The Black Opera (18 page)

Isaura Scalese folded her arms. “Paolo wouldn't touch account books if you paid him! I borrowed his identity. Later on, he wanted to go to Paris, so he was happy to leave me his name so I could go to the Conservatoire. And I wasn't ‘withdrawn' when you came home! I was off spending half my time as a boy!”

Conrad saw Tullio unashamedly lean his arms on the back of the striped sofa, so that he could listen in comfort. It made him want to splutter his disbelief.

But I can't. I believe every word
.

“You didn't see much of me because that was the first time I seriously dressed up as Gianpaolo. So I could sort out Mother's business affairs. Paolo himself is useless! Uncle Dario will never come back from America—”

Conrad thought that a shrewd assessment of Alfredo's brother.

“—And I wasn't going to let Uncle Baltazar get his hands on anything we still had…” She chewed her lip. “But in the end there was nothing, and I had to appeal to you to come home—”

“That was you? I thought that was Mother.”

“I forged the letter. Anyway, once he let Mother have that house, that town was far enough away from Uncle Baltazar and the rest of the family that I could carry on being ‘Gianpaolo'… One advantage of being in the part of the family in disgrace. And I've studied and written music, and now I want to compose opera!”

Conrad was for one ice-hot moment full of jealousy of her lack of responsibilities.

He pushed the feeling away as unworthy.

It left him regarding his undeniably female sister, at home in coat and trousers, with her gloves, hat, and cane left with careless elegance on the coat-table by the door.

It's not a charade she's playing, he realised. She'll pass anywhere, for people who don't already know.

“Why don't you want to run a salon?” he demanded, almost at random. “You could be a drawing-room composer like Malibran's sister, what's her name—”

“Viardot! Pauline Viardot. I bet you don't forget Rossini's name! Or Donizetti's, or Pacini's!” Familiar grey eyes, very like his own, narrowed in disgust. “Why would I want to compose an opera for a handful of my friends? Or for some nobleman in his palazzo, and have to bring in a core of ‘guest' singers from
the opera houses because none of his friends can sing a note!”

Tullio's low rumble broke the silence. “I think your sister wants to be a professional opera composer, padrone.”

“Yes, I did get that impression!” Conrad waved a hand in apology. “Isaura, this is Tullio; we were in the war together. You might have met him when I came to Catania.”

Isaura had been all outraged youth. At Tullio's interjection, she sat down in the other chair, moving as if men's clothes came perfectly naturally to her, but looking at him with an expression that reminded Conrad forcibly of the little endlessly-talking girl that he had held by the hand in Prussia and St Petersburg and a dozen German kingdoms.

Isaura studied Tullio Rossi with unfeminine directness. “I remember you. You nearly caught me in Paolo's clothes several times. I borrowed your walk when I went to the Conservatoire—” She moved in illustration. “—From the shoulders.”

Another man might have been bewildered, Conrad thought, but Tullio, having been used to the opera world for at least a decade, grasped the point—and the compliment—at once.

“Glad to have been of help with your role.” One corner of Tullio Rossi's mouth turned up. He set about serving the last of the tea with milk and cream, and went to Isaura first to put the recently-chipped cup on her small table.

Conrad took his own damaged cup and sighed. He leaned his other elbow on the arm of the chair, and rubbed at his chin.

“If you want a career—one that women can and do have, as independent businesswomen—why not become a singer rather than a composer? Thousands of women do that.”

Isaura glanced at Tullio, who was now aimlessly clearing the main table and shamelessly listening, and turned back to Conrad.
“‘Una voce poco fa qui nel cor mi risuonò; il mio cor ferito è già…'”
She broke off.

“That was…” Conrad helplessly searched for a word.

“…Ouch!
My
heart is already wounded,” Tullio echoed the aria of Rosina from
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
, “never mind my ears! I'll pay money, I swear, if you never, ever, sing again!”

“You know, most people say that…” Isaura grinned, clearly not at all insulted. “I've never had that trouble with instruments—piano and violin, I'm fine. I can carry a tune in my head, and write it down. Just not sing.”

Conrad found himself exchanging glances with Tullio and knowing precisely what was in the other man's mind. Bellini had an opera produced at seventeen, while he was at the same Conservatoire in Catania: it's not impossible that
anyone might come out of their training with a similar genius…

And I don't recall anyone asking Bellini if he could sing
. Conrad indicated the small upright instrument crammed into the far corner of the room. “I think the piano needs tuning, after our ecclesiastical visitors, but suppose you play as best you can?”

She mouthed
“ecclesiastical?”
in bewilderment, but evidently put the question aside in favour of the more-important piano. Conrad found himself assessing her as if she were a stage-role. There was nothing female in how she flipped aside the tails of her coat and sat down, or how she addressed the keys. She took a sheet of music from inside her jacket, presumably of her own composing, and Conrad leaned back, listening to her play.

…She has talent
.

Enough talent, even, to set some recitatives or other connecting material if the deadline gets short. But as for starting at the top, with a whole opera—especially one sabotaging a secular prayer designed either to compel God's attention, or make active whatever the true natural phenomenon of a miracle is… No.

But how do I say that?

Tullio hitched his hip up to rest on the back of the sofa while he listened. He nodded. “In a few years. Maybe as few as five, if you want it bad enough. And if it's there.”

Conrad tended to freckle slightly in the summer. He wouldn't have been reminded of it had Isaura's face not been pale enough now to show a few sun-dots, dark over the bridge of her nose.

For all that, she was smiling.

“If
it's there,” she echoed. “I wish I knew if it came by hard work, or by being there to be uncovered—like coal…”

She nodded an acknowledgement to Tullio, and shot a glance that Conrad caught, which said plainly as day,
Why doesn't my brother say something?

Because your fool brother doesn't know what to say.

‘Gianpaolo' wandered across the small room to the desk, her gaze evidently picking up the gist of those letters he still had to copy and edit for King Ferdinand. Her curiosity was so innocent Conrad found it impossible to resent.

Her head came up; she looked at him brightly.

A woman who can look me directly in the eye, like a man. I wish I could find one who wasn't my sister!

“Here's something I can do for my keep, if you let me stay,” she offered frankly. “I handled productions at the Conservatoire; I liked it. I could be your secretary.”

He had no heart to turn her away. For all he was looking at a young man about town, the ghost of a fifteen-year-old beanpole kept getting in the way.

“You could,” he said measuredly, “if I have your sacred promise, on the grave of our father, that you'll keep everything you see secret.”

Isaura blinked. “It's important, isn't it? I'll give you my promise. But—you know the old fraud would have gambled any information away for money as soon as look at it.”

Conrad was aware of Tullio's stifled choke, somewhere in the corner of the room.

He ignored it. Something of an idea was taking shape in his mind. It emerged out of a mist and became solid.

“I do have a violin, too.” He went to the lockable cupboard and took out the case that had survived the Dominicans' intervention. The deep gloss of Alfredo Scalese's rather-more-than-serviceable violin greeted them. He pushed the case towards Isaura.

After a little preparation, she put it to her shoulder. Conrad closed his eyes, letting the sound take him over. Once not distracted by the silhouette of the slim young man-woman…

She finished with a small flourish.

Conrad opened his eyes.

“Now,
that
you could do professionally. Right now. Today.” The room seemed very bright. “Your professors must have told you this.”

“Yes.” The stubborn set of her mouth was utterly familiar, transcribed up to the age of five-and-twenty from somewhere near five. “But I intend to compose opera.”

Conrad made a gesture towards Tullio. “But not today. And while you're working towards it… I do have something you can do for me, as well as help me with those fornicating letters. If you're willing.”

Isaura-Gianpaolo shrugged questioningly, her hands held out from her sides, entirely Neapolitan.

Conrad closed the violin case and pushed it towards her. “The first attempt to have this opera put on has been—prevented. Consequently, every composer worth paying has left town without, in some cases, waiting to be paid.”

Isaura's eyes opened very wide.

“Whatever composer we get is liable to be—inexperienced.” Conrad reached for the kindest word he could, and saw all the others reflected in her gaze. “I want him to have
all
of his concentration on the music. I know the composer usually conducts, perhaps for the rehearsals, and certainly for the first three performances. I want
you
to do that.”

She protested. “If not the composer, then it's the first violin who conducts.”

“And I want you to be my first violin.”

Isaura glanced from him to Tullio and back, as if dazed. “…Truly?”

“Promise!” Conrad responded as automatically as if he had still been the fifteen-year-old boy crammed into a too-tight-this-year formal coat, holding on to his little sister's hand as she swung on him and gazed in awe at the Prussian kings. “But there's danger—”

Ignoring that, Isaura threw her arms around him, hard enough to make him grunt, and hugged him like a brother. And, like a much younger sister, gave release to her excitement in a soprano squeal.

“I'll show you a first violin!” she exulted, eventually letting go, looking as if she had vital Galvanic current running through her veins. And before he could open his mouth, narrowed her eyes and dropped suddenly into quite another tone. “Corrado, what are we involved in? Is it the people we don't talk about?”

Conrad couldn't help a snort. “In your case, it's the people you don't know about!”

He sobered.

“Most of the singers, hands, costumiers, face-painters and the like
will
be told the Mafia or Camorra are the danger we face. If they won't defy organised criminals, they certainly won't stand up to the people we're up against, so it's better they leave.”

He rested both hands on his sister's shoulders, and looked down into her eyes.

“I'm authorised to brief only those who must know. You're one of the closest to me; it would be pointless not to trust you with what you'll see. I know I can trust you. Make your mind up what you can take an oath on. Swear silence, and I'll tell you what's happening here. If not; if you want to go elsewhere…no one would blame you.”

“I
would.” Isaura held up her hand as if in court. “I swear. Now tell.”

It took a while.

“The fire at the Teatro Nuovo was a coincidence,” Conrad finished briskly, “and whatever these Prince's Men happen to believe, there is no Deity for them to change the nature of!”

“There might be, if they get their opera miracle,” Tullio rumbled.

Isaura looked wide-eyed, which on Gianpaolo's face made her seem twelve years old. “You still got the opera house struck by lightning, though, Corradino.”