The Black Opera (82 page)

“Sir,” he put in, as the King turned away to start the march again. “If they made being able to sing a part of their ‘black miracle'—what else might they have done?”

Ferdinand evidently did consider it. A small, amused, ironic smile tilted his lips.

“Or, Signore Corrado, we could just march on and see what pleasant surprises they have for us?”

Which is as kind a way as I've come across of saying “We'll have to shut up and put up with it…”

The King moved off. JohnJack's hand closed over Conrad's shoulder.

“The air's clear enough for the Prince's Men to sing.” Spinelli sounded triumphant. “Corrado—if they can sing, so can we.”

“Yes.” Conrad looked down the column. He gazed from the man with the oboe to a woman who sang mezzo in the choir; counted twenty in all, including principal singers, and all with the same expression of determination that JohnJack wore.

I'm used to soldiers being brave—when they're not being cowards—but I hadn't thought to expect it from civilians. Tullio's right: I am an idiot.

“Then let's go.”

Spinelli managed a mocking, soldierly salute. “Yes
sir!”

Paolo stumbled up as they moved off. Conrad steadied her by her elbow.

“What are we left with?” he murmured.

The young woman shrugged a filthy shoulder and grinned. “A prevalence of winds and the smaller horns. Drums, cymbals, and piano—no chance!”

“We'll think of it as a small concert performance. The Prince's Men will have brought the orchestra,” Conrad got out, with a grave humour he saw they appreciated.

“I'll get it sorted.” Paolo grinned.

The rough moorland of the Burning Fields grew more erratic as they trudged on. The road became a mere track, occasional ruts from cart-wheels visible. Conrad watched the undergrowth—scrubby rowan-trees hiding much of whatever was in the distance. There was no visible lava now. He scraped his hand against what he thought was a bush, and stopped to pull some of the ivy off it.

It was a low, moss-covered stone wall.

“We must be close…” He lifted his head and gazed around, searching for the rising tiers of brick arches that make up a Flavian amphitheatre.

The eruption plume, now close on fourteen miles distant, dominated the sky. Conrad momentarily lifted his head from where he was putting his feet, studying how the column of fire and smoke rose up and flattened out, slanted smears of black sifting down from it. Volcanic ash falling like rain.

“There are more of these walls.” Tullio pulled more ivy away. “Would this be a part of the amphitheatre?”

Conrad saw they had dropped behind the singers. He quickened his pace, Tullio with him; deftly avoiding other low walls.

“Maybe it's a part of the tunnels that the ancients had, to flood and drain the amphitheatre for naval battles?”

“I doubt it—if that had been excavated, it would have been noticed.” Conrad pushed through a clump of scrub, palm trees, and newly-leafed rowan.

He caught both feet on an obstacle and pitched over on his face.

Tullio made a high-pitched wheezing sound, fist pressed to his sternum. “Holes in the ground would be noticed, oh yes!”

Tullio didn't seem inclined to stop laughing. Conrad knelt up, and tore away ash-greyed creepers. Enough of this particular ancient brick wall remained that one could see it had once had a doorway in it.

A man's feet stuck out of the vegetation-filled gap that had once been a door.

“Corrado?” Tullio's low laughter abruptly stopped. “That's a
body!”

Conrad tore ash-piled greenery down. He found himself looking at scarlet cloth; and into the face of an elderly man, sprawled on his back.

“Blessed Mother!” Paolo gasped.

“Get the King!” Conrad leaned forward and put his hand on the supine man's chest, and took it away bloody. Blood soaked the scarlet robe and white linen.

He pulled down the cloth at the man's neck, uncovering a red-black puncture in the pallid flesh above the collar-bone.

A stiletto lay discarded a yard off, in the bent grass. Blood ran like water down the blade.

Done only a short time ago—and I'll bet he didn't do this to himself
—

The man twitched. His features showed grey as pumice ash in the weak sunlight; cheeks hollowed, eyes bruised in their sockets. But not quite dead.

Ferdinand arrived with Paolo-Isaura, at a low run; and ducked down into the scrub beside them. Conrad couldn't help seizing his sister by the arm.

“It's Corazza. I recognise him. It's Cardinal Corazza. He's the head of the Inquisition in Naples. He exorcised our Papa.”

Paolo's other hand took hold of his and squeezed.

“He's been stabbed,” Conrad added, collecting himself and speaking to Ferdinand.

The King knelt down beside the older man. “Gabriele?”

Corazza's old man's eyes had been bright as candles when he exorcised Alfredo Scalese. Now they looked sunk in, and blue as if he had cataracts.

“They killed my dogs.”

He muttered it barely audibly. Conrad couldn't tell if he recognised the King.

“My best mastiffs. Not a boar in Campania could come close to them. They hung up all my dogs. Hung them on pitchforks driven into my door.”

Bubbling blood ran out of his mouth, down his cheek, and onto the pumice-ash and moss.

“Rest.” Ferdinand caught the eye of one of his
aides
. “Do we have army surgeons with us? Must I send him back to the
Apollon
?”

The Cardinal choked.

His once-red cheeks glowed pale with blood-loss. Conrad scuttled back, his sleeves sprayed with fine dots of blood.

The old man's hand closed lightly over Ferdinand's. “They said, next time it would be Renato and Cesare. If I didn't co-operate in every way. It was no harm. Truly. Just to use the palace. Storage.
I was doing no harm
.”

“Renato and Cesare?” Conrad murmured.

“His nephews.” Tullio, as a man who collected gossip, didn't need to specify any potentially closer relationship.

“I thought they might have been more dogs…”

Tullio ignored that, his frown thoughtful. “Why did they knife him? He might
have lived through it—he nearly has. Why not shoot him?”

The Cardinal said something that Conrad could not decipher, and very slowly the blood stopped pouring into his sodden robes.

Ferdinand closed the old man's eyes with a wet, red hand.

He straightened up with a grunt. “Wrap him in a cloak, here. We'll take him back for burial afterwards.”

If we don't, it'll be because
we're
in need of graves
.

Paolo's nostrils flared as the King strode back towards the head of the line, as if she continued to smell blood above the stink of sulphur.

Conrad stood, and gave her his hand to help her up. “I'll never know if he was warned that Alfredo couldn't keep his mouth shut for long, even about
il Principe
. Whether disposing of my father was just a priestly duty, or an order.”

Isaura said nothing.

Tullio caught his balance on rough mud and buried bricks. “Looks like he wasn't a Prince's Man by choice.”

Paolo's voice went up into an outraged yelp. “There's always a choice!”

Conrad exchanged a glance with Tullio over her head, and read the same knowledge in the other man's face—that some decisions are in no way choices, and any man who loves gives hostages to the wicked of the world.

“Seems the Prince's Men didn't trust him not to run to the King.” Tullio wiped his sleeve across his mouth and spat grey ash into the knee-high grass. “Better watch your footing, Corrado; don't know how many more men they'll have got rid of today!”

A tremor ran through the grass and scrub, the new leaves of a mountain ash swaying. Conrad kept his balance superbly.

It was not easy to read the landscape here.
An ambusher's paradise
. Bushes, and the ash-fall, hid the distance. Uneven earth and grass made the ground untrustworthy.

His pistol was still in his coat pocket; a reassuring weight. He examined it carefully on the march, checking under the frizzen to see that the powder hadn't fallen out during the San Carlo's collapse. It was still there.
Ought I to call
that
a miracle?
he wondered cynically, as he replaced the flint-lock pistol in his pocket.

They walked up a shallow rising slope, Conrad realised, as he returned his attention to the ground.

At the top, we might finally get a sight of the Amphitheatre—!

Tension made his steps quicker. He passed the King—conferring with his
aides
and officers—and ducked down, cautiously approaching the brow of the slope, where it was screened by bushes.

He parted leaves and thin branches carefully, eeling his way into them.
In case
we need to see and not be seen
—

Grass and earth gave way under his foot—gave way completely, pitching him into emptiness.

His stomach jolted. He skidded downhill and forward, grabbing at the saplings and bushes; gravity ripping his hands free of them.

He plummeted helplessly forward—and fell into the vast depth of the Flavian Amphitheatre.

H
e threw his arms up to protect his head and fell face-down on concrete.

He slammed into something that was not level. Pain blasted him at knee, thigh, rib, and shoulder.

He rolled.

Throwing out his hands halted his fall—

He lay face down on
steps
, he realised. Face down and head down, too—the great oval of the Flavian Amphitheatre opening out beneath him.

He noted in a fraction of a heartbeat that the far, eastern, side of the Anfiteatro was what he would expect from Rome—rows of brick arches in a curved wall, the sky showing through, and on the inside, facing him, tier upon tier of stone steps for seating, with access stairs between them.

The ground behind him was level with this topmost tier of the amphitheatre seating.

It took his stunned mind a long minute to process it.

This side of the Flavian Amphitheatre has been
excavated.
Recently
.

Who'd notice yet more archaeologists and tomb-robbers, digging up more relics than Ferdinand has in Naples' secret museum? No one. No one at all. It's not suspicious.

It just means that the Anfiteatro, which I vaguely recall I painted as only a few rows of seating and a part of the arena, has now been dug out to be a
full working amphitheatre
—

Conrad inched up onto aching elbows. The arena floor was divided on the long axis by a dark path or ditch. On the far side of that, a slew of people in costume milled around.

On the lowest front tier of the far side, musicians sat. Scenery looked minimal. A hundred or so men and women made a scant blot of an audience, halfway up the further side.

“Is
this
the black opera?”

There were other men in the arena besides singers. Conrad picked one out of the crowd, urgently pointing up—at him. The attitude was unmistakable; any soldier can read it in their stances.
Intruders!

He yanked his pistol out of his pocket, lifted it, barely sighting, and pulled the trigger.

Click
.

Conrad lowered the flint-lock weapon. He got up onto his knees, knowing he presented a larger target, but needing to work on the gun—

Powder under the frizzen plate, charge in order, no reason why the weapon should not discharge.

He raised it again, shifting his body side-on to the men far below in the arena. Shooting down at an angle, at this range, made him uneasy for his aim. He took the closest man as a target and gently squeezed the trigger.