by Mary Gentle
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.
The air smelled fresh. It was too early for more than the lazzaroni to be out, eating, arguing, gambling over games of mora. Many of the poor wore no more than shirt, breeches, and waistcoat. The Sun put rising gold over the tops of buildings, beginning to be warm. Summer opera season is common in Naples, if not necessarily elsewhere in the opera world (which mostly conducts its business between the Feast of St Stephen—on 26th December—and Lent). Soon there will be breath-snatching inescapable heat, and a city that only truly awakens morning and evening, and the doors of the opera house will stand open to mitigate the heat of a gathered crowd. And backstage will be so stifling that it’s no difficulty to imagine ladies in short-stays or long-stays fainting.
A shouted order halted his escort. Conrad sighed, leaning against the San Carlo corner wall, while the corporal loudly debated orders with another man from the same regiment.
The corner gave Conrad a view both of the unpaved piazza in front of the Palace, and the long straight road that ran past the theatre and off into the city. Only conscience kept him waiting—and both Paolo and Tullio’s promise of what they would do if he went off anywhere without a protective escort.
A shine of light caught his eye. Silk and lace of a morning dress turned his head—
The woman in the blue dress moved with a brisk stride from the Teatro San Carlo, to a closed coach. A long Indian shawl covered her shoulders. Her bonnet allowed him only a glimpse of profile.
I would know her walk among a thousand.
Nora!
It hit him with the force of a punch. Roberto will be sending his wife away the morning of the performance—which is this morning—
The soft clop of hooves sounded down the street. The coach disappeared, out of sight. Going back to their mansion, judging by the road taken.
Without sufficient thought to call it a decision, Conrad let himself drift back between a woman and her child, then two men arguing over a horse, then a group of much younger men…
Out of sight of his escort, he walked fast; choosing a direct route to the Argente mansion through winding streets too narrow for anything but men on foot.
He put the King out of his mind, and his duty to the counter-opera.
This may be the last time I’ll be able to speak with her.
So I must.
A servant took his name, and returned with an expression of muted surprise. “La Contessa will see you.”
A confusion of emotions overwhelmed him. Conrad was barely aware of anything until he found himself in a richly-furnished study, with a desk, and a long mahogany table that would sit twelve or fourteen. Some of the musicians had left their scores scattered across it at an earlier meeting. He walked mechanically around the table.
Leonora Capiraso stood up from the antique Versailles sofa where she had evidently begun reading. More than one book stood open on an Emperor-style military desk, or had a marker paper in it.
“Corrado?”
“At least we don’t have the hypocrisy of ‘Signore Scalese.’” His smile felt false. “I’d give ten scudi to hear what your servants are saying in your kitchen right now…”
She had evidently taken off her bonnet when she came in, but still wore the rest of her morning walking dress; a full-sleeved under-dress of muslin, and over that a silk tunic à l’antique in deep blue with a high-waisted bodice, from which the tunic fell in long drapes, giving her a look of austere Roman determination.
Her frown was also severe. “What is it you want?”
“The book’s done.” He shrugged. “Nothing left that someone else can’t tinker with in rehearsal, before the curtain goes up.”
Leonora put down her book, her fingers just brushing the surface of the desk, and stood poised. The light shone through the velvet drapes, full on her face.
Conrad felt an airless dizziness. “You said I should leave Naples.”
“I said that, yes.”
“I’ll leave on one condition. That you come with me.”
Her voice sounded stifled. “Corrado…”
“Leave your husband. Come with me.”
He could not put it more directly.
He felt his hands shaking, and clasped them behind him. Waiting for her reply sucked even more air out of his chest. He thought he came nearer to fainting than at any time since he had been in a surgeon’s tent.
“No.”
And that is utterly direct.
He risked himself enough to say, “You love me. Why else would you try to get me out of Naples?—yes, I know it’s dangerous; yes, your husband’s right to get you away! But you love me, still, the way you always did. I don’t believe you can look me in the eye and say you don’t.”
Her lashes lay dark on her cheek for a moment, before they lifted and she met his gaze.
“No, I can’t tell you that.” Her defeated voice remained direct. “If I said I didn’t love you, it would be a lie. Corrado—”
She spoke over his attempt at an interruption:
“Wait. If I said I didn’t love Roberto, that would be a lie!”
“Then you’re going to have to choose. Again.” He felt himself being brutal, perhaps because he did understand her predicament. “The poor man or the rich man? The old love or the new?”
“You don’t understand!”
From any other woman, it would have been a wail or a whine. Leonora let loose the words with a blast of frustration, plainly angry at herself for the inability to explain.
“Make me see, then.” Conrad made th
e mistake of stepping up to her.
Her eyes were dark blue; so dark, as she looked up at him, that shades of violet showed there. They were her one true point of beauty, Conrad was not ashamed to admit. For the rest, her thick brown hair was no better and no worse than any other woman’s, and her body was a little on the thin and tall side.
But her spirit glows out of her face.
Not a supernatural spirit—but whatever it is about her that makes her Leonora. Nora, who glowed like a Russian icon on-stage when she sang…
The light from the window caught a semi-circular gleam along the bottom of her eyelid. A tear, he recognised, as it swelled and broke and ran down her cheek.
He leaned down and kissed it from her heated skin, moving his mouth from her cheekbone down to the corner of her lips. It was a strange kiss, with her warm skin, and her body leaning against him with the heft of mortality, but it left him breathless. She pulled him to her fiercely, like an eagle at the stoop.
“It’s me you love.” Conrad barely got it out for kissing every part of her mouth, her neck where it curved down to her shoulders. “You know I never stopped loving you. It’s nothing to me that you’re one of the Returned Dead. You’re still Leonora. Leave here—with me, now—before he tries to send you away and I lose you!”
Conrad pushed his fingers into her hair, the soft coils falling out of hairpins and tumbling over his wrist. He cupped her cheek with his other hand. Her grip around his body was strong; she clung as if she might fall forever if she lost her hold on him. Her deliberate breath smelled sweet, like honey and fire. He ached, erect, to feel the skin of her thighs against his; to lay belly to bare belly, with her soft flesh heated against his. He slid one hand down her shoulder, down the vee of her trapezoid muscles where they dropped to the flare of her buttocks; bunching the soft cloth of her dress and shift in his fist and pushing her body hard up against his.
Her thigh slid between his, only thin cloth obstructing skin against skin. He felt the vibration as she whined in her throat.
He broke free as far as he could, which was only to take his mouth from hers and straighten up. “You have to choose. I swear I’ll go mad.”
She was half a head shorter than he; it meant she needed to stand high up on tiptoe to reach his mouth if, as now, he didn’t lean down.
Her hand knotted in his cravat and she pulled the linen until he gave way and leaned forward.
Their foreheads touched.
“How can you still love me, Corradino? So much time has gone by. We’re different now. I’m… what you see I am.”
“That doesn’t matter—”
“Not the Return from death! You don’t know me!”
Conrad ran the back of his knuckles down her cheek, down her neck, until his hand rested on the unmoving heated swell of her breast above her bodice. “I know you’re ambitious, passionate, reckless, vulnerable; has death changed that?”
Her hair was loose now, falling to her hips; the mass of it rested scented and soft over his wrist. He took hold of her, forcing himself close, as she fought closer; kissed; and finally freed her honey-mouth with a gasp.
“Marry me,” he got out, “if you need a ceremony; if you need the Church, I don’t care! I give you my word, I will stay with you. Married or unmarried, living or dead, I want you with me.”
A faint draught touched his hand and face—and had been doing so for some moments.
It was a warning, Conrad realised, far too late.
“That,” Roberto Capiraso said from the open door, “will not be happening.”
CHAPTER 38
The weight of the single Manton pistol weighed down Conrad’s pocket.
No!—I shouldn’t kill him—
Roberto Capiraso ignored him as if there were only empty air in the study.
Il Conte must have left the San Carlo after the spat with Velluti—perhaps to see off his departing wife, perhaps travel with her out of Naples—but by his face, all that was forgotten. He stared at Leonora with a burning focus, padding forward over the carpet with absolute determination.
Leonora stepped back and abruptly sat down on the blue-upholstered Versailles couch. She fumbled with the tiny buttons of her bodice. Some had been torn loose. Conrad realised it must have been by his hands.
Roberto loomed over the sitting woman, his expression bloodshot. “You whore.”
Conrad took the pistol out of his pocket. He pointed the muzzle at the Conte di Argente’s chest. “Never threaten her.”
Conrad felt a sudden weight, as of something unspoken, in the room.
Both Roberto and Leonora had ears and eyes for no one but each other.
“You’ve betrayed me…” Roberto Capiraso sounded banal, shocked, unbalanced. “Liar. Liar and ungrateful whore!”
The bookcase was within arm’s reach.
Through red anguish, Conrad felt very grateful. He could not have stepped aside to put the pistol down. But he could stretch out his arm and place it on the pale polished oak, in front of the glass doors protecting the valuable volumes, and let go of the metal that could make him a murderer.
That done, he stepped forward, grabbed at the side of Capiraso’s throat and caught his linen stock, and gave it a strong twist. As the man choked, hands going harmlessly up to his neck, Conrad swung him round and freed his right hand.
Old habits from army brawling informed every cell of his body. He brought the punch up from his feet, or so it felt. Punched through his target—as Alfredo had taught him when he was twelve—and felt his knuckles bruise on Roberto Capiraso’s jaw.
The stocky man staggered back a pace, not able to get his legs under him. He half-turned—caught his heels against each other—and measured his length, smashing down onto the desk behind him.
The writing desk was nothing solid; nothing to break bones, or a spine, or crack a man’s skull open. It had been made to appear—or perhaps was—a souvenir of the war; some General’s camp-desk from a command tent, constructed light for travel. It shattered under the dark man’s weight.
Roberto Conte di Argente slid, on his face, down the now slanting top of the desk.
He ended on the floor, files and sheets of paper sliding down to bury him in the wreckage.
“Shite!” Conrad tucked his right hand up under his left armpit, hoping the warmth would take some of the swelling sting out of his knuckles. “Merda!”
Leonora had both hands over her mouth. She made a sound. It might have been either of their names.
Conrad took a step forward and knelt down, feeling for Roberto Capiraso’s pulse. It beat steadily at his carotid artery. The man was not quite unconscious. He gazed up with nothing but confusion in his eyes. Conrad forced himself to unbutton the man’s coat and undo his stock and waistcoat. Rage made him breathless.
For me, he can die in his own vomit, but not in front of his—wife. No—not in front of Nora.
Conrad stood up out of the chaos, absently scooping up a fallen stack of bound scores, and loose pages with notes doodled on them. He looked for somewhere to set the stuff down—found the desk not a choice—and placed them on the Versailles sofa. They slid into a heap. Nora stood and stepped back, out of the way. A bound score fell open as Conrad fumbled to keep the stack under control—
His eyes automatically took in what was written on the page within his view.
Music sounded in his mind. Comprehension came instantly. The familiar black spidery handwriting on the staves put the notes into his head, and the orchestration, and the vocal line. It took him scant seconds, in which Leonora did not move, and the Conte di Argente only breathed thickly where he lay.
“This is the aria you were struggling to complete for us yesterday.” Conrad frowned. “Except that this is scored for a soprano, not a mezzo, and is complete. I don’t understand.”
Yesterday, Count Roberto had agonised over the melody and given it up as “good as it can be in the time.” Here it sprawled across the page in great confident notes and chords—marke
d for an Isabella, regina di Castiglia: Isabella, Queen of Castile—full, and complete.
The aria in L’Altezza stumbled, showing flashes of brilliance.
“This is brilliance itself…” The document in his hands had been bound some time ago, Conrad realised. The corners of pages were curled, where it had been read and re-read.
Other names dotted the page—a tenor aria for a “Ferdinand, il Re di Aragona,” which Conrad had never heard, and would have killed to have for Lorenzo. A bass aria and cabaletta for “Mohammed, Muslim King of Granada”—
“This is JohnJack’s cabaletta for his Mad Scene! Only this version is better!” As if he had not just knocked Roberto down, Conrad demanded, “Is this another one of your one-act operas? Why didn’t you say this was finished?”
Roberto Capiraso made a choking sound. “Put that down—!”
Conrad hefted the thickness of the score. Not a one-act opera. Too long and complex to be anything but a full four- or five-act work.
“If you had this, why not give it to us?” Conrad closed the bound pages together, and then opened the front cover to look at the title page.
Il Reconquista d’amore, ossia la Moor di Venere. “The Reconquest of Love, or, the Moor of Venus—”
He snorted at the outrageous trap of the subtitle, presumably laying in wait for wherever Il Reconquista d’amore might have a London run, close by Shakespearean theatres.
“Put it down, Scalese!”
Conrad shook his head, caught between laughter and anger. “When did you write this?”
He thumbed through the bound manuscript to the back, and the end of the final act. Aria, stretta… and the rondo finale for the soprano. Familiar fragments of melodies teased his mind, and stage situations and confrontations—
Roberto blinked up owlishly, and scowled.
“This final scene has all the music of L’Altezza azteca.” Conrad heard himself as if from a stunned distance, and could not tell if he sounded amazed or appalled. “The same music. But with their melodies just different enough, the arrangement superior enough, that this score is… infinitely superior to The Aztec Princess.”
