The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

Ferdinand demanded bluntly, “Who is it you wish to contact?”

  Conrad interlinked his fingers.

  “Estella Belucci. As I think Signore Roberto knows?—she’s a soprano from the other Sicily, from Palermo. I heard her once; her voice can’t be faulted. However, she has a reputation in the business for being quarrelsome in rehearsal and performance. She’s been dismissed more than once.”

  Ferdinand looked momentarily bemused. “And you want to offer this woman the place of seconda donna?”

  “She’d be excellent for the Aztec slave-girl Xochitl. I know Sandrine and JohnJack. They’re perfectly capable of keeping a capricious singer in order. Signore Velluti is reputed temperamental himself; I don’t think he’s liable to tolerate much dissent either.”

  Roberto gave up standing in favour of drawing out a chair in the cramped space around the table, and sitting down next to Conrad. “Sire, I don’t want to quote proverbs about beggars not being choosers, but this work needs a dramatic soprano.”

  Conrad caught Roberto’s expression out of the corner of his eye. He gave the Count a nod, cementing a growing sense of accord.

  “Very well.” Ferdinand did not quite frown. “We have little enough time for rehearsal as it is. Bring the woman here, see if she can fill the role you have for her without disrupting the rest of the singers. I authorise you to tell Signori Velluti and Spinelli, and Madame Sandrine, as much of our excuse or pretext as you think necessary—erring on the extremely cautious side, even so. Wait before informing Donna Belucci of anything, until we know whether we, also, will have to dismiss her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Conrad searched out another set of notes, and three heads bent over the papers in the sharp sunlight.

  The following day being Sunday, and nearly two weeks of their time having expired, Conrad had no idea if he would see the Count.

  Roberto Capiraso, however, either did not care for his duty to attend Mass, or was neglecting it at this particular time. He arrived by eight in the morning in the secret museum, and sat experimenting with the upright piano (when he was not swearing at its tone) and the text Conrad had handed over—the castrato’s entrance aria with accompanying male and female chorus.

  The Count brought out a score apparently ripped from one of his one-act “private house” operas, and it soon repeated in variations through the grotesque museum.

  Conrad found himself unconsciously tapping his finger to the first two lines of the stretta. “Actually—that’s quite good…”

  “Of course it is.”

  Conrad was not wholly sure if that was a joke, or Il Superbo being Il Superbo again.

  Count Roberto abandoned the piano in favour of reading Conrad’s scribbles over his shoulder. “I see you’re allowing Velluti his entrance…”

  The latest stage direction read: “Enter Fernando Cortez, mounted on white horse, garlanded with foreign blossoms, at the head of his victorious army; the Aztecs sing their thanks to him for defeating their traditional enemies, the Amazons.”

  Conrad shrugged. “It’s easier than listen to how ill-treatment of castrati singers is going to be the death of bel canto opera—again.”

  Count Roberto laughed. “I truly believe Signore Velluti has no idea how conceited he is.”

  Conrad wondered if it was actually possible for restraint to make one swallow one’s tongue.

  He skipped ahead to work on “the Aztec Princess Tayanna enters for her solo aria of gratitude and growing love for Cortez…”

  Five hours, even with refreshments, exhausted his ability to shape verse for that day, after the previous week. He swept his papers together, mentally swore at the prohibition from taking them home, and locked the drawer in which he kept them.

  “I’ll walk with you, Signore Conrad.” The Conte di Argente put the lid of the piano down, and gave a smile made more open by weariness. Conrad waited while he locked the door, and made for that part of the palace maze with which he was more familiar.

  Poor as he was at hearing a score when he read it, Conrad still had for plans for the Count’s already-existent one-act works.

  Which are, to be honest, better than what he’s producing now. If that’s lack of confidence because of how important this opera is—or maybe Il Superbo not believing that he can write a false note—he’d better find his focus soon.

  “We can lift at least the stretta from your Christina regina della Svezia for the end of Act One. Take it out wholesale,” Conrad said, as they walked down a high corridor made bright by fan-top windows. “Just score it for the voices we’ve got. It would be ideal.”

  “If you think so…” The Count sounded uncharacteristically diffident.

  Conrad almost missed a step as realisation hit him.

  You imbecile, you’ve been telling him for a week that drawing-room operas are rubbish! Cazzo! Is it any wonder his confidence for this project is lacking?

  If Conrad was quietly amused to find “Il Superbo” as capable of being nervous as the next man, it was not a joke he would risk The Aztec Princess for.

  “That stretta,” Conrad confirmed. “And maybe the first bass aria and cabaletta. It’s not Spinelli’s voice, but if we get a second bass—a high bass, or ‘baritone’ as they’re starting to call them—and we could badly do with one, for the High Priest—it would work very well.”

  Count Roberto glanced over as they walked, for one moment looking as if he suspected an ill-timed joke.

  “I have no objection.”

  He sounded fully as arrogant as ever, but Conrad was not annoyed by it this time. He’s being defensive, nothing more.

  Two weeks gone, four weeks to go, and I may just be learning to work with my composer…

  Roberto Capiraso rubbed briefly at his eyes, and visibly shook off tiredness. “I’d wondered about the contralto’s solo from I cavalieri di Rodi; it could be transposed to mezzo without much difficulty.”

  “Won’t need it—Sandrine really does have a remarkable tessitura.” Conrad smiled. “I like your Knights of Rhodes, I think we could use more of it for Act Three—when I get the book done that far.”

  “When,” the Count echoed, deadpan.

  “I don’t have the benefit of a spare manuscript at the bottom of a drawer somewhere…”

  Exchanging a glance with him, Conrad met and acknowledged a look of very dry humour.

  Guards passed them down the corridor to one of the royal apartments. Conrad heard the King’s voice from one of the rooms ahead. Private meetings at different times of the day had become a rule for reporting their progress.

  “Sir,” Roberto said as they entered a long chamber. Conrad smiled to himself and let the man make the most of his report.

  The room swam as he looked away from the King, outlined against the sunlight of a tall multi-paned window. Conrad rubbed at his eyes.

  Not until then did he notice that they were not alone.

  The room was shaped as an L, and in the other angle of it, a couch stood before a hearth. A woman sat there, staring into the fire—Waiting, out of the way of the men’s business, of course, Conrad thought cynically.

  The light from another window, behind her, silhouetted her profile, making her features difficult to see. Her dark hair, coiled and braided at the back of her neck, was surrounded by a glowing sun-halo where curling wisps escaped from the pins. The mulberry purple-blue of her morning dress blended with the couch’s upholstery, both disguising her presence, and throwing her pale skin into sharp relief.

  Something in his silence must have caught her attention. Her chin came up.

  Years ago, when the spine of Italy was a place for truly bad warfare, he had come back to camp from a foraging expedition and been ambushed fifty yards from safety. A man stood up so quickly that Conrad had no ability to react. He brought his hand around, holding a chunk of weathered granite, and hit Conrad in the side of the head.

  In one extended, timeless second, Conrad had registered everything about the man, down to his dirty c
hewed nails. And everything about the fist-sized jagged stone. It was a nightmare of paralysis: his mind realised the situation quickly and his body was trapped by slow reaction.

  The feeling ended as the rock grazed his head, scraping off a great lump of his scalp.

  This paralysis, now, did not seem to want to end.

  “Dear God—”

  Conrad’s voice cut off without his volition.

  No, not her, it can’t be her—

  His thoughts simply stopped. He took one blind step forward, staring far too closely for politeness at her oval face. He could have stood all day, looking at the pale, tall woman with lilac shadows around her eyes.

  “Leonora. Oh dear God. Nora.”

  CHAPTER 14

  She did not speak or move.

  Suddenly cold, he thought, It could be a mistake—people have likenesses, doubles—sisters—twins!

  But no woman has ever had quite that endearing mouth of hers, upper lip thin and lower lip full, always looking as if she’s hiding a smile.

  He knows her face, that shows her thinness. He knows that if she were to stand, she would be too tall for a woman; her head always came up slightly above his chin. But put your hands on her slender shoulders and you will feel a surprising amount of strength there.

  “Nora?” he questioned.

  Her lips parted as if she would speak. This close, Conrad caught a glint of light. It reflected from a tiny, triangular chip, missing from the corner of one front tooth.

  Oh Lord, Leonora!

  In opera, everyone on-stage freezes at the moment of exposure and revelation. Tal momento! they exclaim, “this moment”; O istante! “what a terrible instant!” Conrad understood it, in his own moment: everything in his memory was present—all in one instant—to his inner eye. Walking around the quarters of Venice (neither of them being flush enough with cash to take one of the black boats) she stumbles on one of the ridiculously hump-backed bridges that crossed a canal. He catches at her wrist but her hand slides through his. Her shoulder hit against the low bridge wall. She comes up holding her mouth. There is no blood. He’s never sure if she struck the brickwork, or jarred her teeth together. But ever since, she carries the tiny disfigurement—and sets her shoulders and faces directly up at the galleries when she sings, mutely daring anyone to comment. As if anyone could see it from more than six feet away—!

  He came back from five years ago to the present. “Nora. It’s me. Conrad!”

  Just for a moment, he thought he saw the leap of shock in her eyes—

  Fear, recognition, startled longing.

  —and then an utter joy to see him again.

  Missing for so long, so long—

  All of it vanished, inside the double thump of one heartbeat.

  The feelings flashed in her gaze, like fish scales glittering as a Leviathan rolls over and vanishes into the depths. All gone, as she looked past him towards the other men in the room.

  Buried under the mask of a respectable woman.

  Vaguely conscious of King Ferdinand at his elbow, Conrad said, “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Conrad—”

  He made a stunned attempt at social necessities. “I didn’t know you’d found us a soprano!”

  Five years ago, six this spring. She was a whirlwind, a hurricane, a woman who could not be withstood when she made her entrance into any impresario’s drawing-room, demanding that they hire her out to La Fenice, La Scala, or the Teatro San Carlo. Not as prima donna, admittedly. When he met her singing in La Fenice, she had a tiny role as Inez, the maid to the Queen of Spain. She made up for this lack of lines by her voice. As a superb dramatic coloratura soprano, she could rivet the whole house’s attention with forty seconds of un-earthly sound, announcing her lady’s death, or introducing the villain to the heroine, or rebuking a wicked poisoner… Not only impresarios and aristocrats and bourgeois society began to speak of her, but audiences did.

  I fell hard in love; was amazed beyond words when she returned it—

  One year and one season in Venice later, after fourteen months, just before Lent, during an opera he cannot now listen to if any house revives it—

  “—You disappeared!” Conrad barely noticed how hoarse his voice sounded. “I went everywhere. Genoa, Milan, Padua—Paris and Dresden and Vienna. No one had heard anything of you—Where have you been!”

  Ridiculously, all he can think is that age has not touched her in the years since he’s seen her.

  As his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, though, he saw violet smudges dark under her eyes, and at her temples—saw that she leans back on the couch with the acceptance of an invalid. If she’s held on to her youth, she has not managed to disguise the fact that illness has touched her.

  It doesn’t matter.

  Seeing her beauty, unchanged except by the lines of sickness and a certain tiredness, he wondered if perhaps Italy, France, and the German kingdoms were not enough—if he should have pursued a forlorn hope to St Petersburg; if she picked up this weary coldness there.

  A rush of protectiveness overwhelmed him: he found himself desiring to wrap her up in his greatcoat and demand a carriage, so that he might take her somewhere without her foot ever touching the ground, and there look after her until she is well again.

  “Nora…” Conrad repeated tenderly.

  A hand closed over his shoulder, powerful fingers digging painfully into his deltoid muscle.

  Conrad was too surprised to resist as the hand dragged him to one side.

  He choked on inarticulate rage as he discovered it was Roberto who had physically removed him. Wrenching himself free, he stepped forward between the Count and Leonora, shooting a fiercely protective glance.

  Leonora sat up on the couch. Gold caught the light on her finger as she moved her hand. He had not seen it before: he saw it now.

  A ring.

  “You will have to forgive me—”

  Nothing could be colder or less in need of pardon than the Conte di Argente’s tone as he brushed past Conrad to the couch, and sat down on the edge, taking the woman’s hands between his own, not looking at anything but her face.

  “—My wife no longer sings.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “I perceive, also,” Roberto Conte di Argente stated without the possibility of contradiction, “that my wife is unwell.”

  “Of course,” the King murmured, ringing a small bell beside him. As an aide appeared, he ordered, “See the lady to her coach, and accompany her home—Count, I will require you for further business.”

  The next few minutes passed in a confusion which Conrad did not attempt to follow. Leonora’s white face turned away from him, and her husband’s hands put her furred cloak around her shoulders, his square body shutting out the view of her.

  I thought I’d forgotten—got over it—accepted that I would never find her—

  “…Gentlemen?”

  Conrad became aware someone was speaking to him.

  The King, he realised belatedly. He met amiable blue eyes turned cold.

  “I know both of you are aware of how crucial this opera is,” Ferdinand said. “Either you put any personal difficulties you have aside, or else I will have to ask one of you to step down. Now.”

  His tone was stern rather than furious, but Conrad had by now enough knowledge of Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily to hear the unspoken Damn them for this! There isn’t time.

  The Count di Argente looked grim. “Our business takes precedence over anything else. Obviously.”

  I have a hundred—a thousand—questions to ask—!

  Before his mouth could get him into difficulties, Conrad said, “This won’t affect the opera,” and shut it.

  He made his bow and let the servants show him out.

  He said no more to Tullio than, “I’ve found her!”

  Tullio elicited the relevant facts with half a dozen incisive questions, and finished with one of his own. “You haven’t seen her now for five—nearly six—years—You sure it’s her?�
��

  “She hasn’t changed.”

  Isaura had sat silently listening, evidently picking up the context of her brother’s feral excitement. At Conrad’s last assertion, she snorted. “If it’s been five years, any woman has changed! This Leonora of yours will be nearly thirty…”

  Conrad felt brief amusement at Isaura’s tone, which clearly held thirty to be the next best thing to a hag. “She doesn’t look a day older than when I met her…”

  His memories of Venice ought to be rubbed featureless, given how often he’d examined them, but they remained clear. Nora’s face is one of the most definite. Below him, her hair spread out all over the pillow. On-stage, lit only by the candles on the musicians’ stands, singing her two lines in the moonlit Lion’s Court of Alhambra in Act Two.

  War and its disastrous, pointless fighting have been and gone since then; something jerks in his chest at that memory. It should leave deeper scars. But his nightmares about that time in his life never undo him as completely as his dreams that he is left by her—again and again. Or else he finds her. And then wakes up, alone.

  Separating out the year and more that they lived together—in the apartment room near the Accademia’s colony of feral cats—from the dreams, is less than easy.

  Conrad didn’t sleep during the night.

  The reality of Leonora’s existence stunned him into a permanent wakefulness. That, he realised, and a growing dread of going back to the secret museum in the morning, and attempting to pick up work where he and—her husband?—had stopped.

  Two carnivals passed in Venice while he was in that city. The first saw him have to put a mask on, to have the nerve to approach the young singer—the commedia Plague Doctor’s grotesque bird beak, since that was the only mask left that he could afford.

  She laughed at me—without any unkindness. And it was that which made me see her as human and approachable.

  A year later, they made an arrangement to meet in front of St Mark’s Basilica on the hour—a strong wind from the south-east had whipped up the water on the Lido, the sea backed up, and the paving stones of the Square were flooded in part. Conrad picked his way through the waters, buffeted by Carnival crowds around the Campanile, arrived precisely as the bells rang—and she was not there.