The Black Opera (64 page)

“Shite!”
Conrad tucked his right hand up under his left armpit, hoping the warmth would take some of the swelling sting out of his knuckles.
“Merda!”

Leonora had both hands over her mouth. She made a sound. It might have been either of their names.

Conrad took a step forward and knelt down, feeling for Roberto Capiraso's pulse. It beat steadily at his carotid artery. The man was not quite unconscious. He gazed up with nothing but confusion in his eyes. Conrad forced himself to unbutton the man's coat and undo his stock and waistcoat. Rage made him breathless.

For me, he can die in his own vomit, but not in front of his—wife. No—not in front of Nora
.

Conrad stood up out of the chaos, absently scooping up a fallen stack of bound scores, and loose pages with notes doodled on them. He looked for somewhere to set the stuff down—found the desk not a choice—and placed them on the Versailles sofa. They slid into a heap. Nora stood and stepped back, out of the way. A bound score fell open as Conrad fumbled to keep the stack under control—

His eyes automatically took in what was written on the page within his view.

Music sounded in his mind. Comprehension came instantly. The familiar black spidery handwriting on the staves put the notes into his head, and the orchestration, and the vocal line. It took him scant seconds, in which Leonora did not move, and the Conte di Argente only breathed thickly where he lay.

“This is the aria you were struggling to complete for us yesterday.” Conrad frowned. “Except that
this
is scored for a soprano, not a mezzo, and is complete. I don't understand.”

Yesterday, Count Roberto had agonised over the melody and given it up as “good as it can be in the time.” Here it sprawled across the page in great confident notes and chords—marked for an
Isabella, regina di Castiglia
: Isabella, Queen of Castile—full, and complete.

The aria in
L'Altezza
stumbled, showing flashes of brilliance.

“This is brilliance itself…” The document in his hands had been bound some time ago, Conrad realised. The corners of pages were curled, where it had been read and re-read.

Other names dotted the page—a tenor aria for a “Ferdinand, il Re di Aragona,” which Conrad had never heard, and would have killed to have for Lorenzo. A bass aria and cabaletta for “Mohammed, Muslim King of Granada”—

“This is JohnJack's cabaletta for his Mad Scene! Only this version is
better!”
As if he had not just knocked Roberto down, Conrad demanded, “Is this another one of your one-act operas? Why didn't you
say
this was finished?”

Roberto Capiraso made a choking sound.
“Put that down—!”

Conrad hefted the thickness of the score.
Not a one-act opera
. Too long and complex to be anything but a full four- or five-act work.

“If you
had
this, why not give it to us?” Conrad closed the bound pages together, and then opened the front cover to look at the title page.

Il Reconquista d'amore, ossia la Moor di Venere. “The Reconquest of Love, or, the Moor of Venus—”

He snorted at the outrageous trap of the subtitle, presumably laying in wait for wherever
Il Reconquista d'amore
might have a London run, close by Shakespearean theatres.

“Put it
down
, Scalese!”

Conrad shook his head, caught between laughter and anger.
“When
did you write this?”

He thumbed through the bound manuscript to the back, and the end of the final act. Aria, stretta… and the rondo finale for the soprano. Familiar fragments of melodies teased his mind, and stage situations and confrontations—

Roberto blinked up owlishly, and scowled.

“This final scene has all the music of
L'Altezza azteca
.” Conrad heard himself as if from a stunned distance, and could not tell if he sounded amazed or appalled. “The same music. But with their melodies just different enough, the arrangement superior enough, that this score is… infinitely superior to
The Aztec Princess
.”

Roberto Capiraso muttered something, sounding partly conscious.

Conrad looked up from the staves. “Why would you do less than your best when you can do
this?
This is better than anything you've written for us! This is a whole
opera
you could have given us…”

Conrad felt his body tensing to fight.

“The score you've been ‘composing' and ‘developing' for us—is
complete
. Has
been
complete for some time. Look at it! And this
is
yours; I know your style well enough by now!”

He met the dark eyes of Roberto Conte di Argente, where the stocky man sprawled on the carpet.

“You've lied to us from the beginning. You had no fear that you couldn't write a full opera. You'd already done it!” Conrad heard himself sounding more bewildered than appalled. “Tell me
one
reason why you would pretend to compose an inferior version of what you already have!”

Dread twisted in Conrad's stomach.

Dread as well as anger, he realised.

Despite everything, did I want to believe that Roberto was honest? Because he and I have worked side by side like brothers?

The other man spoke a thick, unintelligible curse.

Conrad hefted the score of
Il Reconquista d'amore
.

An unknown and fully complete new opera. In Naples
. At the time when the Prince's Men are here.

Intuition and evidence came together.

“—This is the black opera.”

R
oberto Capiraso looked as if he went to nod but was stopped by pain.

In a breathless, cracked voice, he muttered, “Yes.”

The implied
you idiot!
did not need to be stated aloud; it was clear in his tone. “You've been composing for both operas—”

Conrad couldn't help staring.
I must look like a gawking idiot!

“—
L'Altezza azteca
and…
this
. Counter-opera and black opera. Both of them.”

This time the other man managed the smallest nod of assent. A flinch of pain creased his face.

A confession. But with the evidence right here in my hands, there'd be no point in denial
.

“Major Mantenucci thought their composer was Bellini…”

Roberto Capiraso gave a sardonic grimace that was not quite a smile. “Signore Bellini's death was a convenient chance to spread rumours, as I understand it.”

“And
you
—”

“Il Reconquista
was done before I came to Naples,” Roberto Capiraso muttered tightly. “When I needed to compose music for the key points of
L'Altezza
, to handicap it, I used the earlier, inferior drafts of
Reconquista
.”

As if it were a small image in clear glass, Conrad recalled speaking to il Conte di Argente on the day they first met. The Wars in Granada making a colourful frieze of armour and heraldry in his mind.

Conrad quoted il Superbo's words back to him. “‘Something more exotic than wars against the Moors and Jews'?”

Roberto Capiraso flinched.

Conrad suspected it was not through pain.

Conrad let the score drop.
“Cazzo!
Ferdinand had it right! He just couldn't find the right man.”

He drove his bruised fist into his palm.

“It's obvious, isn't it? The Prince's Men have never truly harmed us. Never irreparably. Why would they?
It wasn't in their interests
. With you in the heart of the counter-opera, writing to
fail
… They had nothing to be afraid of! Our
composer
is one of the Prince's Men.”

The immensity of the realisation left him stunned.

“I should knock you down again,” Conrad realised, head swimming as if he were the one who had been punched. “All the time, while we were giving everything,
you
—”

Roberto Capiraso spat blood onto the carpet. “You—
we
—are a diversion to keep the King of the Two Sicilies happy! That's all!”

The Count got the words out with effort, gasping between them. His dark eyes flashed. His broad hands fumbled for a place to brace, behind him. He pushed himself up into a sitting position on the rich Turkey carpet.

Conrad's thoughts moved faster than he could have spoken.

Roberto Capiraso was behind the Silvestri family and the arrest for debt
. For revenge, yes. And because he's one of the Prince's Men.

Using
my
imprisonment as an excuse to drag his feet with composing the music for the counter-opera. Sabotaging even as he wrote.

Disrupting rehearsals—il Superbo!
—

Persuading the King that all's going well—

He spent his true energy beforehand, on composing the black opera.

He's told the other Prince's Men everything
, everything,
they could ever need to know
.

Hatred echoed down Conrad's muscles and nerves. “You
fucking
son of a bitch.”

Roberto snorted, and flinched at the pain it caused. “You realise how much you've
benefited
from the unofficial protection you had? If I hadn't been composer for both operas—Would you rather have had Tullio Rossi and, say, Signore Velluti, returned in the same condition as Adriano Castiello-Salvati? And note that it was your rehearsal hall burned down, empty, when the San Carlo is the same as every theatre, an inferno waiting to happen? And it might have had every one of you in it?”

The note of superiority brought Conrad's hackles up.

“Don't even try to
justify
—!” He kicked the bound score at his feet. “Who did write this libretto?”

“Felice Romani.” Roberto Capiraso looked as nauseous as if he rested on a swaying deck. “Last year. After the first San Carlo attempt. Not willingly.”

Well, that finally answers my question of: “Why isn't Signore Romani sitting in this chair?”

Conrad searched the other man's blank features for any sign of guilt, or even regret. “This is why we could never find the composer for the black opera. This is why you never committed yourself heart and mind to
L'Altezza azteca
—why you always got to a point and then pulled back—”

Roberto Capiraso made as if he would stand up. It was difficult to tell, red-faced
from the blow as he was, but his skin might have flushed.

The temptation to kick him down on his back in the wreckage again was strong. Conrad found his vision narrowing, identifying the point on il Superbo's jaw where a boot would need to land.

Roberto Capiraso scraped up sheet music in uncoordinated hands, pages all dotted with his sharp writing, and attempted to wave it in Conrad's face. “There are places I wrote supremely well for
L'Altezza
!”

I remember so many occasions in the secret museum and under Naples, watching him speed to get down the notes he heard in his head…

Conrad pushed the memory away. He grabbed up the betraying score of
Il Reconquista. “This
is what you do when you're utterly committed to doing your best. Not holding back, and sabotaging the opera. This—That I could have written the libretto for
this
—”

Il Superbo pushed himself painfully slowly up onto his knees. Pages slid to the floor. Swaying as if he were about to fall, his hands gripping his thighs, the composer forced himself up onto his feet.

Conrad looked down the couple of inches in height that separated them. Roberto Capiraso stood precisely like the loser of a brawl—neck-cloth untied and coat open, hair dishevelled, his breath coming harshly.

“And what
did
I write for?” Conrad demanded.
“The Aztec Princess
—flashy, daring, parts of it stunning… But with all those subtle, subtle faults, that will show up in performance. You
wrote
the counter-opera to fail.”

Roberto barely spared him a look. “Of course.”

For one desperate, conscienceless moment, Conrad could only think,
Roberto's sabotage means arrest and imprisonment for him!

And that means Nora is free of him. Free to be with a man who has
not
betrayed his King…

“Nora hates traitors,” Conrad said hoarsely. “Or did she never tell you that? Too many people betrayed her trust as a girl. If she ever wants to visit you in jail, I'll be amazed!”

Something like absolute misery flashed across Roberto's face. Conrad saw something odd in it, but dismissed it, given how urgent things were.

“We're going to Ferdinand now.” Conrad took a step back, keeping his gaze on the Count, and felt on the bookcase for his pistol.

His fingers skidded over polished oak, encountering no obstruction.