The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  “We can get him off Stromboli easily enough if he agrees. You’ll be inviting the exiled Emperor to the Teatro San Carlo, for the first night of L’Altezza azteca, ossia Il Serpente Pennuto.”

  “Good—grief!” Conrad opened his mouth to protest, and shut it without another word.

  “It won’t seem unusual for the Emperor to attend such a great social gathering. That can be glossed by me to his masters as ‘keeping the Emperor content in his gilded cage.’ Give him seats in one of the boxes with easy access. Then, in the general confusion of the counter-opera’s success—”

  Ferdinand spoke over the rustling ilex leaves with audible optimism:

  “—a carriage can spirit the Emperor away, and take him to the northern border. There, the ordinary soldiers will rally to him as he marches to the capital, and he’ll depose the Council composed of the Prince’s Men.”

  “And the King of the Two Sicilies will gain a powerful ally against any future attacks by the Prince’s Men.” Conrad turned his shoulder as the brisk wind changed to another quarter. It brought the scent of early-flowering camellias. He sought Ferdinand’s gaze, pale as the sky. “Sir, I’m convenient for this—but I’m not convinced I’m competent.”

  At the far end of the copse, the bushes shivered and gave birth to Tullio Rossi, greatcoat opened to the breeze. Fists in his pockets, he strolled idly down to meet them.

  I’ll give him one thing: no one could ever imagine he was here to greet the King of the Two Sicilies!

  Ferdinand exchanged a nod with the ex-sergeant. He made no move to urge him away.

  “In fact, Conrad, there is a problem I do think you’d be best suited to solve.” Ferdinand turned to him with a small smile. “The Emperor doesn’t trust his ‘jailer.’”

  Tullio’s eyebrows shot up.

  Ferdinand continued. “Someone in the Prince’s Men evidently thought ahead. The Emperor has been informed by men he trusts that the King of the Two Sicilies has been paid to assassinate him. So if I offer a helpful escape—he’ll think it’s a trap to get him shot.”

  “And you want me to think up a way around that?” Conrad couldn’t help sounding incredulous.

  “I’ve met your servant, here,” Ferdinand said, dryly regarding Tullio. “It appears that if I trust you, I trust him. Put both your minds to work on this. You have the whole voyage down there. After all, you only need to make his Imperial Majesty trust you, Conrad. And you’re a trustworthy man.”

  Conrad did not remember the words in which he consented. He did recall politely refusing the offer of a seat in the Emperor’s carriage.

  “I’ll walk down,” he said. “Clear my head.”

  He followed the footpaths down Vomero hill, the new walls of the museum vanishing behind him. His view was clear across the city and the bay to Vesuvius’s crater, bathed in golden afternoon light. Down in the town, the haze of cooking smoke rose up.

  Tullio Rossi slid into step beside him.

  Conrad found himself waving his hands. He held his shriek down to a whisper. “I don’t think up diplomatic excuses, I think up opera plots!”

  “Wouldn’t worry about it, padrone. It’s obvious we’re the visible distraction for whatever’s really going on.”

  Conrad shut his mouth, since it appeared to be open.

  King Ferdinand didn’t say that wasn’t the case… Perhaps he thinks I’m qualified to understand the implications of an absence?

  “Anyway, big boss is right,” Tullio added. “You need to be out of Naples for a bit, right now, for more reasons that I’ve got fingers. And possibly toes.”

  “I think I’m getting a headache…”

  Tullio grinned at that, as Conrad had hoped he might.

  “We should find Paolo, while I pack, padrone. She’s going to love this.”

  The knowledge that they would leave on this evening’s boat gave Conrad a curious feeling of freedom. Even if we are being sent to do the impossible.

  “If Paolo didn’t need to be here in Naples for rehearsals, she wouldn’t let us go alone.” Conrad added lightly, “No romantic voyage on a boat for you with your master’s sister…”

  Tullio’s stubbled cheeks turned a hot pink.

  Now that’s a surprise—oh.

  Memory came to Conrad as he spoke. “When Paolo turned up, and we found out she was my sister? You looked relieved. I thought you’d been afraid he was one of the Prince’s Men, but that wasn’t it, was it?”

  The shaven-headed man in the greatcoat, who looked as though he might break bottles with his teeth, turned redder still.

  “You were just glad he was a woman,” Conrad concluded.

  Tullio managed to look sardonic, despite embarrassment. “Always more trouble if you fancy a man.”

  Conrad refused that bait trailed across his path.

  “You like your master’s sister.”

  “Yes. All right? Yes. I like Paolo. Isaura. I like her.”

  “Good.”

  Tullio raised eyebrows, and silently mouthed Good?

  Conrad said frankly, “She could do worse.”

  Before Tullio could interrogate him, he added, teasing, “Never mind the sea voyage. You’ll have other chances to impress her.”

  Tullio Rossi fell into a mood that, in less imposing men, would have been termed a sulk—and after the few moments in which it was genuine, played it up for Conrad’s amusement.

  He does like her, Conrad thought. I wonder, does she like his company because he doesn’t treat her as if she were an ordinary woman, or is there more to it than that? Uncle Baltazar and Mamma Agnese would have fits…

  The walk down into the centre of Naples brought them back to the lodging-house, where they found Paolo-Isaura looking equal parts amused and annoyed.

  “The show goes on… Donna Belucci’s part,” she announced, waving a visibly much-pencilled set of libretto pages. “Passed back to you with all the changes she’d like you to make so she can sing this—and I quote—‘tongue-twister of a role’… I think she objects to her name, too.”

  Conrad bristled. “What’s tongue-twisting about ‘Hippolyta’?”

  Tullio reached over and acquired the thumb-marked sheets. “‘Hippolyta, Amazon warrior, prisoner of the Serpent Queen; now known as the slave-girl Xo—Zosh—’ You know, she’s right!… Padrone, looking at this lot, it’d be shorter to say what words of yours she does like!”

  Tullio smiled down at Isaura. “…Then again—what can you expect from a woman in britches acting like a man?”

  Isaura promptly took the script back, rolled it up, and rapped Tullio Rossi hard across the head.

  Conrad shamelessly snickered.

  That certainly shows interest. It’s up to him if he can turn it into something serious.

  “We have news, also,” he said, and nodded at Tullio’s offer of tea.

  He told Paolo of the King’s request, not so much because he thought she would abandon her responsibilities as first violin and conductor and come on the voyage, but because he wanted to get the shape of it clear in his mind.

  “The Prince’s Men have decided that local sabotage, bribery, and intimidation aren’t the easiest way to get them what they want. We already thought they must be like most of the radical political secret societies, with members all through the governments which they oppose. The ones in the Prince’s Men turn out to be a bit more highly placed than that—about thirty per cent of the Council of the North, Ferdinand estimates. And they have no scruples about de-stabilising that government because it makes it more likely they can take over the Two Sicilies.”

  Paolo’s eyes widened, which made her look no more than twelve. “War, again?”

  “I doubt it. All of the Emperor of the North’s armies against one Italian state? It wouldn’t even need to come to shooting.” Conrad, aware he was sounding bitter, added, “Not that I think it should. One war was plenty for me.”

  An echo came from where Tullio was boiling the kettle on a spirit lamp.

&nbs
p; Conrad took Isaura’s hand. Elegant and long-fingered, he thought it one part of her that wouldn’t pass as male, once she grew older. She interlinked fingers with him as she had as a child, and smiled.

  “So,” Isaura summarised, when he’d done, “the Emperor is a prisoner on the island of Stromboli. He believes the King of the Two Sicilies has been paid to poison his prisoner. You need some way to seem trustworthy. King Ferdinand needs him here in Naples to put an escape plan into operation—”

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” Tullio put tea down for Isaura and his master, and this time waited an awkward moment until Conrad signalled him to join them.

  “And?”

  “A coach out of Naples, yes.” Tullio’s finger traced a route across the table. “But all the way to the northern border? It’s hell travelling north by land. Impassable roads, bridges wiped out by storms, bandits in the mountains… Take forever. The Emperor must still have allies—we want somebody with a ship, a couple of hours drive north of here, to take his Imperial Majesty on board. Then he can go back, maybe by way of Marseilles, and sort out his Council and all the other little traitors.”

  “That’s sound. I’ll suggest it to Ferdinand.”

  Conrad drank his tea, which was strong and bitter as he liked it, and then pinched at the bridge of his nose. Paolo squeezed his other hand encouragingly and released it.

  “So,” she summarised. “You sail to Stromboli, and hope not to be recognised by any Prince’s Men. All you need now is a way to persuade his Majesty the Emperor that it’s perfectly safe to come to Naples, and that he wants to attend L’Altezza azteca.”

  Tullio frowned. “Padrone—”

  “Got it!” Paolo sprang up and started to make a furious search of the escritoire.

  Conrad looked at Tullio, who shrugged.

  “Here!” Paolo-Isaura thumped a sheaf of paper down on the table.

  Conrad recognised it—Dominican sandal-mark and all—as the libretto of Il Terrore di Parigi, ossia la Morte de Dio.

  Paolo put her arms around his shoulders from behind, as she did not often do now, possibly because it was so recognisable as sisterly.

  “You have to capitalise on your talents, Corradino. The North was at the heart of the Enlightenment! It’s a fair portrayal of events—give or take a few alterations because it’s opera. You can say you’d like to present a copy of the libretto of Il Terrore in his honour. Even if he just flicks through it, I bet it’ll get you past the door.”

  The small boat they sailed on anchored here and there to take soundings, as they approached the Aeolian Islands. Conrad, engaging the ship’s master in conversation, discovered that new reefs were rising in these waters almost weekly, and shrinking away as quickly.

  He may not think it that unusual, but I think it’s disturbing. What are the Prince’s Men stirring up under the earth?

  The two days on ship accustomed Conrad to the movement of the sea. He staggered when he stepped ashore on Stromboli’s small dock. It went unnoticed. The few other travellers either gazed, stupefied, at the stark high crag shooting a jet of flames into the noon sky, or else stared around for what the ship’s master described as “the house of the famous secret prisoner.”

  The Council of the North may be unaware of what’s happened to his Imperial Majesty, but word’s getting around among the common people. Do we have weeks before this scandal breaks?

  Conrad stretched himself, and took off his muffler. Out of the sea wind, the island was warm. Its low ground-cover seemed more advanced towards spring than Naples, being further south.

  “I’ll see if there’s any carriages.” Tullio glanced about. “I doubt it.”

  He had been uncomfortable and grumpy on the ships; the result, Conrad thought, of his confession about Isaura, combined with being sent on a mission that had almost no chance of succeeding—and perhaps was never intended to.

  Tullio’s a very private man. And he doesn’t like to fail.

  Then again, nor do I.

  They had landed on the flatter northern tip of the island. Otherwise, it was little more than a huge cone jutting from the sea. Conrad felt himself glad to be at the opposite end of the island to the volcano’s stark crater.

  I don’t see roads—only footpaths—so I’d guess Tullio’s right…

  The big man was back in a few minutes, shaking his head.

  “Believe it or not, those men over there are guards.” He made a jerking movement towards the few men in uniform—or, given that most of them had shed their jackets and were sitting smoking pipes, half in uniform.

  “‘Prison’ guards,” Tullio added with a snort. “Seems they’re used to locals coming in to gawp at the ex-Emperor. For a few soldi—which you owe me, padrone!—they’ll point out the way to the house where he’s kept.”

  Conrad dug in his waistcoat pocket. “Give them a few more soldi. Say I want to view the Emperor without the general public pushing and shoving me, so they’re to hold the rest back on some pretext.”

  “Good idea, padrone.”

  That settled, they walked alone down a dusty trail that ran between hedges of prickly pear, and occasional moorland, and—like all foot paths—seemed to take forever to tread. Conrad caught side of churches hidden down in the rocks, and residences every so often. It was a shock, finally, to find himself facing a white house almost entirely hidden by old olive trees and realise he was there.

  A soldier in uniform jacket and trousers (though he had taken off his neck-stock, and didn’t carry his rifle) ambled over. “Ten soldi to see the great man; twenty to speak to him—once in a lifetime experience!”

  “But we already paid…” Conrad winced at Tullio’s knuckles landing squarely in his kidneys.

  He smiled and handed over the extra coins. The soldier waved them through.

  All the green shutters stood open along the front of the house. Two storeys tall, it was a pleasant mansion—and its occupants, Conrad saw, were taking advantage of the early good weather. Adjutants and aides and servants all crowded round a camp-table set up on trestles on the veranda, under the spreading branches of the olive trees. Two or three high-ranking soldiers sat over cigars and brandy, listening to a stocky figure in white and blue.

  “Oh—hell!” Conrad decided that was not too religious a curse. He gripped the libretto in its thick paper wrapping. “When this doesn’t work, I’m going back to Naples and telling Paolo exactly what he can do with it!”

  “Confidence, padrone. Confidence!” Tullio muttered, comfortably close enough that he bumped his shoulder against Conrad’s. “Pretend you’re a character in an opera!”

  Why do I suspect it would be one of those comically inept and stuttering tenors that infest Neapolitan one-act comedies…?

  At the head of the table, the stocky man in his forties waved his companions aside, and leaned back in his chair.

  “Signore,” he said, still with the vowel sounds of a Corsican accent. “Welcome to my humble home.”

  There are too many servants and guards, Conrad thought. Even if I speak evasively, and he understands me, the story will get out to too many others, and the Prince’s Men can’t know about this.

  Conrad launched into a sentence regarding the distinguished history of the Emperor’s nation, and his own poor attempt to render some of it on the stage—and after a few minutes of this, successfully lost the interest of the military comrades and hangers-on around the table.

  He placed the libretto of Il Terrore di Parigi on the table, and as he leaned forward, risked saying, in a low voice, “If I might speak with your Imperial Majesty privately?”

  One of the Emperor’s brows went up.

  “If you’re polite enough to give me the rank I won by the sword… you’re probably an agent provocateur, here to trick me into speaking something to my disadvantage.”

  “No, sire, I’m not. I assure you.”

  Hopeless! No wonder he thinks that anything that comes from the King of the Two Sicilies is a poisoned chalice
—that’s all he gets from anybody else.

  Conrad muttered something evasive, aware that he was losing the short man’s interest, and beginning to panic. He shifted uncomfortably.

  The Emperor’s dark gaze went past him.

  The man sat up in his chair, utterly alert.

  “Imperial Highness—” Conrad began.

  The Emperor ignored that. He stood up, took four or five paces forward on the veranda, Conrad scrambling out of his way as he went past—

  The Emperor threw his arms around Tullio in a fierce embrace.

  CHAPTER 26

  “What,” the Emperor demanded, “is this famous war hero doing as a servant?”

  Conrad stared at the spectacle of the tall, shaven-headed Tullio Rossi being ferociously hugged by a man a foot shorter than he was.

  I am… more than bewildered by this!

  The short man in the blue coat, orders and medals still on his chest, spun around and jabbed a finger at Conrad. “What?”

  Let nobody say I can’t seize my opportunity—

  “If we could speak privately to you, sire…”

  The exiled Emperor grunted. He turned on his companions and servants, hand sawing at the air, vocabulary that of the military camp. Before a minute passed, there was a clean cloth and light food set out, and no man was closer to the table on the veranda than the servants at the house windows—banging the shutters closed at a furious gesture—and the soldiers out on the path.

  Nobody within earshot.

  Conrad surveyed the olive trees, aware that Tullio matched him in that.

  Not enough cover to hide a man. This is as good as I’ll get.

  “You’ll excuse me,” the Emperor said, “if I summon back those two.”

  He indicated two of the older men, in Northern uniform, who were hanging about somewhat obviously with the guards.

  “They have long wanted to meet Signore Tullio here.”

  Conrad couldn’t help wincing. “Do you trust these men with your life, sire?”