The Black Opera (84 page)

“I think we must,” Conrad confirmed. “They're too busy creating their ‘miracle'—let's give them something to worry about!”

A smile quirked the corner of her mouth, giving her roguish laugh-lines. “The rest of them sent me out first because I was best protected! I can't blame them. Now let all those brave men follow me…”

She fanned her fingers in a little wave, speaking loud enough for JohnJack and the castrato, above, to hear her. A moment later they emerged from the brush and saplings, scrambling down to stand beside her; Sandrine shuffling along behind in boots far too big.

“Cazzo!”
Sandrine exclaimed in a whisper. “I never felt so naked in my life!”

Conrad didn't own to chills up his spine. He suspected he didn't need to.

He found himself speaking before he realised that he would, spurred by the look in JohnJack Spinelli's red-rimmed eyes.

“It seems they were so anxious their singers not be shot down—that they can't touch
us
, yet. They can't shoot us. That gives us a chance.”

A passage of recitative tinkled across the auditorium.

Paolo glanced up, caught his gaze—and seemed to realise instantly what he was leading up to.

“They'll hurt you!” Her clenched fingers locked on the cloth of his coat; grey eyes, so like his own, glaring.

Some instinct made him confident.

“Paolo, listen. The Prince's Men—they won't risk
anything
interrupting them now. If they fight with us,
there goes their audiences' attention
, and
bang!
their miracle's gone. Believe me, they want more out of this than air free of ash, and firearms that don't work!”

Paolo-Isaura's fingernails dug into his arm, through coat and shirt.

“Corradino, by the same reasoning—they can't let
us
sing.”

Tullio rested a large hand on Isaura's shoulder, but looked at Conrad as he spoke. “Just because they can't shoot at us doesn't mean they can't overpower us.”

“They just can't do it quietly enough not to provoke an interruption.”

Conrad glanced away, discovering Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily listening quietly beside him.

“We don't have long, Corrado.”

“No, sir. I believe I'm right. We only have minutes, now—less than a quarter-hour. I don't think they can reach us in that time, if they try. I think we can act before they do.”

Conrad took a breath.

“We need to
know
if the singers will be safe, down on this side of the arena. Paolo, wait with the company up here. I won't risk the principal singers, or what chorus we have, or anyone necessary to
L'Altezza azteca
.”

She clearly couldn't speak.

“You conduct us.” Conrad stiffened his back, disregarding his aching bruises, and the throb of migraine not yet fully gone. “Take what advice Roberto can give you in the next few minutes. When I signal, bring everyone down as fast as you can.”

He moved before he could be stopped, shaking off Paolo-Isaura's loosened grip. He walked down three of the steps between the tiers of seating before he heard her stifled cry.

Treading down the access stairs, step after step, he almost felt the walls of the arena rising around him, as if he descended into a well.

It was absurd, given how large the Flavian Amphitheatre was. He wondered if what constricted his throat was terror.

Or if it's the thought that, any moment now, I might see Nora
.

His feet took him down each step with a jolt, the seed of hemicrania stirring in his spine every time his heel hit the stones.

Closer to the arena floor, he walked on steps cleaned down to the brick or concrete. The floor of the amphitheatre was dotted with the mouths of shafts, and with fallen fluted columns, rolled aside against the bottom tier of seating, away from the audience of Prince's Men.

His steps slowed without him willing it.

Down here, it was clear eight metres was a conservative estimate of how wide the central collapsed passage was.

They won't even try to cross that, Conrad reassured himself. How far would you fall into darkness, and what would you hit at the bottom?

Slowly, not looking back, Conrad raised his arm and gave the signal for them to follow him down.

T
en heartbeats. Twenty—agitated heartbeats though they are, he can still count them—and nothing happens. Nothing except the soldiers and singers and King Ferdinand reaching the arena floor.
The Prince's Men see us. But we're not worth breaking this fragile, breath-holding truce for
.

“Musicians up on the third tier, there. It looks the least crumbled. Choir in front of the bottom tier; principals on the arena floor. Can everybody see Paolo conduct?”

“I'll get it sorted,” Paolo grinned, one hand on the oboe player's elbow.

Nothing but empty air between the Prince's Men and the singers and musicians of
The Aztec Princess
.

“Are they going to
let
us do this?” He spoke aloud, not aware of Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily beside him.

“And I thought you were convinced by your own argument, Corrado…”

The King clasped his hands behind his back, not stooping or shrinking away from the several hundred men of
il Principe
on the auditorium's far side. He stood like any officer Conrad had ever seen, when it came to stand-up-and-shoot at close range of the enemy.

Nothing broke the uneasy truce, not even a shout of surprise.

“They were expecting us,” Conrad realised. “Nora will have warned them—that someone
might
come, at least.”

Sound suddenly burst on Conrad's ears, making him shy like a nervous horse. The plaintive call of horns and flutes, and the low rumble of a drum—all instruments that might be easily transported—mixed with the sound of a dozen voices, spiralling up into a stretta that Conrad recognised from Roberto's scribbled score.

With the outside world shrouded by ash, falling silent as snow, every sound was emphasised. Conrad heard voices ring out, soaring up in a stunning duet.

“We're coming up to the end of the penultimate scene of Act Four,” Roberto Capiraso said, in all of
il Superbo's
pedantic tones.

Conrad noted the sweat sticking volcanic ash to his forehead. He glanced around, curiously. The tiers of seating were still high after having suffered two thousand years of wind, rain, and depredating peasants. Every few yards, on every level, a passage opened back to the rim of the coliseum, so that patrons could
enter there, and more easily walk to their seats. A glint of metal let Conrad's eyes adjust to what he was looking for.

Figures low to the ground, crouched behind the edges of those arches. Just visible in the darkness. Very difficult targets.

They do have men with guns
. Gamekeepers, hunters, peasants from their own estates—and I'd guess there's more than a hundred of them that I can see just from here…

“Firearms won't be subject to the miracle forever,” Ferdinand murmured, under the sound of their own singers testing voices on a line here and there. “We're in an exposed position—we
need
to defeat them. And then, we have no idea at what point in the performance their ‘black miracle' is planned to happen. Signore Conte, you speak on the basis that it is during the finale, but I suspect Madame Leonora did not tell her husband everything.”

Conrad just managed not to observe how that was the understatement of several decades. Seeing Roberto's expression robbed him of the desire to make jokes.

Familiar faces in filthy torn costumes—the singers walked out into the arena, until they took up the places familiar from the San Carlo stage, but here, only yards from the collapsed underground way. Conrad saw that ash had darkened their faces like actors playing devils in the carnival. They swear and make the sign against witchcraft every time the ground shakes. But they are still singers.

Conrad spoke so quietly that Ferdinand leaned in to hear him. “Sir, we don't have much of an orchestra—but I've heard Sandrine and Velluti sing
a capella
. The acoustics should be good, given what this place was created for. Sound does carry—so let's sing against them, the way you intended, sire.”

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily looked up at the daylight sky, rapidly obscured by obsidian-coloured clouds.

“Not quite the way I intended,” he said. “But yes. Tell them—sing.”

Conrad found Velluti approaching him. “Giambattisa—is this sufficient for you to do what you can?”

Velluti wiped black ash from his face and swore in Neapolitan dialect, surprisingly fluently. “You know if I sing
her
part of it, my voice will be wrecked forever! Scalese, you would have no one else to blame but yourself if I resign!”

Conrad heard in his mind the dead Estella Belucci.
If I sing it as it demands to be done, I'll burst a blood-vessel and drop dead on the stage!

He seized on the conditional. “But you won't resign? Not with a chance to match yourself against—”

Velluti glanced across at the singers of the Prince's Men, and a light came into his eyes.

“That
fessa?
Signore, the castrato is
the
classical voice, it will never be bettered!”

Sandrine Furino ripped a torn swathe of lace free from the hem of her snake-coloured robe. “The one time in my life I would have been grateful for a britches role…! We're ready, Corrado.”

“Ready,” JohnJack echoed.

Conrad could overheard one of the captains telling Ferdinand,
Sir, at least sit in with the soldiers or the choir, where you don't stand out as a temptation to sharpshooters!
but he knew what the end of that would be.

Ferdinand gave an absent nod.

“Stop
her,” Count Roberto hissed, ignoring the King's aides and everyone else. “Or she'll wake the Divine and Living God of this world—and we'll be here alive for His wrath.”

Conrad could have said plenty about the God of the Prince's Men. He found himself frowning over a quite different problem.

“Paolo.” He waited until his sister emerged from among the musicians and chorus, and stepped aside with her. “I know what you want—so tell me what you think. We don't have enough musicians on our side. Roberto could conduct this last scene of
L'Altezza
. Only
you
can play first violin. But I won't ask it—”

The corner of her mouth pulled up.

“I wonder if Papa would approve of his violin being played to get rid of holy miracles?”

“Of course not—there's no money in it.”

She snickered. “I'll talk to the musicians; you tell il Superbo.”

Conrad gave the composer no chance to disagree, passing the suggestion on to Ferdinand, and letting the King make it an order.

“We're ready, sir,” Conrad said, two minutes and twenty seconds later. “The stretta of this scene. Then we're into the last scene of all.”

Ferdinand raised his kerchief in what was evidently a signal, and brought it down sharply. Conrad saw JohnJack, two chorus tenors, a flautist bringing his instrument to his lips…

Paolo-Isaura stood up, her back to the tiers of seats. She put her bow to the violin that Alfredo Scalese had somehow never pawned. Conrad, to whom her face was visible, thought he had never seen her look so happy.

“She thrives on this!” he muttered, he thought too quietly to be overheard but Tullio shot him a knowing look.

“Of course she does. The same way she loves tweaking the world's nose by how she dresses.”

There was no condemnation in the big man's voice. If anything, Conrad thought, Tullio Rossi looked as if he were jealous. Or at any rate, if he craved the same kind of life.

“Have you asked her yet?”

“Hush,” Tullio said gravely. “They're singing.”

JohnJack stepped forward first, walking right up to the edge where the roof of the lower floors had fallen in. Conrad saw him inflate his chest, and pick up the melody with a few soft notes. The music Roberto had composed both as Isabella of Castile's soliloquy to God as she plans the death of her husband, and as Lord-General Chimalli's madness while he is haunted by the ghost of his dead king. But the words—JohnJack brought his head up with the words of
L'Altezza azteca
's Act Four, not what the members of the black opera were singing.

My words
.

“We have a damn pitiful chorus!” Conrad whispered, beside the King—and found himself gripped above the elbow, and propelled just as he was, no costume, into the back line of the nervously-grouped men of the chorus.

“Don't tell me you don't know the words!” Ferdinand snapped under his breath. “And you have a perfectly serviceable
drawing-room
tenor—use it!”