The Black Opera (38 page)

All that means is that he's able to perceive it, and that he
believes
it repels him
.

Alfredo's furious distorted face loomed up, suddenly, at Conrad. “Agnese must have slept with another man! You're not my son, my son wouldn't kill me!”

“My father wouldn't join a conspiracy against the King!”

Even caught between hurt and fury, Conrad managed to keep the name of the Prince's Men to himself.

“And if I did?” Alfredo shrugged with supreme carelessness. “So what? I died a long time ago. I can't be wiping your arse every day, boy; do you have any idea how boring existence is for me? I would have thought you'd be happy your old father had found some friends, and some things he can do to feel useful…”

Conrad looked away from the blue-grey figure, translucent as Murano glass. He slid down slightly on the pew while Ferdinand began his questioning.

Which will be useless
—useless!
—Ferdinand won't make him talk in any detail about what the Prince's Men plan
. Why would he? It's
obvious
they'd keep my father in the dark!

The questions went round in circles.

Ferdinand sat back. “How certain are you that let nothing slip to him?”

Conrad rubbed his face, but could not wipe away the weariness or the shame. “I tried to discuss only the libretto, in terms of a small summer production, but… I was used to talking with him when he was alive; it was one thing he always did well. I can't affirm that I told him nothing I shouldn't.”

The King looked stern, but more forgiving than Conrad thought he should. “He was your father… Your
dead
father. He gave no hint that he knew far more of your business than he should?”

“Not to me, sir.”

Alfredo Scalese stared around the chapel as if he searched for someone not present. The minute he caught the King's eye on him, he said triumphantly, “There are certainly those close to you who know more than you think! Not just me!”

“Evil spirits speak ill!” Cardinal Corazza crossed himself, puffing even as he walked the short distance to his King. “Sire, this one is obviously practised in spreading suspicion between those who trust each other, but my experience suggests that he's merely a gadfly, even if associated with those who do evil.”

Alfredo caught Conrad's eye and moved one finger, mimicking sealing his lips shut.

Conrad let go a word that made the Cardinal start. He glimpsed the King calming the churchman.

“Why
would you do this?” Conrad demanded.

Alfredo visibly pouted. “Why
shouldn't
I? I became part of
il Principe
years ago. Along with the Bloody Hand, the Masons,
la società onorata
, the Rosicrucians, the Carbonari, the Camorra—every group I thought might give me something
interesting
to pass Eternity. You have no idea how time weighs… Imagine how surprised I was when the Prince's Men summoned me because they had a suspicion about my son.”

In peripheral vision, Conrad saw Ferdinand speaking urgently to the Cardinal, and Corazza raising his hand as if to swear an oath of silence.

The King looked speculatively at the ghost.

“No
. My father will say
anything
to
anybody
, no matter what oaths he might swear!” Conrad just stopped himself yelling,
Isn't it obvious?
He can't even be loyal to the damn Prince's Men!

Alfredo cocked a jaundiced eye at the riches of the chapel, and the rest of the Duomo. He spread the skirts of his frock-coat and to all appearances perched his immaterial body on the back of a pew, facing Conrad.

“…If I'd known I'd end up here, I wouldn't have come. They were right about you, by the way, Conrad,” Alfredo continued blandly. “You were always a secretive boy, listening and not talking… and you showed a regrettable tendency to refuse to gossip about any of what you heard. The
money
I could have made, if you'd been a bit more careless about what you heard at palace doors…”

His hard expression softened, in that face that seemed made out of frozen light.

“But you loved your Papa, didn't you? You won't let him be sent off into who-knows-what? I did think that when it came to it, I wouldn't object—Eternity's a long time—but I haven't had enough of it yet. You won't let them make me go!”

Conrad rested his face in his hands, welcoming the dark.

If I just said to him, “they can only compel you because you
believe
they can”… A few words from me, and he wouldn't be driven out—

Cardinal Corazza's hound-hallooing voice echoed back from the chapel's arched ceiling. “Be at peace, Alfred Amsel, and return to your Father—”

“I don't want to go!”

The sound of bells swelled and died, and a long chant in Latin echoed back from the maze of pillars. Conrad did not speak, or look up.

But he heard Alfredo Scalese cursing and screaming as he was forced away, until all sign of him finally vanished.

C
onrad leaned back on a pew in the main part of the Duomo. “Tullio, I just want to sit here for a time.”

The ex-soldier gave him a sceptical look. “If you were any other man, I'd say you wanted to pray.”

“The world must be
easier
if it's only six thousand years old, and sandwiched between Heaven and Hell. Surely?”

He closed his eyes, and after a while heard Tullio's quiet departing steps.

He doubted the other man would go far.

Conrad sat in the Duomo di San Gennaro, not thinking of it as a religious house, but as somewhere quiet where he could sit and eradicate the screams of Alfredo's spirit from his memory.

Suppose he is only an imprint, like the mark the printing press leaves on the paper
. That doesn't answer the question of whether he could feel his own terror, or whether it was just for show…

And I wish I thought it was the latter
.

A fair-haired man in clerical clothing seated himself at Conrad's right, with a decorous sweep of his black robes. It was not Luka Viscardo; that was the best that could be said for him.

A priest. The last thing I need is a comforting priest—!

“Have you considered,” the priest asked in a low murmur, “that if your debts to the late Alfredo Scalese's creditors were paid in total, you would be free to leave Naples? Perhaps to a place as a respected librettist in, shall we say… St Petersburg?”

Conrad studied the man beside him.

The disguise—or possibly it was not a disguise—looked flawless. An ordinary ordained priest. But unlike the Dominican Canon-Regular Viscardo, with his burning single-minded faith, this cleric was apparently one of the Prince's Men.

Since I can't think of anyone else who would
pay
to get rid of me.

Never mind how they found me, or how they knew it was me they should approach…
Is there nothing Alfredo didn't tell them?

Conrad felt unsure if the chill in his guts was disquiet, or overwhelming anger at the proposition. “So you're offering me—what?”

“To pay off all your debts.” The anonymous man in his anonymous clerical black lifted a faint blond eyebrow. “Surely you understand? Every debt that your father Alfredo owed, to be paid off by… the end of this week?”

I suppose… I suppose, if they decide that they can do this, they can
.

“After all,” the Prince's Man added, “you may have made some agreement or other, but it can hardly be considered binding. Who'd give up happiness for a philosophical point?”

“Is it philosophical?” Conrad muttered, trying for time. “I thought we were speaking of money…”

And every gentleman knows that money is something not worth talking about. Knows that old money is better than the
nouveau riche
variety, because it comes from the invisible labour of servants on the land, and not from embarrassingly visible industry. Money, according to scholars and philosophers, is beneath a man.

“Think what you could do with all of what you earn,” the man said, “were you not paying nine-tenths of it to Alfredo Scalese's creditors.”

Conrad felt his expression alter, and, in a panic, realised he did not know what it gave away. “I could get married…”

He realised he had spoken aloud.

The Prince's Man leaned forward, alert. “There's a lady in the case? Yes, I see why you would hesitate to engage yourself in marriage, and a family, with your prospects so poor. But if your debts were gone…”

Conrad did not bother to correct the man's misapprehension.

There is only one woman I would ever marry, and this comes too late for that.

I wonder what I would have done in Venice, if this offer had been made to me then? If I could have said to Leonora,
Marry me, have my children, I will spend my life making you happy?

I suppose I would have spent my life as a lapdog of the Prince's Men. For much the same reason men end up obliged to
la società onorata
and the other people we don't talk about.

“Of course—” The man's unexpectedly harsh voice interrupted his thoughts. “—this is not an offer that will be open for all time.”

First the cheese and then the trap, Conrad thought sardonically.

It would have amused him more if he couldn't feel the steel teeth biting. To be free of a burden he has borne these ten years—What does he owe the King of
the Two Sicilies, really?

I haven't lived here since I was a child
. Even the Neapolitan dialect is strange to my ear now. I have almost no memories of the place, since Alfredo dragged us off round the cold German courts to earn his living. King Ferdinand is making use of me, the King admits as much—I wasn't even their first choice. So why not take what the Prince's Men offer?

The tempting thought emerged from the back of his mind:

Once it's done, it would be
done
.

If they pay off my debts, and then I do nothing, they can hardly recall their money.

I suppose my life wouldn't be worth a single
soldo
. But then, it isn't now.

This is why his Majesty Ferdinand wanted some big philosophical statement from me about my ethics, since I'm not constrained to morality by a god. I could have referred him to the old pagan philosophers…

I need to believe in myself as a certain kind of person, and therefore I need to act appropriately.

Apart from that, it's the small threads hold him. Human ties. Knowing how Tullio would look. How disappointed JohnJack would be. And being aware that Paolo-Isaura would never look up to her big brother again—but would understand why he did it.

At the back of his mind, he doesn't want to give il Superbo another chance to sneer—or give his beautiful wife cause to think of Conrad as a traitor.

“You are an atheist, Signore Scalese,” the man in black urged, his white hands clenched on the back of the pew in front. “There's no God to make you keep your word.”

Conrad smiled toothily.

I suppose it doesn't matter who they sent with the offer, since it's so tempting… but this man is something less than tactful.

“Thank you for your generous opinion of me, Father,” Conrad said, not without irony. “Please don't send anyone else with this proposition. There's no point. If I choose to give my word, I choose to keep it. The answer is no.”

“Conrad?”

Ferdinand's hand on his shoulder brought him out of his tomb-cold thoughts. He lifted his head, surprised to see that the Cardinal and his priests had left.

A single set of footsteps rebounded back from the walls. Tullio came to stand beside the King.

Carefully putting the logic together, counting off the points on his fingers, Conrad said, “An exorcism destroys… whatever it is… that makes the appearance of the person. Whether it
is
that person or not. I feel—as if Father has died all over again.”