by Mary Gentle
“As their leader,” Ferdinand began.
Conrad saw sweat shine on the Count’s forehead, under the now-tousled black hair. Roberto glanced over at him. Their gazes met. Conrad could almost read the man’s thoughts. Better I should tell him than you.
“I don’t lead the Prince’s Men in Naples,” Roberto Capiraso confessed quietly. “Leonora does.”
“Leonora?”
Ferdinand’s expression moved rapidly through confusion to realisation and disbelief. “Leonora Capiraso? The Contessa di Argente? You can’t mean—”
“He can,” Conrad said.
Roberto sounded more co-operative, as if he had began to realise he was in the King’s custody.
“Donna Leonora came in as the highest-ranking member of the inner circle in Italy, at the moment. There are other highly-ranked men here, but not superior to her.”
He stroked his short beard. Conrad was not certain if he hid a smile or a grimace.
“I know few enough names. That was intentional. I met a few of Nora’s lieutenants—the stage properties and costumes for Reconquista, for example, have been stored in Gabriele Corazza’s palace, until they should be needed.”
Ferdinand summoned another pair of aides, and gave sharp, quick orders.
Conrad surreptitiously watched their lips. The King will waste no time sending men to search the palace and confirm Roberto’s story.
Ferdinand leaned back in his chair as they left, gazing at Roberto Conte di Argente. “All of what you say will be very carefully investigated. It’s not difficult to imagine the Prince’s Men implicating our own people deliberately to handicap us.”
Roberto shrugged broad shoulders in a surprisingly plebeian gesture.
“I have no reason to lie. My reasons for telling the truth—Signore Conrad will have briefed you on those. As for Cardinal Corazza… I think he’s the only man in Naples whose rank in Il Principe is close to Leonora’s.”
“Gabriele Corazza himself? Gabriele Corazza!” Conrad muttered, his voice high. “The Cardinal of Naples—The man locally in charge of the Holy Office of the Inquisition!”
Ferdinand’s head came up. A frown resolved itself, and his impassive features looked keenly intelligent.
“Astonishing! Corrado, do you realise what that means? If not for Signore Captain Esposito, the Prince’s Men would have had you in their power within—what?—four hours of lightning striking the Teatro Nuovo?”
The narrowness of that escape, even more than a month ago, made Conrad sweat into his crumpled linen shirt.
“And nobody would have heard of me ever again!” he muttered.
Roberto Capiraso snorted, hooded lids closing down over his dark eyes. “You can send police or soldiers, but I imagine the Archbishop’s palace will be deserted by now.”
“They may have left information behind.” Ferdinand frowned, gazing at the Count. “…If the costumes and properties have been stored in Naples itself, that must mean the performance is either in the city, or very close to it. But my campanile spies have seen nothing.”
Those will be the runners, Conrad realised, glancing down the long chamber at the continual coming and going of messengers there. Observers, high in town and village bell-towers, that can command a watch over all the roads for signs of movement. Because surely the Prince’s Men must be moving now?
“Argente.” Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily addressed the Count. “I will keep you out of prison for as long as I have use for you. You will first write me, to the best of your knowledge, a list of those members of the Prince’s Men that you are certain of in Naples.”
Conrad reached across the desk and pushed an inkwell and paper toward Roberto.
The King began to work swiftly through the bound score of Reconquista, as the Conte di Argente wrote. Clearly he thought it might contain more clues to the location of the opera itself. Roberto Capiraso scribbled quickly, despite his handcuffs.
Conrad shuddered, his gaze drifting towards the tall sash windows, and the unclouded morning sky over the Gulf of Naples.
New awareness prickled down his skin.
Being underground made him shut the constant tremors out of his mind—because, really, who wants to think that at any moment the earth may close up these man-made tunnels, or leave the human interlopers blind and trapped in buried medieval catacombs? And the San Carlo seemed such an extension of this that Conrad expunged the shaking ground from his mind there, too.
A rumble shook the floorboards under his feet, four storeys above the ground. All the newly-leafed trees along the foreshore road suddenly shook back and forth in unison. Conrad watched haze grow into existence around the top of Vesuvius.
He found he could not convince himself that random clouds had snared themselves there. The throat of the mountain exhaled vapours.
It does this often; it doesn’t have to mean—
Earth, Moon, and Sun are lining up, he admitted to himself. It means Ferdinand’s “high earth-tide” later today, if nothing else.
“Il Reconquista d’amore…!” Ferdinand slammed his hand down on a page. “This is so much superior to L’Altezza Azteca. Conrad! How did we not notice that we were being given failure?”
Pinned under the man’s sudden gaze, Conrad stuttered for an answer.
Roberto Capiraso didn’t look up from scribbling his long list of names. “It was designed that way. For example, I wrote Giambattista’s arias on the very top edge of his tessitura. I set all Sandrine’s crucial notes in the passaggio that she finds most difficult.”
He glanced up, catching Conrad’s eye.
“You therefore had to concentrate on bringing them up to that standard. You had little enough time to consider whether the opera could work if they did sing.”
Conrad folded his arms, hiding his hands that shook with anger.
Ferdinand turned the score so that it was possible for Conrad to page through it with him. “I’m one man. Describe me your opinion of this, Corrado. Is it a danger to us?”
Finally, the chance to look at it properly!
Conrad thumbed anxiously to Felice Romani’s synopsis. “Background—Spain, AD 1492. ‘The Emirate of Granada, the last kingdom of mediaeval Spain still ruled by a Moor, King Muhammad the Twelfth (bass).… The Christian forces are at their gates, under command of Ferdinand of Aragon (tenor). Here… During the Sinfonia, we hear behind the stage curtain the cries of invading Christian knights, and the alarm and counter-attack of the Moorish soldiers beating them back.’—This is effective.”
Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily nodded unhappy agreement.
Conrad turned the pages of the score, the notes bringing sound into his mind. A solo lyric soprano aria—an angry romantic duet—the Moorish King’s bass lamenting the fall of Muslim Al-Andaluz in Spain—a heroic mezzo (en travesti, as a priest) leading a magnificent Christian anthem for which there was no other word but hymn.
“You wouldn’t have got this past a censor!” Conrad exclaimed—and realised that he addressed Roberto Capiraso as if he were still co-worker on their opera. He turned back to Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily. “Yes, it’s a danger, sir.”
He read on, careful to pay attention to his own reactions. One doesn’t encounter a work of art for the first time twice.
“‘Queen Isabella of Castile, coming to join her husband the King of Aragon, is captured by Barbary pirates, and sold in the slave market to King Muhammed.’ That could unintentionally be comic—but this score makes us believe her fear, her pride, his sudden lovestruck infatuation, his desire to make her not a slave but a wife… ‘Isabella escapes and returns to her husband and co-monarch, Ferdinand of Aragon. She finds him unwilling to allow her full power as a Queen in her own right. He accuses her of unfaithfulness with the Moor. To prove her good name, and bolster her precarious political power, she is forced to announce a new crusade against Granada—although, heartbroken, she realises at that moment that she loves the Moorish King Muhammad.’—That has to be the end of Act Two!”
&nbs
p; The King of the Two Sicilies smiled with wistful irony. “In opera, we go to war for love…”
He stood, signalling Conrad to keep his seat, and stepped aside to talk to his returning aides and Colonel Fabrizio Alvarez of the King’s Rifles. A few police uniforms were visible among the military around the map tables, but Conrad couldn’t see Enrico Mantenucci or Luigi Esposito.
Luigi would pay money to go to this opera.
Conrad flicked over further pages, searching for the build-up to the finale ultimo.
“Here we are, sir.” He glanced up as the King returned from giving orders, “The last Act. Granada falls, all except the central citadel, which is the city garrison and powder store. From the tower, the King’s vizier Osmino threatens the Christian knights and their King and Queen that he will fire the powder store, and blow them all to hell. All’armi! But Muhammed himself emerges on the tower. He begs Isabella to come away with him, to North Africa, and he will hand over the city to Aragon. She is desperate to accept, but with all their eyes on her, can’t. Aria. Desolate, King Muhammad abdicates.”
Conrad broke off, glaring at the scribbling Roberto Conte di Argente.
“One verse in the major key, celebrating his great love for Isabella; one verse in the minor key, his racking grief that she will never be his. JohnJack will recognise that.”
The Count shrugged, not looking up.
Conrad returned his attention to libretto and music:
“‘Christian celebrations start, but they’re premature. Aria. Queen Isabella foresees that, despite his race and religion, Muhammad will offer her more freedom to rule than her husband Ferdinand ever can. Besides, she loves him. Duet. She conspires with the vizier Osmino. At the height of the celebrations, when Ferdinand of Aragon is about to have the imprisoned Moor executed, Queen Isabella warns her husband that there are Muslim and Jewish saboteurs in the garrison powder store. Ferdinand heroically enters the tower to attempt to prevent this—aria and cabaletta—but fails. He is blown up, as Isabella planned. The widowed Queen Isabella pardons the Moor and takes Muhammed as her consort. She announced no one need leave Granada—there will be peace and community now—she herself will rule a united kingdom of Christians, Jews, and Moors, according to rational, Godly principles’…then rondo finale, soprano…”
Conrad stopped himself, suddenly. Clumsily, tearing the edges of paper in his haste, he went feverishly back over what he read.
“But this—”
Conrad stood and slammed the bound score open in front of Roberto Capiraso. It smudged the pages of the man’s endless list. Conrad smacked the open pages, glaring.
“—This is pointless! Your sabotage of our opera, pointless!—”
Men turned to listen at the end of the war-room. Conrad ignored that. He saw nothing but the annotated score, heard only flute and oboe, horns and trumpets, strings and drum—and the ardent, searing power of the soprano’s final aria.
“Corrado.” Ferdinand spoke with firm authority. “What have you found?”
Conrad leaned both hands on the desk, close enough to jostle the seated Conte di Argente. “Hopeless! I can read a score as well as the next man! What is this? Is it some sort of fake document, intended to throw us off?”
Roberto Capiraso sat back. He folded his arms across his body as much as he could with the short chain between his cuffs. It was an oddly protective gesture.
“I assure you, Scalese, you have your ‘black opera’ there in your hands. Orchestration, voice roles, all as we in il Principe have rehearsed.”
“Impossible!” Conrad snarled, relief and triumph making him dizzy. “Who can the Prince’s Men have who could possibly sing Isabella of Castile? Look at this ultimo finale, the soprano’s rondo—Ridiculous!”
The pages of the score brushed past his fingers as Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily seized it up.
The King made a choking sound. “But it’s worse than der Hölle Racht! Who could possibly—”
Conrad didn’t take his eyes off Roberto Capiraso.
“For all I know, the Prince’s Men have kidnapped a dozen principal, professional singers.” Conrad shook his head, disbelief building up to fury. “You may have Giuditta Pasta or Giulia Grisi tied up in a palazzo somewhere! It doesn’t matter! The tessitura of this is inhuman! Middle C to the F two and a half octaves above is a lyric soprano—low C is a tenor range—and here, here! the A below low C! One singer is supposed to span the range down to a baritone? As for the two-octaves jumps—the succession of high Fs!—yes, I hear it would work as something tremendous. If it were a duet! A trio!… An aria—This is impossible for one singer!”
Ferdinand slammed the score down in front of Roberto Capiraso. Ink spilled off the desk, running across leather and wood and down to the priceless carpet. The King ignored it. “I don’t understand! I can’t understand, Argente. You’ve crippled your opera, worse than you have done ours!”
Silence filled the vast chamber.
Roberto Capiraso, Conte di Argente, laid down his steel pen. For a long moment, his gaze went past the shining morning windows, contemplating the shivering sea—or perhaps some memory known only to him.
“I always hear her in my mind as both, you know.” His voice slid into a quietly-confiding tone. “…Isabella, Queen of Castile. Princess Tayanna of the Aztecs…”
Ferdinand opened his mouth, plainly to snarl. Conrad rested a restraining hand on the King’s arm. He shot a warning look.
Don’t interrupt.
If he could have spoken aloud, Conrad would have said: I heard that tone all too often around army campfires, after we’d been fighting for too long… From men who would shatter the next day.
I think he’s realised what he’s done in the last hour.
Ferdinand shot a tense glance, signalling Conrad to proceed.
Awareness of the potential for fracture—and loss of information from this one source—Conrad prompted gently:
“‘Her’?”
“Il Reconquista’s soprano will have no need to strain her voice in the part.” Roberto’s secretive smile turned mirthless with regret.
“The role of Isabella was written for her alone—for the only woman who could ever sing in il Principe’s opera.”
The Conte di Argente raised his head. Conrad found himself pinned by the dark, penetrating gaze.
Roberto said softly, “The first of many lies that you were told—is that something in Death destroys the human voice.”
CHAPTER 43
Conrad stared, wide-eyed.
“Leonora?” he choked out.
The Conte di Argente gave an odd smile. “She lies, my wife…” Something inside Conrad, deeper than the everyday, made him feel on the instant that he should have known.
Because Nora, Leonora, could never be separated from her voice!—that voice which I’ve heard in front of thousands at La Fenice, and nakedly private between the two of us.
Not separated by death, or anything else—Why did I allow myself to believe that she was mute?
Because when I knew she was lost to me, and with Roberto, I couldn’t bear to think of her at all.
He repeated it aloud, wondering if it would make more sense. “Leonora still sings.”
The look in Roberto Capiraso’s eyes was almost sympathetic. “She learned, after her death, that the Prince’s Men were planning an opera. It took a few years, but she worked her way up to become their leader in that arena.”
“I used to say, She never lies…” Conrad gripped his temper hard, ignoring whatever it was that swelled in his throat and behind his eyes, and might have burst out in weeping.
“That she’d keep silent, or she’ll let people believe what they want—or she’d allow other people to lie for her—but she doesn’t lie—”
—To me.
Conrad stood up from his chair, stumbling across to the open balcony doors, so that no one in the room could watch his face. So that the only thing before him was the innocent sea—air fresh, sky bright, morning rising to
wards heat.
He smelled salt water, and something acrid. This side of the Palace was away from the crammed roads and houses of Naples, overlooking the Bay, so that very few human voices rose over the noise of distant waves.
Conrad realised that no birds let loose their song. No gulls skimmed the waves. The dogs in the royal kennels were silent.
The marble steps four floors below, going down to the small enclosed royal dock, must be the ones on which il Principe had deposited the body of Adriano Castiello-Salvati.
They—She—
Furious, too choked to speak, Conrad gripped the iron balcony railing hard enough that flakes of paint came away embedded in his skin. He thought he detected a faint, continuous tremble, reverberating through the metal.
All of it’s a swamp. I have no firm footing! Because I have no idea what was truth and what was a lie. She’s il Principe’s leader here, is she? Then everything she’s done will be to benefit them…to benefit her.
He felt a desperate desire to have his hands on her. Shake the truth from her.
He rested his weight down through his arms, letting the early blue of the Bay fill his vision, ease his pain.
Roberto Capiraso’s baritone sounded, not far behind him.
“I think that if Leonora herself did have a choice to Return, instead of the Sung Mass compelling her to come back—she Returned to sing.”
Conrad turned. Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily was giving urgent instructions to officials and aides, at his great desk. Evidently the man had chosen to let the Conte di Argente—of all people!—approach him.
“That we’ve had traitors and spies with us from the beginning—” Conrad ignored the handcuffed man’s flinch. “I can be at ease with that. I’m not a fool: these things happen in war-time, and this is a war. But that she came back—came back as she is—and never even considered telling me the truth—”