4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight (5 page)

“Jean-Louis has been in the theater since he was a boy. He began as a sceneshifter in Marseille. His star was made one night when the troupe on the bill failed to appear. Marseille isn’t Paris—it’s a rough-and-tumble port full of sailors from all parts of the Mediterranean. If the show disappoints, they don’t throw rotten fruit, they start firing pistols.” She paused to chuckle. “Have you ever played there?”

I shook my head.

She narrowed her eyes. “Of course not, Marseille doesn’t possess an opera house that matches your renown.”

I didn’t like her tone, so I turned the conversation back to her husband. “What happened that night?”

“Ah, with the management cowering in the wings, my Jean-Louis raised the curtain and rushed onstage. He sang, he danced, he declaimed scenes from popular plays, doing first a man’s part, then a woman’s. The sailors were amused, and from that night forward, Jean-Louis was on the bill. Since then, he’s done a little bit of everything.”

“What was he doing in Constantinople?”

“Searching for oriental entertainers. You know the sort—rope dancers, fire walkers, fakirs who pierce their cheeks and lips with needles. But when he heard me sing at one of Vladimir’s musical soirées, he found a way to send me a message. If I could only get away from Vladimir, he would take me back to Europe and put me on the opera stage. My talent could make us both rich.”

“Then the fire was a godsend for you.”

Frowning, she tossed her book aside and crossed her arms. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. I’m happy singing and the stage suits me well. And I’m home… well, almost. Venice is only a day or two away.”

A smile broke over her face, and I couldn’t help smiling back. Here was my little sister, snatched from the grave. Our shattered family whole at long last. My heart swelled as I slid to my knees and threw my arms around her in an awkward embrace.

“Oh, Tito,” she whispered, burying her face in my shoulder. “All those terrible years… you have no idea. You won’t tell anyone who I really am, will you? Especially Jean-Louis. He has no idea that you’re my brother.”

“If you wish,” I replied, my nose full of musky French scent, my eyes full of tears.

We heard the step on the tiles at the same time. Someone had come onto the loggia. Grisella pulled back in alarm and snatched up her book. I sprang to my feet.

Carmela moved out of a deep shadow thrown by one of the massive columns that supported the ceiling and the stories above. “Maestro Weber is ready to begin,” she announced, giving us each a penetrating look.

“Thank you, Carmela.” Grisella rose, tucked her book under her arm, and collected her handkerchief and fan. She swept toward the salon doors without a backward glance.

I attempted to follow, but Carmela laid a detaining hand on my arm. “You seem very friendly with our prima donna.”

“It’s fitting to get to know your fellow singers as individuals, not just voices, don’t you think?” I cringed inwardly. Couldn’t I have come up with a less inane excuse for embracing Grisella?

Carmela snorted. “You’ve made fast work of it, even for a celebrated singer that half the women of Venice would welcome to their beds. Are you still going to claim that you’ve never met her?”

My mouth went dry and I willed myself to meet Carmela’s gray eyes without flinching. I didn’t fully understand why Grisella was so intent on hiding her true identity, but I was willing to keep her secret until I could learn more. With a broad smile I answered, “Madame Fouquet is a lady completely new to me.”

***

Karl met us with a preoccupied frown. He was in his shirtsleeves with his waistcoat hanging open. I couldn’t help noticing his bloodshot eyes and wine-soaked breath as he directed Carmela and me to take a seat in a ring of sofas and chairs around the harpsichord.

“We’ll begin with Gabrielle and Emilio,” he said, his German accent seeming even heavier than last night. “The duet from Act Three that we worked on yesterday. But take careful note, Carmela, your aria follows.”

A sunny corner of the vast cream and gilt salon had been given over to music. A fresco of cherubs bearing mandolins and garlands of flowers made a fitting background for a handsome harpsichord in a richly carved case. Potted palms and vases of end-of-season rose cuttings created the atmosphere of a garden pavilion much more conducive to singing than a dusty rehearsal hall. I could easily become accustomed to this.

At one side of the harpsichord, the Gecco brothers were coaxing their instruments into proper tune. Mario notched his violin under his chin and drew his bow across the A string, which was just enough off pitch to set my teeth on edge. After tightening the peg, he played a snippet of a popular tune. Lucca’s violoncello echoed him in lower tones.

Karl handed us our scores for the day’s rehearsal, assured me that I would catch up in no time, then settled himself at the keyboard. He took a deep breath; on exhalation, his shoulders sank away from his ears and he began to smile like a man reaching home after a long journey.

Grisella and Emilio were already studying their parts. I hoped their scores were neater than mine. My paper held staves of tilting, ragged notes looking as if they had been set down at breakneck speed. When I withdrew my thumb, it was smudged.

Leaning close, I whispered to Carmela, “I can’t believe it—our maestro wrote these out this morning. He must have been up for hours. Why in Heaven’s name didn’t he have his original manuscript copied into parts before he came to the villa?”

Touching the satin ribbon that circled her throat, she threw a nervous glance toward Karl and shook her head.

Romeo was not so prudent. He’d been leaning against a nearby pillar, unashamedly listening. He lumbered over and threw himself on a delicate chair that responded with an ominous creak. “For the same reason he assumed that the man who got his brains bashed in came to steal his music.” Romeo winked and circled his ear with a forefinger. “Our maestro is a genius at composition, but a few tiles seem to have slid off the roof, if you catch my meaning.”

“He actually believes a copyist would dare publish a composer’s score under his own name?” I was astounded. In our tight-knit world of music, such a crime would be swiftly discovered and that copyist would never work again.

Romeo shrugged. He started to elaborate, but changed course when Karl sent him a glare from the keyboard. The basso jerked his chin toward Emilio. “Poor fellow. You’ve made him so nervous, it’ll be a wonder if he can get through the song.”

Emilio did appear ill at ease. Grisella stood by the harpsichord, idly twisting a lock of hair as she waited. But Emilio couldn’t seem to stand still, and his complexion resembled the flesh of a peeled potato.

“What’s all that about?” I asked Romeo in a whisper. “I’m not doing a thing.”

“You don’t have to,” he answered in his deep, carrying voice. “Just knowing that everyone will soon compare his voice to yours is enough to make Emilio sweat.”

Looking alarmed at hearing his name mentioned, my fellow castrato paled even more. I sent him a nod, encouragingly, I hoped.

“All right, we go?” Karl raised his right hand high, his first two fingers ready to mark the tempo.

Emilio muttered an indistinguishable reply, chin on his chest.

The composer’s arm sank. “I know we’ve all had a difficult night, but it is time to put that unpleasantness aside. You are all professionals, so give me professional work.”

“Of course, Maestro.” Grisella assumed an expression she had inherited from our father, a smile at once virtuous and deprecating to those around her. She then directed a nod toward the entrance, and I turned to see Jean-Louis reply with a tight-lipped grimace. The Frenchman was dressed in a suit tailored to fit his frame like a second skin. He crossed the salon with a courtier’s glide and settled in a wing chair with a stack of news-gazettes.

“Emilio?” The composer’s question held a note of impatience.

The castrato steadied himself and managed a gracious nod.

“Good, we go. One, two, three—” Karl introduced a swaying meter of three-quarter time. Over the strings and the
continuo
provided by the harpsichord, Grisella’s voice took flight like a falcon rising on sleek wings.

All the worries my sister had caused us over the years had made me forget what a truly fine singer she was. Her clear soprano was capable of the most elegant trills and divisions, but that was technique. Above the schooling she’d had as a girl, her singing flowed with a loveliness born of pure instinct.

I sat forward with my elbows on my knees, drinking it all in and thinking back to the days right before she had disappeared from our lives. Father often set her to vocalizing scales at the battered harpsichord in our sitting room. Under his direction, she sang endless rounds of ascending and descending notes, striving to link them like a string of perfectly matched glass beads. But once her stern taskmaster was out of earshot, she would launch into lilting songs she had heard only from the gondoliers on the canal. She sang them by ear with joyous gusto, never missing a note. I couldn’t have done as well at thirteen, even with my
conservatorio
training.

Karl appeared as delighted as I was. Grisella seemed particularly sensitive to the directions he gave with his right hand while he played the
continuo
with his left. A hint of Karl’s flattened palm and she extended her note; a precise wiggle of his fingers and she adjusted her phrasing accordingly. They made an excellent team: a skilled director and a talented soprano.

Glancing around to see what Jean-Louis made of Grisella’s performance, I was surprised to see his beaked nose buried in a news-sheet. He must be so accustomed to her singing that it made little impression.

Now it was Emilio’s entrance, and the castrato didn’t fare so well. Early on, he snatched a breath in the wrong place that threw him off tempo for several measures.

Karl abruptly stopped playing and the Gecco brothers followed suit. “You know where you went wrong,” the maestro observed in a level tone.

Emilio nodded, cheeks flushing.

“That’s all right. Let’s have it again.” Karl sounded a chord and Emilio returned to the beginning. Better this time, I thought. With proper breathing, Emilio’s small mouth was able to produce tones of mellow, bell-like timbre. Just the thing for his role of Andronicus, the lovesick prince.

He and Grisella were blending their voices in an energetic cadenza when Octavia joined us. She wore a loosely draped morning gown of screaming yellow dotted with red bouquets. If any of our eyes were still bleary from sleep, they were jolted to full wakefulness by one glimpse of our hostess.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” she called gaily as she crossed to a settee near the open loggia doors. “I’ll listen while I work on my stitching over here in the good light. I promise to stay quiet as a mouse.”

Nita followed her mistress, bearing a floor stand topped with an oval tapestry frame. Rehearsal continued over Octavia’s increasingly strident commands: “Set it here. No, not there, you fool. I’ll be too warm. Put it over here. No, this is the spot to catch the breeze—you must move the settee.”

The duet concluded on a subdued note. Before dismissing Grisella and Emilio, Karl mumbled a few obvious corrections. I expected him to mention several others, but something had happened to the composer. As Carmela took her place, Karl leafed through his score distractedly. The adroit master of the company was once more the moody artiste.

At least Carmela was in good voice, and seasoned enough to handle her aria without much direction from Karl. Her bold, vivid soprano was the perfect instrument to convey the frustrations of Irene, the princess of Trebizond who had been callously rejected by Tamerlano. She also showed herself an accomplished actress with artful expressions and sweeping gestures that could have given a deaf man the sense of her words. I rubbed my chin thoughtfully; holding my own would not be easy when I shared the stage with Carmela.

Several times I glanced across the salon toward our hostess. Octavia plied her needle with an air of rampant gentility, but her promise to imitate the house mouse didn’t last long. The concluding note of the aria had barely faded when she popped off the settee.

Octavia’s heels tapped a staccato beat across the floor. “Karl, my lamb, you know I don’t like to interfere, but must Signora Costa be so loud?”

The composer cleared his throat. “It’s an impassioned aria, expressing the anger of a wronged woman.”

“Yes, but for female singers, the common vogue favors more… restraint. The public wants their lovely nightingales to chirp, not shriek. Don’t you agree?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Charm, Karl, feminine grace.”

The composer steeled himself like a schoolboy expecting to be boxed on the ear. “Carmela is delivering the aria exactly as I asked.”

“Really, now. I understand Venetian audiences just a bit better than you. Vincenzo keeps a box at both the Teatro San Marco and the San Moise. I’ve had my eye on the nobility for years, and I know what will win their approval.”

“
Il Gran Tamerlano
is not just for Venice. It will open there, to be sure, but soon it will play in London and Paris. They expect fire from all Italian singers, men or women.”

Octavia tapped a furious toe. “London and Paris are nothing to me. I’m mounting this opera for Venice’s benefit. Above all, I’m lending my name to it. Think how humiliated I’ll be if people say Signora Dolfini’s soprano trumpets like an elephant and spreads her jaws as wide as an Egyptian crocodile.”

Carmela had been following this exchange with one hand on the rim of the harpsichord. Octavia’s comparison to wild beasts propelled her away from the instrument. “I’ll have you know that my singing has been praised from Lisbon to St. Petersburg.”

“Perhaps by moonstruck students or rabble who know no better,” Octavia snapped.

“By the Czarina, herself. I was a favorite at her court for months. When I left Russia last spring, Anna Ivanova presented me with a pair of pearl-studded garters and a purse full of rubles.”