The Black Opera (104 page)

“I defied the Prince's Men by coming back on the
Campi Ardenti
.” Leonora's accent drifted back towards the north and Castelveneto. “And given that their code of honour is more strict than anything in Sicily, my life isn't worth the price of an old sock.”

The Conte di Argente, a dark flush across his cheekbones, demanded, “What protection can the King offer you that anyone else can't?”

Conrad had the glimmering of a realisation. “It's not a matter of protection—” The first look she directed at him was a cutting glance that reduced him to silence.

She took another set of steps across the wheat and crimson-coloured chamber, and swung around, facing the King as if she challenged the whole House of Bourbon-Sicily.

“Remember, I could have just rescued Signore Scalese and Signore Capiraso. Nothing
compelled
me to wait for any other man!” Defiance flashed from her eyes—and vanished. “That said, Signore… I'm a murderer.”

Air dried up in Conrad's throat.

The only sound in the room was the buzzing of bees outside, and the falling water in the fountain's basin.

Leonora's voice was barely louder.

“A murderer, dozens, hundreds of times over. Perhaps thousands. I don't know how many of the Neapolitans dead in the eruption were called to the Flavian Amphitheatre. Maybe all of them.”

She took a breath she didn't need.

“Yes, there was something in them that
wanted
to hear us, or else I couldn't
have called them to come back and listen… But they were dead because of what we did—because of what
I
did.”

Ferdinand nodded. “Yes.”

“It's useless to put me in prison.” Irony touched her lips. “Your son or grandson would likely let me out, when it was forgotten why I'd been locked up.”

She's fey
. Conrad could hardly bear to look at that smile.
How many legends of the fairy queen and mortal lovers have ever ended happily?

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.”

A
n 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?”