The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  The low light was clear enough to show sleek black hair and burning dark eyes. Canon-Regular Luka Viscardo gazed forward, apparently watching King Ferdinand and the Cardinal, Gabriele Corazza, talk.

  Viscardo spoke quietly enough that his sneering tone wouldn’t reach the King or Cardinal. “I wonder why, signore, if you’re an atheist, you believe the souls of the dead haunt the Earth?”

  “Because I perceive them, Viscardo.” Conrad matched him sneer for sneer. “Like the Returned Dead, but not corporeal. I doubt they’re ‘souls’ in your sense. Just because there’s something that appears to be the personality of a dead man, that doesn’t mean that it is.”

  Conrad paused, and dissected emotionlessly:

  “If it is a survival of something after death—that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything religious about it. It could be a non-supernatural echo of a personality. Or it could simply be that our next stage of life, after we appear to die, is as an incorporeal being. None of that implies a ‘soul’.”

  Leather shoes squeaking, Viscardo walked around the end of the pew and sat down beside him, leaning forward as if he comforted a parishioner. “So that’s why you’re willing to have us kill your father?”

  Conrad couldn’t hide his reaction. He grunted. The words hurt him like a boot under the ribs.

  Is this what I’m doing? Murdering what remains of my father?

  Viscardo’s tone turned unctuous. “This is a sad day for you, signore. There is a comfort in having the ghost of a loved one about the place. As if the person is not quite gone.”

  Conrad stood up, unsurprised to find the King and Cardinal within earshot now, walking back from the altar. He found one of his hands balled into a fist. He hid it in the folds of his coat, turning a shoulder to Canon-Regular Viscardo.

  “His Eminence agrees with me,” Ferdinand said, his face stern and sad. “And grants permission for the exorcism, which he himself will perform.”

  Conrad nodded respectfully to the Cardinal, aware of irony.

  This is the man who would have interrogated me, being Head of the Holy Office as he is…

  “Yes, sir. When?”

  For all his magnificent robes, Corazza resembled very remarkably certain comic prints Conrad had seen in England, of red-nosed, explosive-tempered fox-hunters. The Cardinal spoke in a powerful wheezing voice. “Now.”

  Conrad choked out, “Now?”

  “If a soul is in danger of damnation, the sooner it’s sent on to God the better.” Cardinal Corazza paced on, calling for various churchman, that Conrad guessed would be his most skilled priests.

  Conrad sat down hard on the wood of the pew. Under his breath, he muttered, “Now?”

  Viscardo’s voice sounded as if he smirked. “So that’s how an atheist asks us for an exorcism…”

  “Whatever it is that you people do, the method works—mostly—as I understand it.” Conrad met Viscardo’s black gaze with unblinking defiance. “A shame you don’t investigate it scientifically, to find out why!”

  Conrad found Ferdinand’s hand squeezing his shoulder. The King gestured the red-faced Canon-Regular away, and implacably watched him go.

  “Might I tactfully suggest you keep the heresy quieter?”

  Conrad gave a wan smile, but couldn’t keep it on his face. “Sir, will we—should I—be present for this?”

  “His Eminence has been brought to understand that we will. I think there are questions to be asked of Alfredo Scalese.”

  The distant choir sang with Gabriele Corazza as he offered the holy sacrifice of Mass; Conrad could not focus his attention even for a Sung Mass, potential cause of miracles.

  He couldn’t pay attention, either, to the ancient ceremony of exorcism, no matter how good an opportunity it would have been to observe it. He watched the sun-bathed squat pillars of the ancient Norman chapel. They blurred.

  The rite of exorcism continued interminably.

  “Vade retro Alfred Amsel!” Cardinal Corazza’s deep voice hit a pitch perfect note. “Vade retro Alfredo Scalese! Vade retro mundus, exitas mundus—”

  Conrad could not even bring himself to quarrel with their execrable Latin. The chapel echoed with the screams of the ghost.

  Conrad was conscious of Ferdinand stirring beside him. He managed to nod to the King.

  “Signore Ghost,” Ferdinand Bourbon called.

  The spectre glided across the ancient flat slabs of tombs, and was brought up with a jolt five yards from the altar. There was no visible boundary there now, but Conrad was willing to bet money it was where the Cardinal had aspersed holy water at the start of the ceremony.

  All that means is that he’s able to perceive it, and that he believes it repels him.

  Alfredo’s furious distorted face loomed up, suddenly, at Conrad. “Agnese must have slept with another man! You’re not my son, my son wouldn’t kill me!”

  “My father wouldn’t join a conspiracy against the King!”

  Even caught between hurt and fury, Conrad managed to keep the name of the Prince’s Men to himself.

  “And if I did?” Alfredo shrugged with supreme carelessness. “So what? I died a long time ago. I can’t be wiping your arse every day, boy; do you have any idea how boring existence is for me? I would have thought you’d be happy your old father had found some friends, and some things he can do to feel useful…”

  Conrad looked away from the blue-grey figure, translucent as Murano glass. He slid down slightly on the pew while Ferdinand began his questioning.

  Which will be useless—useless!—Ferdinand won’t make him talk in any detail about what the Prince’s Men plan. Why would he? It’s obvious they’d keep my father in the dark!

  The questions went round in circles.

  Ferdinand sat back. “How certain are you that let nothing slip to him?”

  Conrad rubbed his face, but could not wipe away the weariness or the shame. “I tried to discuss only the libretto, in terms of a small summer production, but… I was used to talking with him when he was alive; it was one thing he always did well. I can’t affirm that I told him nothing I shouldn’t.”

  The King looked stern, but more forgiving than Conrad thought he should. “He was your father… Your dead father. He gave no hint that he knew far more of your business than he should?”

  “Not to me, sir.”

  Alfredo Scalese stared around the chapel as if he searched for someone not present. The minute he caught the King’s eye on him, he said triumphantly, “There are certainly those close to you who know more than you think! Not just me!”

  “Evil spirits speak ill!” Cardinal Corazza crossed himself, puffing even as he walked the short distance to his King. “Sire, this one is obviously practised in spreading suspicion between those who trust each other, but my experience suggests that he’s merely a gadfly, even if associated with those who do evil.”

  Alfredo caught Conrad’s eye and moved one finger, mimicking sealing his lips shut.

  Conrad let go a word that made the Cardinal start. He glimpsed the King calming the churchman.

  “Why would you do this?” Conrad demanded.

  Alfredo visibly pouted. “Why shouldn’t I? I became part of il Principe years ago. Along with the Bloody Hand, the Masons, la società onorata, the Rosicrucians, the Carbonari, the Camorra—every group I thought might give me something interesting to pass Eternity. You have no idea how time weighs… Imagine how surprised I was when the Prince’s Men summoned me because they had a suspicion about my son.”

  In peripheral vision, Conrad saw Ferdinand speaking urgently to the Cardinal, and Corazza raising his hand as if to swear an oath of silence.

  The King looked speculatively at the ghost.

  “No. My father will say anything to anybody, no matter what oaths he might swear!” Conrad just stopped himself yelling, Isn’t it obvious? He can’t even be loyal to the damn Prince’s Men!

  Alfredo cocked a jaundiced eye at the riches of the chapel, and the rest of the Duomo. H
e spread the skirts of his frock-coat and to all appearances perched his immaterial body on the back of a pew, facing Conrad.

  “…If I’d known I’d end up here, I wouldn’t have come. They were right about you, by the way, Conrad,” Alfredo continued blandly. “You were always a secretive boy, listening and not talking… and you showed a regrettable tendency to refuse to gossip about any of what you heard. The money I could have made, if you’d been a bit more careless about what you heard at palace doors…”

  His hard expression softened, in that face that seemed made out of frozen light.

  “But you loved your Papa, didn’t you? You won’t let him be sent off into who-knows-what? I did think that when it came to it, I wouldn’t object—Eternity’s a long time—but I haven’t had enough of it yet. You won’t let them make me go!”

  Conrad rested his face in his hands, welcoming the dark.

  If I just said to him, “they can only compel you because you believe they can”… A few words from me, and he wouldn’t be driven out—

  Cardinal Corazza’s hound-hallooing voice echoed back from the chapel’s arched ceiling. “Be at peace, Alfred Amsel, and return to your Father—”

  “I don’t want to go!”

  The sound of bells swelled and died, and a long chant in Latin echoed back from the maze of pillars. Conrad did not speak, or look up.

  But he heard Alfredo Scalese cursing and screaming as he was forced away, until all sign of him finally vanished.

  CHAPTER 24

  Conrad leaned back on a pew in the main part of the Duomo. “Tullio, I just want to sit here for a time.”

  The ex-soldier gave him a sceptical look. “If you were any other man, I’d say you wanted to pray.”

  “The world must be easier if it’s only six thousand years old, and sandwiched between Heaven and Hell. Surely?”

  He closed his eyes, and after a while heard Tullio’s quiet departing steps.

  He doubted the other man would go far.

  Conrad sat in the Duomo di San Gennaro, not thinking of it as a religious house, but as somewhere quiet where he could sit and eradicate the screams of Alfredo’s spirit from his memory.

  Suppose he is only an imprint, like the mark the printing press leaves on the paper. That doesn’t answer the question of whether he could feel his own terror, or whether it was just for show…

  And I wish I thought it was the latter.

  A fair-haired man in clerical clothing seated himself at Conrad’s right, with a decorous sweep of his black robes. It was not Luka Viscardo; that was the best that could be said for him.

  A priest. The last thing I need is a comforting priest—!

  “Have you considered,” the priest asked in a low murmur, “that if your debts to the late Alfredo Scalese’s creditors were paid in total, you would be free to leave Naples? Perhaps to a place as a respected librettist in, shall we say… St Petersburg?”

  Conrad studied the man beside him.

  The disguise—or possibly it was not a disguise—looked flawless. An ordinary ordained priest. But unlike the Dominican Canon-Regular Viscardo, with his burning single-minded faith, this cleric was apparently one of the Prince’s Men.

  Since I can’t think of anyone else who would pay to get rid of me.

  Never mind how they found me, or how they knew it was me they should approach… Is there nothing Alfredo didn’t tell them?

  Conrad felt unsure if the chill in his guts was disquiet, or overwhelming anger at the proposition. “So you’re offering me—what?”

  “To pay off all your debts.” The anonymous man in his anonymous clerical black lifted a faint blond eyebrow. “Surely you understand? Every debt that your father Alfredo owed, to be paid off by… the end of this week?”

  I suppose… I suppose, if they decide that they can do this, they can.

  “After all,” the Prince’s Man added, “you may have made some agreement or other, but it can hardly be considered binding. Who’d give up happiness for a philosophical point?”

  “Is it philosophical?” Conrad muttered, trying for time. “I thought we were speaking of money…”

  And every gentleman knows that money is something not worth talking about. Knows that old money is better than the nouveau riche variety, because it comes from the invisible labour of servants on the land, and not from embarrassingly visible industry. Money, according to scholars and philosophers, is beneath a man.

  “Think what you could do with all of what you earn,” the man said, “were you not paying nine-tenths of it to Alfredo Scalese’s creditors.”

  Conrad felt his expression alter, and, in a panic, realised he did not know what it gave away. “I could get married…”

  He realised he had spoken aloud.

  The Prince’s Man leaned forward, alert. “There’s a lady in the case? Yes, I see why you would hesitate to engage yourself in marriage, and a family, with your prospects so poor. But if your debts were gone…”

  Conrad did not bother to correct the man’s misapprehension.

  There is only one woman I would ever marry, and this comes too late for that.

  I wonder what I would have done in Venice, if this offer had been made to me then? If I could have said to Leonora, Marry me, have my children, I will spend my life making you happy?

  I suppose I would have spent my life as a lapdog of the Prince’s Men. For much the same reason men end up obliged to la società onorata and the other people we don’t talk about.

  “Of course—” The man’s unexpectedly harsh voice interrupted his thoughts. “—this is not an offer that will be open for all time.”

  First the cheese and then the trap, Conrad thought sardonically.

  It would have amused him more if he couldn’t feel the steel teeth biting. To be free of a burden he has borne these ten years—What does he owe the King of the Two Sicilies, really?

  I haven’t lived here since I was a child. Even the Neapolitan dialect is strange to my ear now. I have almost no memories of the place, since Alfredo dragged us off round the cold German courts to earn his living. King Ferdinand is making use of me, the King admits as much—I wasn’t even their first choice. So why not take what the Prince’s Men offer?

  The tempting thought emerged from the back of his mind:

  Once it’s done, it would be done.

  If they pay off my debts, and then I do nothing, they can hardly recall their money.

  I suppose my life wouldn’t be worth a single soldo. But then, it isn’t now.

  This is why his Majesty Ferdinand wanted some big philosophical statement from me about my ethics, since I’m not constrained to morality by a god. I could have referred him to the old pagan philosophers…

  I need to believe in myself as a certain kind of person, and therefore I need to act appropriately.

  Apart from that, it’s the small threads hold him. Human ties. Knowing how Tullio would look. How disappointed JohnJack would be. And being aware that Paolo-Isaura would never look up to her big brother again—but would understand why he did it.

  At the back of his mind, he doesn’t want to give il Superbo another chance to sneer—or give his beautiful wife cause to think of Conrad as a traitor.

  “You are an atheist, Signore Scalese,” the man in black urged, his white hands clenched on the back of the pew in front. “There’s no God to make you keep your word.”

  Conrad smiled toothily.

  I suppose it doesn’t matter who they sent with the offer, since it’s so tempting… but this man is something less than tactful.

  “Thank you for your generous opinion of me, Father,” Conrad said, not without irony. “Please don’t send anyone else with this proposition. There’s no point. If I choose to give my word, I choose to keep it. The answer is no.”

  “Conrad?”

  Ferdinand’s hand on his shoulder brought him out of his tomb-cold thoughts. He lifted his head, surprised to see that the Cardinal and his priests had left.

  A
single set of footsteps rebounded back from the walls. Tullio came to stand beside the King.

  Carefully putting the logic together, counting off the points on his fingers, Conrad said, “An exorcism destroys… whatever it is… that makes the appearance of the person. Whether it is that person or not. I feel—as if Father has died all over again.”

  At Ferdinand’s gesture, Tullio’s strong grip brought Conrad up onto his feet.

  “He died at my request.” Conrad looked away, not able to meet either of their gazes. “It’s all the worse because I could never respect him.”

  Before he could formulate an objection, he was being walked smartly towards the church door. A swirl of black and white robes might have been Luka Viscardo, but if it was, the man never spoke.

  “I’ll take him round by way of the taverns this afternoon, sir, in places we won’t be recognised,” Tullio said as they came out into the open. “So at least he can sleep.”

  “I approve.” Ferdinand absently patted Conrad’s shoulder. It was intended to be comforting, Conrad thought, though it made him feel more like a Labrador retriever.

  Conrad allowed himself to look at King Ferdinand, weighing himself intently for any sign of resentment.

  No. It was my choice to get mixed up in this. And… it was Father’s, too.

  Sunlight shone on the opulent doors of the Duomo, and the women in bonnets, and men removing their top hats, filing in for their prayers to the loved dead. He and the King and Tullio—two gentlemen and their servant—were anonymous in the crowd.

  Ferdinand murmured, apparently idly, “I made the voyage to island-Sicily recently. While I was there, I saw unusual amounts of smoke and steam issuing up from the crater of Mount Ætna.”

  “Are you sure it was unusual?” Conrad felt his face heat, and added apologetically, “Ætna’s always a lively mountain, sir.”

  “I know.” Ferdinand smiled like a boy. “I’m sure. My advisors were in hysterics—I insisted on climbing some distance up the Valle de Bove.”

  The King’s smile faded, giving way to determination.

  “There are earthquakes continually shuddering along the slopes of the mountain. Although the mountain-top is snow-covered, snow and ice have melted away from the actual crater. I saw minor eruptions. In places the earth is coloured yellow with sulphur. The air stinks.”