The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  Roberto Capiraso muttered something, sounding partly conscious.

  Conrad looked up from the staves. “Why would you do less than your best when you can do this? This is better than anything you’ve written for us! This is a whole opera you could have given us…”

  Conrad felt his body tensing to fight.

  “The score you’ve been ‘composing’ and ‘developing’ for us—is complete. Has been complete for some time. Look at it! And this is yours; I know your style well enough by now!”

  He met the dark eyes of Roberto Conte di Argente, where the stocky man sprawled on the carpet.

  “You’ve lied to us from the beginning. You had no fear that you couldn’t write a full opera. You’d already done it!” Conrad heard himself sounding more bewildered than appalled. “Tell me one reason why you would pretend to compose an inferior version of what you already have!”

  Dread twisted in Conrad’s stomach.

  Dread as well as anger, he realised.

  Despite everything, did I want to believe that Roberto was honest? Because he and I have worked side by side like brothers?

  The other man spoke a thick, unintelligible curse.

  Conrad hefted the score of Il Reconquista d’amore.

  An unknown and fully complete new opera. In Naples. At the time when the Prince’s Men are here.

  Intuition and evidence came together.

  “—This is the black opera.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Roberto Capiraso looked as if he went to nod but was stopped by pain.

  In a breathless, cracked voice, he muttered, “Yes.”

  The implied you idiot! did not need to be stated aloud; it was clear in his tone. “You’ve been composing for both operas—”

  Conrad couldn’t help staring. I must look like a gawking idiot!

  “—L’Altezza azteca and… this. Counter-opera and black opera. Both of them.”

  This time the other man managed the smallest nod of assent. A flinch of pain creased his face.

  A confession. But with the evidence right here in my hands, there’d be no point in denial.

  “Major Mantenucci thought their composer was Bellini…”

  Roberto Capiraso gave a sardonic grimace that was not quite a smile. “Signore Bellini’s death was a convenient chance to spread rumours, as I understand it.”

  “And you—”

  “Il Reconquista was done before I came to Naples,” Roberto Capiraso muttered tightly. “When I needed to compose music for the key points of L’Altezza, to handicap it, I used the earlier, inferior drafts of Reconquista.”

  As if it were a small image in clear glass, Conrad recalled speaking to il Conte di Argente on the day they first met. The Wars in Granada making a colourful frieze of armour and heraldry in his mind.

  Conrad quoted il Superbo’s words back to him. “‘Something more exotic than wars against the Moors and Jews’?”

  Roberto Capiraso flinched.

  Conrad suspected it was not through pain.

  Conrad let the score drop. “Cazzo! Ferdinand had it right! He just couldn’t find the right man.”

  He drove his bruised fist into his palm.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? The Prince’s Men have never truly harmed us. Never irreparably. Why would they? It wasn’t in their interests. With you in the heart of the counter-opera, writing to fail… They had nothing to be afraid of! Our composer is one of the Prince’s Men.”

  The immensity of the realisation left him stunned.

  “I should knock you down again,” Conrad realised, head swimming as if he were the one who had been punched. “All the time, while we were giving everything, you—”

  Roberto Capiraso spat blood onto the carpet. “You—we—are a diversion to keep the King of the Two Sicilies happy! That’s all!”

  The Count got the words out with effort, gasping between them. His dark eyes flashed. His broad hands fumbled for a place to brace, behind him. He pushed himself up into a sitting position on the rich Turkey carpet.

  Conrad’s thoughts moved faster than he could have spoken.

  Roberto Capiraso was behind the Silvestri family and the arrest for debt. For revenge, yes. And because he’s one of the Prince’s Men.

  Using my imprisonment as an excuse to drag his feet with composing the music for the counter-opera. Sabotaging even as he wrote.

  Disrupting rehearsals—il Superbo!—

  Persuading the King that all’s going well—

  He spent his true energy beforehand, on composing the black opera.

  He’s told the other Prince’s Men everything, everything, they could ever need to know.

  Hatred echoed down Conrad’s muscles and nerves. “You fucking son of a bitch.”

  Roberto snorted, and flinched at the pain it caused. “You realise how much you’ve benefited from the unofficial protection you had? If I hadn’t been composer for both operas—Would you rather have had Tullio Rossi and, say, Signore Velluti, returned in the same condition as Adriano Castiello-Salvati? And note that it was your rehearsal hall burned down, empty, when the San Carlo is the same as every theatre, an inferno waiting to happen? And it might have had every one of you in it?”

  The note of superiority brought Conrad’s hackles up.

  “Don’t even try to justify—!” He kicked the bound score at his feet. “Who did write this libretto?”

  “Felice Romani.” Roberto Capiraso looked as nauseous as if he rested on a swaying deck. “Last year. After the first San Carlo attempt. Not willingly.”

  Well, that finally answers my question of: “Why isn’t Signore Romani sitting in this chair?”

  Conrad searched the other man’s blank features for any sign of guilt, or even regret. “This is why we could never find the composer for the black opera. This is why you never committed yourself heart and mind to L’Altezza azteca—why you always got to a point and then pulled back—”

  Roberto Capiraso made as if he would stand up. It was difficult to tell, red-faced from the blow as he was, but his skin might have flushed.

  The temptation to kick him down on his back in the wreckage again was strong. Conrad found his vision narrowing, identifying the point on il Superbo’s jaw where a boot would need to land.

  Roberto Capiraso scraped up sheet music in uncoordinated hands, pages all dotted with his sharp writing, and attempted to wave it in Conrad’s face. “There are places I wrote supremely well for L’Altezza!”

  I remember so many occasions in the secret museum and under Naples, watching him speed to get down the notes he heard in his head…

  Conrad pushed the memory away. He grabbed up the betraying score of Il Reconquista. “This is what you do when you’re utterly committed to doing your best. Not holding back, and sabotaging the opera. This—That I could have written the libretto for this—”

  Il Superbo pushed himself painfully slowly up onto his knees. Pages slid to the floor. Swaying as if he were about to fall, his hands gripping his thighs, the composer forced himself up onto his feet.

  Conrad looked down the couple of inches in height that separated them. Roberto Capiraso stood precisely like the loser of a brawl—neck-cloth untied and coat open, hair dishevelled, his breath coming harshly.

  “And what did I write for?” Conrad demanded. “The Aztec Princess—flashy, daring, parts of it stunning… But with all those subtle, subtle faults, that will show up in performance. You wrote the counter-opera to fail.”

  Roberto barely spared him a look. “Of course.”

  For one desperate, conscienceless moment, Conrad could only think, Roberto’s sabotage means arrest and imprisonment for him!

  And that means Nora is free of him. Free to be with a man who has not betrayed his King…

  “Nora hates traitors,” Conrad said hoarsely. “Or did she never tell you that? Too many people betrayed her trust as a girl. If she ever wants to visit you in jail, I’ll be amazed!”

  Something like absolute misery flashed
across Roberto’s face. Conrad saw something odd in it, but dismissed it, given how urgent things were.

  “We’re going to Ferdinand now.” Conrad took a step back, keeping his gaze on the Count, and felt on the bookcase for his pistol.

  His fingers skidded over polished oak, encountering no obstruction.

  Conrad glanced back.

  Leonora Capiraso stood several paces away from the bookcase, his Manton flintlock duelling pistol in her hands. The black muzzle pointed precisely at his heart.

  CHAPTER 40

  “Why are you protecting him!” Conrad exclaimed. “Didn’t you hear him confess?”

  But I don’t need to ask.

  He’s her husband; she has a longer history with him than she does with me; of course she’s loyal to him.

  It still hurt.

  As gently as he could, considering Leonora’s temper, Conrad said, “Keep the pistol if it makes you feel safer. But we’re going to King Ferdinand right now.”

  Leonora said clearly, “No one is going to King Ferdinand.”

  “What?” The bald exclamation made him sound like a village idiot. “Just because your loving husband has dragged you into this mess—”

  Leonora took a precise step to the side. Conrad realised it allowed her to see both himself and Roberto without interruption. And it put her the other side of the long table in the centre of the room—in effect, safe behind a barricade.

  He stared at her across polished mahogany and an expensive English lead crystal decanter and its attendant glasses. The pistol muzzle didn’t waver from the trunk of his body. The weight of the flintlock pistol was supported by both her hands. The hammer was drawn back—and, as he observed that, she brought it back to full cock with a satisfying, terrifying click.

  This isn’t the first time she’s handled a gun.

  Four yards away, behind an obstacle—I can’t simply grab her.

  He learned in the war, at this point there’s nothing to do but wait. If—when—the trigger is pulled, there’ll be the fraction of an instant between the flintlock mechanism striking the pan, and the flash travelling down the touch-hole and igniting the main charge. Men have thrown themselves aside from the lead bullet and lived, in that instant.

  Some irrational, irreverent part of his mind supplied, Tal momento! O istante!

  In a voice more distant than the stars, she said, “Please don’t move.”

  Conrad could do nothing but gaze, stupefied, at her—at warm scented flesh into which he wished to sink, and obliterate all the world except the two of them. Except that…

  “It’s both of you? He forced you to join him?” Conrad added instantly: “Nora, we can give you sanctuary from the Prince’s Men—”

  Leonora snorted.

  The sound of contempt went clear through him.

  “Corrado, when did you ever know anyone make me do anything?”

  Conrad stared into her determined, willing face. “You can’t be a Prince’s Man. Him, yes; but not you—!”

  Roberto Capiraso leaned forward, his hands braced on his thighs for support, and grunted with bitter amusement. “Oh, she is.”

  Conrad couldn’t help staring at Leonora, in her high bodice and flowing tunic, with her fallen hair rippling down to her hips and below. Dishevelled, and with a pistol, she might have been the mad-woman in an opera. Although on-stage it would more likely be a dagger.

  “I told you my husband was a member of a criminal society,” Nora said lightly, as if she ignored the weapon she held. “I just didn’t tell you which one.”

  “Che cazzo! And what was the point of—Oh. To divert suspicion from him if he made any mistakes.”

  “Yes.” Leonora’s gaze stayed fixed on Conrad. “Also… I did want you to leave Naples. I forgot how pig-headed you are when it comes to threats.”

  Roberto Capiraso’s baritone drowned her out. “You warned him? You treacherous bitch!”

  Leonora moved from stillness to swiftness. The pistol came up so that she looked straight down the duelling sights at Conrad. Her fingers tensed, a fraction from fully pulling the trigger.

  He flinched.

  Her hands stayed steady. She turned her head, gazing at Roberto. “You have no reason to accuse me! I loved you before and after I died, Roberto, and now, just because I’ve kissed one man—because it was necessary—you accuse me!”

  Contempt and self-contempt tore at Conrad’s heart.

  Necessary.

  Pain flooded in on him, drowning him. He dragged himself free of it sufficiently that he could think. She must have a reason for that saying that—

  That she might be trying to drive him off for his own safety, he put out of his mind as a self-serving fantasy.

  Roberto Capiraso spoke thickly, as if he had bitten his tongue. “It was necessary, was it?”

  Conrad could have echoed him: the word stabbed deep. He moved forward a pace. He did not care that the pistol’s muzzle shifted with him as he did. “Why? Why was it necessary for me to love you?”

  Leonora didn’t take her gaze from the Count. “Oh, I would have gone much further than love and one kiss. If I were a man, Roberto, and I slept with someone’s wife because it was necessary for the cause, you wouldn’t think twice about it.”

  “You’re a woman: it’s different!”

  Her voice sang with scorn. “Do you say I can’t have principles?”

  Conrad flinched back from the zeal shining raw in her eyes.

  She took another pace back, towards the door; the mahogany table still between her and both of them.

  She doesn’t want to be disarmed by me or her loving husband, Conrad recognised.

  But she still only has one shot.

  Wanting to spring forward, he forced his body to wait.

  The slender woman, uncannily motionless, stared at the bruised face of Roberto Capiraso. “Let me tell you that you have nothing to forgive! I did what was right to keep this man’s attention occupied—”

  Every small brick of knowledge fell into place, building the edifice before he was consciously aware of it. She’s been decoying me, she doesn’t love me—He framed that with brutal honesty in his thoughts. Then—

  “Only one thing makes me different from any other man in Naples,” he stated aloud. “The libretto—”

  “Corrado!”

  “—For the counter-opera—”

  “Conrad!” Her voice bounced back off the ornamented plaster ceiling. “I’ve been distracting you, yes! But—”

  “But—I can’t trust anything you’ve ever said to me.”

  Roberto cut in icily. “Nor, apparently, can I. This is no matter of playing out a scene of jealous husband and pure wife in the debtors’ prison! Leonora, we agreed you would not be further involved in this—”

  “It was necessary. I told you it would be.”

  “Was it? I think you always intended to find it necessary—”

  “Roberto—”

  “What have I heard since we came here? Nothing but Conrad, Corrado, Corradino! Tell me how you broke your word, Leonora. Tell me how you planned every step of this to bring him back to you—”

  The pain in his voice provoked contradictory emotions in Conrad. Both sympathy, and a blazing hope that he was right. Right that it’s me she’s been looking for, as I looked for her!

  Leonora had the stillness of the Dead as she stood with Conrad’s pistol raised. All her attention on her husband, she exclaimed fiercely, “I was as shocked as you were when Bourbon-Sicily presented him as the librettist! The idea that he would be writing the book for us—”

  “—Is just too coincidental!” Roberto Capiraso’s hands shook as he pulled off his untied neck-cloth. He wiped his face with it, and pushed it into a pocket. Scorn made his voice razor-sharp. “You mean to tell me, with all your connections among il Principe, that you had no idea where Signore Scalese might be?”

  Conrad snorted. “Unless she has some way of divining where lightning will strike, it must have been a sho
ck seeing me in Ferdinand’s opera!”

  Two heads turned as one. Both glared at him as if he interrupted some private thing, not his business.

  But it is my business! No matter how close they seem to be.

  Roberto Capiraso absently tested his swollen red and blue jaw under his clipped beard. “Leonora, believe me, I know your rank among il Principe is far higher than mine. I refuse to believe you didn’t gain access to, say, the police lists of ‘undesirables’ in the Two Sicilies—”

  “Yes!” Her eyes seemed to take in all the light from the great sash windows of the mansion. They flashed. “Yes! Very well! I hoped I might see Conrad privately—”

  Conrad’s heart lurched.

  “—While we were here; it would not have interfered with the mission. I had no idea he would be chosen as the King’s librettist—I so swear!”

  Conrad went to speak and found his mouth too dry. I have no idea what I can say to her.

  His body tensed as the pistol’s muzzle shivered.

  Roberto Capiraso wiped his mouth with his hand, this time. A thread of carmine—from where a tooth had cut the inside of his cheek?—ran down his chin, visible through his beard. He spat blood in Leonora’s direction. “You claim that? Am I stupid? Cornuto? Even I can see that you’d spread your legs for him in front of me if he asked you to!”

  “Never doubt what I feel for you—” she began.

  “I killed you.” The Count sounded almost reflective. “I’ve been aware that you would, eventually, exact payment for that.”

  “Oh, stop playing the martyr!” Leonora’s voice shifted down the social classes. Her chin came up, and she glared at the dark man. “I’ve told you before, you were not responsible for my death!”

  “You died in attempting to give birth to my child.”

  Her voice snapped like a coachman’s whip. “I was hardly forced to conceive it!”

  Conrad saw her expression change.

  He only then realised that he must have given an indication of the rip of her words.

  “It couldn’t be helped.” Her gaze sought his for one moment, before it went back to Roberto. “Not by you or any other man. My body wasn’t meant for childbirth.”