The Black Opera (44 page)

I'm back in Naples!

“This is one of the main rehearsal areas.” Enrico Mantenucci waved a hand as they walked out onto great beams and boards. They formed a stout floor above shattered stone debris that filled the bottom of the great cavern. Conrad recognised Angelotti's work.

Oil lamps glowed. The stone roof narrowed as it went up high into darkness, sloping into an immense bottle shape. Conrad visualised miners hanging down on their ropes, hacking out the
tufa
rock by oil lamp, seventy generations ago…

One clear note sounded.

“Uomo perfido!”

Giambattista Velluti's voice flew up in brilliant, effortless trills, soaring from alto to soprano, his larger chest cavity giving more power behind the high notes than any woman could achieve. The sound of a boy's unbroken voice grown to manhood without changing thrilled through the cavernous mines: Fernando Cortez, denouncing the Aztec Lord General Chimalli—

“Perfidious man, you betray your land of

Obsidian mountains and the scarlet bird…”

In the centre of the cavern, a dozen figures stood around Spinelli's forte-piano.

Conrad automatically lowered his voice so as not to interrupt the rehearsal. “How did they get
that
underground?”

Mantenucci shook his head, amused. “Not easily…”

“Corrado!” a voice exclaimed. Conrad turned.

Passages led out of the main cavern. Off these, there were smaller chambers and caves, furnished incongruously with desks and chairs from above ground. In the nearest, Luigi Esposito had his hand on Paolo's shoulder, pointing her at Conrad.

Tullio Rossi stiffened.

Isaura sprang up—visibly (to Conrad's gaze) recalled herself as “Gianpaolo Pironti”—and ran out of the chamber, grabbing Conrad's hand and wringing it like a brother would. “You're back!”

“I told you he would be.” Luigi sat himself elegantly down on the corner of Paolo's desk. “The wind was in the right quarter.”

The rock-walled chamber with the desk and many oil lamps made a surprisingly homely place. Paolo's desk was piled with unfolded sheets of paper. There was a tell-tale chessboard set up on the far side.

Conrad embraced Paolo and put her back at arm's length. “How are things going now?”

Paolo threw up her hands. “The principal singers can't remember their lines, the chorus rehearsals are dreadful—they're
imbeciles!
—half of Signore Angelotti's stage crew don't even speak the language, the costumes are late, the set designs need a Leonardo to complete, and the orchestra! Don't even
talk
to me about the orchestra!—”

“In other words,” Luigi put in, “about as one would expect.”

Paolo grinned at the police captain. Her eyes were far too warm.

Conrad became conscious of a gap where for the past few days he had been used to find Tullio. His ear brought him the older man's footsteps stalking off across the smooth-hewn boards.

Enrico Mantenucci gave Conrad a nod. “I'll let Captain Esposito and your cousin show you your own quarters.”

Conrad didn't get two steps before Sandrine pounced on him.

JohnJack Spinelli (whose fingers had been moving in the eternal manipulation of a man telling his beads) abandoned the sacred for the secular, and barrelled through the crowd.

What looked like a delegation from the tenor section of the chorus joined the crowd.

Conrad was submerged in loud demands to correct this, that, or the other verse in the unfinished libretto.
The twenty-seventh day of February
, he reminded himself, as he took their scribbled-over scripts.
Sixteen days to deadline.

And there's one thing I have to do, very soon. Because this isn't the normal opera, where there's time for the librettist to compose the whole script and send it to the composer to set, in advance of deadline. Not even one of those occasions when the composer squeezes the libretto out of the poet by post, a verse or a scene at a time. Time's so short that this will have alterations and additions and subtractions going back and forth, right up to the finish.

And therefore I have to speak to Roberto Capiraso, Conte di Argente.

For the first time since I was in jail
.

Catching up with where the counter-opera now stood took a surprising amount of time. Nothing changed, underground. That it advanced on midday was indicated only by the clocks.

Tullio—still sniffy about the police captain's presence—brought a meal from outdoor food sellers, vouched for by Fabrizio Alvarez's soldiers. Conrad shepherded JohnJack, Sandrine, and Velluti out of his own side-cavern (which was presumably a dry cistern), and took advantage of their absence to eat.

He found it disconcerting to discover old furniture from the lumber rooms of the Palazzo Reale set up so closely resembling his lodgings above ground. Isaura had mentioned that she did it, with Luigi Esposito's help, to give some aura of familiarity, and hopefully enable Conrad to bear the underground location better.

Tullio Rossi cursed under his breath as he finished unpacking their travel-cases.

“Don't suppose he knows she's not a boy,” Tullio grumbled. “—Don't suppose he
cares!”

Conrad put his knife down, and rested a sympathetic hand on Tullio's shoulder. “If we're
really
unlucky, there's somebody devout from the crew or chorus watching, who doesn't realise Paolo's a girl. And if they're still going to confession… and happen to mention the possibility of sodomy…”

The older man straightened. “Bollocks! The Inquisition again!”

“We could ask Paolo to just let the company know,” Conrad suggested.

“—Or she could just
stop flirting with that whore Esposito!
”

Conrad bit the inside of his lip. It enabled him to use a serious tone. “She's twenty-five, marriageable, and in
opera;
you can't expect her to live like a nun.”

Tullio stalked out past the hanging curtains that partitioned off their “rooms,” sounding very much as if he missed the ability to punctuate his departure with a slamming door.

Conrad finished his cheese and olives, and made his way through the lantern-lit maze of tunnels to his cousin's chambers. There was nothing to knock on. “Paolo?”

“Come in, Corradino!”

He swept aside the faded green velvet curtain. Her chambers also looked as if they had been furnished from the palace lumber-rooms and attics. Conrad glanced at the lamps—four in number. “You miss windows.”

“Oh yes. And balconies. Breakfast outside on the balcony…” She shot a grin up at him. In dark trousers and unbuttoned waistcoat, her white shirt and stock picking up the lamplight, she looked a dissolute young man-about-town. The
room only lacked the abandoned stockings and forgotten garters from ladies of leisure.

His own words came back to him with violent impact:
You can't expect her to live like a nun.

I want to
protect
her! But…

Isaura-Paolo sank into one chair, and shoved another his way with her foot. Reaching down, she rescued a bottle of wine from some corner of the floor.

Conrad sat and rested his elbows on the table. He couldn't help smiling affectionately at her. “If I act the older brother with you, you'll hand me my head, yes?”

“I thought you were going to hand me mine!” She seemed to collapse into a relieved smile. “I didn't have anyone telling me what to do while I was at the Conservatoire, and I haven't been told to behave as a woman for three years… I wasn't sure you'd understand.”

“I'm not sure I would, if I hadn't met you wearing trousers.—What?” Conrad shrugged at her expression of pique. “It's true. You don't look like a girl.—Not that you aren't perfectly attractive as a woman—I mean—That is—I'm sure men who aren't your brother will tell you that!”

He continued over her snicker:

“In fact, that's close to the problem…”

Isaura-Paolo showed more than male intuition. “This is about Luigi? And Tullio?”

“I do wish I believed in a deity,” Conrad muttered. “Because now, of all times, I'd like to be able to say,
Dear God, why do I have to be involved in conversations like this!”

Paolo laughed affectionately.

Conrad raked his fingers through his hair. “I was beginning to think you had a partiality for Tullio. Now there's Luigi. He's a philanderer—But he might change, people do. Or Tullio might be better suited to another woman… And I'm talking gibberish!”

Isaura poured wine into two chipped cups, and grinned with the expression of someone taking pity on him. “Corrado, I'm not planning to get married yet!”

“Oh, thank God!” Conrad stopped. “—
You
made me say that!”

“I'm a bad influence.” She sobered. “Corradino, I love you dearly, but when I do decide about someone… I'm not sure I'll come to you for advice.”

That stung.

Conrad passed it off with a sardonic comment. “Given that I'm in love with a married woman, I don't think I'm the person to give you advice…”

“Oh,
that
gilded parasite!” Paolo slumped back with an exasperated huff. “If
it's her you want, spending all her time painting her face to go to teas and dances and salons—you'll end up as her poodle!”

It hurt enough that he winced.

Almost as fast as that reaction, realisation came.

“Paolo?”

The woman looked up from under her shaggy short hair, face set.
“What?”

“You—” A glance beyond the green curtains showed them isolated for the moment. “—Will
always
be my sister. You will never come second in my family affections. No matter who I may otherwise love.”

Shock momentarily gave all her emotions place on her features—jealousy, shame, hope, fear.

Conrad added, “I'm sorry I never came for you.”

It hurt him that this realisation was new.

“I shouldn't have left you to get out of the Catania house on your own. You'd think meeting independent businesswomen in opera would make it all clear to me, but I… forgot… you might not like staying at home with Mother.”

“I missed you—even though I wrote to you—you didn't know it was
me
—!” Paolo-Isaura scrambled up out of the chair, all elbows and knees, and threw her arms around him, holding him far too tightly to be a brother. Conrad hugged her as hard, patting her short hair as she shed tears that soaked into the lapel of his coat.

“I'm sorry!” She awkwardly fell into the chair next to him, as he manoeuvred them to sit at the table. Conrad kept his arm around her shoulders. There were dark smudges under her eyes, as well as the red rims from weeping; it was obviously how hard she must be working.

Quietly, Conrad added, “Nora's no parasite.
She
was one of those singers who lived as independent businesswomen. If she'd lived, Nora would have been better than Maria Malibran—”

Isaura raised her head, sounding dumbstruck. “If she'd lived?”

“Cazzo!
Well… It's not a secret as such, I suppose—Leonora is Returned Dead. So it's hardly her fault if she can't have the singing career she was working towards.” Conrad pushed memories away, but couldn't escape. “She was working so hard…”

“I'm sorry.” Isaura was white. “I didn't know. Losing it all like that and being left here. Oh God. Poor girl. I'm so stupid!”

“It's forgiven.”

“But, Conrad—”

“Forgiven,” he emphasised firmly.

They sat together for some time, Conrad feeling the rock-hard muscles of
his neck and spine gradually relax. He realised he had forgotten the comfort a sibling could give—
When we're not screaming at each other, or having tantrums
, he thought wryly.
Who'd imagine that would continue outside of childhood?