The Black Opera (67 page)

“Keep hold of that, signore,” Roberto ordered harshly. “You will now take me to the King.”

C
onrad placed the bound score of
Il Reconquista d'amore
and the hand-written pages of
The Aztec Princess
on the King's desk.

He bluntly repeated, “Signore Roberto has been composing for both operas. The black opera is better.”

“This is impossible!”
Ferdinand's voice broke with shock and anger. “And even if it weren't—The time! Past eight in the morning, the day of the performance! We have six hours—
less
than six hours—to do anything! And what
can
we do?”

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily rose from his chair, pacing agitatedly in front of the floridly-ornamented fireplace. He snapped his fingers at an
aide
. “Being me maps. Find me Major Mantenucci!”

The young cavalry officer turned from a map table, arms loaded with charts of the local area. “The Major isn't on duty until nine this morning, sire.”

“Find him!
You,” the King beckoned a second
aide
, “summon Colonel Alvarez. Order a detachment of the Rifles to the Palazzo Argente, outside the city, with orders to search and seize.”

“Sir!”

The two men left.

“Sit.” Ferdinand gestured to Conrad, and after a moment extended the gesture to il Conte.

Folding wall-panels had been pushed back, opening the King's office up to take in all the sea-ward side of the palace's fourth floor. Walls shone
jager
green. Sunlight caught the ceiling that was painted in eighteenth-century pastels. At
the further end of the chamber, a flock of
aides
and military officers commanded other tables covered in maps and charts. Paper unrolled onto the floor. Conrad was vividly reminded of his own days in the north, in muddy tents, at officers' meetings.

He pushed Roberto firmly towards one of the carved upright chairs by the King's desk. The Count Roberto sat, and leaned back in his similar chair, one leg negligently crossed over the other, and his hands interlaced in his lap as if he did not wear handcuffs.

Getting in to see the King himself had entailed explanations with the royal guard, that left Roberto wearing cuffs connected by steel chain-links, not able to move his hands more than six inches apart. Conrad spent a few seconds fighting back
schadenfreude
as he took his own seat.

If I came before the King in chains first, then that makes the two of us equal now…

If one knew Roberto well—as Conrad was startled to discover he did—one could detect the faint tremors that ran through shoulders and spine. The cold rage that had brought them here still ran in his veins, Conrad guessed. The Count must want nothing better than to seize Nora and shake her; to scream
Why did you do what you did?
—

Or perhaps that's just me
.

“Sire,” the Conte di Argente ventured.

Ferdinand choked him off with a look. “We would have known nothing! I would happily have accepted that our composer and his wife took a travelling carriage to Rome, because you were too afraid of violence by the Prince's Men to attend the actual performance today… And instead you would have gone to—where?
Where is the black opera!
You must know!”

Roberto Capiraso attempted an air of dignity, Conrad saw, despite the bloody cuts and grazes peppering his face.

“I was sent in to be a saboteur.” Roberto spoke with bleak, self-castigating amusement. “To work side by side with the men that
il Principe
wanted defeated—destroyed. Do you think I was trusted to know
anything
, when I could be taken and interrogated at any moment?”

“As their leader,” Ferdinand began.

Conrad saw sweat shine on the Count's forehead, under the now-tousled black hair. Roberto glanced over at him. Their gazes met. Conrad could almost read the man's thoughts.
Better I should tell him than you.

“I don't lead the Prince's Men in Naples,” Roberto Capiraso confessed quietly. “Leonora does.”

“Leonora?”

Ferdinand's expression moved rapidly through confusion to realisation and
disbelief.
“Leonora Capiraso?
The Contessa di Argente? You can't mean—”

“He can,” Conrad said.

Roberto sounded more co-operative, as if he had began to realise he was in the King's custody.

“Donna Leonora came in as the highest-ranking member of the inner circle in Italy, at the moment. There are other highly-ranked men here, but not superior to her.”

He stroked his short beard. Conrad was not certain if he hid a smile or a grimace.

“I know few enough names. That was intentional. I met a few of Nora's lieutenants—the stage properties and costumes for
Reconquista
, for example, have been stored in Gabriele Corazza's palace, until they should be needed.”

Ferdinand summoned another pair of
aides
, and gave sharp, quick orders.

Conrad surreptitiously watched their lips.
The King will waste no time sending men to search the palace and confirm Roberto's story.

Ferdinand leaned back in his chair as they left, gazing at Roberto Conte di Argente. “All of what you say will be very carefully investigated. It's not difficult to imagine the Prince's Men implicating our own people deliberately to handicap us.”

Roberto shrugged broad shoulders in a surprisingly plebeian gesture.

“I have no reason to lie. My reasons for telling the truth—Signore Conrad will have briefed you on those. As for Cardinal Corazza… I think he's the only man in Naples whose rank in
Il Principe
is close to Leonora's.”

“Gabriele Corazza himself?
Gabriele Corazza!”
Conrad muttered, his voice high. “The
Cardinal of Naples
—The man locally in charge of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition!”

Ferdinand's head came up. A frown resolved itself, and his impassive features looked keenly intelligent.

“Astonishing! Corrado, do you realise what that means? If not for Signore Captain Esposito, the Prince's Men would have had you in their power within—what?—four hours of lightning striking the Teatro Nuovo?”

The narrowness of that escape, even more than a month ago, made Conrad sweat into his crumpled linen shirt.

“And nobody would have heard of me ever again!” he muttered.

Roberto Capiraso snorted, hooded lids closing down over his dark eyes. “You can send police or soldiers, but I imagine the Archbishop's palace will be deserted by now.”

“They may have left information behind.” Ferdinand frowned, gazing at the Count. “…If the costumes and properties have been stored in Naples itself,
that must mean the performance is either
in
the city, or very close to it. But my campanile spies have seen nothing.”

Those will be the runners
, Conrad realised, glancing down the long chamber at the continual coming and going of messengers there.
Observers, high in town and village bell-towers, that can command a watch over all the roads for signs of movement
. Because surely the Prince's Men
must
be moving now?

“Argente.” Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily addressed the Count. “I will keep you out of prison for as long as I have use for you. You will first write me, to the best of your knowledge, a list of those members of the Prince's Men that you are certain of in Naples.”

Conrad reached across the desk and pushed an inkwell and paper toward Roberto.

The King began to work swiftly through the bound score of
Reconquista
, as the Conte di Argente wrote. Clearly he thought it might contain more clues to the location of the opera itself. Roberto Capiraso scribbled quickly, despite his handcuffs.

Conrad shuddered, his gaze drifting towards the tall sash windows, and the unclouded morning sky over the Gulf of Naples.

New awareness prickled down his skin.

Being underground made him shut the constant tremors out of his mind—because, really, who wants to think that at any moment the earth may close up these man-made tunnels, or leave the human interlopers blind and trapped in buried medieval catacombs? And the San Carlo seemed such an extension of this that Conrad expunged the shaking ground from his mind there, too.

A rumble shook the floorboards under his feet, four storeys above the ground. All the newly-leafed trees along the foreshore road suddenly shook back and forth in unison. Conrad watched haze grow into existence around the top of Vesuvius.

He found he could not convince himself that random clouds had snared themselves there. The throat of the mountain exhaled vapours.

It does this often; it doesn't have to mean—

Earth, Moon, and Sun are lining up
, he admitted to himself.
It means Ferdinand's “high earth-tide” later today, if nothing else.

“Il Reconquista d'amore…!”
Ferdinand slammed his hand down on a page. “This is so much superior to
L'Altezza Azteca
. Conrad! How did we not notice that
we
were being given failure?”

Pinned under the man's sudden gaze, Conrad stuttered for an answer.

Roberto Capiraso didn't look up from scribbling his long list of names. “It was designed that way. For example, I wrote Giambattista's arias on the very top
edge of his
tessitura
. I set all Sandrine's crucial notes in the
passaggio
that she finds most difficult.”

He glanced up, catching Conrad's eye.

“You therefore had to concentrate on bringing them up to that standard. You had little enough time to consider whether the opera could work if they
did
sing.”

Conrad folded his arms, hiding his hands that shook with anger.

Ferdinand turned the score so that it was possible for Conrad to page through it with him. “I'm one man. Describe me your opinion of this, Corrado. Is it a danger to us?”

Finally, the chance to look at it properly!

Conrad thumbed anxiously to Felice Romani's synopsis. “Background—Spain, AD 1492. ‘The Emirate of Granada, the last kingdom of mediaeval Spain still ruled by a Moor, King Muhammad the Twelfth (bass).… The Christian forces are at their gates, under command of Ferdinand of Aragon (tenor). Here… During the Sinfonia, we hear behind the stage curtain the cries of invading Christian knights, and the alarm and counter-attack of the Moorish soldiers beating them back.'—This is
effective
.”

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily nodded unhappy agreement.

Conrad turned the pages of the score, the notes bringing sound into his mind. A solo lyric soprano aria—an angry romantic duet—the Moorish King's bass lamenting the fall of Muslim
Al-Andaluz
in Spain—a heroic mezzo (
en travesti
, as a priest) leading a magnificent Christian anthem for which there was no other word but
hymn
.

“You wouldn't have got this past a censor!” Conrad exclaimed—and realised that he addressed Roberto Capiraso as if he were still co-worker on their opera. He turned back to Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily. “Yes, it's a danger, sir.”

He read on, careful to pay attention to his own reactions. One doesn't encounter a work of art for the first time twice.

“‘Queen Isabella of Castile, coming to join her husband the King of Aragon, is captured by Barbary pirates, and sold in the slave market to King Muhammed.' That could unintentionally be comic—but this score makes us
believe
her fear, her pride, his sudden lovestruck infatuation, his desire to make her not a slave but a wife… ‘Isabella escapes and returns to her husband and co-monarch, Ferdinand of Aragon. She finds him unwilling to allow her full power as a Queen in her own right. He accuses her of unfaithfulness with the Moor. To prove her good name, and bolster her precarious political power, she is forced to announce a new crusade against Granada—although, heartbroken, she realises at that moment that she loves the Moorish King Muhammad.'—That
has
to be the end of Act Two!”

The King of the Two Sicilies smiled with wistful irony. “In opera, we go to war for love…”

He stood, signalling Conrad to keep his seat, and stepped aside to talk to his returning
aides
and Colonel Fabrizio Alvarez of the King's Rifles. A few police uniforms were visible among the military around the map tables, but Conrad couldn't see Enrico Mantenucci or Luigi Esposito.

Luigi would pay money to go to this opera
.

Conrad flicked over further pages, searching for the build-up to the
finale ultimo
.

“Here we are, sir.” He glanced up as the King returned from giving orders, “The last Act. Granada falls, all except the central citadel, which is the city garrison and powder store. From the tower, the King's
vizier
Osmino threatens the Christian knights and their King and Queen that he will fire the powder store, and blow them all to hell.
All'armi!
But Muhammed himself emerges on the tower. He begs Isabella to come away with him, to North Africa, and he will hand over the city to Aragon. She is desperate to accept, but with all their eyes on her, can't. Aria. Desolate, King Muhammad abdicates.”