The Black Opera (85 page)

Conrad picked up the choral melody, and fitted his own voice in as a background body to support the other singers.

The chorus that had come with them were not all professionals; some came from Naples' many church choirs, one or two—as Roberto no doubt noted—from drawing-rooms. Some from the comic opera houses, where the singing was in Neapolitan dialect. And a handful who merely followed opera with the obsessiveness of devotees, and—possessing a voice—were pleased to have the self-discipline to be sufficiently good to pass the audition, and spend their evenings at the back of the stage, singing. As opposed to the front, where they might hurl criticism, cheers, and bad fruit with incisive critical insight.

I may not be so out of place after all
, Conrad decided, between a butcher from the Vomero district, and one of Luigi's off-duty police officers.

Opera is a great engine
, Conrad felt, as he always did; reminded of nothing more than those great cathedrals of work in the northern parts of Inghilterra, where looms replaced pews, and a man could not hear himself speak for the rattle of shuttles.

One voice rose over the rest, searching, yearning upwards; soaring in sheer coloratura bass genius.

JohnJack!
Conrad lost the rhythm of his breathing, too anxiously following the bass's brilliance.

Over on the arena's far side, the end of the aria had been scored as a duet for soprano and tenor, Leonora's voice climbing high into the ash-scented air.

The villain's Mad Scene went on, held in JohnJack's hand, stolen from the singers of
Il Reconquista d'amore
.

The
Principe's
tenor, spurred by an evident threat, strained and managed a creditable chest-note C.

JohnJack's gloriously resonant voice swelled out to take in the upper tiers of the Anfiteatro, without any apparent effort, and then sank down again, all in one breath—only to soar again.
Mezza voce
, the heart of bel canto.

Conrad wiped his cheeks hastily with the back of his hand.

Leonora, and a bass he recognised from the Paris
Opera
, sang as
Reconquista
's Queen Isabella and the Muslim King of Granada—sang of the loss of the greatest age of Spain, when Christian, Muslim, and Jew alike lived and thrived there, and how the fall of Granada would wrench them from each other, as surely as it split its people into warring factions.

Their tenor broke in, singing in the new fashion, voice now soaring like a trumpet, nothing on earth like the power of nine high C chest notes in a row—

Power against intensity
, Conrad thought, nursing his own head-voice C-note as much as he might, knowing there was no use attempting to put emphasis behind the sound.
Not unless I want it to crack, right here.

The two scores fell out of synchronisation. The lover's trio quarrel in Spain rose towards climax, each voice yearning toward the other. A few yards ahead of Conrad, Spinelli rose from his pose on one knee, where he had ended the aria with his head on his breast. He rose up with a surge, meeting the music that—Conrad could see—Isaura conducted in strict time, ignoring the momentary cacophony.

The end of the penultimate scene was scored, not as an aria, but as a cabaletta. Energy surged out of the orchestra as they switched gears, and Conrad found himself at the back of the male chorus as they surged forward—the army meeting their leader. JohnJack swung around, skinny tall body believably impressive in a breastplate and scarlet cloak, and sent his own voice out to meet them:

“‘Shame held me down, but by your faith I am risen;

“‘Let us rise up, all, and save the Principessa—'”

With Brigida and Lorenzo dead, both the high soprano and the tenor are missing; Velluti and JohnJack sing their transposition of it, and—inspired—Brigida's mezzo transposes down to make the necessary higher notes.

Conrad caught at Ferdinand's arm. He whispered, under the glorious sound, “We know the black opera doesn't need more of an audience than they had at Tambora.
We
need an audience. And we've got it.”

Ferdinand craned his head. Conrad could tell the moment when he caught sight of the soldiers taken prisoner—some of Alvarez's men barracking the Prince's singers as if they were in the Teatro Nuovo on a Saturday night, and others applauding JohnJack, even with tied hands.

“Soldiers! If they can't find one kind of trouble, they'll find another!”

JohnJack came to the reprise of the aria, and joined his voice to the others, a bass deep enough to seem responsible for the shaking ground.

Conrad turned his head to share a look of congratulation with Ferdinand—but the King stared off towards the south-east, as if there were not an opera being sung within paces of him.

Something's wrong, Conrad realised.

Ferdinand abruptly strode towards the south-eastern side of the amphitheatre. Conrad forced himself bodily, painfully, away from the singing, and followed.

“Sir, what—”

“Look.”

The archway entrance framed everything beyond it, distinct and clear as a watercolour miniature.

The King stared with intensity into the south and east.

Rock thundered up from Vesuvius: boulders and cumulo-nimbus dust flooding up into the lightning-threaded pillar.

Ferdinand was not looking at it. He stared through one of the arched openings towards the hills where the Grotto of Posillipo cut through, and the sea beyond that.

Absently, as if Conrad were one of his aides and advisors, Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily pointed towards the choppy blue waters.

“We can't see that from here.”

“Sir?”

“This land's too low-lying.” The dusty creases in Ferdinand's face deepened. He spoke quietly, under the penultimate scene of
Reconquista
and
L'Altezza
. “My Natural Philosophers warned me… If, one day, the lava beneath the Burning Fields should swell, and lift the land, then…”

Then we're standing on top of a hell about to be opened
.

Conrad made out the shape of Egg Castle on its tiny peninsula, but not the Palazzo Reale, or around the headland into the old city.

He didn't know the country well enough to guess how many inches of lift should be needed before they could see not only Vesuvius, but the waters of the Gulf of Napoli at its foothills, from here.

Impossible that the solid earth itself should rise under my feet! And yet… “I believe Pliny wrote something the same.”

As before—when he had visualised the sun, not rising, but rounding the curve of the earth as a racehorse rounds a bend in the course—his perceptions shifted. The physical earth, a byword for permanence, became a thin skin over magma and sulphur-gas, swelling like one of Montgolfier's balloons.

Ferdinand turned away from looking at Sorrento, and Amalfi. He gazed at
Vesuvius, and made a choking sound.

Far over the eastern hills, the lightning-threaded tower above Vesuvius faltered.

Its upward eruption
hesitated
.

—The ash and smoke column over Vesuvius dropped.

It broke only for a moment. In a heartbeat, Conrad saw the boiling clouds of magma continue to blast upwards, threaded by jagged bolts of Galvanic force.

The crater flooded over.

Unimaginably-hot gas boiled over the lip of the crater and ran down the mountain-side—surged down, faster than a galloping horse—faster than a thought.

Conrad felt the other man's grip tighten, hard enough to bruise. The onrushing front of dirty-white cloud slammed into the outlying hamlets on the foothills. They were wiped out in a moment.

“The Bay—!” Conrad's heart stuttered in his breast with a brief moment of hope. Naples, across the bite that the Golfo di Napoli takes out of the land.
Surely it can't cross the sea
—

The surge did not die out on the lower slopes of the mountain, nor at the edge of the sea.

It
flowed
out onto the water.

The billowing front of the cloud shot out onto the waves without hesitation. White steam went up in gouts from the foot of the flow—steam that might even cushion it above the sea; buoy it up as it hurtled on.

Seconds away from the city.

Risen land or not, Conrad could not see around the headlands into Naples itself. He witnessed the blossoming grey cloud jet out across the waters of the Gulf, aiming directly for Naples harbour.

The hills towards Posillipo cut off his view. He could only imagine what was happening seven miles away.

Conrad shivered, picturing the boiling steam and rock surging up over the hills, towards the defenceless amphitheatre.

Ferdinand breathed the words, as if the mountain itself could hear him. “We're too far from the eruption—surely?”

Will another six or seven miles save us from the volcano?
Conrad wondered.
I doubt it.

Seven miles between Pozzuoli and Naples…
Two hours or more for a man on foot. An hour or less for a man on a good horse. And for the edge of the cloud of ash and gas, rocks and fire, that has spewed out of Vesuvius—

Minutes, only. The few miles between Naples and the
Anfiteatro Flavio
will make no difference. Such a distance was nothing when it came to Pompeii.

“The Anfiteatro will be flooded by rock and gas before the Burning Fields can blow up.” Conrad was amazed to hear himself sound calm, even bored.

It's wonderful what panic will do
.

“We're going to die.”

F
erdinand Bourbon-Sicily, in filthy uniform and aged grey by ash, gazed towards the scarred, steaming flank of the volcano. Conrad thought he must be picturing the streets of Naples now: super-heated ash and molten rock racing over houses and streets.

Looks like neither side will get to finish the opera
.

Stubborn, something not optimistic enough to be called hope reasserted itself. Survival, perhaps.

He reached out for the King's arm and led Ferdinand back across the
Anfiteatro Grande
.

Neither the singers nor instrumentalists moved, all their attention on the shuddering plume of rock jetting up from the distant mountain. They froze, Conrad thought, as if they thought how the collapse of the eruption might be worse than the eruption itself.

He glanced swiftly at the opera of the Prince's Men. The white figure of Leonora busily went from one to another of the singers, and back to the conductor. No one but Leonora moved.

With a considerable amount of
schadenfreude
, Conrad thought.
Yes, these things are different in performance than rehearsal!

The concrete and brickwork of the arena floor had been worn by hundreds of years of weather and dirt, before
il Principe
uncovered it, and footing was everywhere uncertain. The King moved as if he were a blind man. The remaining captain of the King's Rifles came forward as they returned, with a dozen men, who formed up around Ferdinand as personal escort.

Conrad made quickly towards Isaura. “Paolo! If we can start again before they do—”

Paolo's gaze went past him. She pointed up.

“Look at that…!”

Light vanished.

The very top of the amphitheatre seating vanished into surging waves of ash, boiling down from the obscured sky like sea-haze.

Nothing so cool, so damp, as fog
.

Conrad's flesh shrank. As if his bones could bodily cringe away from the extreme heat so few yards above—only a handful of seconds until death—a horrible death—skin crisped and fat melted, like a cooked animal, but all too fast to realise; a man's body will be steam and gas within less than a heartbeat—

He sprinted out across the arena, no thought in his mind except reaching Nora. Even knowing that he couldn't reach her, couldn't cross twenty or thirty feet of open gap, he needed to get closer to her.

It's too much, even for her, she can't survive it
.

The Prince's Men can't have intended this!

A running body cannoned into him.

Conrad stumbled over broken earth and fell, not so far from where the collapsed underground passageway split the amphitheatre. His hands smarted with grit. He pushed himself up onto his feet—and saw the Conte di Argente, equally stunned, scrambling up from where the collision had knocked him.

A shriek, half pain and half joy, came from Leonora. Her hands covered her mouth. She stood in front of the other singers, staring up the ranked tiers of seating, poised on her toes—

Conrad spluttered a hysterical laugh. She might have been a parlour-maid at a fair, entranced by exploding coloured fireworks. The incongruity of it made him choke.

Roberto stared, bewildered, first at Nora, then up at the top tiers of seating.

Still tasting blood in his mouth, where he had bitten his tongue, Conrad stared where il Superbo did.