The Black Opera (34 page)

“Corradino.” Her voice was breathier than he recalled. “You don't flinch away?”

“Why should I? I always loved your warmth in my bed.” He realised what he had said to a married woman just as she wrinkled up her nose, and smothered a giggle.

“Don't say that in front of Roberto.” She sounded unaccountably cheerful.

Conrad let his other hand be about delicately smoothing her hair back behind her ears. The ash-brown curls were wonderfully soft and sleek.

“I can't help being glad you don't run away from me.” She placed her fingers lightly against his cheek. “Some people think I ought to be a thing of horror—rotten flesh, raw-head and bloody-bones, children's nightmares. I can see in their eyes that some think I am. That this—”

Leonora shrugged, inviting his inspection.

“—is all illusion, and that underneath everything is grave-cold and mossgreen. But it's no illusion. This is how I came back.”

Conrad took both her hot hands in his own. “I suppose everybody asks—but I can't help asking, too. Came back from what?”

The hope of getting an eyewitness answer robbed him of any more speech.

Her expression changed from affection to apology. “The Mind of God; isn't that what the Church teaches us? But I—don't truly remember anything—I wasn't
there
—I have no answers. You are not the first to ask.”

She massaged her right hand with her left, and Conrad realised she had withdrawn from his grasp. Her face was sad and knowing. There was no accusation in her expression, but guilt tore through Conrad.

She's used to everybody rejecting her; no wonder she doesn't go out in public!

He took her by the shoulders. “It doesn't make any difference to me!”

The maid's cry and a clatter of footsteps on the wooden stairs only gave enough warning for him to let her go, and step back.

Leonora snatched up her hat and gloves, clutching them to her, plumes trailing.

The door slammed open and Roberto Capiraso strode through it, moving far too fast for the size of the small cell.

“Madam wife.” His voice grated.

Conrad spoke at the same time as Leonora:

“Argente—”

“Roberto—”

“I recognised your carriage outside. This is not where I expected to find you!” The Conte di Argente over-rode all other voices, including the guard's outside the cell. “Come out, madam wife!”

Conrad, in shock, thought,
Strange how often real life mirrors the stage
. Roberto Capiraso's face flushed red, the man blustering like a stage baritone protesting against his wife's betrayal of his honour.

Nora's voice cut in, not at all loud. Icy and intense. “Don't make a fool of both of us! I have every right to visit the librettist of your opera. My experience in the world of opera itself is a help—”

Roberto Capiraso's hand closed over her wrist. It had none of the gentleness of Conrad's remorseless investigation. It cut her voice off as cleanly as if he had grabbed her throat.

Her shock at the red indentations of his fingers made Conrad think she was not used to being manhandled like this. That sent a spark of joy through his belly—
At least she isn't beaten by him!
—which flashed into anger.

“You have no right to hurt her, Argente!”

“Oh, I apologise, is that
your
privilege?”

Roberto Capiraso took advantage Conrad's stunned silence to reach down with his free hand, and snatch the pages off the table.

“I'll set these.” He nodded curtly to Conrad. “Unfortunately, my wife and I are too busy to pay social calls at the moment.”

Before Conrad could step forward, the Count caught hold of the open door, pushed his wife unceremoniously through it, and, as he followed, pulled it sharply closed behind him.

“Cazzo!
Wait!
Nora!”

The click as the lock's wards engaged sounded an instant before Conrad's fists crashed down and hit the wood.

Three hours later Paolo arrived with the news that the royal yacht
Roberto Guiscardo
was sighted, and expected to dock back in Naples within the hour.

T
he King placed the long, lawyer-written document on the table, gazing up mildly at the others present in one of his private chambers.

“This is agreed, then, gentlemen?”

Conrad blinked. A night of glacially-slow hours had passed, when he rivalled the changing guards for sleeplessness. Now, after the sudden rush of officialdom that had Conrad released into the custody of his Majesty at the Palazzo Reale, he found himself hungry—it was well past lunch time—but the more alert because of it.

Conrad heard the timbre of iron as the King added, very patiently, “If anyone has difficulties, please speak now—once signed, this is settled.”

“I'm content,” Conrad put in, slightly too quickly.

The silver-haired Adalrico Silvestri, Conte di Galdi, held his gloves and cane neatly in one hand. His other hand rested on the arm of a younger man, whom Conrad recognised as one of Naples' young-men-about-town who favour the opera, and guessed him to be Galdi's son or nephew.

The son-or-nephew, much the same age as Conrad, shot him a glare.

A Prince's Man, like his father?
Conrad wondered. Men to steer clear of, in any case. He could see that the Silvestri, father and son, would love to have him taken back to debtor's prison.

But they're in no position to overtly argue with the King.

“I consent.” Adalrico Silvestri spoke in a perfectly urbane tone that was more frightening than his son's glares. “Your Majesty, your Treasury will pay the interests on Alfredo Scalese's debts, enabling Signore Conrad Scalese here to stay out of jail to earn sufficient to pay off the principal.”

The faint emphasis on ‘earn' held more contempt than Conrad thought it possible to get into one word.

“Precisely: I don't want charity,” Conrad put in, perilously close to interrupting the King. “I'll pay the debts off myself given time.”

“Signore Scalese, if I had no… obligations… owed to your sire from the years
before I took the throne, your time would still be spent in prison.” Ferdinand shrugged, managing (deftly as an actor) to leave an impression that Alfredo's help had been incurred during youthful self-indulgence which the adult man would prefer to forget.

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily held out the quill to the old man, who scrawled “Adalrico Silvestri” in one long jagged line. Conrad signed his own name, and watched the king and the other man sign as witnesses—the latter being one “Niccolò Silvestri.”

Ferdinand let them go through the politenesses attendant on farewells with perfect equanimity, and only after the two men had gone did he regard the anteroom's tall doors with a faint frown.

“Both of them in the Prince's Men, I think,” he murmured. “My spies don't like the look of the older Silvestri at all. I advise you to avoid the son, too, socially.”

“If I don't want to end up in a duel?” Conrad nodded. “Yes, sir. He looks the type to give out challenges, and if I did find myself in a duel with him, I doubt I'd get away alive. If not shot in the back, then met with by a gang of
masnadiere
on the way home…”

Ferdinand gave a smile of appreciation. It faded to anger. “And now I believe I need to have a word or two with the Conte di Argente about using obvious plots by the King's enemies to settle his personal grievances.”

Conrad trespassed on his relationship with Ferdinand sufficiently to contradict him. “Sir, no!—Not if you ever want the man to work with me in the future!”

By Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily's expression, he was imagining
il Superbo
after a raking-down like that.

“Very well.” The King gestured for Conrad to sit with him at the table. “Then, how is our Aztec Princess progressing?”

Conrad took his notes and clean copy from their leather folder, together with more of Paolo's correspondence. “I'm going to need to settle the roles quite soon. La Tachinardi writes that she's not available to sing any role—still afraid of lightning, according to Paolo. We have one tenor, Bonfigli—Giovanni Davide is booked up two years ahead, and Berardo Winter hasn't replied. Donna Belucci is turning out to be quite an asset—”

Conrad showed the King his synopsis for “Xochitl the Aztec slave-girl,” now “Hippolyta the captured Amazon warrior”; at which Ferdinand looked thoughtful.

“—And this can be as large or small a role as we require, sir,” Conrad added, “Depending on how she settles in with the rest of the cast. She
need
only come on to sing her arias at the beginning of Act II and Act III, to give the crew time
to work the scene changes, and allow the cast who have sung in the strettas to rest for a few minutes.”

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily nodded as if he were an impresario like Domenico Barjaba. His expression altered. Conrad saw the man suppressed embarrassment.

“In fact—as I was reminded on my return—I have another singer for you. She's under contract to the San Carlo, so we must give her something… But it could be a small role. Brigida Lorenzani, a contralto.”

Conrad searched his memory for Naples' faces and reputations.
Lorenzani, Lorenzani…
Yes. Competent but not reputed to be inspired.
Porca miseria!
Just what we needed!

“I'll… think of something, sir.”

“I'm sure you will. Show me the libretto so far,” the King added.

The rest of the afternoon passed in discussion of how the libretto should be staged. Dismissing him, finally, Ferdinand picked up two or three of the files bound with red ribbon that Conrad recognised as diplomatic dispatches.

“I may be along again later in the week to watch the rehearsals, Corrado, if you think it won't prove disruptive?”

“If they can't put up with you, sir, I have no idea how they'll cope with the pit hurling old fruit when they sing a sour note…”

He left Ferdinand chuckling.

Tullio fell in beside him on his walk back from the Palace. The streets of Naples were one of the most secure places to talk of secrets, so long as one appears to be involved in no more than gossip—every other man and woman being engaged in their own business, at the volume of a shout.

“I went out looking for all the local gossip about why the Donna and the Signore are together.” Tullio Rossi shoved his hands in his greatcoat pockets, sending Conrad a cautious look. “And if he beats her, that sort of thing. The servants say there are rumours of a child, years ago, but there's no sign of any in the house, so that may be people making up juicy stories.”

The feeling that urged itself on Conrad was, he realised, guilt.

Tullio added, “There are the usual rumours she is beaten, but her maids have never seen bruises. Some of them say it must be she who can blackmail him—why else would he keep a wife who can't give him a son? Just the usual scandal, padrone. Nothing you could say was true.”

Nora's married to him, why am I asking around to find dirt?