The Black Opera (68 page)

Conrad broke off, glaring at the scribbling Roberto Conte di Argente.

“One verse in the major key, celebrating his great love for Isabella; one verse in the minor key, his racking grief that she will never be his. JohnJack will recognise
that
.”

The Count shrugged, not looking up.

Conrad returned his attention to libretto and music:

“‘Christian celebrations start, but they're premature. Aria. Queen Isabella foresees that, despite his race and religion, Muhammad will offer her more freedom to rule than her husband Ferdinand ever can. Besides, she loves him. Duet. She conspires with the
vizier
Osmino. At the height of the celebrations, when Ferdinand of Aragon is about to have the imprisoned Moor executed, Queen Isabella warns her husband that there are Muslim and Jewish saboteurs in the garrison powder store. Ferdinand heroically enters the tower to attempt to prevent this—aria and cabaletta—but fails. He is blown up, as Isabella planned. The widowed Queen Isabella pardons the Moor and takes Muhammed as her consort. She announced no one need leave Granada—there will be peace and community now—she herself will rule a united kingdom of Christians, Jews, and Moors, according to rational, Godly principles'…then
rondo finale
, soprano…”

Conrad stopped himself, suddenly. Clumsily, tearing the edges of paper in his haste, he went feverishly back over what he read.

“But this—”

Conrad stood and slammed the bound score open in front of Roberto Capiraso.
It smudged the pages of the man's endless list. Conrad smacked the open pages, glaring.

“—This is
pointless!
Your sabotage of
our
opera, pointless!—”

Men turned to listen at the end of the war-room. Conrad ignored that. He saw nothing but the annotated score, heard only flute and oboe, horns and trumpets, strings and drum—and the ardent, searing power of the soprano's final aria.

“Corrado.” Ferdinand spoke with firm authority. “What have you found?”

Conrad leaned both hands on the desk, close enough to jostle the seated Conte di Argente.
“Hopeless!
I can read a score as well as the next man! What
is
this? Is it some sort of fake document, intended to throw us off?”

Roberto Capiraso sat back. He folded his arms across his body as much as he could with the short chain between his cuffs. It was an oddly protective gesture.

“I assure you, Scalese, you have your ‘black opera' there in your hands. Orchestration, voice roles, all as we in
il Principe
have rehearsed.”

“Impossible!” Conrad snarled, relief and triumph making him dizzy. “Who can the Prince's Men have who could possibly sing Isabella of Castile? Look at this
ultimo finale
, the soprano's
rondo
—Ridiculous!”

The pages of the score brushed past his fingers as Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily seized it up.

The King made a choking sound. “But it's worse than
der Hölle Racht!
Who could
possibly
—”

Conrad didn't take his eyes off Roberto Capiraso.

“For all I know, the Prince's Men have kidnapped a dozen principal, professional singers.” Conrad shook his head, disbelief building up to fury. “You may have Giuditta Pasta or Giulia Grisi tied up in a
palazzo
somewhere!
It doesn't matter!
The tessitura of this is inhuman! Middle C to the F two and a half octaves above is a lyric soprano—low C is a
tenor
range—and here,
here!
the
A below low C!
One singer is supposed to span the range down to a baritone? As for the two-octaves jumps—the succession of high Fs!—yes, I hear it would work as something tremendous. If it were a
duet!
A
trio!
… An aria—This is
impossible
for one singer!”

Ferdinand slammed the score down in front of Roberto Capiraso. Ink spilled off the desk, running across leather and wood and down to the priceless carpet. The King ignored it. “I don't understand! I
can't
understand, Argente. You've crippled your opera, worse than you have done ours!”

Silence filled the vast chamber.

Roberto Capiraso, Conte di Argente, laid down his steel pen. For a long moment, his gaze went past the shining morning windows, contemplating the shivering sea—or perhaps some memory known only to him.

“I always hear her in my mind as both, you know.” His voice slid into a quietly-confiding tone. “…Isabella, Queen of Castile. Princess Tayanna of the Aztecs…”

Ferdinand opened his mouth, plainly to snarl. Conrad rested a restraining hand on the King's arm. He shot a warning look.

Don't interrupt
.

If he could have spoken aloud, Conrad would have said:
I heard that tone all too often around army campfires, after we'd been fighting for too long…
From men who would shatter the next day.

I think he's realised what he's done in the last hour
.

Ferdinand shot a tense glance, signalling Conrad to proceed.

Awareness of the potential for fracture—and loss of information from this one source—Conrad prompted gently:

“‘Her'?”

“Il Reconquista
's soprano will have no need to strain her voice in the part.” Roberto's secretive smile turned mirthless with regret.

“The role of Isabella was written for her alone—for the only woman who could ever sing in
il Principe's
opera.”

The Conte di Argente raised his head. Conrad found himself pinned by the dark, penetrating gaze.

Roberto said softly, “The first of many lies that you were told—is that something in Death destroys the human voice.”

C
onrad stared, wide-eyed.

“Leonora?”
he choked out.

The Conte di Argente gave an odd smile. “She lies, my wife…” Something inside Conrad, deeper than the everyday, made him feel on the instant that he should have known.

Because Nora, Leonora, could never be separated from her voice!
—that voice which I've heard in front of thousands at
La Fenice
, and nakedly private between the two of us.

Not separated by death, or anything else—Why did I allow myself to believe that she was mute?

Because when I knew she was lost to me, and with Roberto, I couldn't bear to
think of her at all.

He repeated it aloud, wondering if it would make more sense. “Leonora still sings.”

The look in Roberto Capiraso's eyes was almost sympathetic. “She learned, after her death, that the Prince's Men were planning an opera. It took a few years, but she worked her way up to become their leader in that arena.”

“I used to say,
She never lies
…” Conrad gripped his temper hard, ignoring whatever it was that swelled in his throat and behind his eyes, and might have burst out in weeping.

“That she'd keep silent, or she'll let people believe what they want—or she'd allow other people to lie
for
her—but she doesn't lie—”

—To me
.

Conrad stood up from his chair, stumbling across to the open balcony doors, so that no one in the room could watch his face. So that the only thing before him was the innocent sea—air fresh, sky bright, morning rising towards heat.

He smelled salt water, and something acrid. This side of the Palace was away from the crammed roads and houses of Naples, overlooking the Bay, so that very few human voices rose over the noise of distant waves.

Conrad realised that no birds let loose their song. No gulls skimmed the waves. The dogs in the royal kennels were silent.

The marble steps four floors below, going down to the small enclosed royal dock, must be the ones on which
il Principe
had deposited the body of Adriano Castiello-Salvati.

They—She
—

Furious, too choked to speak, Conrad gripped the iron balcony railing hard enough that flakes of paint came away embedded in his skin. He thought he detected a faint, continuous tremble, reverberating through the metal.

All of it's a swamp. I have no firm footing! Because I have no idea what was truth and what was a lie
. She's
il Principe's
leader here, is she? Then everything she's done will be to benefit them…to benefit her.

He felt a desperate desire to have his hands on her.
Shake
the truth from her.

He rested his weight down through his arms, letting the early blue of the Bay fill his vision, ease his pain.

Roberto Capiraso's baritone sounded, not far behind him.

“I think that if Leonora herself
did
have a choice to Return, instead of the Sung Mass compelling her to come back—she Returned to sing.”

Conrad turned. Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily was giving urgent instructions to officials and aides, at his great desk. Evidently the man had chosen to let the Conte di Argente—of all people!—approach him.

“That we've had traitors and spies with us from the beginning—” Conrad ignored the handcuffed man's flinch. “I can be at ease with that. I'm not a fool: these things happen in war-time, and this is a war. But that she came back—came back as she is—and never even
considered
telling me the truth—”

He cut himself off before he could complete it, aloud:

—
Never considered offering me a place, with her, in the Prince's Men
.

Conrad was used to assuming that when he gave his word, he would keep it. That this was a part of his character. Now…

He released the balcony rail and shoved his hands through his hair, aching for some physical outlet for his pain and confusion.

Would I have abandoned his Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies if she offered me a place with her?

I should at least be able to answer that question one way or the other!

Roberto, sounding as if he had overcome his moment of breakdown, said, “You—even I—were not her first concern.”

Conrad stepped back out of the early sun, into the cool of the room. He heard himself sound strained.

“You and I are the only two men here who could know that truth. Because only you and I have heard her seize the attention of fifteen hundred people with a single passionate note.”

Roberto Capiraso gave a rueful nod.

The King handed off another list of instructions to a page, and walked over.

“Inform me. Aside from the book and music, what do you know of the black opera? About the function of this
Il Reconquista
?”

Roberto frowned. “I know only as much as was necessary for the structure of the opera. You could tell as much from studying the score, sire. The main climaxes are the stretta at the end of Act Two, and the soprano's
rondo finale
at the end of Act Four. I assume the latter is what brings about the ‘sacrifice,' as Nora calls it.”

“And how long have you known that the ‘sacrifice' would be a Plinean eruption of Vesuvius?”

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily couched the question almost primly in scientific terms. Conrad saw it hit home.

“The
finale ultimo
is Leonora, alone,” the Count said. “Because no other singer could do what she does. I assume that's that part intended to ‘wake the God of this world.' I don't believe Leonora told any but her closest inner circle what that will involve. I… Truthfully, I never asked. I neither know nor care about
il Principe's
theology!”

Conrad saw Ferdinand give the composer his bland, weighing glance, that
concealed everything the intelligent monarch might be thinking.

Roberto Capiraso added, “I knew of the Prince's Men only through my brother Ugo. Ugo was sufficiently older than I that he seemed more of an uncle or father to me, rather than a brother and equal. He died overseas, some years ago. Until recently, I thought he did no more than fund the Prince's Men.”

“I was told Leonora Capiraso came back by way of a Sung Mass,” Ferdinand said. “Which you organised.”

“Which I asked the Prince's Men to organise,” Roberto corrected, his tone still automatically respectful. “As far as I could tell, sir, it was an ordinary liturgical Mass, done by a common parish priest.
Il Principe
added their own elements into the ceremony, but to tell the truth, I was in no state to pay attention to them.”

The Count was lost to memory, his stare unfocussed.

“Leonora died. There was nothing the Church, or the Prince's Men, or
any
man, could have asked in return for bringing her back that I would not have given.”

“But presumably your wife believes in the Prince of this World?”

“She may.” Roberto Capiraso's tone took on sardonic amusement. “Sire, the antique Aegyptians worshipped cats and crocodiles. The black man of Africa has a thousand gods. The heretic Protestants have One, and say we have Three. Perhaps a Mass sung to any of them would produce a miracle?”