The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  Small fangs of pain sliced into his skin.

  He got his eyes open, realising all in one moment, The shutters are fully open—the window is broken!—The floor—the bed—

  —I’m covered in broken glass!

  “What in hell, padrone!”

  Tullio Rossi shoved through the bedroom door. The last of the window pane fell to the floor in guillotine-sharp pieces. Rossi wrenched the broken shutters aside, and stumbled, his foot catching against a brick on the floor among the glass.

  “Merda!” Shards of glass stood out from Conrad’s hands, his dazzled attempts to remove them only seeming to drive them deeper.

  The red clay brick lay surrounded by dust and brilliant shards on the floorboards. Undeniable and present.

  Tullio snapped his fingers. Conrad relinquished his hands to Tullio: army experience would let him remove the splinters more cleanly.

  “Corradino!” The voice from below in the street was a familiar clear bass. “Conrad! What does it take to wake you up!”

  “Spinelli—you idiot—I have a fucking front door—!” Conrad clamped his eyes shut. He could not smell smoke, he realised. So, the building’s not on fire, no excuse!

  Being still clothed meant he had his shoes on. Conrad staggered upright, crunching over the glass on the floor. Tullio cursed, following, attempting to deal with his master’s injuries.

  With no regard for splinters still in the frame, Conrad kicked the glass doors open and put one foot on the balcony, leaning off the side so that he could see down into the street.

  Blazing sunlight over the Bay of Naples skewered his right eye. He squeezed his eyelids together, blinking away tears, and snarled with intense quietness:

  “JohnJack, I’m going to fucking kill you!”

  “Kill me later. Come down here now. And get your coat on—you’re leaving Naples!”

  Before his other eye watered shut, Conrad saw that GianGiacomo Spinelli—called “JohnJack” on occasion, for his having sung at the Theatre Royal in London, God bless the English for their ignorant love of opera—had his own coat pulled hastily on, and a low hat tugged down over his eyes.

  He also had the collar of his jacket folded under itself, his crimson cravat badly tied, and every other sign of having dressed hastily (and conceivably in the dark).

  A carpetbag bulged at his feet.

  Tullio firmly seized Conrad’s hands one at a time, ensuring each was free of glass. The cold February wind made Conrad’s mind feel more clear.

  “Has everyone in Napoli gone mad this morning?”

  “Get to the carriage, I’ll tell you on the way!” JohnJack Spinelli glanced left and right, and looked up at Conrad again. “I had to come round the back—the front of your building’s being watched.”

  “Watched!”

  “Leave this way and you won’t be seen. The rest have packed up and gone already. Fanny’s on her way to Milan with Persiani. We broke down the door and Barjaba’s lodgings are deserted—They say the impresario was seen fleeing over the rooftops, clutching a carpet-bag full of the house takings, on the way to a hired carriage—”

  Conrad spluttered disbelief.

  “—He’s gone!” JohnJack snarled. “The others have left on the public stage or the first ship they could get out of Naples harbour. I waited to get you. Tullio, get him packed, we don’t have any more time!”

  Vomit burned in the back of Conrad’s throat.

  He was aware that Tullio moved away, and a moment later returned with a jacket that he urged on over Conrad’s slept-in shirt and waistcoat. And, over top of that, a faded and battered greatcoat, surviving from the war. As if it were still war-time, when a man must up and move without warning and only the vaguest idea of why.

  Tullio moved around the room behind him; the sounds unmistakably those of things being thrown into carpetbags and travelling trunks.

  The disparate parts of the morning failed to make any sense.

  Conrad opened his eyes cautiously. Below, the tall, skinny coloratura basso stepped from foot to foot, either against the frost on the cold earth, or in urgency. While pale in the face, he did not appear to have a hang-over—Though he should, Conrad thought. Given what he drank last night—

  All the previous night overwhelmed him, pushing aside the pain. Five ovations; singers and audience made into the closest of drunken friends after the performance; and Conrad himself in the middle of it, for the first time one of the centres of success.

  “No.” He gestured at Tullio to stop packing. “No, I’m not going anywhere! We had the success of the season last night!”

  “Yes.” Spinelli sounded grim. “And in the early hours of this morning, just before dawn, that same Teatro Nuovo opera house where we had the success?—Burned down to the ground! Struck by a lightning-bolt from God.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “Struck by lightning?”

  “Burnt to the foundations.”

  Conrad stared. Shock overrode all questions except What happens to Il Terrore di Parigi now?

  The other implications rushed over him like a storm-wave.

  “Is everybody all right? Was anybody hurt!”

  “The building was deserted by then. No; no one.”

  Spinelli’s definitive answer sank in. Conrad heard himself begin to babble. “Did we lose the costumes? What about the stage-flats? Can we transfer to another opera house? Was it sabotage—”

  A chop of the hand cut him off. JohnJack spoke just loud enough to be heard. “Conrad, the Teatro Nuovo burned down because it was struck by God’s lightning…”

  GianGiacomo Spinelli huddled deeper into his greatcoat than the spring chill in the Port District could justify. As close to whispering as a man shouting up at a balcony can come, he finished:

  “By the Wrath of the Lord. Because of the opera’s impiety.”

  “That’s…” Conrad struggled between pain and growing astonished anger.

  “—Bullshit, JohnJack!”

  “Now isn’t the time to give me your atheist arguments! The Inquisition say the opera house was struck down because of your libretto, Conrad. They can’t get the impresario, or the composer, because they’re gone. You’re still here. The Inquisition is going to arrest and question you for blasphemy if you don’t get your arse downstairs and into to this coach I have!”

  Squinting through wet blurred vision, Conrad made out something large at the dark end of the street; heard the stamp of a hoof, and smelled the soft scent of horse manure.

  The silhouette was not a light about-town cabriolet or barouche, but a large, luggage-laden coach. A cross-country traveller: the kind that singers and composers and other artists slog from town to town in, every opera season.

  Early light made his eye throb. Conrad felt overwhelmed by a sense of unreality. The intimately-sized Teatro Nuovo has become utterly familiar these last six weeks of rehearsal. How to imagine that the ranks of gilded boxes, the narrow cramped spaces behind the stage, no longer exist?

  Spinelli added, “We have space enough for you, Corrado, and your man Tullio can ride with the driver.”

  “You’re not serious?” Spinelli threw up his hands.

  “Yes, I’m serious! Now—”

  “Lightning strikes—let me guess—the opera house’s roof? And it’s supposed to be our fault? The gables of the Teatro Nuovo are higher than any other building around it! Why wouldn’t lightning hit it. Cazzo! It’s built from timber from top to bottom, and do they believe in lightning rods? No! Of course it would go up like a firework! Haven’t they any common sense!”

  “Corradino!—” Spinelli hit the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Signore Giuseppe Persiani at least has the excuse that he writes Church music as well as opera. Fanny Tacchinardi and the rest of us are at risk because we were dumb enough to sing what you wrote, but that’s not as bad as actually writing the bloody thing. It’s the easiest thing in the world to find blasphemy in words! Now are you coming or not!”

  “No!” Conrad dre
w in a breath. He belatedly realised. “—You waited for me?”

  “Are you going to get your arse down here, or do I have to get Rossi to throw you over his shoulder!”

  JohnJack’s been here quarter of an hour, at least.

  Fifteen minutes, in which he could have been two miles further away from the Inquisition’s officers. And two miles here and now will count for a lot later on.

  I have good friends.

  “…All right. We can sort it out with the Teatro Nuovo opera board by letter. Give me two minutes to fill a carpet bag!” Conrad turned away from the outside world, mind on his desk, his papers—

  Sudden loud sound jolted him from head to foot.

  Mind and body dislocated; he clapped both hands to his head. Agonising pain blossomed, as if his skull opened along its fissures; laudanum did not touch it. Conrad swore at himself for weakness.

  He forced his eyes open. Dazzles hung in the centre of his vision; left him more than half blind.

  And again!—the crash of something heavy striking against wood.

  “The door!”

  “We won’t make the back stairs now.” Tullio left off emptying the wardrobe and chests, and called grimly but quietly down from the window. “Signore Spinelli, you may need to make a run for it!”

  Conrad rubbed his fists over his eyes. The corners felt wet with pain. Some of his vision cleared, but left him squinting

  Two—three—four more thundering blows of fists against wood came from the lodging’s locked and bolted outer door. “Merda!”

  Tullio Rossi held a wicked little flintlock pistol in one hand. It had once been the property of the Emperor’s gendarmerie, and rarely missed fire. The broad-shouldered man directed a look at him. “Padrone?”

  Conrad instinctively gestured to him not to load it. “All we need is an accident and a man killed! No. Go! Keep them talking!”

  Tullio Rossi was already moving towards the door.

  JohnJack’s right. It’s the Inquisition.

  Conrad squeezed his eyelids shut and opened them; more of the shifting dazzles dispersed. Fear of the Church coalesced in his belly and grumbled in his bowels. By some alchemy, it transmuted into anger.

  Here I am, yet again at the mercy of the irrational!

  Who have law and power on their side. The fury turned on himself. A man who can think himself safe from the righteous if he keeps his head down—and then goes ahead and puts it all on stage in an opera! What a fool I am—

  And more than a fool, because I have no intention of changing.

  Conrad leaned over the balcony, ignoring the shattered glass. Sunlight crept down the house-walls. He cupped hands for shade, his skin speckled with blood, and ignored the blurred sunlit curve of the Bay of Naples, and the looming, blue-grey broken crater. Because otherwise he might allow himself to think, Is this the last time I’ll see the outside for weeks? Or months?

  The cells of the Holy Office are terrible.

  “JohnJack!” He called down urgently. “There’ll be officers coming round the back of here! Go. Now!”

  Tullio’s voice sounded at the outer door in gruff innocence. Increasingly aggressive voices raised against him, words inaudible but the authoritarian sound clear.

  “Corrado—” Spinelli reached up, fruitlessly; the balcony was too high. Jumping down will mean a broken leg, or worse injury.

  Conrad forced himself to focus through the pain behind his eye. “Get your coach out of here. They might let you go if you’re on your own. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Spinelli’s round features were not suited to dark emotions unless in heavy stage make-up, but his stance was telling: shoulders tight and fists clenched. “Come after us! Try Rome first, it’s the last place they’ll expect us to be. Be safe!”

  Spinelli seized the bag at his feet and turned on his heel. Conrad staggered as he pushed himself back into the room.

  Every minute they’re here may be one minute they’re not following JohnJack.

  Conrad walked through the tiny main room of his lodgings. The outer door was open on chaos, Tullio’s broad back blocking most of the view. Seven or eight men in dark clothing crowded the landing beyond him. By the volume of noise, every man present must be attempting to out-shout the rest.

  Conrad felt a sudden nostalgic desire for his old long-barrelled heavy cavalry pistols. Firing a ball into the ceiling would get instant silence.

  Although the noise right now might well kill me.

  “Gentlemen?” he managed to ask.

  The leading intruder shouldered Tullio to one side.

  Conrad met furious black eyes in a sallow face.

  The man barely referred to the document crumpled in his hand, gazing hungrily up.

  “Conrad Arturo Scalese, sometimes known as ‘Corrado’ or ‘Corradino Scalese,’ aged twenty-nine years, resident in the Port district of Naples—you are the author of a declared heretical work, namely, ‘Il Terrore di Parigi, ossia la Morte di Dio.’ You are hereby placed under arrest in the name of the Cardinal of Naples!”

  A shift of cloud above the lodging-house brought dim sunlight into the stairwell and the second-floor landing. It glowed on the black cappa cloaks worn over the white habits of the Dominicans, and on dark hair and white faces. In the uniform, all alike as brothers.

  For one moment, in amusement born out of sheer terror, Conrad saw them in terms of opera. All-male chorus, tenor and baritone, opening Act 1—these will be the jolly singing Assassins, of course; daggers under their cloaks, and all smiles!

  The brilliant tonal contrast of the blacks and whites pierced his head sufficiently that Conrad clapped a hand over his eye, and bit back a groan.

  He saw the arresting Dominican’s face almost shining.

  —Because I’ve showed a weakness.

  “You are—unwell.” The man’s voice held an undertone of satisfied malice, as if he thought some vice had earned the pain Conrad suffered. That was confirmed a moment later. “So you are the drunkard that rumour makes you out to be. Not that I’m surprised—heretic, blasphemer, and atheist—”

  The dark man’s attention suddenly shifted.

  Conrad caught the noise, too. Doors opening on the landings above, and the creak of stair-rails as his neighbours leaned over them. In Naples, nobody’s business is their own.

  The Dominican smiled.

  “Conrad Scalese—” He pitched his voice to be intensely carrying. Any of the gossiping old women in the apartment building will hear it, deaf as they claim to be.

  “You’re under arrest—by the authority of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition!”

  “Perhaps we should speak in private,” Conrad said flatly. Pain half blinded him, but left him even less inclined to be bullied. He stepped back into the sitting-room before he could be shoved, a pace in front of the Dominican friars, and gripped Tullio’s wrist. It might look like an appeal for physical support. In fact, it forced Tullio to keep his flick-knife hidden in his other breeches pocket.

  And who knows, it might make them underestimate me.

  Releasing the ex-rifleman, Conrad faced the first priest. “And you are, signore?”

  “My name is an unimportant matter between myself and my God,” the man said dryly. “More importantly for you, I stand here as a representative of Christ Miraculous and His Church—”

  “Let me see your authorisation.” Conrad held out a demanding hand.

  A steel cuff snapped shut over his wrist.

  For a vital moment he failed to react.

  “Brothers, shackle him! Search the rooms!”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Yes, Canon-Regular!”

  The first blow put Conrad so far back into agony that he could hardly struggle. If not for the pain’s razor edge, he would have screamed like a woman, but it left him literally breathless.

  He hit back blindly, powered by fear.

  The leader seemed clerically ageless—he could have been anywhere from thirty to fifty.
All the other Dominican friars were in their twenties or early thirties, and all evidently trained for this. Two men pinned Conrad’s arms, and another kicked the back of his knee with a solid boot.

  Conrad overbalanced under the hammering blows, and went down with all three of them, rolling on the threadbare carpet and the varnished floorboards. His mind seemed to absent itself, fleeing from sensation, and he found himself hyper-aware of small details—the dusty marks of boot-soles printed on his knee-breeches and stockings; the pattern of the Turkey carpet as the side of his face pressed into it.

  Two men knelt on him.

  Cloth rucked up against his face—one of the Dominican cloaks, pulled off in the struggle, and now blocking light from his eyes. A seam ripped as he fought; it felt like the under-arm of his shirt. Hands at his wrists and ankles locked the shackles shut.

  He strained to get an arm free, or to kick, and found himself rolled over on his back, with their fingers digging painfully deep into his muscles. Three or four men pinned him, discussing in barely breathless voices what ‘evidence’ might be hidden in the apartment.

  “Padrone?” Tullio sprawled a few feet away, flat on his face, a Dominican friar kneeling in the centre of his back. His wrists were tied with plain rope. Unusually, fear showed on his face.

  For me as well as him. Damnation.

  Conrad coughed, clearing the dust from his throat. “I see they weren’t chosen for their spiritual gifts…”

  It reassured him immensely when Tullio chuckled, even if the sound was gruff and breathless.

  Footfalls jarred his head. One of the friars searching the premises pelted back out of the bedroom, stuttering.

  “Canon Viscardo! A rear window is smashed, but from the outside!”

  The Dominican Canon jerked his head and two of the junior priests left the lodgings at a run. Conrad heard them clattering down the stairs.

  I hope JohnJack and the others are streets away by now!

  Conrad couldn’t move from his starfish-sprawl. He strained to lift his head, to see what the men holding him did.