;
Conrad guessed there would be multiple copies of the new parts soon.
And then she has to brief the orchestra—it's a good thing the San Carlo musicians are close to the best in Italy!

Conrad bumped against a thin, intractable obstacle. He glanced up to find himself standing beside GianGiacomo Spinelli.

“‘Forgiveness for
all'?”
JohnJack queried mildly.

“Up to a point. The world is bad enough as it is, without humans making other humans' lives unbearable.”

“Cynical romantic?” Spinelli appeared to muse. “Romantic cynic—?”

“JohnJack!”

They were interrupted by Paolo ushering them aside and calling the principal singers to the forte-piano.

The voices faltered at first, and then suddenly caught, as tinder catches, going up in a blaze. The first bars of the revised sextet soared in an unashamed anthem, as if it were part of some secular oratorio.

Conrad drew in a breath and forced his attention away.

If I sit and listen, I'll do nothing, and every word has to match what Roberto is writing
—

He made himself turn and go towards the backstage maze, on the route to the upper work-rooms.

Some illumination shivered in his mind, almost ready to coalesce. Some revelation about the nature of this music, this singing, and—

A man stepped directly into his way.

Conrad lost his thought.

He halted, the words to flay the man on his tongue.

“Signore Scalese—”

It was a police officer of the Port district, Conrad realised; whose face he recalled, but not the name.

“—You were expecting a delivery at the dock, signore?”

Conrad flatly stared, his mind too tired for a second to catch up.

“Merda per merda!”

He shot out of the backstage exit of the theatre, barging past Roberto Capiraso and his attendant soldiers without even an apology, and left the San Carlo, heading for the royal dock.

T
ullio Rossi followed the dignitaries off the yacht
S. Gennaro
, looking in his elderly greatcoat and tricorne hat like a guileless servant. “Avoiding any secret police,” he murmured, straight-faced enough that Conrad was instantly reassured about what might have happened on the voyage from Stromboli.

The lackeys, court gentlemen, military escort, and King of the Two Sicilies made a fine display of colour on the quay, greeting his Imperial Majesty the (incognito) Emperor. The stocky figure of the Emperor bowed his greetings, and was given precedence by King Ferdinand as they departed for the Palazzo Reale on the way to an early lunch.

Conrad surreptitiously wrung Tullio's hand, in case it should be observed how glad he was to have his ‘servant' back. “You'll need to dress up if you're coming inside the Teatro.”

“Nah. My friends will be going up to the royal box with me, to check security, but we'll go in the back way.”

Tullio indicated by thumb two men in the uniform of Imperial Colonels, wearing the many colourful Orders of his Imperial Majesty.

Conrad recognised one of the Colonels as “Philippe,” whom he had met on Stromboli. And the other—

Conrad's head whipped round and he stared after the departing King and party.

“We got a message to his Majesty…”

Tullio's voice was a barely audible undertone.

“…That's Colonel Étienne wearing the fancy dress as his Emperorship. Won a game of
mora
. The other Colonel will stay as his aide, and stick with him in the royal box. Never mind waiting for the
Sinfonia
—I've ordered a coach parked outside the stage door, now, and we'll be gone while Old Squeaky's still practising his entrance aria!”

“That's no way to refer to Giambattista Velluti.” Conrad with difficulty kept a straight face. “You're checking the royal box because…”

“Because the big boss wants to know his Colonels can get out of there when the shit starts flying.”

Conrad has met officers like that. If the Emperor is one of them, it accounts
for a lot about his rise to power.

Turning back, Conrad discovered Philippe and his companion “Colonel” gazing across the bay at Vesuvius. He made sure he greeted them with every sign of respect.

“You people of Italy, you are always mad!” The Emperor made a wide gesture, that seemed to imply approval, and concluded with a flourish at the distant crater. “The earth turning crazy under your feet, and you don't even notice it.
Bravo!”

Conrad couldn't help but follow the gesture. The haze that shrouded the top of the mountain might be catching light from the mid-morning sun, lifting up the arc of the sky—or it might be lit internally by some seepage of lava. From here it was impossible to say.

A jolt of the quay sent Tullio's coach horses half-rearing, the grooms at their heads clinging on and soothing them.

Wistfully, the Emperor said, “I wish I could stay to see your opera.”

“Yes, sire,” Conrad agreed, dazed.

“We agreed, Imperial Majesty,” the other colonel observed mildly.

“We did, I know, Philippe; no need for all of that. I am your commander, not your Emperor. We have known each other too long.” The Emperor of the North hugged his subordinate.

Conrad suspected, from how the other man took it, that this happened quite often.

“We should go into the theatre, sire,” Conrad ventured.

“Of course!”

Conrad could see how difficult it was for the remaining Colonel, Philippe, to avoid a subordinate position to his companion. Conrad ushered them towards the back entrances of the San Carlo, eyes alert for watchers. Tullio sidled up close.

Conrad muttered, “If everything goes this much according to plan, this will be the first easy thing to happen today!”

“So what's been happening?”

“Luigi can fill you in on the details. I can't stay away from the dress rehearsal now—shouldn't be doing it for even this amount of time.” Conrad braced his mental strength. “Briefly—we found our traitors. Roberto, Conte di Argente. Leonora, Contessa di Argente.”

Tullio Rossi stopped dead.

A momentary glint of light made his expression unclear; either fear or fury. He jerked back into motion, approaching the backstage doors.

“And you believe it, padrone?”

Conrad's thumb found a small scar left on his hand by flying glass. It still bled slightly when rubbed.
“I
was the one who discovered it.—You won't believe how much has changed here in the last twenty-four hours.”

He passed significant details on to Tullio while they infiltrated the cramped wooden corridors in the upper floors of the San Carlo, entered at the rear of the royal box, and the two Colonels—one indefinably in the lead—examined it from a tactical viewpoint.

“So… Let me get this straight,” Tullio said thoughtfully, removing his tricorne hat and scratching at his shaven head. He squinted at Conrad's face, where—Conrad hoped—Sandrine's stage make-up covered the black eye.

“So, il Superbo came in and found you two kissing like two hogs eating the same banana—”