The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  Conrad blinked furiously. The frigate coursed directly towards him as it lost headway, men sprinting round the deck to pull on ropes; some at the rail, with boat-hooks, fending small craft away—

  Not directly at me, Conrad realised. Straight at the King’s Dock.

  The young lieutenant squinted through his spyglass. “The… Apollon, sire.”

  The flag the ship flew became clear—the colours of France.

  Conrad put a restraining hand on Ferdinand’s arm. “Sire, you don’t need to use force.”

  Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily gave him a look incandescent with incredulity. Conrad reached out without looking and seized Paolo-Isaura’s arm. He marched her with him, in their wake.

  The Apollon moored, letting a ship’s boat down almost before the sails were furled. It rowed in to the King’s dock.

  Conrad, keeping pace at Ferdinand’s shoulder, didn’t recognise the ash-covered naval officer in the bows, beyond the oarsmen.

  The other figure, sitting beside him, was completely recognisable.

  “Tullio Rossi!”

  CHAPTER 49

  Sailors threw mooring ropes. Conrad overheard the King being introduced to the unknown man—one Captain Sébastien Bernard of the Apollon—but all his attention was on the broad figure shaking ash off his greatcoat, and avoiding (after the first glance) looking eastwards, seven miles, to where Mt Vesuvius thundered its erupting cloud into the darkening sky.

  Tullio Rossi descended the gangplank—carefully enough that Conrad did not at first realise he was limping. He turned his head.

  Conrad followed his gaze.

  King Ferdinand’s soldiers formed a cordon to keep the frigate’s boat isolated. On the Apollon, sailors used boat-hooks to push refugee boats away.

  Gives us very little time.

  Conrad gripped Tullio once, hard, by the shoulder. Tullio returned the grip, and then reached out his hand and laid it momentarily on Paolo’s arm.

  “Well?” Conrad demanded, breathless. “What happened!”

  Tullio Rossi’s dark eyes showed an appreciation of the San Carlo—the visible part of its roof open like a smashed egg—but he spoke with his usual composure.

  “We put ‘our friend’ on a ship a bit to the north—up the coast, at Castel Voltumo. One of his Commodores is loyal. Had a frigate send its boats in, so we didn’t have any idiocy trying to get the coach to ford the river there—mind you, nasty place; if I get malaria, it’s you I’m blaming.”

  Conrad snorted. He found himself grinning.

  Isaura demanded, “You’re limping?”

  “…Coach horse stood on my foot.” Tullio’s Sergeant Rossi look suppressed any mirth at his expense. “In mud. Paolo, it’ll be fine.”

  Paolo looked concerned and bemused in equal parts. “And this is the frigate? Is our friend with you?”

  “‘Our friend’ is headed north to Marseilles aboard the Charles Martel, a 118-gun Océan class ship of the line. He’s on his way back home, and he was having a lot to say about the wrath of God—and how his arsehole councillors were going to think he was it…”

  Tullio shrugged, but more as if it eased his shoulders to be back on land, no matter the chaos of Naples.

  “…No, this one, the Apollon, it’s a frigate under a junior captain that he’s decided to loan us. For some reason he thought I might be planning to leap in heroically and rescue you. No idea why he thought ‘Monsieur Scalese’ might have his arse in the fire back here…”

  “Can’t imagine,” Conrad said dryly. “I’ll tell you the precise nature of the fire as we go—when you have your arse well and truly in it.”

  Meeting Tullio’s gaze, he pushed Isaura forward a little, until she was standing almost pressed up against the burly man. Both looked happier for it.

  “Well, our friend gave us the use of this ship,” Tullio remarked. “Better move quick. Where are we going?”

  Conrad didn’t bother to consult with King Ferdinand and Il Superbo. “Pozzuoli. Then the Burning Fields.”

  Tullio rolled his eyes. “Not one big volcano but a lot of little ones, much closer to us. That’s…” A sufficient word evidently eluded Tullio. “…Charming. We’ve got a small marine complement, and the Emperor told off a number of the Old Guard to stay with us, but I still wouldn’t want to face something bigger than a skirmish.”

  Conrad’s spine tightened, pulled muscles paining him as he steadfastly ignored the looming clouds and lightning covering the eastern sky.

  “Then let’s hope it doesn’t come down to guns.”

  The French frigate Apollon lurched on choppy waves.

  Fiery rocks and boulders hurtled down around the ships, striking the waves and sending up spray and sheets of sea-water. Conrad found himself ducked down below the railing, clamped into the ship’s side over the scuppers, his mind shaken with memories of rocket attacks in the night, in the war.

  A warm body was pressed hard against his back, shaking—unless it was he himself who was shaking.

  “Rocks! Fucking rocks!” Tullio sounded completely affronted.

  Conrad’s hearing stung. The slap of waves, shouts of sailors, and Tullio’s swearing all sounded muffled. He slammed a palm against the side of his head, and then rubbed one knuckle as far as he could into his ear.

  Sounds began gradually to come back.

  Beyond the ship’s wake, hills hid Naples now. This close to Pozzuoli, they would be seven miles from Naples itself; which put them—Conrad calculated—an extra six or seven miles from Vesuvius.

  Still, the great tower of roiling blackness swelled, spreading out over his head.

  The volcano pumped out ash and lava and gas, black fire and lightning. The spreading clouds darkened all the afternoon sky, seeming as solid in the air as coral-rocks do under the sea.

  “How long till Pozzuoli?”

  “Dunno!” The crouching figure of Tullio Rossi glared up at the red and black sky. An explosion made it too loud to talk. Conrad felt Tullio touch his shoulder. The other man pointed south.

  Conrad squinted against the spray and shook his head.

  Timing it with a lull in the seas, he shouted, “We’re too far north to see Stromboli or Vulcano, or Ætna! Remember they told us there were new volcanic cones near Marseilles, and down near Messina? I think that must be the same thing—new volcanic islands in the Tyrrhenean Sea.”

  “I heard an officer reporting to the Frenchie captain.”

  Tullio looked wonderfully innocent for a moment, leaving Conrad to work out how the older man might have parleyed his commission from the Emperor into a licence to hear all news.

  Tullio’s mouth twisted in something between a scowl and an expression of disgust. “There was messages from the southern heliographs. While they were still working. The southern volcanoes have started to erupt. Yes, Ætna,” he added, anticipating Conrad’s concerns for Agnese and the rest of the family. “They’re evacuating Catania.”

  Conrad nodded mute thanks. The spreading extent of catastrophe numbed him.

  And bad news has to be told, and won’t be better for being kept.

  “We’ve lost two people.” He put his mouth close to Tullio’s ear as the gale howled over them. “At the San Carlo. We lost Estella and Lorenzo.”

  “Shite.”

  The ship tacked into the Gulf of Pozzuoli, knifing towards the small and ancient harbour. The port lay past western headlands, in a Gulf of its own, with a fort or castle skylined on the high ground.

  The fort, glimpsed through sea-spy and falling ash, began a train of thought.

  “I wonder?” Conrad said. “Could we use this ship to bombard the Anfiteatro…?”

  “Might be outside the range of a sea battery.”

  Tullio Rossi buttonholed one of the junior officers, and managed to have the matter discussed between Captain Bernard and King Ferdinand. Conrad left them debating over charts.

  Out on deck again, he found himself looking up thousands of feet into the sky.

 
In the west the day’s blue was now only a fringe at the edges of the horizon.

  How long before it covers all the sky?

  Paolo scrambled over to him, holding on to ropes and rail, to walk the deck.

  “Tambora! Conrad, Tambora! If the singers from the Prince’s Men could sing on a ship there, couldn’t we do the same, here?”

  JohnJack Spinelli appeared behind her, bedraggled in wet ash that left him the colour of concrete. He broke out into swearing, and the emphatic words halted on a cough. He doubled over, a cloth to his mouth.

  Sandrine raised her voice to be heard over wind and wave, creaking oak and manila cordage. “What he means is that this air is full of enough ash to choke a mule! One verse into an aria and our throats would be scraped raw and bloody.”

  Conrad watched all three of them amusing themselves with black humour. He rubbed the heels of his hands over his face.

  “Padrone?”

  He didn’t turn to see Tullio. “I got you into this. You, Isaura there, JohnJack who was just dumb enough to want to save me from the Inquisition, Sandrine who’s a good friend; even Velluti and Estella and Lorenzo were brought into it because I recommended them.”

  He looked up, finding his vision blurring with the aftermath of hemicrania. Tullio Rossi exchanged a look with his sister.

  “Tell your brother he’s an idiot, Paulo.”

  “You’re an idiot, Conrad.”

  Sandrine grasped the rail as the ship leaned over, and tacked into the harbour. Her eyes were bright, although red-rimmed. She reached out and put her hand on Conrad’s shoulder, and squeezed tightly enough that it hurt.

  “What he means, Corradino—every one of us volunteered. When this is all over, and you want to indulge in misplaced guilt, we’ll indulge you. For now… you know who’s really to blame. Make sure you won’t flinch when it comes to dealing with her.”

  Pozzuoli stood deserted, under a cover of grey ash and the startling yellow of erupted sulphur.

  Conrad narrowed his eyes, gazing around the harbour. Only a dead overloaded mule bore witness to the locals making their escape.

  Paolo stared at the ship’s seamen as they threw ropes to the quay-side and moored the Apollon temporarily. Conrad came to lean on the rail beside her. He saw her tiny frightened glance.

  “Miseno.” He pointed westwards, to where they knew it would be. “Called Cape Misenum in Roman times—”

  “Corrado—”

  “Pliny was there, at Cape Misenum. It was dark enough that they had to tie pillows and mattresses on their heads when they walked around, because of the falling rocks.”

  Paolo-Isaura exclaimed, “Mattresses?”

  She pushed salt-stiff hair out of her eyes. Conrad saw her abandon interest in the frigate’s preparations—the Apollon was to pull out into the harbour and wait for a signal, or else ride out the earthquake-waves, if that became necessary.

  “Mattresses!” she echoed, sounding almost incensed.

  Conrad kept a smile off his face with difficulty, pursuing his distraction for her. “It’s what Pliny wrote. Cushions, pillows, mattresses. It was so dark they couldn’t see the rocks falling out of the sky, or tiles coming off roofs—or if they were walking into the walls of houses…”

  “Oh, come on! Tying a mattress on your head—!”

  A crack and ping echoed around the apparently deserted harbour.

  Conrad found himself crouched below the ship’s rail, one hand clamped around Paolo’s wrist, her body dragged down with him. “Musket fire!”

  Paolo-Isaura’s hand smacked smartly against his ear.

  “Cazzo!” He let her go. She stayed crouched against him.

  Minutes passed. The King’s Rifles and the Old Guard, and the Apollon’s marines, went ashore in a quiet, businesslike way. There was no more shooting.

  “Picket line.” Tullio ambled back along the deck, looking dusty, and approaching without using cover.

  Conrad slowly stood. “Put out so the Prince’s Men will have warning of anyone’s approach? They’d want some way to know if they’ve been followed.”

  Under the ash on her cheeks, Paolo was stark white. “They’ll know we’re coming.” Tullio, unexpectedly reassuring, said, “King’s Rifles think they captured all the pickets.”

  “Isaura. You won’t come,” Conrad decided, abruptly. “You don’t have to be afraid—”

  “I’m coming with you; I’m conducting. I’m not scared for me! You—Tullio—One of them just has to be lucky with a shot!… There’s nobles in the Prince’s Men; they’ll have armed and drilled their own servants. And they’re men who use hunting rifles as a matter of course!”

  “And when was the last time a deer stood to arms behind a barricade and shot back?”

  The transvestite young woman grinned.

  Conrad didn’t want to add to her fear by remarking that the barrels of hunting weapons are rifled to be accurate far beyond a soldier’s musket.

  “Besides,” he added with calculated scorn, “The nobility were officers in the last war—not men who went sneaking around in the undergrowth, picking off officers as a matter of course…”

  Paolo-Isaura gave him a far too knowing look. “Someone made a company of Colonel Alvarez’s soldiers disappear. And Commendatore Mantenucci’s armed police officers.”

  “If they are at the Anfiteatro—maybe the Prince’s Men have numbers. Or only a good defensive position…” Conrad shrugged, knowing himself to be unconvincing.

  Tullio shot a gaze that accurately analysed the two of them.

  “Welcome to war.” He managed a sour humour, and acknowledged Paolo. “This is what it’s all about—being afraid your mates will cop it.”

  Paolo-Isaura’s posture straightened, taking on the other man’s bravado as if it were infectious. “Somehow I imagined war to be more exciting and less terrifying… More adventurous?”

  “Nope. No adventure. Bad rations, lots of walking, puking in a corner with fear, and then lots more walking. Any different in the cavalry, padrone?”

  “Lots of riding. Saddle sores. Horses bite, have diseases, fall dead if you so much as look at them, and then they take it out of your pay. No adventure.”

  Tullio took up a stolid position at the head of the gangplank, arms folded, ignoring the men of the King’s Rifles, and the opera company, as all prepared to go ashore. “Paolo.”

  Paolo-Isaura wrapped her neck-stock carefully over her nose and mouth. It didn’t hide the determined expression in her eyes. Her voice came out muffled. “What?”

  “I want you to stay on the ship.”

  Conrad snorted, while he wrapped his own neck-stock over his mouth. “Tried that one! I’ve got a better chance of stopping Vesuvius by sticking my arse in the crater…”

  “Please do try,” Isaura muttered sweetly.

  Before Tullio could collect himself enough to argue, Paolo strode down the plank and off the Apollon.

  Sudden afternoon light slanted in under the eruption cloud, making Pozzuoli’s buildings stand out as if they were against the blackest rain-cloud. An unexpected roar sounded. Conrad startled.

  A brick house at the far end of the harbour slanted—shifted—and the walls finally burst open, as if from some slow inside pressure.

  From the ship’s deck, Conrad could see black, earth-rimmed lava pushing over the lip of the foundations, very slowly gliding towards the next house.

  “That must be from Monte Nuovo,” Sandrine guessed.

  Conrad followed her down the gangplank to the harbour.

  Roofless buildings stood crushed under grey lava. Trees and bushes stood stripped of their leaves and branches. All white. The ground was hot underfoot—Conrad took it for an illusion, but lifting his feet and touching the underside of his soles showed him it was reality.

  The stink of sulphur almost made him vomit.

  He found himself—and Paolo—in charge of the opera people. The small knot of people drew apart from the soldiers and marines. Most of them cou
ghed—Brigida Lorenzani with both hands over her face, cheeks turning a purple-red colour.

  Conrad climbed down the edge of stonework where the quay ended, and wetted his handkerchief in sea-water. He passed it up to Brigida, and repeated that for as many of the principal singers, chorus, and musicians as he could persuade. Breathing through wet cloth cut down on the dry choking.

  One of the oboe players tripped over the stream of boulders that the road out of Pozzuoli had become, and screamed. His hands were red with scalds when he was helped up, and his knees. Conrad borrowed a water bottle from one of the riflemen and shared the water between the singers, before refilling it with sea water to wet down kerchiefs.

  He obsessively counted minutes.

  “Act Three, scene seven,” a soldier observed.

  Startled, Conrad saw it was no rifleman, but Roberto Capiraso, Conte di Argente, in a uniform coat.

  Of all of us, I suppose he needs a disguise against the Prince’s Men.

  Even covered in ash, without hat, cane, or cloak, Roberto somehow seemed impeccable. He cocked a dark brow. “I told you your face was a book.”

  Conrad kicked at congealed grey ash, that ought to look like snow, since it fell like it, but instead resembled rocks and rubble. The falling ash gritted between his teeth. He noted that the corners and rims of Roberto’s eyes were red, like everyone else; adding twenty years to his apparent age.

  He glanced at Ferdinand, where the King stood with the French officers, apparently arranging order of march.

  “Will we get there in time, do you think?”

  “I haven’t been across here since I was a child—I liked Monte Nuovo, and Solfatara.” Roberto’s smile tilted. “If I ever visited the Flavian Amphitheatre, I don’t recall it.”

  “And you call yourself a Neapolitan Count!”

  “Conrad!” Ferdinand waved him forward. “Are your people ready?”

  “Yes, sir.” Conrad couldn’t help a frown. “Are we certain it’s the Flavian Amphitheatre we should be going to?”

  Ferdinand gave a slow smile, that altered his bland expression to something rueful.

  “A conversation I’ve just had with Lieutenant Baptiste of the Guard… If nothing else, it’s the place where everything disappears. Commendatore Mantenucci, Colonel Alvarez, their men—and any scouts I’ve sent after them. And now we’ve met a picket line. They claim to be native Pozzuolans defending their town, but I know the local accent, and they don’t have it.”