First Night

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘Yes?’ She had seen him single out Cristabel and was beginning to guess at what had happened.

  ‘Idiotic,’ he said. ‘Taking it for granted. You heard what my father said, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘I’m sorry about your opera, Prince.’

  ‘Oh, if it was only that! I have high hopes of Herr Wengel’s … But that’s just it! I’ve made her so angry – rightly so – I’ve been such a fool. She says she won’t work with me, Miss Peabody.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Martha, ‘that’s serious, isn’t it? For her, as well as for you. No, don’t tell me any more, Prince. I would rather not know.’ She was pulling on her gloves. ‘I suppose, in so far as she has one, I am her manager.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘So I must talk some sense into her. It’s her career at stake, as well as the celebration opera, which, I take it, you cannot trust Signor Franzosi to handle?’

  ‘No! I’ve had a quick look at it. It’s brilliant, Miss Peabody, I beg you to tell Lady Cristabel this. It’s musically very advanced indeed, an immense challenge. As a success, it will be the talk of Europe. As a failure, it could be a disaster for us all.’

  ‘Particularly for Lady Cristabel.’

  ‘I’m glad you see that.’

  ‘It’s making her see it, or care about it, will be the problem. Very well, Prince, I’ll do my best.’ She rose. ‘Any messages for her?’

  ‘My abject apologies.’

  ‘No,’ she told him, ‘those I won’t deliver. There’s always wrong on both sides in cases of this kind.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘One thing.’ She turned back to him. ‘Herr Wengel. Is his illness real, do you think, or diplomatic?’

  ‘Diplomatic? Why in the world should he choose not to come, today of all days?’

  ‘You’ve never met him, have you? He’s a strange man. It did strike me that now he has won the competition, he might make an equally diplomatic recovery. In which case, might not the answer be for him to take over the direction of his own opera?’

  ‘Of course! Idiotic of me not to have thought of that, but my world has turned upside down, Miss Peabody. It’s hard to think straight, with a broken heart.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She meant it. ‘Will you bear with a piece of advice from a friend to you both?’

  ‘Gladly.’

  ‘Frau Schmidt is spending tonight in Lissenberg. You know her, of course.’

  ‘Indeed yes, since she is related to my mother. But not so well as I would like to.’

  ‘Improve the acquaintance then. Call on her. After all.’ Smiling at him, ‘You have defied your father once already today, you might just as well keep it up. So – call on her. She is an infinitely wise and reliable old lady. I think, if you ask her right, she will tell you if her grandson’s illness is merely a pretence, as I strongly suspect. And if it is, get her to persuade him to make a surprise recovery and take over the management of his opera. And for you – may I speak like an old friend? – I would advise a trip abroad. To Russia, perhaps, to look at some princesses?’

  ‘Miss Peabody, you will never cease to amaze me. Without committing myself, you mean?’

  ‘Without committing yourself to anyone about anything.’

  ‘Easier said than done.’

  ‘So many things are.’

  * * *

  Every copyist in Lissenberg was hard at work for the next few weeks, getting out the parts for Crusader Prince. ‘It’s brilliant,’ said Cristabel, when she got hers. ‘But, Martha, you gave me no idea of how revolutionary the theme is.’

  ‘Revolutionary?’

  ‘Yes. Prince Brandt planning to lead his people against the tyranny of Charlemagne.’

  ‘Good gracious. Let me see.’ She read eagerly through the scene Cristabel indicated. ‘This wasn’t in the text I copied,’ she said at last.

  ‘You mean it’s been changed? After the Prince selected it?’

  ‘It must have been. Let me see the rest of it, Cristabel. Amazingly clever,’ she said at last. ‘It’s just that one extraordinary scene between you and your husband, Prince Brandt, which proves him the intended liberator of his people, rather than their tyrant. Franz Wengel is a brave man.’

  ‘Mad,’ said Cristabel. ‘And I’ll tell you something else, Martha, Gian Carlucci will no more be able to sing Prince Brandt than the man in the moon. And even if he could, if you ask me, he’ll be afraid to.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Be afraid?’ She thought about it. ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s tremendous theatre, marvellous music, there are to be guests at the celebrations from all over Europe. However angry it may make Prince Gustav, if it’s the success I expect, there will be nothing he can do about it, except smile, and congratulate us. I look forward to it! Yes?’ She turned as a servant scratched at the door.

  ‘Herr Wengel to see you, Milady.’

  ‘At last!’ She rose to greet him. ‘You are recovered then, Herr Wengel? I am delighted to have a chance to congratulate you. We have been reading your opera. You’re a bold man.’

  ‘I’m an idiot! I gave strict instructions that none of the parts were to be sent out until I had discussed them with the principals. My illness kept me confined longer than I had expected, and my miserable copyists ignored my orders. I am come both to explain and to implore your discretion.’

  ‘You can count on us,’ she told him. ‘I am sure I don’t need to tell you how magnificent your opera is. Nothing will stop me from singing in it, and most especially singing the scene with Prince Brandt that is likely to cause the trouble. But, tell me, who else has seen it?’

  ‘Only Carlucci, thank God, since only you and he are in the scene. He came straight to me to resign the part. He has his career to think of, he says. I agreed, in exchange for a promise of absolute discretion.’

  ‘Can you trust him?’

  ‘Oh, I think so. I am not without friends in the major opera houses. He knows I could do him harm if I wished to. We are thinking of a pretext that will allow him to leave without damage to his career.’

  Cristabel laughed. ‘Not easy. Since it is so obvious that your music is too difficult for him. Frankly, I’m a little nervous myself.’

  ‘No need,’ he told her. ‘I wrote it precisely for you, Lady Cristabel. You will be superb.’

  ‘I long to get started. But how are you going to find my Prince Brandt? There’s not a moment to be lost.’

  ‘No indeed. Fortunately my admirable grandmother saw the problem almost before I did. And Prince Maximilian has volunteered his assistance. You did not know that he is going abroad on a diplomatic mission for his father? He is to combine it with finding us a tenor, and in the meantime I am to have the pleasure of working with you, Lady Cristabel. I shall be a poor substitute, I am afraid, but I promise you I can sing the part, or I would not have written it. I intend to start rehearsals next week.’

  ‘Good. Prince Maximilian is going abroad, you say?’

  ‘He’s gone. There are rumours in town of a disagreement with his father. I did hear it suggested that the talk of a diplomatic mission was merely a polite phrase for what is tantamount to exile. He’s to be back for the celebration itself, I believe.’

  ‘A sadder and a wiser prince?’ suggested Martha.

  ‘So his father doubtless hopes.’ He turned to her smiling. ‘The word, in town, is that he’ll be forgiven if he brings home a suitable bride.’

  ‘Suitable for whom?’ asked Cristabel.

  ‘Need you ask? His father, of course. Some foreign lady with outlandish habits and not a word of Liss. There’s even talk of a Russian princess who would treat us as serfs, not subjects. We all love Princess Amelia,’ he went on, ‘she’s a neighbour, after all, and has done her best in her hard situation, but a Russian barbarian from the steppes would be something quite other.’

  ‘It would certainly make your opera uncomfortably topical,’ said Martha. ‘Are you really sure you are not
going too far, Herr Wengel?’

  ‘Not the way I am going to produce it,’ he told her. ‘You’ll see. But for the time being, that scene is to be kept entirely secret. You and I will rehearse alone, Lady Cristabel.’

  ‘Throwing convention to the wind?’ asked Martha drily. ‘I think perhaps you had better begin by rehearsing here, where Lady Helen or I can act as chaperone, otherwise there will be more of the talk in town that you speak of, Herr Wengel.’

  ‘Talk! Convention!’ He turned his full attention on Martha as Cristabel moved away to pick up her score. ‘We are making musical history and you talk about convention! I had expected better from an American rebel like you, Miss Peabody.’

  ‘Oh, I’m all for freedom, and I’ll defy the conventions any time I think it necessary, but why go out of the way to cause talk? There’ll be enough when it comes to the performance.’

  ‘You’re right as usual.’

  ‘How tedious of me! You really have been ill.’ He was looking fine-drawn, she thought, his dark eyes deeper than ever in their sockets above the luxurious growth of beard that surely had now a faint hint of grey among the gold.

  ‘You thought it merely a pretence? Well, I confess, I was glad enough to have an excuse to stay away. You know how I feel about pomp and circumstance?’

  ‘Everyone is going to know after they’ve seen Crusader Prince! But, are you really better? Should you be here? What does your grandmother say?’

  ‘She says I’m a self-willed young fool, and sends you her kind regards, Miss Peabody.’

  ‘And mine to her. But, Herr Wengel, I have been longing to know what you think of your hero, Bonaparte, now. What kind of a liberator is it who stoops to judicial murder?’

  ‘The Duc d’Enghien? A horrible business. I can only think that there must be more to it than has been made public. The trouble is, we know so little of what really goes on. If the conspiracy in which Pichegru and Moreau seem to have been involved really threatened the stability of France … If the Duc d’Enghien was a part of it … Miss Peabody, you can have no idea what the Reign of Terror was like in France. They have proved themselves dangerously, bloodily unpredictable. No wonder Bonaparte dares take no chances.’

  ‘If… if… if. Special pleading, Herr Wengel? From you, who used to tell me about Bonaparte’s reform of the law … the order and stability he was bringing to the countries he conquered – I beg your pardon, liberated – I wondered a little about it all when I got to Venice. I can tell you, it did not feel much like liberation there.’

  ‘But that was the Austrians.’

  ‘To whom Bonaparte had handed Venice.’

  He threw out a hand. ‘Touché! But that was before he was First Consul.’

  ‘True, but he was First Consul right enough when he re-established slavery in the French colonies. That whole wicked business of Toussaint l’Ouverture! I’m not sure I don’t find his death even more shameful than poor young d’Enghien’s. That hadn’t happened either when you used to praise Bonaparte to me so, as a liberator, back in Paris.’

  ‘And you thought him such a villain.’ His smile transformed the drawn face. ‘Just because he was rude to your English friends.’

  ‘No, Herr Wengel, do me justice! It was because I scented absolutism in him, the thing we Americans most abhor.’

  ‘Absolutism?’ Thoughtfully. ‘I do hope you are not right. I must admit this high-handed treatment of poor d’Enghien does smack of it.’

  ‘High-handed? An odd description of murder, surely?’

  He threw out a hand in surrender. ‘It’s disturbed me so much, I’m not thinking clearly. I had pinned all my hopes on him.’

  ‘Hopes?’ She saw that Cristabel was listening again. ‘You used him as a model for your Prince Brandt?’

  ‘The liberator of his people.’ He flashed her a quick, considering look. ‘Yes, I suppose I did.’

  13

  The cattle were up on the high pastures and the vines in full leaf on the slopes between the theatre and the town. The chorus forgot their lines less often, and Martha was getting tired of sitting in on Cristabel’s rehearsals with Franz Wengel. Their great scene began with her revelation that she had been the devoted page who saved his life in the Holy Land, and in the passionate reconciliation that followed he was carried away to tell her his real plans for the future of their country.

  It was the passionate reconciliation that Martha found hard to endure. Cristabel was putting her heart into the character of Princess Algisa as she had never done before and the scene grew more intense with each rehearsal. When she threw herself into her ‘husband’s’ arms at last, Martha found herself studying the text, looking out at spring-green meadows, looking, in fact, anywhere except at the embracing couple across the room. Cristabel had never said a word about Prince Maximilian or his sudden departure. She had simply thrown herself into her work as if her sanity depended on it. Perhaps it did, but did it also depend on Franz Wengel’s daily visits? And if this should prove the case, would he be able to resist her? Indeed, why should he?

  ‘You’re looking tired, Martha,’ said Lady Helen one June morning. ‘Let me chaperone Cristabel’s rehearsal today. It’s a long time since I have done so, and I’d enjoy it. If you don’t mind, Cristabel?’

  ‘Why should I? A change of audience will be good for us. It’s true, Martha, you do look tired. Selfish of me not to have noticed, but this part is eating me up!’

  ‘With marvellous results,’ said Martha. ‘I wonder when we shall hear from Prince Maximilian.’ It was the question she had been expecting Cristabel to ask.

  ‘And the elusive tenor,’ said Cristabel. ‘If only Herr Wengel’s voice matched his acting, I would be inclined to snap my fingers at our absentee director and urge that Wengel take the part himself. But I would sing better with a better singer,’ she went on thoughtfully. Martha breathed again. Cristabel was merely throwing herself into the part like the professional she was. Absurd to mind watching it so much, and maddening if her desperate, sleepless nights were beginning to leave their mark on her daytime self.

  ‘And Herr Wengel would have more time for rehearsing the rest of the cast,’ she said now. ‘He was fretting only yesterday about the way the chorus mangles his music.’

  ‘He may find he has to make it a little easier for them,’ said Cristabel.

  ‘I doubt he’ll do that. But he’s looking exhausted, had you noticed? I think that illness of his took more of a toll than he will admit.’

  ‘Or that he is burning too many candles at too many ends,’ said Cristabel. ‘If he didn’t insist on rushing back to Brundt so often, we’d get on better. Nothing goes right when Signor Franzosi is in charge, poor man. He’s losing his nerve a little, I think.’

  ‘I don’t altogether blame him,’ said Martha.

  She was glad to receive a visit from Ishmael Brodski that afternoon, just when she had put on bonnet and pelisse for a stroll through the vineyards.

  ‘You were going out?’ he asked, after the first greetings. ‘Admirable! May I accompany you, Miss Peabody?’

  ‘Delighted. I am tired of my own company today.’ They had become curiously good friends in the course of the winter. She found she could talk to him about things that would not have interested Cristabel or Lady Helen.

  ‘You look full of news.’ She unfurled her parasol against the morning sun.

  ‘I am! Bonaparte has proclaimed himself Emperor of the French. The Pope is even to crown him, giving an air of respectability to the business.’

  ‘And the murder of poor young d’Enghien is to be forgotten?’

  ‘It looks like it. The British have protested, and the Tsar put his court into mourning, as Prince Gustav did, but everyone else seems to be going with the tide, with one exception that will interest you: Herr van Beethoven had been writing a symphony dedicated to Bonaparte. When he heard the news, he defaced the title page. But he is the only one. Hardly surprising that Prince Gustav has gone off on one of his hunting holida
ys. He must feel the need of some very serious thought about his position.’

  ‘You think he may bend the knee and apologise to Bonaparte?’

  ‘We must learn to call him the Emperor Napoleon now,’ he warned her, ‘and, yes, I do. If I were Prince Maximilian, I’d be expecting the worst.’

  ‘His father will want him to re-engage himself to Mademoiselle de Beauharnais?’

  ‘Well…’ He spread his hands in a characteristic gesture, ‘what do you think?’

  ‘I think it very likely.’

  ‘And how are the rehearsals going?’ He had followed her line of thought, as he often did.

  ‘Superbly, but they need their tenor. Have you any news of Prince Maximilian’s quest, Herr Brodski?’

  ‘I did hear a rumour that he had given up hope in Italy and is on his way to Vienna. I also heard that it is not only the technical difficulty of the part that made Carlucci resign it.’ He did not quite make it a question.

  ‘You hear a great deal, Herr Brodski.’ Time to change the subject. ‘What news of the war?’

  ‘The new Emperor is making great preparations for an invasion of England. All his energies are concentrated on his fleet and the invasion barges he is building on the north coast of France. Lucky for Prince Gustav, and all of us here on the Rhine. But it will be only a matter of time, I think, with that one. Today Emperor of France, tomorrow the world.’

  ‘Never the United States of America, Herr Brodski.’

  ‘You’re right. His selling of Louisiana to you Americans last year does seem to prove that. When he has conquered England, he will turn east, for Russia and India. Follow in the path of Alexander the Great as he has always wished to do.’

  ‘He’ll come this way? Are we sitting on a powder keg, here?’

  He shrugged. ‘We always have been. Be grateful for the difficult road into Lissenberg, Miss Peabody, for yourself and for your companions. The worst that will happen here is starvation. I wish you had Prince Gustav’s ear.’

  ‘Oh, why?’