The Black Opera (61 page)

Blindsided, he realised he was thinking of Nora again. Of other things that could never be.

The mourning I feel for the loss of that voice to death…

What would
L'Altezza azteca
be like if Nora could have sung Princess Tayanna?

The guards changed shift, and Mantenucci's temper seemed unpredictable (if “Let me do my damn
job
and protect you!” was any indication). Conrad settled for returning to underground Naples with the singers for the last hour of rehearsal time.

The odour of the evening meal cooking sifted through the aqueducts and passages. That section of the tunnels that had been taken over by the work-crew drowned out other sound with incessant hammering.

The answer came to him out of nowhere—or out of whatever place the seeds of story come: perhaps the same mind that dreams at night. Conrad stopped dead.

Spinelli trod on his heels and swore.

Conrad ignored the dramatic complaining from the other singers. “Come with me.”

He led the
primo uomo
and
prima donna
—knowing the rest would follow—
into his own stone chamber, and drew two thick velvet curtains across the entrance, muffling the noise to where it was bearable.

He gave Velluti his own seat—a gilded, velvet-padded monstrosity brought down from the Palazzo Reale by some over-enthusiastic servant. It was deceptively comfortable. Sandrine and Estella sat down on the satin couch, JohnJack between them, each with an arm linked through one of his. Brigida Lorenzani glanced about and chose a stout dark wooden chair, throne-like, and suitable for her weight. She looked in her silks like a pagan queen; Lorenzo, on a padded stool at her elbow, like an intelligent vizier.

“Very well.” Conrad looked around at them all. “I've been approaching this wrongly.”

T
hat brought about complete cessation of their conversations.

Conrad met their eyes, each person in turn. “It's all very well for il Conte to specify the counter-opera by classification—
seria, semi-seria
, comedy—but that isn't the heart of it.”

JohnJack smiled and leaned back between his two ladies. Conrad didn't give him a chance to interrupt with any
I told you so
.

“You know your roles. You know them as characters, as
people
.” Conrad paused, watching their faces for recognition. “What I need to know, to write the verses for the finale, is what you will or won't
do
, as that role.”

A moment of silence. The
basso
broke it.

“Oh,
si
…” JohnJack's expression turned introspective. “I will insist on paying court to the Princess—and repenting my crimes, when faced by the memory of the old King. But Tayanna needs a steady male influence while she rules, and who better than I, one of her own people, who loves her?”

Sandrine gave a curt nod, with an edge of regality to it.
“I
won't give up my throne. But I want my lover.” Her large, elegant hand waved in Velluti's direction.

“And Cortez—” Giambattista corrected himself. “—
I
will not give up the Princess. Pagan though she may be. Or bow my head to
il Re
Carlo, when Spain is so very far away.”

Conrad stayed on his feet, orchestrating the gathering. In fact he had no need to do much except nudge and listen, as they argued in their stage roles. He did
not interrupt until after a half-hour of back-and-forth, when he pounced on Estella.

“Repeat that,” he demanded.

Estella lifted a dazed expression from where she had been haranguing Velluti. “I said, ‘I know you no longer love me, you love Tayanna.'”

“And you'll be prepared to leave a man whose affections have gone elsewhere?” Conrad spun around and pinned Brigida Lorenzani. “Suppose your daughter wants to return to the Amazon lands—?”

“Dear daughter, I welcome you, but not your son.”

Estella Belucci's eyes narrowed. Conrad recognised her expression as the one that made managements tremble.

“You're my Queen and my mother,” Estella said. “And if you wish to make an exception to that law, it's in your power. Because, otherwise, I will certainly take my son and become a wanderer—leaving the Amazon lands forever, and abdicating my place as your successor.”

Conrad caught a broad grin on Brigida's round face.

Demurely, she said, “Then an exception will be made. Something as insignificant as a boy-child should not interrupt the succession.”

Conrad bent to scribble triumphantly on his copy of the score. “And
that
resolves Hippolyta, her son, and the Amazon Queen! This is exactly what I hoped for…”

“Semi-seria
, then?” JohnJack questioned.

Conrad straightened up from the pages on his desk. “It's the best I can do, I think. Not everybody can have a happy ending.”

The coloratura bass snorted. “I've had the short end of the stick before in Signore Rossini's
semi-seria
comedies! Can I take it that Jaguar General Chimalli will be meeting a bad end when he raises the rebellion?”

“If you're volunteering.”

“Deh! I get to threaten Signore Cortez, I hope, before I perish? And fight him?”

Giambattista Velluti's eyelids lowered. “The body to be dragged off by the heels, I would suppose, before the Princess and I have a happy duet?”

The bass grumbled, but waved an accepting hand.

Lorenzo Bonfigli coughed. “And what's
il Re
doing, while you're singing, Cortez?”

Sandrine beamed, before Conrad could make any suggestions.

“Being bribed,” she said happily. “We Aztecs have gold enough to fill a ship or two for King Carlo. We can arrange a tribute every five years—”

“Two.” Lorenzo flirted his eyebrows at the mezzo.

“—Three years,” Sandrine corrected herself gravely. “Which will keep Spain content. I assume that Signore Cortez will in any case want to continue with his heroic deeds, and explore all of South America for Spain, in between returning home to his new wife?”

Velluti gave a thoughtful nod. “I'd hardly retire from conquest.”

Il Re
Carlo addressed his new Viceroy. Sandrine caught Conrad's eye, murmuring too quietly to disturb them. “And I'd hardly retire from ruling my Aztecs…”

“Too unfeminine a line to include,” Conrad muttered. He grinned as Sandrine made a face also unsuitable for a Princess.

Another half-hour passed, the characters of
L'Altezza azteca
wrangling for position. Conrad wrote as fast as he could to keep up—from time to time there was something worth jotting down as a verbatim line.

When it devolved into mere repetition, he stopped them.

“Enough. This is exactly what I need. And now dinner—before we discover if it's the Aztecs or the Amazons who practise cannibalism!”

The principal singers left—JohnJack and Estella both embracing him—and Conrad collapsed in his chair, the suddenly-empty chamber a balm to his thoughts. He ran over the notes that he made, conscious that his own stomach grumbled.

This is it
.

The realisation made his spirit soar.
Or whatever part of the human mind that the common reference of “spirit” means
. This is it, I can mine all the material I need from this—

Saturday night, now.

Sunday.

Monday.

A few hours of Tuesday morning, should we be
utterly
desperate. And then we're out of time.

Conrad got to his feet, not sure if he was seeking a meal, or il Superbo, or both.

The cuts give us eight minutes for the rondo finale, he mused. Twelve, if we end with a stretta. Most of the music exists in the score—I think—it just needs to be adapted. If Roberto can do it right.

Work at such intensity brought him to the state that, when he should have lain down to snatch sleep for a few hours, he could only sit and watch his fingers shaking.

The right middle finger had an ink-stained callus.

He licked his left index finger and rubbed at the ink, failing to remove most of it.

I am afraid to sleep. Afraid that if I relax this ardent state of mind, I won't be able to retrieve it when I need it—in four hours time.

Thinking of similar occasions in the past, sleeping four-hour watches in the war, didn't help.
I should take a job as a ditch-digger
, Conrad berated himself fiercely.
Since it was always easier to go out and dig trenches than
think.
And at the moment, I would much sooner be shifting mud…

He pushed aside the inner curtain and sprawled down on his camp bed, staring up at the chiselled roof.

It was an odd thought that brought him sufficient peace to sleep.

I've seen enough of Roberto; il Superbo is—to give him credit—doing everything he can to assist the conclusion of
L'Altezza
.

I've seen nothing of Nora.

I suppose, at the moment, that's her way of helping
.

Sunday passed too quickly. Conrad swore openly at the stupidity of those singers and musicians who went to Mass, and weren't there when he needed them for rehearsal. Some of Alvarez's soldiers muttered and made the sign to avert the evil eye.

“It won't work,” Paolo stated, noting it happen backstage in the San Carlo. “You've got as evil an eye as any I've ever seen, cousin!”

Conrad fixed her with it. “Forty-eight hours,
cousin
. Then we're done.”

Isaura grinned at him. “I'll be conducting, and you'll be curled up in the back of one of the boxes, sleeping like a baby…”

Conrad nearly let out precisely what he thought of impudent sisters, superstitious cast members, and the entire organisation of the Prince's Men in general and in particular. Fortunately, perhaps, Giambattista called him over, complaining that one of Conrad's favourite new lines was impossible for anyone human to pronounce, and so he let out some of his temper on Velluti's impervious hide.

Sunday and Sunday night saw the most part of the new verses written.