The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  By the look on Roberto’s face, realisation tasted like sucking a lemon.

  “You and I were working together, Corrado. I rehearsed your singers with young Paolo. Every day I could see a way of doing things better. Those I could, I added into Il Reconquista. A few got past my guard and into L’Altezza azteca. It is very hard to cripple something short of being sublime.”

  Conrad opened his mouth—and shut it again.

  Il Superbo is very nearly entitled to that. No matter who he is or what he’s done.

  Roberto added, “Your cousin and the rest of them, they have an instinct for when something could be better. I hadn’t foreseen that I would be unmercifully badgered… For a better aria for themselves, yes, perhaps! But last week I actually had Estella Belucci accost me to demand that I strengthen Signore Velluti’s part in the finale!”

  Conrad suppressed a snort. “The magnitude of that miracle!”

  Roberto Capiraso bowed his head. The early morning light showed bruising and swelling along his jaw. “Perhaps I’ll be allowed the scores, after they imprison me.”

  Without looking up at Conrad, he crossed out a phrase of the music, and wrote a different one in the margin.

  Why is it possible to want this man not to end in Ischia prison?

  Conrad shook his head.

  Doors clicked open. King Ferdinand strode in, from a further room. He spoke with Enrico Mantenucci, and Conrad didn’t interrupt. If there was news, we’d be told.

  Through the still-open doors, he glimpsed a mass of people. Unsurprisingly, there were numerous clergy, and in the mass of black, he could see priests from all the city’s churches, Dominicans; no sign of Cardinal Corazza.

  Conrad took the rest in in a glance before servants closed the double doors. A family—grandfather, father, and son?—with a definable air of wealth and danger. Their faces had in the past been pointed out to Conrad, as they rode Spaccanapoli Street in fine carriages, with the warning “Camorra.” A very Borgia-looking family of two brothers in early middle age, and a younger sister, who had similar rumours attached in Catania, in island-Sicily. Spoken of in undertones as “Honoured Men.”

  Uncomfortable beside them, a Colonel in Hussar uniform was plainly not from any of the Italian kingdoms. He might have been German, or English, and was speaking to a Turk in uniform jacket and baggy breeches. Conrad recognised faces familiar from Neapolitan salons and opera boards. One man—by the close presence of Ferdinand’s royal guard, he might have been under arrest—Conrad knew as a writer from the Giornale.

  Key men that he keeps under control, or needs as allies. Friends. Enemies. Neutral parties who may become either.

  Insistent thoughts of Leonora threatened. Distracting himself, Conrad pulled the maps of Naples and the countryside across Ferdinand’s desk, and leaned down to study them.

  The map of the Phlegraean Peninsula came first to hand. Conrad traced with a forefinger the road from Naples to the Grotto. West, through the Grotto itself. The road beyond, across the Campi Flegrei, the Burning Fields, to the small thriving port of Pozzuoli, protected by its own cliff-top fort.

  He let his fingers trace the maze of small roads and tracks around Pozzuoli. Lake Averno, one of many volcanic pools. The cone of Monte Nuovo. Solfatera’s sulphur springs…

  One of the more defined roads ran across Campi Flegrei, from the western end of the Grotto of Posillipo towards Pozzuoli, and made a cross-roads with a north-south road that had existed—Conrad’s spotty Classical education reminded him—at least since Hellenic settlers in Magna Graecia founded Napoli as “Neapolis,” “new city,” nine centuries before Christ, and long before even the Romans.

  It must be an antiquarian map that Ferdinand has, Conrad realised. Classical ruins were marked, dotting the landscape—

  “What is it?” Roberto Capiraso’s voice spoke at his ear.

  “What?”

  “What have you seen?”

  Conrad, startled out of concentration, realised he had frozen with one finger on the map. “You said you rehearsed in Nero’s theatre?”

  The Conte di Argente looked very humanly puzzled. “Under the Mercato. What has that to do with the Campi Flegrei?”

  Ferdinand emerged from a group of Mantenucci’s constables and strode towards his desk.

  He seemed to catch the tension in the air. “Conrad?”

  The ormolu clock on the mantle, above the carved arms of the King of the Two Sicilies, chimed the hour. Conrad startled, as if it had been cannon-fire. Nine in the morning, on the fourteenth of March.

  Conrad’s spine shivered and pulled his shoulder-blades tight with tension. “We…were talking about antique ruins. It’s likely nothing—but—I went there as a child. And once as a young man—when I thought I might take up water-colour—”

  “Corrado!” Ferdinand exclaimed, not unkindly. “You have something that will help?”

  “A ruin of pagan Rome, sir.”

  Conrad slid his finger back an inch on the map, uncovering the detail that seemed to burn into his retina.

  A small oval.

  Small on this scale map.

  “On the road out from Posillipo, sir, going towards Pozzuoli. The port would mean it could be reached without needing to enter Naples. Most of it is still intact—the part above-ground, certainly, because stone survives.”

  Ferdinand looked down at the map, and then blankly up at Conrad.

  Conrad used his nail to underscore the words printed on the map beside the small oval.

  “‘Anfiteatro Grande.’ The Flavian Amphitheatre.”

  He lifted his head, to meet Ferdinand’s blue gaze, and finished:

  “It once seated forty thousand men. And—sir, what’s the best substitute for a theatre? A theatre.”

  CHAPTER 44

  “On the Burning Fields?” Enrico Mantenucci sounded flatly incredulous. “You think they’ll use a ruin as a theatre, in volcanic fields? When they know to expect an eruption! Are you telling me the Prince’s Men are planning to blow themselves up?”

  Roberto Capiraso interrupted harshly.

  “Leonora’s dead.”

  Pain twisted his face, and for a moment it seemed he couldn’t speak. Finally:

  “Very little can hurt her. She doesn’t care about singers and musicians—once they’ve done what they’re meant to. They themselves believe implicitly in the goals of the Prince’s Men. You have no idea how deep their ethic of sacrifice goes.”

  Silence lengthened.

  Ferdinand clapped his hands, breaking it.

  “If the Prince’s Men are near the Anfiteatro Grande, they ought to be visible. Fabrizio, you have sufficient spare men to take a company out through Posillipo and examine the Flavian Amphitheatre?”

  Fabrizio Alvarez smiled for the first time that Conrad had noticed; a slow, warm expression. “I dare say I can dredge up a hundred men from somewhere, sire.”

  “Take some of Enrico’s people with you; they know the roads.”

  Mantenucci re-buttoned his uniform jacket correctly. “I’ll come with you, Fabrizio, if you like; I started as a officer in Pusilleco. Sire, Captain Esposito can stay in charge of security in the San Carlo; they know him. I could do with a ride to clear my head…”

  Ferdinand’s quick nod held amusement; clearly he suspected that Enrico Mantenucci’s lack of sleep had been augmented overnight with bottles of wine.

  “Be back before midday. Our guests will expect to meet the Commendatore of Napoli.”

  Conrad clenched his fist, nails digging into his palm. He just managed not to exclaim Figlia di puttana! out loud.

  When Tullio gets back, some time this morning! How do I explain that the world’s changed—utterly—in the few days he’s been gone?

  Ferdinand turned a severe gaze on Roberto Capiraso. “How long will it take to perform the black opera?”

  “If Il Reconquista d’amore is performed without cuts—and I think they won’t dare to cut it, without me—then, the better part of three hour
s. Much like The Aztec Princess is now. I believe they must start when you do, when the Sun and Moon pull strongest, early this afternoon. By two at the latest.”

  “And one must assume that they have preparations to make, if it is the Anfiteatro they’re using… If the performance is interrupted, then there’s no chance of a miracle?”

  “I hope that’s true, sire.”

  Conrad glanced from Ferdinand’s practised unconcern, to Roberto’s bleak, elsewhere-stare.

  “There’s much I wasn’t told,” the Count said. “In the worst case—the very worst—then, once begun, the process of the miracle is also begun, and can’t be stopped.”

  The King paced a few turns by his desk. “If that were true, the same would be true of the counter-miracle we perform, and what might result from such a paradox, God working against Himself—dear Lord, no!”

  “Leonora could have explained it better.” The Conte di Argente spoke as if it cost him no pain or hatred to say her name. “The forces under the earth don’t stop being vulnerable at the moment the Moon passes overhead. Volcanic earth is most easily made to erupt at the height of the earth-tides, but there’s a certain amount of time after, while the Moon passes over the Tyrrhenean Sea, in which the same effect might be forced to continue. With difficulty, but it’s possible.”

  He added, “Apparently the same thing happened in the Dutch East Indies, when my brother died. Hence I listened when the other Prince’s Men discussed it with Leonora.”

  Conrad heard the faintest hesitation. He met Roberto’s sideways glance, and realised the man had censored the phrase my wife.

  Ferdinand began to pace and turn and pace. “I know of no way to anticipate what might happen. I will put the matter in the hands of my Natural Philosophers.”

  He halted, raising a brow at Conrad.

  “Sympathising with the physiologi, who always have the impossible questions to answer?”

  “Impossible questions are always impossible until they’re answered, sir.”

  Ferdinand’s eyes showed the amusement Conrad had hoped to call up.

  “Regarding the practical matters we can deal with…” The King sighed, smile fading. “If the Prince’s Men have been planning a performance al fresco in the Anfiteatro—or, I suppose, elsewhere outside—they will have had time in which to shore up ruins, move in scenery, prepare places for the orchestra, make a stage habitable for singers. Because they appear nowhere else this morning. Unless they and their audience are on board ships.”

  Conrad had an immediate mental picture of men—perhaps with their wives and whores—packing luggage for sea-travel, and coming by coach-road to every port in the Mediterranean. Ostia Antica, Marseilles, Istanbul, Cairo.

  Conrad couldn’t help a wry speculation. “Which is worse? If Il Principe’s singers are not on a side-wheel steam-yacht, as Enrico mentioned, but a five-thousand-ton three-decker war-ship? Or at the Anfiteatro Grande—big enough that the ancient Italians not only fought elephants and lions and men, but flooded it for mock naval battles?”

  Ferdinand chuckled. “You’re a true bringer of joy, Corrado! If we have to fight the Prince’s Men, let it be on land where I have an army. We don’t have a ship other than the Guiscardo!”

  Conrad recalled once hearing that, when the Two Sicilies had needed a warship, one had been loaned by the English Navy. Doubtless since taken back.

  Down the far end of the chamber, bell-tower spies came and went, but no messages came over to the King.

  Ferdinand seated himself behind his immense green desk, and signalled for an officer.

  “Major Berardo, I want you to take another company of riflemen on the royal yacht. The Guiscardo will sail for Pozzuoli, and land you there, before it goes out to patrol the coast. You’re to make your way back along the road and secure the Flavian Amphitheatre, and assist Colonel Alvarez there, or in the Grotto di Posillipo.”

  The man saluted and left.

  A long slow rumble and shake went through the Palazzo Reale. The ground grated, deep below. Conrad felt as if someone sharply nudged the chair he sat on—

  Nothing was there.

  Roberto glanced up from the score. “I believe they are getting more regular.”

  Conrad reached over and took the bound score out of the other man’s hands. With cuffs restricting his wrists, il Superbo’s grab failed to retain it.

  “You don’t have time for that.” Conrad stood, and approached the King where the round-faced man rummaged through crumpled reports. “Sir, we can’t be sure of stopping the black opera before it’s performed.”

  Ferdinand grimaced. “I know you, Corrado, you have some mad idea.”

  Conrad held up the score of Reconquista d’amore. “A lot of this is the music of The Aztec Princess. Here, it’s composed as it ought to sound. Or with the sabotage removed.”

  Ferdinand opened his mouth to interrupt. Conrad risked lèse majesté and didn’t permit it.

  “I realise we have no time! Sir, I want to call together the orchestra, chorus, and principal singers, and rehearse the new versions of key points—”

  “New material now?”

  “I’ve heard Nora sing.”

  Silence spread out to occupy their end of the great chamber. A breeze from the open window ruffled at Ferdinand’s brown hair. Conrad watched his gaze go inevitably to Vesuvius.

  For the first time, the blue sky seemed flat to Conrad, rather than deep. If I could see past it, I imagine I could see the darkened Moon beginning to rise.

  The Sun, the Moon, and the Earth all moving to line up; gravity’s implacable pull stressing the dirt beneath his feet.

  “All of this can still be coincidence,” Conrad murmured, too low for anyone but Ferdinand to hear. “There’s no proof—but evidence is stacking up for the ‘black miracle.’ You told me yourself, sir; when you rescued me from the Inquisition—if the Prince’s Men can’t be stopped any other way, we must have the counter-opera, and it must succeed.”

  Ferdinand’s expression hardened. “If you try to rehearse new material and confuse the company enough that they fail in what they could have done—”

  “If we change as little as possible, sir—the end of Act Two, the ultimo finale; maybe the Act One opening—I think we can do it.” Conrad added, “Allow me to have Signore Roberto to assist, sir.”

  He knows the material. For both operas.

  “We’re to trust Contessa Leonora’s husband?”

  If there was a way Conrad did not wish to think of his composer, that encompassed it in three words.

  Ferdinand knows that, Conrad thought. He tests both of us. In his place, I’d do the same.

  Conrad dug down into himself for honesty. “Trust him, for this, because he feels more betrayed by Leonora than—” I do. “—Any man does. And we need a composer.”

  A chink of shifting cuffs made Conrad look around.

  Roberto Capiraso rose to his feet. “I appreciate the compliment—and also the responsibility. If my guards can be unobtrusive, sire?”

  Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily appeared as struck by the other man’s composure as Conrad felt. “This will not affect my judgement of you, or the Contessa, after this is over. However, I will remember it.”

  The bearded man gave a short bow. “I put myself in your hands, sire.”

  Having assumed the Conte di Argente believed in the religion of his ancestors, Conrad now wondered whether it was that or a secular definition of honour that allowed Roberto Capiraso to sound so certain of his decisions.

  Ferdinand inclined his head. “Very well. Conrad, of necessity, Signore Capiraso’s guards will be present at your rehearsals; is that acceptable?”

  “Find men who go to the opera in their spare time, sir, and it might even be useful.”

  “I’ll tell the officer that! Meanwhile—” Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily consulted his pocket watch. He caught Conrad’s eye, and spoke in a tone of gallows humour. “—People put on an opera in—five and a half hours—every day?” />
  Conrad winced. “Thank you for that, sir.”

  “I told you they were words that would come back to haunt a man!”

  “Oh—consider me haunted.” Conrad tucked the score of Il Reconquista under his arm, made his farewells polite, and brief, and left the King’s chambers with the Conte di Argente and two foot soldiers behind him.

  They were not allowed through the indoor passage from the Palazzo to the San Carlo—it was still being cleaned in anticipation of the King’s visitors—and so walked out of the Palazzo Reale by one door, and into the backstage area of the opera house by another. Conrad took refuge in one of the San Carlo’s dusty, cramped side rooms.

  “Ink,” he suggested to the troopers. “Paper. Wine and olives. You need to watch il Conte, I suppose, but there’s another room across the corridor; we can leave the doors open.”

  Roberto sat on a rickety chair with as much dignity as he had on the King’s furniture. He held his wrists up imperiously, and the other trooper unlocked his cuffs. “Five hours… We should start!”

  Conrad leaned his weight on the table, one hand flat on each bound score. “You’ve spent six weeks telling me it’s not possible to stage a real opera in the time we have. Now you think we can alter one in a morning!”

  The dark man gave a tired, oddly warm, smile. “I don’t think it matters what I believe. If I’ve heard anything this past six weeks, it’s from our professional singers—‘How long does it take to learn a principal role? Ten days if a comedy, fifteen days if a tragedy!’ Then they boast about how they’ll also be learning the season’s second opera, at the same time they’re learning the first. And a back-up work, in case the first fails with the public. Nine hours in a day learning the part, and another four hours of rehearsal! Up at six and asleep at one in the morning! According to your singers, Conrad, they can do anything except walk on water—and Signore Velluti seems positive he could do that, too.”