The Black Opera (103 page)

“Oh, it's genuine. So is the resistance to it. That's why I want a hard-headed man to break the rock-face for me.” Ferdinand gave him a very direct look. “I'll smooth feathers and suggest compromises in your wake—and if my compromises happen to tend more towards your views than theirs, well, they'll think themselves lucky to escape
every
tenet of atheistical heresy, won't they?”

Conrad couldn't quite make up his mind between a smile and a scowl. By Ferdinand's entertained look, this must be apparent.

“I'm relieved,” Conrad said, his tumultuous thoughts quietening.

Ferdinand raised a brow. “Relieved?”

“I was beginning to worry that you were the dangerous one—likeable, rational-minded, and Christian. Forgive me, but, you're the enemy. Not Canon Viscardo, or—” Conrad closed his mouth on the name
Nora
. “—Or the Prince's Men. I'm relieved that your appetite for science is genuine, sir. And, if you'll excuse me being outspoken, I'm willing to bet that for every man you convince to be religious, there's be two that your Institute turns into atheists.”

There was a light in Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily's eye. “Conrad, do you really want to talk yourself out of a job?”

Conrad smoothly matched him. “I'll just hope that's a hypothetical question, sir.”

The King snorted.

“Well, I hope I shall prove a sufficiently convincing enemy, Corrado. You may as well know that I don't give up hope of bringing even
you
to an awareness of the spiritual side of life… I foresee interesting moments ahead with our Institute. Although, remember, I don't intend it to occupy all your time; you will still have librettos to write—”

A lackey interrupted at that point.

Conrad sat in a quiet daze while the King sent out several orders. Something that was closer to exaltation than happiness burned in his breast.

Oh God!
—He used the phrase mentally without shame, referring to that
emergent voice on the Campi Ardenti that had proclaimed itself no god at all.

Oh, God, I'm free of all my debts!

No more delaying on paying the rent each month, until another tiny fee creeps in from the local opera board. No more fulsome apologies and sickening politeness, hoping that will gain me a day or two's grace. No more snatching up every piece of work that comes my way—no matter that there aren't enough hours in the day—because I daren't let any work go by.

A sinecure
, he said.

If it's sizeable, I'm going to buy a mansion, and Paolo and Tullio will never be without a place to live.

If it's more than sizeable, I'll be buying mother a cottage—and listening to her whine that it's not as nice as the house “dear Zio Baltazar” loans her.

And if my pay is no more than reasonable—I'm going to live the way I do now, but without waking up at three in the morning in a cold sweat.

“Conrad?”

Conrad shook himself out of his daydream. “I was thinking, sire—the
‘Institut Campi Ardenti'?”

“That seems fitting. Yes.”

Ferdinand rested his arms on the arms of the gilded chair, the diamond at his neck catching scintillating light. His expression lost its liveliness. A gravity of authority settled on him.

“Now, we come to the judgements. Conrad. Count Argente. You are two of the three most centrally concerned with this. The third will be joining us shortly. Conrad, you're here primarily as witness and advisor—you saw much at first hand that I only have through reports. If you hear anything that sounds mistaken or incomplete, you are to tell me.”

“Yes.” His breath came short.
If Roberto's here with me, then the third must—must be!—be her…

Some part of himself wanted to put off the hour in which he must see her.

He asked, almost randomly, “What's been decided about the other Prince's Men?”

“Exile.” Ferdinand shook his head. “If I send them to execution, I shall only have dozens more of their agents flooding over the borders. I'm sending them back to their countries of origin, except when they're Sicilian; those I merely intend to put a considerable distance over the border. Let the Prince's Men sort out their own confusion. They have massive losses in the Council of the North—our friend in the north is more ruthless than I am in putting down anarchy. With their erroneous conception of ‘the Prince' known, I suspect they'll be just another secret society that withers away once the first fanatics are gone.”

Ferdinand's round face, that could be utterly bland, altered very slightly, but displayed both pain and betrayal.

“Enrico Mantenucci is dead—”

Conrad's comment froze in his throat, recalling both the corpse in the Flavian Amphitheatre, and the trusted colleague in the map room of the Palazzo Reale.
What is there that can be said?

“—It only remains to deal with the other leaders of the Prince's Men here.” Ferdinand pushed his gilt chair back. Standing, he restlessly paced the great chamber.

Conrad caught a creak from the invalid-chair as Roberto Capiraso shifted his weight. The bearded man gave no other sign of tension.

“Signore Conte…” Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily halted, close to his huge desk. “You conspired in a plot that would have had the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies destroyed. You turned your coat, and by that betrayal helped the process that saved us. Both these things for the same reason.”

Ferdinand rested his fists on the green leather, and leaned forward. He fixed a long weighing stare on Roberto Conte di Argente.

“You are easily dealt with.”

The Count drew himself up, as much as a sitting man can. “Sire.”

Ferdinand laid his hand on a pile of papers heavy with wax seals.

“I'm taking over the estates belonging to Argente. Those here in the Sicilies. Those in Spain. The revenues they bring in will come direct to the Treasury of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. So also will the profits from your financial dealings. I confiscate any and all other properties you own: palazzos, farms, lesser properties in towns. Also horses, carriages, jewels, heirlooms, inheritances. Anything other than minor personal belongings I appropriate to the Crown, signore.—You may keep the title.”

Roberto Capiraso stared, thunderstruck.

Lightly, maliciously, Ferdinand added, “There's an argument as to whether the leisure of being a gentleman, or the necessities of poverty, better bring out the talent in an artist. I imagine as a composer you'll be able to settle that argument in my mind.”

Roberto's expression moved from bemused to bewildered.

Conrad wanted to put a word in, and could not imagine what it might be.

He's guilty, guilty of everything, but… But
.

Roberto said, “It is not to be prison, then?”

“That would be a waste.” Ferdinand's blue eyes had a cold glitter to them. They relented, a very little, as he added, “You've composed for the San Carlo; I dare say other houses will give you a hearing just because of that.”

Moved by something closer to compassion than pity, Conrad put in bluntly, “I can write the book.—If I'm still wanted as a librettist, when rumour says I'm responsible for the destruction of two theatres.”

“Three! If we count the Flavian Amphitheatre…” Ferdinand smiled lightly. “All of that will have been subsumed in what happened to Naples itself, Corrado; you're a hero. And you can always write for me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Justice is important.” The King's gaze swept over the Conte di Argente once more, as if he weighed whether the penalty that reduced the man to absolute poverty were sufficient. “Despite his title and sex, the Conte di Argente was not the leader of the Prince's Men in the Two Sicilies. And so we come to the instigator of this thing: the woman Leonora.”

Ferdinand rang a small gold bell on his desk. Soldiers of the royal regiment entered. Conrad automatically rose to his feet.

The Contessa di Argente was hidden among the tall uniformed men, being a few inches shorter.

Their lieutenant saluted and left, with his men. Conrad saw her as servants took her bonnet, parasol, and gloves.

She dropped a curtsey, briefly enough that it did not seem like either sycophancy or insolence. “Sire.”

She is unchanged
.

Conrad remained standing, caught in everything about her. The reflected sunlight from the walls called out a bloom in her skin. Blue irises, so dark in the shade as to be purple, were echoed by the lilac shadows in her eye sockets and temples. Thick ash-brown hair done up in a loose knot, as the goddess Athena might have worn it in Classical sculpture… A white muslin dress, with a blue high-waisted
tunic à l'antique
over it—the creases in the fabric made Conrad realise this was the same one she had worn on the day he parted from her, in the Argente house in Naples; clearly saved for any interview she might be granted with the King.

He watched her profile. She would not turn to look at him.

She is wholly changed
.

He couldn't identify anything that would make him feel that, but he did.

Ferdinand gestured to Conrad to sit down again.

There was no chair for Leonora.

She stood with the perfect stillness of the Returned Dead, not breathing or blinking.

Conrad felt trapped in that same frozen lack of motion. The dead woman fixed her gaze on the King, looking neither at her husband nor Conrad.

“Leonora Capiraso—that is—” Ferdinand turned over one of the papers on his desk clearly unnerved for a moment. “—You are widely known as Leonora Capiraso, Contessa di Argente, but this is a courtesy title, your marriage to the Count having lapsed on your—first—death.”

Conrad realised he must have made some protesting noise.

Ferdinand gave him a direct look. “The Church authorities have agreed and given their judgement. Marriage only lasts until death.
‘For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage
.'”

Conrad's heart beat so hard that it felt as if it rose in his throat and choked him.

Leonora's husky, still-strained voice added, “Matthew, chapter twenty-two, verse thirty, sire.”

“And that will be your Church orphanage upbringing…” The King of the Two Sicilies turned over a page upon which not much was written. “Leonora D'Arienzo, in Venice; Nora Sposito, in Castelveneto.”

“That's the earliest name I recall, sire.”

Conrad found himself taken back to barely-lit rooms, as dawn lightened to a cold grey, and Nora woke from nightmares. Whispered, wept confidences afterwards…
Call it bad blood and be done
, she had snarled. He couldn't help contrast that fire and misery with her current polite meekness.

“If there's a family who should take responsibility for you,” Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily said frankly, “I can't find it. Very well. It's irregular, not having a father or uncle or brother here, but needs must. Nora Sposito… You understand that you are here to hear your judgement?”

Conrad's jaw ached. He made himself breathe. He watched her expression—impossible to read.

“May I be heard, first?” There was nothing conciliatory in her tone.

Roberto Capiraso made a cut-off movement, as if he would have warned or stopped her.

I think if he and I were not present, Ferdinand would instantly order her out of here in chains.

“Speak.”

Without asking leave, Leonora walked to the window, gazed out at the sea, and turned and walked back; exactly as a man would pace if he needed to think something out.

“I was a high-ranking member of the European inner circle of the Prince's Men. I still am a Prince's Man. Even having seen what the Prince of this World
is
…”

Ferdinand cut Roberto's stuttered exclamation off with one glance.

“I did what I was supposed to do.”

Leonora turned, her hands a little out from her sides, as if she presented herself for the King's examination.

“But I wasn't supposed to come back twice! I wasn't supposed to rescue the enemies of the Prince's Men. I wasn't supposed to find the idea of the death of the traitor Roberto Conte di Argente unbearable—never mind the death of an unimportant librettist. I wasn't supposed to abandon my post—even though everything we were doing had just been proved an utter failure!—so that I could try to rescue the men I love.”

She and Ferdinand looked at each other as if they crossed swords. Her voice didn't waver.

Conrad guessed the King had attended the boards at which she was questioned, had heard her in front of examiners and advocates, without ever knowing what it was like to have her—a woman, born a commoner—speak to him as an equal.

Conrad hid in his heart that she had said
men I love
.

Ferdinand made a sign for her to continue.