by Mary Gentle
She came forward from the window to the desk, until she was a mere yard from the King’s chair. Ferdinand rose to his feet automatically, as one does for a lady. He did not seat himself when he realised his error. He extended a hand to Leonora, indicating that she should speak.
She had completely abandoned the pose of the lady of society. Conrad realised, We’re seeing her now as she was when she commanded the Prince’s Men. Her fingertips rested lightly on the desk, as if she measured out some chart or battle-map. She carried her weight balanced evenly, without the affected pose recommended to women in deportment lessons, and magazines.
Leonora said, “I killed several thousand people. Men of Naples, their wives, their children. Even if I’d had a valid cause—”
She broke off, briefly.
“Men go to war and kill thousands more than I did, for a valid cause. In retrospect, this was not one. I consider what we learned to be… stupefying.”
Her dazed face had an expression Conrad recognised: someone who has been forced to reconsider everything they ever knew.
“But the price was too high, learning at that cost…”
The thin, too-tall woman whose plentiful hair and light-filled eyes were her only beauty gazed at the King. The two of them were almost of a height.
“All that said, sire… You have a task that only I can do.”
Her eyes blazed.
“Put me into Naples, Signore—as your Governor-General in Naples.”
CHAPTER 60
An intake of breath sounded; almost an oath. Conrad only belatedly recognised that it came from him.
Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily stared dumbfounded at Leonora. “How you can ask—!”
Leonora interrupted the King without hesitation. “How will you govern in Naples!”
Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily slowly closed his mouth. His expression was both outraged and bemused.
Leonora faced him without faltering.
“How can you, sire? Look at Naples—a city of the dead, now. You don’t know what the people want, what they need. They won’t trust the living. Not as they would one of their own.”
Her stare accused Ferdinand.
“They don’t understand what’s happened to them! You don’t understand what’s happened to them! I do. I can give them what they want and need, sire, if you let me!… I’ll spend as many years doing it as are necessary. I can’t make up for bringing back the dead. Nor for the eruption that killed them in the first place. I can care for them. If you appoint me as Governor of Naples, then the Dead will have someone on their side.”
Conrad waited, his chest tight with breathlessness, for Ferdinand to speak. The King remained silent.
It burst out of Conrad, before he could stop himself. He snapped at Nora. “You think they’re going to welcome you?”
Leonora’s lips ticked up at the side, in a secret half-smile that she had always reserved for him.
“I’ll be lucky if I’m not hung up from the nearest lamp-post. Assuming I survive the a la lanterne! then they’ll see that I can help. I want to help.”
Her voice dropped in power. She involuntarily lowered her head.
“I can tend to them, look after their interests, make the life they have—if that’s the word—as happy for them as it can be. I don’t know how long the Returned Dead survive, but I think it reasonable that I’ll survive as long as the rest do.”
Her back was to the light from outside the windows. Warm air stirred the wisps of her hair. Conrad saw that she looked immensely sad.
Her head came up, her eyes dazed.
“It’s not a thing one can atone for. Still, I want to atone. Give me this chance. You can watch me every step. I won’t betray them.”
Ferdinand gave one great informal sigh. He flipped over a number of the folders on his crowded desk. “Donna Leonora. You made them. The stubborn dead of Naples… You say, you’re the same as they are, Returned Dead, and that you therefore understand their nature?”
Leonora made a quaint little bow, which reminded Conrad immensely of her appearances in travesti roles. “Yes, sire.”
“Let me think on it. It can’t be rushed into.”
“It can if the other option today is my—well—not execution. Destruction.”
Conrad remembered once dredging his mind for arcane rumour. Saying, It’s possible for the Dead to, well, not die, but to be destroyed…
Ferdinand made idle circles with the shaft of his dip-pen, running the wood over the leather top of his desk. He studied Leonora’s face with the utmost keenness.
Difficult as it was to see against the light, Conrad glimpsed the wet streak of tears down her cheek. “Nora—”
She made a sharp unfeminine gesture, waving him off. Turning back to Ferdinand, she sniffed and achieved a shaky self-possession. Although her voice wobbled, her tone was shot through with self-mockery:
“Consider, also, that if I’m your governor in Naples, the Prince’s Men will be convinced all their secrets are spilled. Even if we survive as a society, they’ll think it will be a long time before it’s safe to resume their activities in the Two Sicilies.”
“And would their secrets be handed over to the Two Sicilies, Contessa?”
Conrad expected a plain yes or no, and probably the former. He realised that several moments of silence had passed.
Nora sighed.
“I still am a Prince’s Man. There are men in the society to whom I owe loyalty, even if I have betrayed them. Assure me of some form of armistice—that they only suffer exile, not execution—and, yes, you’ll know whatever you need to know.”
Ferdinand’s gaze swept over Roberto and rested on Conrad.
Belatedly realising he was being canvassed for his opinion, Conrad exclaimed, “Cazzo!” And then, hastily, added, “You can’t think I’m impartial, sir. Not about this.”
“I think you know this woman, well enough to know if she’ll keep her word.”
This is why I’m present here, Conrad realised.
Yes, I’m intimately concerned with what’s gone on—but from Ferdinand’s viewpoint, I’m the one who can tell whether Nora’s honest, and (unlike Roberto) be willing to speak about it.
Conrad made himself think.
Words of assent must be bitten back, because what could be easier than to say Yes, I believe in Nora, I believe what she says.
And yet, Conrad realised, despite everything I’ve been through in Naples—perhaps because of it—I do believe.
He looked at Ferdinand, where the King waited.
“She kept her word to the Prince’s Men until she died for the second time. She kept more than her word to the Count and myself—” Conrad was proud that his voice stayed level. “—When for a second time she Returned from death. Yes, sir, you can trust what she says. You can trust her.”
Negotiations concluded over two hours later, lawyers having been summoned, a contract drawn up in rough, and the King’s seal and Leonora’s signature attached.
Many times during that period, Conrad thought, I don’t know what I’m still doing here.
The same might be said for the newly-destitute Conte di Argente. Conrad could see the same thought pass through the man’s mind.
You might make a case that I’m here for advice because I do know Nora, but why is that needed, now?
Even if you could say the same for Roberto, the King can’t imagine—even now—that he’d say anything to her detriment. So why is he still in the room?
Ferdinand sat back. “The last point agreed, then. The dead of Naples will have a free channel to me, to tell me if they think they’re well looked after, or oppressed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is only useful,” Ferdinand tapped the rough contract, “in spelling out duties and responsibilities. It can hold neither of us. This is useless unless we exercise trust between us, donna. I think it will be apparent in—shall we say, a year and a day?—whether you and I are capable of working together.”
�
��I agree, sir.”
“Then the sooner you can take up your duties, the better.”
Conrad watched as Leonora rose from the chair she had taken, and walked to the window.
It was not possible to hear the city, here in this isolated part of the Palazzo. The Sun crept up the sky—the helioscope in the Duomo would soon mark noon—and the heat become great enough for everyone to retire behind closed curtains and open shutters. For a moment Conrad longed for the slant of the declining Sun, when the citizens of Palermo would be out in the warm dusk; eating, drinking, gossiping; listening to the lap of the sea in the harbour, and watching the pulsation of fireflies.
His eyes on her thin silhouette, against the windows’ brightness, he blurted out, “What about her singing?”
Nora spun from the window with far more agility than any lady ought to have; all workhouse brat and opera donna. “Corrado!”
Ferdinand tilted a hand. It invited Conrad’s further explanation.
He’s not angry, Conrad judged.
In fact, is he pleased?
Conrad let himself speak plainly to her. “You still have your voice?”
Leonora’s expression went from shame to anger to sorrow; difficult to decipher against the light. Finally, she gave a small nod of assent. “Strained, but it will recover if I rest it.”
Conrad turned back to the King. “There are rumours going round, from the men who went with you into Naples. That the Returned Dead are rebuilding—and they appear to have begun with the San Carlo.”
Ferdinand slowly nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Naples won’t be wholly a city of the dead. Tell me you think that the living won’t come to the San Carlo and the other houses, as soon as they re-open?”
He let the King think. And realised, Yes, he did think that, as if being dead were like leprosy, to be shunned.
He glanced over at Nora, as he had been used to do when they were together, and exchanged a look of silent understanding.
The dead who have Returned are those who want the world…
“The Teatro San Carlo should still be the best. If Nora’s there, it would be—” Conrad sought the word. “—Would be shameful, for her not to be heard.”
The silence that succeeded could not have been more than two minutes long. Conrad felt every heartbeat of it.
Ferdinand’s bland features gave away nothing of what he was thinking—whether he was wondering if forbidding this might not be an additional and better punishment for Leonora Capiraso. His eyes momentarily closed.
“Set the Governor’s offices up in the Palazzo Nuovo—” Ferdinand’s eyes snapped open. He seemed both sardonically amused, and sad. “—Naturally the old Angevin castle appears to have survived better than the Palazzo Reale. If you choose your officers well, Governor Capiraso, you may have one season of the year free of your duties to sing. Christmas to Lent, or the summer season; your choice.”
Leonora stumbled, sank down into a chair by the balcony, and looked up with her expression raw. “Sir—thank you—”
Conrad said something at the same moment. He could not have told what he mumbled, if it was not the same thing.
A similar rumble at his elbow was Roberto Capiraso, features white and startled.
Ferdinand sighed. “I would not withhold that voice. I think, too, the dead of Naples will wish to hear it. If the Count di Argente and Signore Scalese agree, I dare say both of them will write for you, as Rossini wrote for Colbran.”
There was a light in his eye that proved not even the monarch of the Two Sicilies immune from the enthusiasm for opera that involved every man, from lazzaroni to Count and Cardinal.
“You sing for them,” Ferdinand added, “not for you.”
Leonora had the proud look on her face that was Nora’s shield against the world. Behind it, Conrad recognised, was gratitude.
Not for being allowed to sing.
For being given a way to make up for those lives she transmuted from living to Returned Dead.
“If there’s more, we’ll complete it tomorrow.” Ferdinand smiled. “I’ll make the announcement officially tomorrow, but if I know the court, it will be known now—say, within a half-hour… We’ll have a reception in your apartments here, Donna Leonora, since at least that way we can control any rumour and gossip; always a concern… Shall we say, in two hours?”
The King closed his manila folders. He reached out his hand towards the bell—and paused, before ringing it.
“Corrado, I would have said this as your friend, in any case. Now I add Leonora, and you, Roberto.”
Ferdinand inclined his head with some civility to the Conte di Argente.
“Since it’s now a matter that includes the efficient functioning of my Governor-General in Naples… I have no preference for how you do it, but I perceive it’s necessary that it be done. For preference, before you, Donna Leonora, leave for Napoli.”
He gazed sternly around.
“The three of you—regularise your private lives.”
CHAPTER 61
The few corridors between the King’s apartments and the quarters of the King’s new Governor in Naples passed in tight-lipped silence, breath inhaled through the nostrils and let out with almost audible huffs.
Conrad followed the other two in.
We could go down to my quarters, but I think Tullio and Isaura are in; as for Roberto—
“Where are you staying?” he asked, before he caught himself.
The Conte di Argente shot a burning glare at Conrad, and then at the entrance to the apartments occupied by Leonora.
“If his Majesty had left me my pocket watch and rings, I’d be hiring rooms. As it is, one of his gentlemen-in-waiting is permitting me to share his cupboard, on the grounds that the Palermo opera house may offer a conductor an advance—always supposing Palermo needs a conductor!”
Conrad dropped back a pace as the servants opened up the rooms ahead. “So, yes, let’s meet on Nora’s own ground,” he muttered.
The servant stood aside as they entered, with a respect that told Conrad rumour of the new Governor had already spread.
“You!”
Conrad looked up as the doors closed, hearing utmost venom in Roberto’s voice. He expected it to be directed at him.
Startled, he discovered Roberto staring across the room at Leonora.
“You.” His tone was no less venomous for being quiet. “You made me join the Prince’s Men! And now my reputation is dog-shit, and you’re betraying me with another man—”
“You joined il Principe before I even died!” Leonora’s pale hands clasped together, knuckles white from pressure, if not loss of blood. “You followed your brother into the society—”
“—Not the inner circle!—”
Conrad walked around the edge of the drawing-room, pushing the shutters open. White sunlight streamed in. Too hot, too bright, perhaps; but after the eruption-pillar spreading across the sky above Naples, he found himself twitchy when there was no natural light.
A warm breeze blew the gauze curtains in, and he faced around.
“You—” He ignored the composer, pointing his finger directly at Leonora. “You abandoned me in Venice where we were husband and wife—yes, we were! All but the ceremony—to go off with a rich man. Just because I had to pay off my father’s debts—”
“And didn’t that make a wonderful excuse not to marry me!”
Conrad stared across the room. “I would have married you.”
“Would you?”
Roberto brought his chair to a halt where the servants had left his pair of crutches. He got himself deftly up onto them while Conrad was still squelching his inexplicable desire to offer help.
“You still care more about what he says—” The Count hitched himself closer to her, all his weight dependent from the crutches. “—About what happened six years ago!—”
“You brought me back from the dead!” Her mouth momentarily lost shape. Her heels rapped on the terracotta til
es as she paced. “Yes, I think I came back because I wanted to, but… Roberto—how do I know that what you did didn’t make all the difference? I’m still not sure if I love you or hate you for that. How can I pay off such an obligation?”
The composer stopped, more than an arm’s length away from her. “It’s not a debt!”
Conrad watched the emotions that altered her features. The shifting light from outside called up purple highlights in her blue eyes, and gold highlight in her undistinguished brown hair. The line of her shoulders slumped.
She slumped down on a satin-covered chaise-longue, nothing mannerly in her posture, “I don’t know…”
Her head came up; Conrad realised—his heart missing a pulse-beat—that she spoke to him.
“…I didn’t know then… I have no idea how to love someone when I don’t know if I’ll be out on the streets tomorrow. I’m ashamed that I ran away from the opera life at the same time that I ran away from you—I wasn’t brave enough for either.”
Conrad opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. He turned, on the point of reaching out for the door-handle. In the corner of his vision, he caught sight of Roberto Capiraso.
No, why should I leave him here with her?
“As for you, signore—” Even boiling with hatred, he could not infuse the word with the same contempt that Capiraso would have managed. Conrad was infuriated. “As well as taking my woman, you betrayed L’Altezza azteca every day we worked on it! And I’d come to think we were friends—”
The admission was sour on his tongue; he burned with more humiliation than when he had had to beg for money for Adalrico di Galdi.
“—Yes, I admit it! You had me fooled too.”
Roberto Conte di Argente supported his weight heavily on the padded crutches. He lifted his head, in the path of warm air blowing from the open shutters, as if he too needed to see the sky in its natural state.
“I know.” He glanced away from the open air, his irises seeming black as the pupils. “It’s been wearing on me since the first weeks we worked together.”