The Black Opera (43 page)

Up until a few years ago, Conrad could still distinguish the white scars where red-hot metal farmyard implements fell against his hands, as he and another soldier rescued the prisoners from their inferno. Now those scars have vanished into the general wear and tear.

“What you did at Borodino was quick thinking—and war.” Conrad tried to make out Tullio's expression in the gloom. “And I'm not sorry I got you out of that barn, if that's what you're thinking. No matter how many Emperors you saved. Captain Rossi!”

A sailor passed, hanging lanterns at intervals down the rigging, and making it, if not light, light enough to see each other. Tullio, by the turning of his head in the semi-darkness, shot a glance at Conrad that seemed to ask for reassurance, even if not willing to admit it.

If I treat him any differently I confirm his fears, whatever they are
.

Conrad prodded Tullio Rossi's shoulder.

“I do have one question. Which is very easily asked… What were you
thinking?”

“Padrone—?”

“—You let me go into this, knowing I had to persuade the Emperor—without
telling
me any of this?”

Tullio froze, and gave Conrad a pitiful
“oops?”
look. “I was sure he'd never remember my face!”

Conrad grinned. “Who could be lucky enough to forget
you!”

Tullio snorted. “Thanks, padrone. Thanks. I think.”

They stayed out on deck both nights, talking, and spreading their coats over themselves against the dew.

Before Naples, they had a reasonable framework for the Emperor's escape from the Teatro San Carlo on the fourteenth of the next month.

“Once the lights go down, no one's going to look at his box—with the curtains half closed, he can be out of there before the Sinfonia's finished, and on his way by the time the first aria ends.”

Conrad nodded. “He'll only trust you to drive the coach, that's obvious. You ought to take another man, it's a job for more than one. I'd say, take Paolo—”

“Except she won't come.” Tullio leaned over the ship's rail, gazing at the rushing green water. “You don't realise, maybe, but she's convinced she's the only one can conduct
The Aztec Princess
and make it work. Don't like the idea of leaving you both there if there's danger of an eruption… I wish we could just
take
her. Except I know what she'd do to the man who did that.”

The wavelets slid down the side of the boat like silk, taking the dawn's light. Conrad breathed in the scent of salt, which is like nothing else. “The Emperor won't trust anybody but you. As for Isaura… I could tell her the Conte di Argente insists on conducting his own first night. Il Superbo's pushed himself into conducting enough of the rehearsals that she'll believe it.”

Tullio glanced up from the luminescent sea. “She might.
He
won't. Put him in front of the pit and the galleries, throwing things at him, and he'll freeze.”

Because that's not the way it is in salons or drawing-rooms
…

“Che stronzo!
You're right…”

Full light brought green land, and towering cliffs, and the sea becoming a hard blue, as if the foundations of all were utterly secure.

“And what will
you
be doing, padrone?”

“I'm staying with
The Aztec Princess
.”

Tullio's gaze sharpened and he frowned. Conrad looked at him with more attention as the man seemed to brace himself, physically and mentally.

He's going to say something I don't want to hear
.

At least things haven't changed between us; he'll still speak his mind—

“I know why you're staying, padrone, besides the libretto.”

“Tullio—”

“You asked me to find out when she goes out. She doesn't. She pays private calls to bored wives of the local nobles for morning tea—but that's ladies only. She doesn't go to dinners or anywhere else unless she's with her husband.”

The big man squared his shoulders.

“Do me a favour—and the rest of us. Leave the composer's wife alone until
after
the first night?”

A
coach met them at the harbour, and took them to a closed meeting with Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily. It lasted a bare half hour. The incumbent of the throne of the Two Sicilies listened with increasing joy—there was no other word for it—and then shook Tullio Rossi's hand as well as Conrad's.

“I'm well content with the arrangements for the Tyrant's visit,” Ferdinand said as they stood to take their leave. “Amazed, but content. Well done! Commendatore Mantenucci will be in charge of rumours and dissimulation, closer to the time; make sure you speak with him.”

“Yes, sire.” Conrad heard Tullio's acknowledgement half a beat behind.

The King rested his hand briefly on Conrad's shoulder. His expression was cheerful. “You'll find we've been busy here while you've been gone, gentlemen. One of Enrico's men will take you where you need to go. Remember—we have less than three weeks to be word- and note-perfect.”

“On my honour, sir.” Conrad, recovering his court manners, managed a creditable bow.

Outside the Palazzo Reale, a second coach waited. Luigi Esposito, in a snappy black civilian coat and cravat and tall-crowned hat, ushered them inside. At the driver's whip-crack, the team of horses moved off in a swift trot.

“It falls to me—on the King's now
comprehensive
orders,” the police chief of the Port district said, smugly, “to brief you about where rehearsals have been moved to.”

Conrad slumped back against the seat. “You're on board, now? Good! Now I can stop biting my tongue round you…”

“And I'm sure it was difficult,” Luigi purred.

Conrad gave him a look.

He was not certain where they would go first—certainly not to the San Carlo, since it was next door to the Palazzo Reale; perhaps to his lodgings—but he was startled when the coach slowed to pick a way through crowds, and then drew up outside a baker's shop in the back streets of the Mercato district.

Luigi had a glint in his eye.

Conrad refused to ask for information. “I didn't realise that you were hungry…”

“They bake very well. But they are, for the moment, closed. Come; I'll show you.”

The shop door had an ill-lettered piece of paper attached:
Closed owing to family illness
. The police chief let himself in with a key, and led them through the shop. For all the ovens had been allowed to cool, the place still smelled deliciously.

“It's surprising what secrets people hide.” Luigi opened the door to what was obviously a bedroom, at the back of the establishment. The bed had been pushed aside. The police chief bent down and gripped a rope, hauling on it—a trapdoor some four feet by three feet lifted up from the floor.

In the darkness exposed, there were wooden steps going down. As Conrad leaned to look, a light came up.

“Captain Esposito?” The voice from below was familiar. Iron-grey hair became visible. Enrico Mantenucci came into view, stooped from climbing the steps. “Ah, there you are, Conrad!”

“Caves under the cellars?” Conrad guessed.

“Close. Ancient mines, from the times of the Roman Emperors.” The Commendatore didn't emerge further. “We can guard this place expertly. There are only two other exits from the mine-system: one in a domestic house at the base of Vomero hill, and the other far out in the countryside on the way to Posillipo. My men are occupying the Vomero house. Colonel Alvarez has his troops taking care of the Posillipo entrance, disguised as a camp of thieving antiquarians digging up the soil…”

The man turned around on the steps, and held his lantern aside, so as not to be dazzled going back down.

“Come on, Signore Conrad; no lazing about now you're back from your little holiday!”

Conrad opened his mouth as he was faced only with Commendatore Mantenucci's back, caught a stern look from Luigi, and shut his mouth without letting the indignant protest out.
Holiday, indeed!

“Let us show you the rehearsal halls,” Enrico Mantenucci's voice floated up. “And where you'll be working from now on.”

The wood that made up the steps was ancient. Conrad concluded they had been here some centuries, at the least. Aware of Tullio and Luigi behind him, he stepped down into a slanting tunnel in volcanic rock. Lanterns were hung at intervals on the walls. The temperature seemed constant.

“The King had my people mapping all the places under the city. Catacombs. Quarries. Sewer-channels.” Mantenucci slyly shot a smile past Conrad at his subordinate. “I'll let Esposito show you those.”

Luigi Esposito looked down with distaste at the mud that smeared the tunnel floor, and muttered something, audible only to Conrad, that might have been,
Charmed, I'm sure
.

“Sewers,” Luigi added, with a lopsided smile, “Wells. Old aqueduct junctions. Ossuaries. Burial mounds. Catacombs—
ideal
rehearsal spaces. You may get complaints that the audience are unappreciative…”

Conrad gave that the quietly profane answer it deserved, and followed the other men into the gloom.

“…I'll show you your quarters,” Luigi finished.

Tullio, who had automatically moved ahead, surveyed the slanting tunnel. “We're
living
under Naples now?”

“There's been activity by the Prince's Men. Separate lodgings and rehearsal rooms above-ground can't be adequately protected. We sorted out which sectors of the underground network could be isolated by the use of fewest guard-points, and truly made safe.”

Away from the entrance, now, the tunnel walls were smooth rock. A cool but not cold gloom was lit up by intermittent lanterns—few enough that they would not significantly eat up the air. Between the shadows, Conrad saw odd sigils carved here and there into the rock-face.

The messages of miners to each other, eighteen hundred or two thousand years ago?

“Bloody waterways!” Tullio Rossi muttered, shaking one of his boots.

Conrad guessed that the stream running down the channel carved in the rock-floor meant this part of the maze was an underground aqueduct; one of the Roman ones that still supplied the public fountains in the city.

He walked forward briskly, catching up with Major Mantenucci. “Say we're Prince's Men—How likely it is that we could already be in occupation under Naples?”

“We're Prince's Men? I'd say we
hate
the Chief of Police and his officers.” Enrico's lips quirked, under the grey moustache. “Colonel Alvarez's rifle troops, too. If it helps, we rounded up two separate mundane smuggling gangs, both with connections to the Camorra. We questioned them intensively. None had knowledge of other men besides their rivals using these underground tunnels; not for the past year or more.”

By the steel in Mantenucci's tone, there had been no squeamishness in the questioning of those men.

“Wherever it was possible there might be other ways into this part of the underground system, we collapsed them with blasting powder. We can open up more mines here if you need more room. It only remains to ask, is this is sufficient for your rehearsals? I guarantee it free of enemies.”

Conrad nodded. “We'll need to keep the place warm. Well-lit. Oil lamps, not candles: smoke won't help the singers' throats… I suppose a bullet in the back
will help them less. If this is a prison, at least it's a spacious one.”

Mantenucci and Luigi Esposito shared almost identical wry smiles.

The square-cut passages drove down under Naples with mathematical precision. From time to time Conrad saw that side-chambers led off, and there were carved steps descending further. The atmosphere smelled here and there of wet stone. Lanterns diminished down a slope ahead, and Conrad felt a constant shift of air. It would at least be impossible to suffocate.

Along with the air, he detected sound beginning to move in the tunnels. It was as if argumentative Naples had not been left in the world above. Voices resounded, both raised and singing. Conrad picked out the rough yells of men working—hammers—running footsteps—the slow click of a woman's heeled boots—laughter—and one violin playing phrases of music recognisable from the Conte di Argente's score.