The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  Conrad pushed back visceral shock, ransacked his memory, and discovered they were speaking of history. “The Byzantine Emperors’ bodyguards?”

  “From the Scandinavian countries. No Byzantine Emperor could trust his countrymen, so he brought in warriors from Norway and Sweden and Denmark—who were, of course, a world away from their native lands, and dependant solely on the Emperor. That made them loyal.”

  The King, with the curtains blowing around him, remained utterly still. Enrico watched him with a keen, sympathetic gaze.

  He gave a grim smile.

  “Adriano was an uncommon man. He loved what he did. He had no other desires—his family were rich enough for him to tell every one of the courtier-rats in this palace to fuck themselves. He wasn’t just his Majesty’s Varangian Guard; he was his friend.”

  Ferdinand suddenly moved. He strode back down the gallery, stopping by each window and throwing the sash up, opening each to the air. It reminded Conrad of how peasant women open every window in the house, after a death, so the soul won’t be held captive.

  The angle of the unobstructed sunlight as it struck into the gallery was itself a shock. It’s not even midday!

  Wind brought the smell of the sea, and smoke from innumerable chimneys, and seaweed, and hot tar boiling in the distant shipyards. Ambushed by sensation, Conrad took a deep breath.

  Ferdinand halted beside both of them. “Who found him?”

  Mantenucci spoke with blunt honesty. Only the lines on his face indicated he wished he might temper the truth.

  “Sailors from the Guiscardo, sire, when it came in. No one else saw anything, apparently—those steps are an ideal place to meet and exchange information; my own men have used it. No spy can approach from the direction of the palace without crossing wide courtyards and exposing himself to you, and from a distance, on the dock, it would be assumed it was men or officers of the Guiscardo there, or men who had business with them.”

  “You’ve given orders.”

  “Yes, though I think a search will be useless. The blood has been dry long enough that he was killed before dawn.”

  “I want the murderer found.” Ferdinand spoke in a grim, undone voice, as if this is not the first subordinate’s death for which he takes personal responsibility. “You know what they’ll say here. Signore Adriano Castiello-Salvati, murdered in a brawl over a harlot…”

  “It’s too late to redeem his name now, sire.”

  “I—Yes. Yes, you’re right.”

  Conrad found his nails digging into his palms. Not for the loss of a brave man, he realised. The part of him that is artist feels only a cold-blooded regret for what has been lost. No chance, now, to speak with the man who heard what was sung at Sumbawa. And if someone has noted down an approximation of the score, without Adriano Castiello-Salvati’s experience the true sound is lost.

  “Warn your men against gossip, Enrico. Report it as a robbery turned murder. I know he has—had—no close family. Put up a stone in one of the respectable churchyards, but I’ll have him interred in the royal mausoleum here, with a Sung Mass. My confessor will keep it confidential. Adriano’s service to my kingdom has been invaluable.”

  Conrad did not have the heart to say, It doesn’t matter what honours you give him; there’s no one there now to hear it.

  Ferdinand suddenly swore. “I have no idea how men do this in the name of any God!”

  Out of respect, Conrad bit down on his tongue, and let the small pain remind him not to be contentious. Not to say Ask the Inquisition how many Jews and heretics and witches they’ve judged, or Ask the Muslim Barbary pirates how they convert Christians at the point of the sword!

  Ferdinand apparently caught his look. He said nothing. Mantenucci removed a flask from one of his coat pockets and passed it to Ferdinand. Conrad smelled brandy.

  The King shook his head, like a horse with a troublesome fly; then upended the silver flask and drank it down with no more reaction than if it had been water.

  Is this going to be me, one day? Conrad suddenly thought. With Major Mantenucci reporting to the King how the Prince’s Men have murdered me?

  I knew there was this chance when I agreed. I just didn’t expect it to come so close, so soon.

  “There’s no doubt of who and why…?” Ferdinand’s lips twisted sardonically. He gave Mantenucci a deliberate echo of the earlier conversation: “Suppose that we’re Prince’s Men, Enrico—what would you do?”

  “If I’m a Prince’s Man, and I suspect the Two Sicilies still oppose us, after we sabotaged their first counter-opera? I suppose… Sire, I suppose I should take care to find out the most important spy the other side have in our organisation, and I should murder him.”

  Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily gave a snort, and emptied the silver flask. His reactions remained coldly sober. Conrad remembered nights on which he has finished a bottle of brandy and gone to bed no less sober than before; most of them in the Alpine wars.

  Ferdinand looked up from the silver flask, full into Conrad’s face.

  “Conrad—Enrico will have to brief you further, now that we don’t have Adriano. Assuming that you still wish to work with us.”

  “Yes.”

  There was nothing more he could say and not have it sound like bravado.

  The King inclined his head.

  “Enrico. Get Conrad safely out of here.”

  Under Ferdinand’s abruptness, Conrad glimpsed concern.

  He cares for the Two Sicilies first—but for his men, too. And this is why Adriano, and doubtless others, keep faith with this man.

  Mantenucci stroked his moustache thoughtfully. “If you take my advice—yes, I can huddle him out the back way, with a dozen of my men to make sure he isn’t spotted. But he’s just as likely to be spotted because he’s protected.”

  “Enrico—”

  “Sire, if you want Signore Conrad here safe, have him walk out of the Palace in an hour or two, with the other disappointed petitioners, when the time for audiences is over. He’ll vanish into the crowds in Naples and no one will even know he’s important.”

  “Ah. Yes. Very well. Conrad—”

  Ferdinand rested his hand on Conrad’s shoulder, his grip secure.

  “—I’ll have my Master of Music appoint you to some sinecure, to account for your comings and goings here… A copyist in the library, perhaps. That should enable you to communicate with us incognito. I leave you with the responsibility for the libretto, and the work of an impresario until I can give my attention fully to that. I look to hear from you how the counter-opera develops—as soon as you can. We have much less time than we need.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Conrad walked back up the long central Roman road of Naples at a rapid stride.

  He threw his head back, drawing in a breath. Inexpressibly pleased to be smelling horse dung where carriages passed and brackish harbour mud, instead of musty tapestries and beeswax polish. The outside world, at last!

  The two hours in the Palazzo Reale, waiting until the time for the levee should be past, left him with an incalculable energy now. He turned off into the many little streets of the Port quarter, elbow to elbow with loud-voiced crowds. Evergreen trees ruffled leaves in the sunlight, casting cool shadows. He kicked up dust in the narrow roadways, automatically manoeuvring around slower-walking groups. Men in high-crowned hats, with walking sticks in one hand and wife on the other arm. Mother and nurse and baby, and two children walking… No one who looked like a murderer, or a Prince’s Man, even supposing either could be recognised on sight.

  Conrad found himself finally on the edge of the market quarter, among flowers and vegetables and jabbering women with voluminous aprons. Lower class and younger men went without hats or shoes, only wearing knee-breeches and a waistcoat open over a shirt.

  A loud cheer almost sent him across the road in shock.

  They’re only playing mora…!

  I feel as exposed as a butterfly pinned to a board!

  Conrad waited for h
is heart to stop thumping, watching the teams outside a tavern exclaiming specific loud numbers and holding out their hands with (naturally) a different number of fingers extended. Another roar went up when the captain on one team outguessed the other—a man in a pair of vertically striped trousers that were an affront to any eye.

  Conrad absently stepped out of the way of two or three younger men, walking with women in high-waisted dresses and complicated hair. He straight-forwardly envied them for a moment. Just to be able to swagger and impress a girl, with nothing else hanging on it…

  Walking helped him think.

  Not to rid his mind of images.

  He gave it up after another hour or so, approaching his lodgings by circuitous ways.

  He found his steps slowing. Hiding in plain sight from these “Prince’s Men”… And then there’s the power of the Church…

  A broad-shouldered, brutal-looking man shifted from where he leaned on a shadowed wall. And, as he reached the sunlight, visibly became Tullio Rossi.

  “They’re gone,” he grunted.

  Conrad couldn’t help a smile. I can rely on Tullio relaying the essential piece of information. “You and JohnJack, you’re all right?”

  “Signore Master Spinelli’s up there setting your room to rights. I let him do it.” Tullio’s bruiser-face dissolved into a smile that was mischievously wicked. “Told him, he knows more about where ornamental knickknacks go than I do…”

  Conrad ignored the suspicious looks and semi-audible comments from his neighbours as they approached the lodgings. None of them quite dared question him openly after a visit from God’s Hounds.

  At least I can let it slip I’m working for his Majesty King Ferdinand II, no less.

  Rumour will get about, and most people will assume it to be an exaggeration of an even more low-ranking post.

  Tullio rubbed his large hands together. “So what we doing, padrone?”

  Conrad clapped him on the shoulder, if only to be reassured that the man was here and in the flesh. “We’re writing a libretto.”

  “And there was me thinking the Church wanted to put a stop to that…”

  Tullio had the expression of a man who expects to hear a satisfying explanation.

  “So. Whose wine are we pissing in today, padrone? Not Holy Church, not the King… the Honoured Men?”

  “Close.” Conrad couldn’t help a wry grin. “You’ll get all the details. About the opera, too. But first—first, we become an impresario.”

  “Blessed Saint Jude, Apostle and Martyr!”

  The first twenty-four hours went past so quickly Conrad barely had time to breathe. The business of being an impresario-even-in-name-only involved a lot of footwork—at least for Tullio, since Conrad decided it was better he settle down to work out an overall composing and rehearsal schedule, while Tullio ran about all over Naples, ferreting out who had fled the city and who had merely gone into hiding for a tactful amount of time.

  “…We have Signore GianGiacomo Spinelli,” Conrad found himself reviewing, some time later in the auditions, for the benefit of a man who appeared surprisingly younger than his known forty years. “You will have heard him; a stunningly good comic or tragic bass. And if we have yourself—”

  Giambattista Velluti waved a pale, long-fingered hand. It was the only sign of his status as a castrato singer, other than his androgyne dark good looks. Not for Velluti the tall obeseness of many castrated singers. He smiled with the confidence of a man who knows he can insist on working with the best.

  “You cannot tell me anything at all about the libretto? Or what my role will be?”

  Conrad managed not to look like a man who knows only two certain words of his libretto—“Act One.”

  “I realise that you’re used to being the primo uomo in any company, signore. There’s no question but that you’ll be First Man and have the hero’s role. However, at the moment this is only a preliminary agreement. When we hammer out contract details, we can of course take note of any special requirements you may have…”

  A surprisingly amiable discussion settled the draft agreement. Conrad thought himself lucky to get away without “entrance, up-stage, riding a white horse and wearing a plumed helmet.” or “disembarks from on-stage warship while a grateful crowd cheer the victor wearing laurels” enshrined in the castrato’s contract, but decided against mentioning this. Rumour said Velluti had little sense of humour about such things.

  That settled, he sent the castrato on for a social audience with his Majesty King Ferdinand, without letting Velluti know that that was the second and more important audition.

  Conrad found himself dreaming of Castiello-Salvati’s death, in the grey hours. He put it out of his mind after the second time, with the finality he had practised during the war.

  Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily, in his character as an impresario, drafted more letters to be sent out to Milan, Venice, Pesara, Rome—letters that showed him to have paid surprisingly close attention to the mechanical details of producing an opera during his patronage of the Teatro San Carlo. Conrad forged a signature that matched the handwriting and posted them on.

  By the third day he found himself reduced to vulgar southern profanity.

  Minchia! but the contracts are a bitch to write! Half the singers he wants are attached to other opera houses. But I suppose he is a King…

  Conrad lost four days of the first week before he knew it. Normally, the usual chaos of an opera in progress would begin to be reported back—he was familiar enough with that from Barjaba’s bitching, before the man fled. Once the impresario summoned, contraltos and basses set out by carriage from towns the length and breadth of all Italy, complaining to a man (and woman) about bumpy interminable mountainous journeys and bedbugs in inns. Sopranos would travel with their mothers in tow—and nothing is quite so terrifying as the mother of a secondo donna who thinks she ought to be the mother of a prima donna—and musicians from town bands and church parades would make a foot-sore way to Naples (the carriages being mostly beyond their means) to compete with the locals.

  This time there was an ominous lack of reply. And of those that did, almost all were chorus singers and musicians for the orchestra, not opera stars.

  Knowing he must still be ahead of their arrival, even assuming that roads and tides were good, Conrad took the advantage of the following twenty-four hours to secure any as-yet overlooked Neapolitan singers, whether with Teatro experience, church choir, chorus, or merely sitting on the sea-wall singing folk-songs. With the good ones secured, he was left with a succession of weak tenors and mezzos whom Conrad would cheerfully have pushed into Vesuvius—too many opera plots featured that already, unfortunately. It was a great relief when the next knock on the door announced Sandrine Furino.

  “Back from Rome? I thought you’d abandoned me like the Persianis. I swear, Sandrine, if I weren’t an atheist I’d say Thank God!” Conrad kissed her hand and led her to the cherry-striped satin couch that the Dominicans had at least left with all four legs. “If I need anything right now, I need a stunning mezzo…”

  “Then you won’t mind paying me a stunning amount of money.” Sandrine Furino unpinned her hat and veil. As always, she left her gauze scarf still around her neck. She wore her bodice a little higher than might be expected, but the width of her satin gigot sleeves emphasised her tiny waist. She spoke in the low, slightly breathy tone which fascinated all her young male admirers at the stage door. “What sort of role would you have for me? Not another britches-part?”

  Conrad sighed and threw his quill down, coming to join Sandrine on the couch, and pour tea from the slightly-dented service Tullio had brought in. “But you’re so good at playing romantic heroes.”

  “And sometimes I’d like to play the girl!” Sandrine smoothed down the set of her gown at her hips, and threw Conrad what he took to be a deliberately smouldering look from under her long lashes. “Travesti roles are losing their appeal, Conrad. They remind me… Well. They remind me.”

 
“All right. I still wish there was a way to get your amazing lower range on stage…”

  Conrad braced himself and gave the warning about the supposed Camorra. Making a mental note: If she does join, she’ll certainly be one of the ones told about the Prince’s Men.

  “I’m in sufficient danger walking down the street as it is.” Sandrine gave him a somewhat rueful look. “I don’t suppose I care about more.”

  “All right, then…” If she says that, I have to accept it. Conrad reached for the scribbled notes spread over his desk. “So, JohnJack for the villain, unless a decent tenor unexpectedly leaps out of the woodwork. Velluti’s just been signed up, he’ll expect to sing the hero… So, yes, I could offer you a female role.”

  “A role central to the story,” she insisted, looking at him under her lashes again. “Not the heroine’s maid, or the villain’s discarded mistress. Something with meat in it.”

  As things stood at the moment, she looked fair to be the prima donna, but Conrad bit his tongue in case he had to retract the offer later. It’s only been four days, who knows what the King will say?

  “I swear—” Conrad held up his hand, only to find his notes whipped out of his grasp.

  “You’re in, Signorina Sandrine,” Tullio observed, shuffling the papers together, and returning her welcoming smile. “Now go away for a few hours, while my master explains to me just why he appears to have forgotten how to sleep or eat…”

  “Certainly.” As she passed Tullio on the way to the door, Sandrine Furino stood up on tiptoe in her neat ankle boots, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You look after him so well, you sweet, sweet man…”

  It didn’t take her wink from the doorway to collapse Conrad in choking laughter—Tullio’s expression had already robbed him of the ability to breathe.

  “I’ll bring in the food,” Tullio Rossi managed eventually, with immense dignity. “Parsley omelette. If you weren’t so starved, you’d end up wearing it!”