The Devil in Music (78 page)

"From
then on," he continued, "Marchese Lodovico took charge of
everything. He brought me to sing for Maestro Donati and persuaded
him to accompany us to the lake. In the meantime, he enjoined
absolute secrecy on me about our project. His concealment of our
connexion was inconvenient, since I couldn't get near him to look for
the notebook. But I had great hopes of our sojourn at the lake.
Since the notebook contained vocal exercises and ornamentation, there
was at least a chance the marchese would bring it with him to use in
my training. Failing that, he might let fall some clue to what he had
done with it. After we came to the lake, I lost no opportunity to
discuss exercises and ornamentation with him. But it wasn't until
we'd been there some six weeks that his scribblings of tritoni
revealed he was trying to break the cipher."

"You
were remarkably patient."

"I
had no choice."

The
truth was, he had hardly noticed the days flying by. Absorbed in his
training, challenged by Donati's demands, aglow with achievement when
he met them, he often had to remind himself of why he had come here.
As he listened to Donati's anecdotes of singers and their triumphs,
he was fired with ambition and a kind reverence for his own talent,
as if it were not a possession to be flaunted, but a gift he must
strive to deserve. He felt guilty at all the effort Donati was
investing in him. He even felt some compunction toward Lodovico, who
was doing so much for him. But of course Lodovico had known how to
chill gratitude, as frost does flowers.

"How
did you find my notebook at last?" asked de la Marque. "Where
did you find it?"

"On
the morning after Marchese Lodovico caught me at the castle, he came
to the villa and announced he would be spending the night there. I
determined to have another try at getting into the castle while he
was at the villa. That night he sent Maestro Donati and me to bed
early. After I'd helped Maestro Donati prepare for bed, I went
downstairs again, hoping to slip out without Marchese Lodovico's
seeing me. I was just in time to see him going out by the front
door. I nipped into the library and looked out of the window to see
where he was going. He was striding off down the shore path to the
belvedere, as we know now, to keep the rendezvous with Valeriano.

"I
turned away from the window, and the light from my candle fell on the
writing-table there. I saw the very notebook I was looking for lying
open, with a pile of papers beside it. Aeneas had described it to me
its size and thickness and the colour of the binding. I looked
through it quickly and found the pages contained music, with tritoni
scattered throughout. The loose papers were covered with tritoni,
letters of the alphabet, and stray words. They showed the whole
history of Marchese Lodovico's efforts to break the cipher.

"There
was no time to think, no room for hesitation. I thrust the papers
into the notebook and took it up to my room. I couldn't destroy it,
because I'd promised Aeneas I would return it to him if I could. We'd
met a second time before I left Milan, and he had given me the names
of a pair of brothers in the neighbourhood to whom I could safely
entrust the notebook. I retrieved my pistols and whatever else was
essential to take away with me, and bolted.

"I
found the brothers Aeneas had told me of and left the notebook with
them. They gave me a horse, money, and other provisions. They
warned me to travel north into the mountains and cross the border at
a point well above Chiasso, which was swarming with customs

officers.
I spent a week in the wilds of the Val Cavargna, sleeping in barns
or under trees and dodging the customs men, till I felt quite like
one of the local smugglers. Finally I descended to Lake Lugano and
bribed a boatman to take me clandestinely into Switzerland."

"How
did you learn of Marchese Lodovico's death?"

"I
read about it in the newspapers when I reached Lugano. I was
considerably surprised. The papers said he'd died of heart failure,
but I'd never seen the least sign of ill health in him. Of course,
looking at the thing coldbloodedly, his death was a stroke of luck
for me. He was the only one who'd known my real name, and now I
might well be able to keep dark that I was Orfeo. That seemed
prudent, since the newspapers also reported that the Milanese police
were looking for Orfeo I assumed because my disappearing so suddenly
had made them suspect me of being a Carbonaro, or some less exotic
variety of criminal."

De
La Marque nodded. "My colleagues sent word to me in Turin of
your success and the lengths to which you'd gone to achieve it.
Because of course," he added nonchalantly, "we assumed
you'd killed Lodovico to get the notebook back. I was immensely
relieved, and only sorry I would probably never have an opportunity
to tell you of my admiration and gratitude. Later I heard how you'd
taken London society by storm and become the most celebrated dandy
since Brummell. I could only think what a shame it was to waste such
talents on leading a pack of aristocrats about by the nose. With
your audacity and cleverness, what a revolutionary you would have
made!"

"You're
very kind."

"What
did you make of me," de la Marque asked curiously, "when I
turned up in the midst of your investigation? Did you know from the
beginning it was I who'd compiled the notebook?"

"No.
The idea did occur to me when I heard of what you call your parlour
tricks your perfect pitch and your ability to write down a melody
after a single hearing. But you must understand, Aeneas had told me
nothing of who compiled the notebook or how it came into Lodovico's
hands. I was forced to look about among all Lodovico's acquaintances
for a Carbonaro who might have passed the notebook on to him. Of
course, when you came to the lake with us and persistently dropped
hints that you knew more of Orfeo than you were saying, I strongly
suspected you. But I had no proof until the footmen told me how
they'd stolen your notebook and given it to their master."

"Did
you think I had killed Marchese Lodovico?"

"I
entertained the possibility. I could see you were smarting from

his
footmen's treatment of you. And you might have feared he'd learned
so much about the cipher and the contents of the notebook that it
would be dangerous to let him live, even if I were to get the
notebook back for you. But once Rinaldo was killed, my suspicion of
you receded. I couldn't conceive of any reason you would have to
want him dead."

"If
it's any consolation, man vieux, I can't have baffled you half as
much as you baffled me even though I had the advantage of knowing
from the beginning that you were Orfeo. We the Angeli were mystified
when you turned up in Milan after the truth came out about Lodovico's
murder. Why in the name of the devil and all his minions would you
be courting discovery like that?

"We
couldn't afford not to know, in case you were proposing to turn
informer against us. I took it upon myself to keep an eye on you,
which is why I watched you and La Beatrice through that little device
you detected at the opera. A few nights later I called at her box
and asked her all about you, and to my surprise, she invited me to
join your party at the villa. Of course I realized the theft of my
notebook might come out. But I had to keep abreast of what you were
up to. Besides, you'd put me on my mettle. If you were willing to
take such daring risks, surely I could do no less.

"Of
course, once I came to know you, I understood why you had come here:
you were a mad, quixotic Englishman, and you couldn't let the police
make a hash of the investigation, when you could set things right.
What took me utterly by surprise was that I I, and not you was
suspected of being Orfeo! That really was a sublime farce. Moliere
couldn't have written anything better.

"It
seemed a trifle less amusing when those troublesome footmen turned
up. That, man vieux, was when I concluded you were not merely
eccentric but a raving lunatic. Whatever possessed you to tell
Grimani about my notebook and the Comte d'Aubret's protege? The
footmen wanted no trouble with the police. They would have held
their tongues if you had."

"You
left me no choice," said Julian. "You conveyed to me very
clearly, through your account of the Comte d'Aubret's protege, that
you knew I was Orfeo and could reveal it to Grimani at any time. You
made a direct threat: Say nothing about the notebook, or I shall
miraculously remember the protege's name. But that was a
double-edged sword: if I were exposed as Orfeo, I would have nothing
to lose by telling Grimani all I knew of the Angeli. So I turned
your threat

against
you. I passed on all the information to Grimani, including your
story about the comte's protege."

"I
must admit, you took the wind out of my sails. But surely for you,
it was a Pyrrhic victory. If the murders hadn't been solved, Grimani
would have sent to Paris for information about d'Aubret, and would
have ferreted out that the young English protege with the marvelous
voice was a certain Julian Kestrel. And where would you have been
then?"

"Exactly
where I would have been in any event, if Lodovico's murder hadn't
been solved when it was. Because Grimani had given Lucia only three
days' respite before he meant to sink his fangs into her. And that I
could not allow."

"Do
you mean to say you would have given yourself up? Even though you
would almost certainly be hanged or sent to the Spiel-berg?"

Julian
smiled wryly, thinking of his sombre outing with MacGregor to Villa
Pliniana. "I must admit, I was a bit blue-devilled."

"So
I should think!" De la Marque shook his head indulgently.
"Mad, utterly mad, just as I said."

"Is
there no one you would consider dying for?"

"Only
liberty, mon vieux."

They
both fell silent. Julian lay back in the boat, feeling its gentle
rise and fall and listening to the soft plash of the water against
its sides. The stars blurred before him. He closed his eyes and let
his conscious mind slip free

De
la Marque called it back. "There's one thing more I should like
to know. Why did you take Conte Raversi as your ally after you'd
solved the murders?"

"I
had to confide in someone. Raversi was Lodovico's friend, he had
influence with the authorities, and it would probably be a relief to
him to find that the killer was someone other than Orfeo, since it
was his own secrecy about the murder that had helped Orfeo escape.
Or at all events " Julian smiled. "That's one
explanation."

"What
do you mean?"

"Here's
one I like better. Conte Raversi is one of you, isn't he? He came
to the lake while Lodovico and I were there, in part to keep an eye
on my mission, and in part to gauge the strength of the local
military in the event of a rebellion which he did very cleverly by
organising a meeting of the local landowners with Comandante Von
Krauss. After he learned of Lodovico's murder, he helped me in the

only
way he could: by hamstringing the investigation so that I was able to
get away."

"I
am shocked," said de la Marque delightedly, "utterly
shocked that you could accuse such a pillar of orthodoxy of being a
Carbonaro!"

"If
I had any doubt of it," Julian added, "you settled the
matter when you told me that, after you heard how I'd retrieved your
notebook, you assumed I'd killed Lodovico. Who told you he'd been
murdered, if not Raversi?"

"Mon
vieux, you are magnificent! Is there any chance you would consider
coming over to our cause?"

"I
should have thought your cause was a bit moribund at the moment."

"In
Italy, yes. The people are too much at odds with one another for
concerted action. The pot simmers, but the lid stays securely in
place. The revolution will come first in France. We have
experience. We know what to do."

"And
what comes after? Another Terror? Another Bonaparte?"

"I
don't concern myself with that. Europe is encrusted with
institutions that need to be torn down. Let someone else worry about
what to erect in their place. If a revolutionary thinks too much
about consequences, he becomes incapable of action. As your poet put
it, conscience makes cowards of us all."

"Doesn't
that strike you as a trifle irresponsible?"

"That's
your English sense of order. Order belongs to art. Real life should
be all disorder and struggle."

"I
see," said Julian. "It's a philosophy. I'm glad you
explained that. Otherwise I should have been in danger of thinking
you took up Car-bonarism out of sheer devilry."