The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  His eyes were dark and stunned.

  “She’s dead.” Roberto Capiraso stared at the cleft through ash rising now that the opera miracle lapsed. “No one could survive—not even Nora…”

  “The Dead don’t come back a second time. Not even her.” Conrad tried to keep his voice level. It betrayed him, cracking on the last word.

  A bead of light glinted on Roberto’s face. Conrad saw water overflow, suddenly, and cut lines in the dirt on the man’s cheeks.

  The Count reached out and wrapped his square-fingered hand around Conrad’s arm. Conrad gripped Roberto’s shoulder.

  He felt himself entirely understood: met and matched in searing grief.

  Conrad coughed, inhaling sulphurous gases. Recovering, he lifted his head, squinting around. There are the living, as well as the twice dead.

  “Tullio! Paolo!”

  Two dark figures emerged from the sulphurous steam. Tullio thumped down beside him. “There you—”

  “He’s hurt. Check him. Where’s Paolo?”

  “Here!”

  Hidden behind Tullio’s bulk, Conrad realised. The ex-sergeant began gently to feel Roberto’s body for injuries—first the skull, then the trunk, then the limbs. Paolo made her own tactile examination of Conrad.

  “Nora’s dead!” Conrad blurted out. He buttoned his waistcoat with shaking fingers, and couldn’t look his sister in the face.

  I still have no idea if she thinks I’m a fool—was a fool!—for loving Nora.

  Paolo stared over at the shaking crevasse, face whitish-yellow under the coating of dust. “I saw someone—That was—Was that her? Oh, Corrado—!”

  A cone of ash emerged on the lip of the chasm, growing visibly.

  “We have to leave!” Wide-eyed, she caught Conrad by his torn shirt-sleeve. “Or we’ll die too!”

  Tullio knelt back from efficiently removing one of the Count’s army boots, and slitting the uniform trousers to the knee with his pocket folding razor. “We got a problem.”

  A raised bump low down on Roberto’s exposed shin did not break the skin, Conrad saw, but it was already swelling.

  “Fracture,” Tullio assessed. “Other leg hurts him—”

  Roberto Capiraso’s head went back at the touch. Conrad saw the muscles at the hinge of his jaw knot.

  “—But I don’t think it’s a break. Likely a crack partway through the bone. Corrado, he can’t walk on either of ’em.”

  Conrad managed to meet Roberto’s desolate look.

  Neither of us care about this, not at this moment, but—

  “Did the pillars fall on you?” Conrad asked. “One cracked against me.”

  It would have been a glancing blow, or the man’s legs would both be crushed. Along with the rest of him. Conrad swore.

  “Leave me.”

  The tone was uncompromisingly practical. Conrad did not have to look closely to perceive Roberto thought it a providential excuse.

  He wants to die.

  How ironic is it that I can’t follow her because I have to help my rival?

  And the others, the practical part of his mind emerged to say. Paolo, Tullio, JohnJack, Sandrine, Ferdinand; the rest.

  He let the practical mind take over, splitting his emotions away with practised ease, like fissuring a rock. Maida, again. A battle is no place for complex passions. For grief over the dead.

  That comes later.

  There are others to be got out of this. And after—well, that will be my decision.

  He rested his hand on Paolo’s shoulder, on her man’s coat. “You and Tullio splint his legs. I don’t care what you use. I’ll see who else of us is alive.”

  Paolo’s red-rimmed eyes held an oddly-aged understanding and gratitude.

  Conrad turned away, to the clouds of yellow gases that swirled, parting to show the tiers of seating, and closing in again. He sheltered his mouth with his hands and called, broke down coughing, and called out again.

  Velluti staggered out of the covering murk, supported by Sandrine and Spinelli. The castrato failed to form words. He bled from the corners of his mouth.

  Conrad found himself torn between the memory of Velluti matching Leonora in the stretta, bringing the sextet up to overcome the solo soprano voice, and the knowledge that something irreplaceable had likely been destroyed.

  He took refuge in practicality.

  “Sandrine, JohnJack, find help for him. Collect as many people as you can. See who’s missing. I’ll talk to Ferdinand. No—” He held up a hand as they protested. “—We have to evacuate the Amphitheatre. Now. It’s too dangerous to run around like chickens with the fox in the hen-house!”

  JohnJack wrapped one hand around Sandrine’s arm. “We’ll call the roll.”

  A handful of men appeared out of ash and gases. Conrad shouldered forward to one whose stance he recognised. Uniform and hair grey with ash, but unmistakably Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily.

  “Corrado!” The King’s expression was sheer military exhilaration. “Good! I have a refugee column; join your people to it—What?”

  “Sire!” One of Alvarez’s corporals interrupted, skidding to a halt. “Scout report from the top of the arena. More of the Burning Fields is visible. They report big eruptions from Monte Nuovo and Solfatara. Lots of small lava floods everywhere. The Campi Flegrei can be crossed to the west, at the moment, but not east towards Posillipo and Naples.”

  The corporal turned to a man Conrad recognised, with surprise, as Fabrizio Alvarez, much the worse for wear but evidently rescued from il Principe.

  “Captain says, he thinks you ought to see it for yourself, sir.”

  Colonel Alvarez saluted his king and departed in the soldier’s wake at a ground-covering trot.

  Ferdinand rubbed at his chin, apparently unaware that he smeared pumice and ash across himself as he did. “The Burning Grounds are breaking up, I think. We’ll be lucky to get our people out.”

  Conrad blotted out everything but the current emergency from his thoughts. “Land or sea?”

  Ferdinand’s blue eyes showed red around the rims, and at the corners. He stood foursquare, feet placed apart on the shaking earth.

  “We’ll go out the way we came in, where the top tier of seats is level with the ground outside. What concerns me is how many injured men I have.”

  “I have two who can’t walk,” Conrad supplied. “There may be more to come.”

  “Get your able-bodied to move them. We’re leaving as fast we can. If we lose contact, make for Pozzuoli and the Apollon.”

  “Sire.” Conrad touched his forehead in salute, automatically Lieutenant Scalese, Cacciatore a Cavallo.

  He turned away as the King took other scout reports—and had a moment of complete blankness.

  I forgot her!

  Hot shame fought with practical survival:

  I have to forget her now.

  He staggered back across the uncertain earth. A larger group clustered around Tullio Rossi, in the ragged remains of costume or evening dress. Two Kings’ riflemen appeared by Velluti, crossed wrists to make a cradle and scooped him up, heading for the southern tiers of steps.

  “Go with him.” Conrad put his hand on JohnJack’s shoulder, giving him a push. “You too, Brigida, Sandrine, quickly!”

  The basso called his name. Conrad waved a hand without looking back. “I’ll be there! Go!”

  He made his way cautiously out over the arena floor, that sloped now. Red light flickered through the dust storm. The black ash-cone spurting from the earthquake-cleft, no larger than a loaf of bread at its birth, now stood waist-high to a man.

  Nora. Leonora!

  Tullio and Isaura moved almost as mirror images of one another, torn shirt-sleeves and cravats binding Roberto Capiraso’s legs to a makeshift wooden splint. They had lashed both legs together with a musket between, the barrel and stock long enough to span from foot to pelvis, wood and steel a strong enough support.

  Tullio stripped off coat and shirt, put his coat back on, and bit
at the linen to tear it. Paolo added her neck-stock as a last binding over the others. The Count’s legs resembled an Aegyptian mummy. She stood.

  She’s shaking, Conrad realised.

  Paolo didn’t seem to notice it. She said, “He’ll live if we can get him out of here before the broken bone cuts an artery.”

  Conrad found himself curtly realistic. “He has more chance of burning than bleeding. Are we set to go?”

  Sandrine strode up in some luckless male’s boots. A dozen of the King’s riflemen followed, with chorus singers, musicians, and the other refugees from the San Carlo.

  Several stray Prince’s Men trailed after the riflemen, their hands tied. At Sandrine’s sharp command, they formed a column, escorting the staggering men and women through the smoke and gas, and on up the aisle towards the high exits on the southern side.

  “Well?” Tullio demanded. “I take it this muck in here is still better than what’s outside?”

  Conrad flicked a glanced at the exit stairs, and how many flights there were up to the amphitheatre’s north-western rim. He didn’t soften it.

  “Out that way, then try to keep everybody together while we find Pozzuoli. Assuming the roads aren’t blocked—make for the Apollon before the Burning Fields go sky high. It may get rough at sea, but there’s worse to come on land.”

  “Dio!” Tullio’s expression showed what he thought of that.

  Gaps in the swirling sulphurous murk let Conrad see the King’s column moving up the steps, towards the rim of the Amphitheatre. Ferdinand himself loomed out of the smoke.

  He beckoned Conrad without breaking stride.

  “Corrado—if it means saving the able-bodied, we will leave the wounded. But not until it’s absolutely necessary. Are your people ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Count stirred. Conrad knelt, instantly, and gripped Roberto’s shoulders firmly. Because he’ll try to run, and make a cripple of himself!

  “Leonora.” Roberto’s voice grated, acid with grief and disappointment.

  Conrad stated it brutally and without tact. “It’s true. We both saw it. She’s dead.”

  The Conte di Argente made to move, and slumped. Conrad eyed the dirty bandages that wound him from hip to foot.

  Self-evidently he can’t stand on his own. So—

  Conrad gestured for Tullio to help pull the man up. Tullio’s powerful shoulder under Roberto’s armpit heaved the Count upright so that his feet barely touched the earth.

  Conrad caught Roberto’s right arm and pulled it sharply forward. At the same moment he ducked his own shoulder under the other man’s lower ribs and into his stomach, and pulled Roberto’s arm over his shoulder. He braced, breathing hard. Tullio supported him from one side, Paolo from the other, and he lifted.

  An in-breath made him choke. “Che cazzo!”

  He stood with the man’s body balanced over his shoulders, Roberto’s head resting down his back, and splinted legs hanging over Conrad’s chest and belly.

  For a minute he thought they would both fall.

  He got his feet braced squarely apart, and adjusted to the twelve stone deadweight draped warm and limp over him. He steadied the bound legs with his hand. One thrash and we’ll both be on the dirt—!

  The other man hung slumped over his shoulder and back.

  Is that the weight of the splints on his injuries?

  “Has he fainted?” Conrad grunted.

  “—Syphilitic son of a cock-sucking whore—!”

  Tullio lifted his voice over Il Superbo’s flow of raw insults. “Uh, I don’t think so, padrone…”

  Isaura made a small snorting noise, part laughter and part distress.

  Roberto Capiraso subsided into grunts of suppressed pain.

  Might be better to let him curse.

  His sister glanced at Tullio. Something in her expression brought another face to Conrad: pale and gamin, under clouds of soft brown hair.

  Water washes the volcanic particles from the eyes. Water is good. And tears are water, aren’t they?

  It took three of them to carry the wounded man up the Amphitheatre steps to the earth outside. Conrad shared the weight awkwardly with Tullio—the composer unconscious, now—and they eased him over the lip of the excavation.

  Tullio grunted, reaching down, and lifted up first Sandrine and then Paolo, his hands encircling their waists, as if neither of them weighed more than a bale of straw.

  Wild wind thrashed. A harder tremor shook the ground. It was easier to see, outside the amphitheatre, but more difficult to walk. Conrad took the Conte di Argente up over his shoulder again. Rocks and ash-camouflaged holes caught at his feet. Thin whips of scrub slashed his face. Tullio grabbed his elbow as he almost came down. He hit Roberto’s legs with a flailing hand, and the Count swore.

  “You can’t carry me!” Roberto’s voice protested thickly, close to his ear.

  “I can drop you, if you’d rather!”

  All his effort went into supporting the man; he had none to spare for politeness. Conrad tasted grit in his mouth, hauling in a lungful of air. He let Tullio steady him, made sure he had the Count’s body securely over his shoulders, and a tight grip on the man’s arm and splinted legs.

  The air above was dark as snow on a midwinter afternoon.

  The pathway down towards Pozzuoli passed in and out of vision, yellow-tinged clouds adding to the sleeting ash. Conrad did not think of the ship waiting, in the harbour. He plodded on, aware he must be ahead of two-thirds of the column, conscious only of grey ash caking every bush and track, the wheeze of his breathing, and splinter-pains stabbing at his chest.

  Roberto’s voice sounded strained, weakened, but full of malice.

  “I’ve seen Christ painted like this, carrying the one sheep that was lost back to the flock. Is this a newly-discovered Christian feeling in you, to rescue your fellow man?”

  “Purely altruistic—!” Conrad just stopped himself from adding God knows why! He winced, pulled muscles catching him. “Read Plato—Socrates—!”

  “A few more minutes and we can ask them in person!”

  The man’s heavy weight shifted; evidently he was trying to look around at the rest of the straggling column of soldiers and operatic refugees.

  “Stay still, che stronzo!”

  “Put me down! I can walk.”

  “Of course you can,” Tullio murmured. He strode beside Conrad, his right hand gripping Paolo’s left. “…You got a clean break above the left foot. You want to shove it out of kilter and let bone splinters slash up the muscle, you go right ahead and put your weight on it.”

  Conrad felt the man’s breath increase, where he lay prone over Conrad’s shoulder.

  “I don’t need to be carried!”

  “Not sure what the other leg’s got.” Remorselessly cheerful, Tullio continued. “Cracked the bone, I think; it’s swollen all to hell. You can go running around on that, too, if you want. Then you can see the rest of your life from a wheeled invalid-chair.”

  Tension rolled through the composer’s muscles; Conrad could feel it where the man sprawled helplessly over his shoulders.

  “Leave it,” Conrad ordered sharply.

  He’d rather be dumped here for the short time it will take him to die.

  And so would I.

  He wondered briefly if either Tullio or Paolo realised it—and almost missed his footing again.

  Scheisse! I have to concentrate!

  The earth juddered.

  The concentration needed excluded all else but moving one plodding foot in front of the other. Rocks littered the heathland. Fireballs shot across the darkening sky: rocks hit scrub and it burst into flames. Lightning cracked, more deafening than thunder.

  The shouts of Ferdinand’s troopers, rifles at the ready now, drowned out the singers, and one or other of the musicians who would not be parted from his instrument case. Conrad staggered sideways to avoid the roped line of prisoners.

  It isn’t forgiveness.

&
nbsp; If I didn’t have to do this—I would have to think.

  I would disbelieve that she’s gone, even though I saw her die in front of me, because how can it be true?

  The knowledge of other griefs and losses doesn’t help. Conrad knows from war-time, and from when the plague is loose, that the shock of the news itself can mute the pain. Temporarily disconnect the grinding unhappiness that eventually sends other people away, leaving one waiting for the grief to pass.

  And only Roberto can understand that this time it won’t.

  The wide track to Pozzuoli was a river-bed of rocks. The uncertain footing, and the unconscious man’s balance across his shoulders, took all Conrad’s attention.

  He forgot, for long enough to take three easy breaths.

  It crashed back down on him.

  She’s gone. I saw her die.

  A shudder went through his belly, and he found his mind disconnected from the situation, coolly turning over ideas. Whatever it is the Returned Dead do, they don’t do it when so thoroughly destroyed, as by fire. But how long did it take for the lava to kill her? The same as for a living human, or—longer?

  Roberto Capiraso’s body stirred, over his shoulders. The injured man was not unconscious, Conrad realised. He recognised the shuddering breath, kept under iron control.

  O Dio! I hate her for dying!

  Grief and guilt took him between iron jaws. The unbearable dull agony of bereavement stretched ahead—days and years of nothing. Only the glance at a street corner, heart stopping because a chance woman looks like her. The hallucination of knowing he has just heard her voice, when there’s no one there. And when all strength is expended just to get through a week, a month—knowing it’s all to do again. And again. And again.

  Rising tones of panic roused him.

  Paolo slid ahead, through the head of the column of refugees. Conrad slowed his trudging pace, watching Paolo move into the mob.

  A minute or two later, she reappeared.

  She nodded towards Roberto Capiraso. “You might want to put him down.”

  The heavy weight had settled onto his body, compressing muscle and spine, tension and lung.

  “If I put him down I may not pick him up again. What is it?”