by Mary Gentle
Conrad’s responsibility to the King of the Two Sicilies felt a very distant memory. Even the opera was no more than a fever-dream of work and messa di voce: those bel canto voices that swell up and sink down under perfect control.
Battered by feelings that were just the opposite, Conrad stated, “I’m finished here.”
“Corrado—”
“No more!”
It made his skin shiver to ignore a weapon, but he gave Nora his shoulder and turned to look directly at Roberto Conte di Argente.
“Tell me one thing. Before I leave this house and go to King Ferdinand and we have no private business.” Conrad drew breath, and managed to get words out steadily. “Before the child. Before Leonora died. In Venice—She was my wife in all but the church ceremony. How did you get her to love you and leave me?”
Roberto’s head snapped around, his expression open and shocked.
“What do you mean, leave you? Scalese, a few assignations don’t make a wife! She was never with you!”
CHAPTER 41
“Nora and I lived together as man and wife,” Conrad repeated, with as much dignity as he could manage. “Under the same roof in Venice, for over a year.”
“You did not.” The dishevelled figure of Roberto Conte di Argente stared back, apparently honest in his confusion. “She would have told me if she had ever been mistress to another man. I was her first lover.”
“Her first?” Conrad choked on words that would be half-venom, half-glee.
No—since I must disillusion him, let me at least not make Nora sound worse than she is.
“It was three years after the Armistice,” Conrad stated calmly. “We met. We were together fourteen months. Then along you came… and offered her marriage, I understand. It seems that’s all it took to entice her away.”
“No.” Roberto Conte di Argente shook his head with perfect sincerity. “No. Three years after the war ended, she and I were in Venice for that year. I met her there.”
The silence in the richly decorated room stretched out to breaking point.
Have I mistaken the year?
“The first season at La Fenice, when I met her, she sang in I Borgia,” Conrad managed. “Through December and January. Then in Riccardo Cuor di Leone.”
Roberto Capiraso inclined his head as if he were not battered and bruised. “Also small roles in Paer’s Sofonisba, and Donizetti’s Pietro il Grande.”
The world might have cracked in two and Conrad would not have heard it.
“The following winter season, a year later,” Conrad said, voice beginning to scratch and dry, “she sang in Armide—”
“Gluck’s Armide.” Roberto Capiraso sounded like a man in a nightmare—calm because, if he were anything else, he would shriek. “Riccardo e Saladino, and I Virtuosi—”
“Fioravanti’s I Virtuosi ambulanti,” Conrad echoed involuntarily.
“—Ambulanti, and Mayr’s Rosa Bianca e Rosa Rossa. She then left Venice with me.”
Conrad swallowed. “Those two seasons, and the year between… yes, we are speaking of the same year.”
The Conte di Argente’s face twisted. “I don’t know what sordid little trysts you might have imagined with her during that time. But she was never with you. She was with me.”
Conrad’s mouth felt as dry and unwieldy as if it were full of dust. “Ridiculous!”
Am I going mad?
There was no comfort in that thought.
“Nora lived with me,” Conrad insisted feverishly. “In my lodgings in the Accademia quarter! We were together each day and night, except when her singing and her jobs as a recitateur and singing-teacher elsewhere didn’t allow it. We lived as man and wife.”
The silence grew so intense the noise of the advancing early morning became audible; children and horses in the street outside.
“Nora—” Conrad turned, as if this were any conversation, to bring Leonora in to confirm his side of things.
I’d forgotten she has a weapon.
Clearly, so had she. The wooden stock of the pistol was still in her two hands’ grasp, but it sank down, the slanting aim pointing the steel barrel a yard or two in front of her.
Her expression was open and devastated.
Roberto Capiraso spoke as politely as if he were making conversation at a dinner party. “I had rented a palazzo on the Grand Canal that year. I courted and won the company of the woman whom I desired as my wife. She lived in a respectable boarding-house for singers, which naturally did not allow single gentleman callers. But still, as her betrothed, I had those nights which she spent with me, and those days—every day, when her rehearsals, her singing, and her post giving lessons to others permitted.”
Bile jolted in Conrad’s stomach.
He wondered idly if he had been shot. A strong nausea flooded through his abdomen. A crushing sensation constricted his chest.
Daylight illumination from the sash windows exposed every part of Leonora’s expression. She watched without blinking.
Conrad inhaled sharply. It felt as if he couldn’t get sufficient air.
“You lied.” Conrad spoke to her as if begging to be contradicted.
She said nothing.
Seconds ticked past.
It became obvious she would not respond.
Conrad felt his gut tighten with bitterness. “So, all the ‘voice training,’ the parties I didn’t attend, the nights at your friend Rosalba’s house, your jobs… You must have thought me a complete fool.”
Roberto Capiraso stared at his wife as if she were a woman he had never seen before. Sound wrenched out of him. “Fessa!”
Leonora gave the Count a look that reminded Conrad she was brought up in a foundling house and on the streets, and would know the southern Italian slang for the female genitals.
“Neither of you understand,” she said sharply.
Roberto Capiraso wiped blood from his mouth. “All of this is irrelevant to you, isn’t it? Nothing matters except for what il Principe requires!”
Conrad found himself speaking louder to drown the other man out. “Nora, tell me that you didn’t love me. That you don’t. Look me in the face and tell me that!”
“Corradino…”
She glanced from him to Roberto.
“Neither of you know what happened in Venice that year! Roberto—Conrad—” Leonora lowered the pistol until it was almost hidden in the silk folds of her tunic à l’antique. For all she did not need to breathe, she looked as if she asphyxiated. “I met you both within two weeks of each other.”
“Two weeks!” Conrad snarled.
Her long hair hid her expression as her head tilted down. It made him more angry.
“Both of you, within fourteen days…” She closed her eyes, delicate violet-shadowed lids quivering. “And I delayed—delayed—I put it off—I knew I had to tell one of you to go… And I didn’t.”
Roberto stepped forward, hit the edge of the heavy wooden table, and leaned his hands on it as if he needed that to stay upright. “You have the bald-faced nerve to confess this? He was your lover?”
“You were never faithful to me?” Conrad tried to piece it together. “You were always fucking both of us?”
“None of this is important.”
Her pale complexion had no pink flush, no redness of anger, but her voice erupted from her motionless body.
“Roberto, you should know this is unimportant! Ugo Capiraso died in the cause of the Prince’s Men! If your brother could have a grave-marker, the name on it would read ‘Matteo Ranieri,’ Prince’s Man, faithful unto death. He gave everything for this, gave up being an aristocrat’s spoiled older son, gave up his life—It’s due to your brother that we stand where we do today! What would he say to see you this disloyal?”
Roberto’s peasant hands made fists at his sides. “You dare mention loyalty! You were my cause. They killed my brother, but I put myself into their hands because they promised me you! Promised their Prince could give you back to me after you died—�
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“—Then you’re a fool.” Conrad’s voice sounded unsteady even to him. “Because according to her, the Dead come back only when they want to.”
“Is that so?” Roberto might have been listening to a paper at the Royal Society. “Did I waste everything, then?”
Scorn gave his voice all of il Superbo’s bite.
“I’d lay a bet that she didn’t come back for you, in that case, Conrad. And she didn’t come back for me. Did you, Leonora? If you did come back yourself, you came back for il Principe, for the Prince’s Men!”
“And they needed you.” Conrad felt the pattern lock together. “Because where else can the black opera have been rehearsing, except in one of the palazzos of the nobility? Ferdinand’s men couldn’t find it anywhere in Campania. But you could have told him, couldn’t you? The Argente family’s country estate?”
Roberto’s lips showed white. “Correct. I wanted the Prince’s opera to succeed, for her sake—my wife’s sake…”
The Conte di Argente snorted, thickly.
“My wife! Now… Vaffanculo! I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want her world, or her Prince! Who cares what God you’d put over us, when we’re all irrevocably corrupt!”
“The innocent will be saved.” Leonora’s face was unable to be more pale, but she looked as if she had lived a century of terrible years, and every one had left its mark on her. All her attention was on the Count. “Roberto—No. You’re betraying us!”
Conrad stepped to one side, towards the end of the table, to come around and cut her off from the door.
She raised her arms.
The duelling pistol lifted.
It pointed between the two of them—but would only need to move a fraction to shoot either man.
Lead bullets expand in flesh. Even a shot that barely scrapes a limb will tear clothing, burn flesh; or leave a cut through muscle that takes a year or more to heal. In the cavity of the body, a belly-wound will leave a man infected and dying. Conrad judged that Leonora aimed for a shot that strikes under the sternum (avoiding the rib cage) and will fatally clip the heart.
He realised he was free of fear. He felt only irritation—That is my Manton duelling pistol and I want it back!—and a suffocating pain in his chest where he did not dare consider Venice, now that none of it is what he thought.
Conrad took another step; not caring if she shot him.
“You have to come back with us now, Nora. Don’t be worried. No one will get hurt.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Leonora brought up the flintlock pistol.
Conrad had a moment to regret the weapon’s superb balance. The pazzo inglese—English crazy person—who sold the pair to him in London had said cheerfully, ‘A twelve-year-old boy could hit his mark with this!’ Leonora’s wicked aim looked far more experienced than that.
The pistol’s sights targeted him for a brief, unmistakable moment.
Before he could react, she lowered the muzzle and pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell.
Conrad twisted away, arms up to protect his face, in all the old reflexes learned from being in trenches facing mortars and artillery. He was already throwing himself down when the flint scraped and powder ignited, and fired the half-inch lead ball.
In a corner of his vision he glimpsed Roberto ducking away.
The room exploded in high-pitched ricochets.
Something hard clipped his skull. Conrad’s teeth jarred together.
A hard surface hit his shoulder—the floor, he realised, sprawling down on the carpet. The stink of burned powder, smoke, and alcohol made him choke. Small objects rained down on his back like a shower of hard hail.
Nothing penetrated his coat.
His head rang and his ear stung. He rolled back up onto his feet, and swayed.
He put his palm to his stinging ear, and brought back a handful of blood.
Conrad surged forward before the shot’s echoes in the high-ceilinged room faded. He flung the door open. The vestibule was empty. Two maids clung together on the stairs, hands over mouths, eyes wide.
The front door was closed.
Conrad waved the servants away and stepped back into the main room.
Roberto Capiraso’s blood-speckled face was turned away from him. “She’s gone.”
Following the man’s gaze, Conrad saw a door in the corner of the room that stood open. The flat exterior of the door was covered with the same wallpaper as the room. Closed, it would be invisible. A servants’ door.
Leading to a labyrinth of dark passages.
“We won’t find her now.” Conrad blinked against pain in his head. “She’s Nora; she will have had a way out planned.”
Something ground under his boots. He looked down to see the carpet covered in shattered, glittering debris. Conrad recognised one of the larger lumps. It was the broken base of a lead crystal decanter.
“That accounts for the smell of port…”
A fragment had evidently clipped him. Conrad unwrapped his neck-stock and pressed the linen against his ear, to stem the bleeding, and wiped his wet hands.
One of the scientific Institutes has probably done research on why the result is so much worse when one shoots a full bottle or decanter, rather than an empty one—all Conrad’s experience comes from bored evenings in the Mess with three-quarters drunk officers. Empty bottles break or shatter. Full corked bottles explode like grenadoes.
For a moment he surveyed the wreck of the mansion’s room—shattered desk, glass, spilt port—and it could be one of those houses commandeered to billet army officers.
Roberto Capiraso turned away from staring at the servants’ door. The movement penetrated Conrad’s mental fog.
Conrad met the man’s fathomless dark eyes.
Without warning or change of expression, far more quickly than Conrad had reason to suppose he could move, Roberto Capiraso jabbed a short, brutally-effective fist.
Pain exploded in Conrad’s ribs, compressing his chest and stopping him breathing. A white flash jolted behind his eyes. He sucked in air—and stumbled back from a glancing blow high on his cheekbone. The wall hit him between the shoulder-blades.
He stayed on his feet, though he swayed. It seemed to take him an unmeasurable moment of time to realise, Roberto hit me!
Roberto Capiraso collected up the scattered pages of L’Altezza azteca, ossia il Serpente Pennuto, moving with a slow deliberation that gave away his own physical pain.
The discharged pistol lay a few feet from the door.
Conrad bent, wincing, and recovered it, using his bloodied neck-cloth to wipe the soot off the steel barrel.
The Count rummaged in the wreckage of his desk and picked up the bound score of Il Reconquista d’amore.
His hand only shook a little as he held out the black opera.
“Keep hold of that, signore,” Roberto ordered harshly. “You will now take me to the King.”
CHAPTER 42
Conrad placed the bound score of Il Reconquista d’amore and the hand-written pages of The Aztec Princess on the King’s desk.
He bluntly repeated, “Signore Roberto has been composing for both operas. The black opera is better.”
“This is impossible!” Ferdinand’s voice broke with shock and anger. “And even if it weren’t—The time! Past eight in the morning, the day of the performance! We have six hours—less than six hours—to do anything! And what can we do?”
Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily rose from his chair, pacing agitatedly in front of the floridly-ornamented fireplace. He snapped his fingers at an aide. “Being me maps. Find me Major Mantenucci!”
The young cavalry officer turned from a map table, arms loaded with charts of the local area. “The Major isn’t on duty until nine this morning, sire.”
“Find him! You,” the King beckoned a second aide, “summon Colonel Alvarez. Order a detachment of the Rifles to the Palazzo Argente, outside the city, with orders to search and seize.”
“Sir!”
The two men left.
“Sit.” Ferdinand gestured to Conrad, and after a moment extended the gesture to il Conte.
Folding wall-panels had been pushed back, opening the King’s office up to take in all the sea-ward side of the palace’s fourth floor. Walls shone jager green. Sunlight caught the ceiling that was painted in eighteenth-century pastels. At the further end of the chamber, a flock of aides and military officers commanded other tables covered in maps and charts. Paper unrolled onto the floor. Conrad was vividly reminded of his own days in the north, in muddy tents, at officers’ meetings.
He pushed Roberto firmly towards one of the carved upright chairs by the King’s desk. The Count Roberto sat, and leaned back in his similar chair, one leg negligently crossed over the other, and his hands interlaced in his lap as if he did not wear handcuffs.
Getting in to see the King himself had entailed explanations with the royal guard, that left Roberto wearing cuffs connected by steel chain-links, not able to move his hands more than six inches apart. Conrad spent a few seconds fighting back schadenfreude as he took his own seat.
If I came before the King in chains first, then that makes the two of us equal now…
If one knew Roberto well—as Conrad was startled to discover he did—one could detect the faint tremors that ran through shoulders and spine. The cold rage that had brought them here still ran in his veins, Conrad guessed. The Count must want nothing better than to seize Nora and shake her; to scream Why did you do what you did?—
Or perhaps that’s just me.
“Sire,” the Conte di Argente ventured.
Ferdinand choked him off with a look. “We would have known nothing! I would happily have accepted that our composer and his wife took a travelling carriage to Rome, because you were too afraid of violence by the Prince’s Men to attend the actual performance today… And instead you would have gone to—where? Where is the black opera! You must know!”
Roberto Capiraso attempted an air of dignity, Conrad saw, despite the bloody cuts and grazes peppering his face.
“I was sent in to be a saboteur.” Roberto spoke with bleak, self-castigating amusement. “To work side by side with the men that il Principe wanted defeated—destroyed. Do you think I was trusted to know anything, when I could be taken and interrogated at any moment?”