The Black Opera (89 page)

The thought was swept away in a moment. Dramatic soprano and male soprano clash against each other.
No
, Conrad forced himself to remember.
I wrote the emotion, but it is how they interpret it.

It is on Tullio's face that Conrad sees the first change.

Sees him soften, caught up without his own wish, as, a few yards away, Velluti began to truly sing.

Some of his voice was male soprano. Some down in the natural range that castrati normally sing: a rich and flexible contralto. Some of the notes drop low enough that they must be out of Velluti's tessitura—

And they are.

“Sandrine!”

Conrad stared at the mezzo, hearing Sandrine picking up the role of the hero, to give voice to all that she is—both upper and lower ranges of her stupendous range. She did not risk jumping from one to the other, or finding some passaggio, but she sung in a mezzo that mirrored Leonora's flawless soprano, and then dropped to a strong tenor to out-sing
il Principe
's man, her coloratura brilliant enough that the Prince's Men applauded.

Tullio said in deep appreciation, “God
damn
.”

A soaring note rose from Leonora, up into the smoky air, buttressed by the male voices. Her coloratura roused Alvarez's shackled hostages to shout in appreciation. Conrad found his eyes free of volcanic dust as water welled up and ran down his cheeks.

No one has ever heard such singing, Conrad knows.
Or ever will again
. Whatever power there is in
musicodramma
, this is the zenith of it. Rocket-showers of notes cascading into the thickening air, spangles, bright as thrown gold coins, joyful as bells—the unearthly sound bringing the taste of ash and char into Conrad's mouth, as she reaches notes not attainable by the human voice.

A capella
, Velluti and Sandrine and Brigida sung with the joys and pains that belong to mortality, love, and pardon.

The slim figure of Leonora, so still against the background of swirling ash and smoke; she sings with the joy that comes of being freed of the pains of mortality, Conrad knows.

No wonder she sings
Non perdoni!
Who has a right to pardon her?

Time doesn't constrain her any more: she has all the time in the world. Death isn't an end: death is endless life to her—endless existence, anyway. If she finds herself in pain, she need only wait, and sooner or later it will end. For all intents and purposes, she is immortal.

The two sets of voices soared, and he was not certain, now, whether they fought, or whether they supported each other: Leonora's fire, Velluti's slender beauty, Sandrine's pure open joy in singing, JohnJack's utter masculine resonance, and Brigida's amused confidence. Their voices have all the joy and aching pain of being alive in them, heightened so it is more bearable than mere everyday living.

Leonora's voice soars, luring them to follow—

Velluti's voice broke.

It cracked and tore, with a sound no human throat ought to make.

Conrad had a split second to think,
Velluti will be lucky if he ever speaks again, never mind sings
—

Leonora is still standing. Triumphant, opening her mouth, singing her coloratura victory at them.

Not higher, but more able to penetrate the dull everyday and carry the hearer away. Not louder, but more intense; soaking up every part of the one who hears it, and impelling emotion into them.

Leonora began to walk forward—towards them—as she sang.

Conrad glanced back—saw Roberto Capiraso stop conducting—and Paolo-Isaura flawlessly pick it up in mid-bar—

Roberto walked forward until he was almost at the crumbling edge of the gap. He and Leonora stood some eight metres apart, across the gash in the earth. Close enough to see expressions, even the most subtle; close enough to hear what is spoken, if not what is whispered.

Incalculably far apart; the gap cannot be bridged.

Conrad couldn't stop himself. He left the singers and went towards the crevasse.

“Leonora.” The Count's voice sounded ash-clogged.

Her voice reached up, overcoming all the ambient noise. She lifted her head, as if the shrieks of applause blew in her face like a warm summer wind.

She sang, her voice inhumanly caressing the pure notes that the human voice cannot reach, going far beyond the mortal

“We could never win against that!” Conrad swore, frustrated.

Roberto's fists clenched at his side. He didn't look away from his wife's face. “You've realised that, have you?”

The last note of the
finale ultimo
swelled up, soaring over the fumes and smoke of the Burning Fields.

Leonora prolonged the final note far beyond the ability of a living singer. Conrad listened and let it run through him, never staggered by Roberto Capiraso's work as much as he was now.

A silence fell, like no other.

Silence after the great anthem of the finale—silence padded by the volcanic ash that still sleeted down over the Burning Fields, covering the stone of the Amphitheatre and the men and woman who stood inside it.

The ash-born crowds of dead men and women turned as one, every head simultaneous; from those on the highest tier of the amphitheatre to those a dozen yards away.

“Padrone.” Beside Conrad, Tullio's whisper sounded taut. “Why are they all
looking
at us?”

A crackle of friction-lightning echoed through the amphitheatre. The thunder that rolled around the eruption pillar of Vesuvius shook the stones.

The lips of the Returned Dead moved in unison.

The voice, from each ash-dry throat, spoke.

“You have summoned the Living God—and I am here.”

C
onrad found himself speaking before he realised that he would.

“I don't know what you are, but I do know you're not God!”

Commotion. Many living voices speaking. Many Returned Dead speaking in unison, speech interwoven so that all—including the voices of the most distant—seemed to arrive simultaneously in his ear.

The unified voice demanded, “How do you know this?”

“I don't
know
it, the way you mean ‘know,'” Conrad said, surprisingly buoyed up by that conviction. “Not to be certain. I've no proof. But it seems to me the most likely theory.”

Paolo-Isaura muttered, beside him. “You mean you're positive that you're not sure.”

Conrad's declaration was drowned out by Dominicans—Luka Viscardo the most vociferous. And by the remaining living Prince's Men, hailing the vocal apparition as the Prince of this World.

And
by a number of the King's riflemen loudly praying; crying that they should have brought a priest.

Only Ferdinand looked amused at Conrad's willingness to debate theology and philosophy in the middle of something aching to turn into killing violence.

The throng of Returned Dead stood shoulder-to-shoulder in ranks on the tiers of the amphitheatre. They—or it—ignored the prayers, praise, and cries of heresy issuing from the Prince's men, to focus on Conrad.

“For all I know,” Conrad added, “since you're speaking through all our voices, you're something that comes from our dreams.”

He half-hoped he might be given some clue to Nora's music.

Instead, the Voice of the Dead visibly pondered.

The risen earth shook under their feet.

Conrad eyed those of the Prince's Men with rifles—those he could still see. They had mostly abandoned the upper levels of the ruined amphitheatre, he noted, almost with amusement. As if guns would be harmless for all the future. The lower archway entrances seemed crowded with men who still carried guns, and who could cover King Ferdinand's small force without effort.

“Now it begins.”

Leonora's voice filled the air without effort. Conrad caught sight of her,
suddenly, not twenty yards away; standing on the arena floor and gazing up at the Returned Dead of Naples.

“What is she doing?” Paolo asked.

Conrad turned his head, looking for Roberto Capiraso, and found the Count standing with his hands clasped behind him, as if he stood at the back of an opera-box like any gentleman, watching the finer points of the performance. “Roberto?”

“They've given the Prince of this World the ability to over-ride the rules that the Creator-God set in place.”

Capiraso's lips quirked in a dark, oddly self-mocking, smile. To Conrad it said,
How could I ever have believed in this?

“In a moment, the requests will begin. I beg your pardon:
prayers
. And then we see how different a world the Prince will make.”

Leonora lifted her head, gazing up at rank upon rank of the Returned Dead. Conrad expected to see more kinship with them. He thought she still outshone every one.

“You are free!” Her voice came as triumphant as when she sang. “Prince of the World, you're free—tell us how you've healed this world of its pain?”

Silence.

They're wondering what to tell her first
.

Conrad surveyed row upon row of Naples faces. The kinship of being Returned was too subtle for him to see. What was plain—entirely plain—was that no mouth even intended to open to speak.

Leonora stared.

Only that motion, as her head came up, but he recognised the stillness in her. Nora, when trapped, thinking rapidly and desperately for an escape.

“Of course,” Roberto rumbled quietly, his voice desolate. “I should have seen it.”

“That there's no God to answer her?” Conrad prompted.

Before Roberto could answer, Luka Viscardo's corvid profile drew Conrad's eye.

“I believe I see the difficulty.” The Canon-Regular gazed at the collapsed subterranean passageway that separated them as if he hated every brick and clod of earth—and every foot of open air.

And especially those beyond it.

Conrad felt every singer and member of the San Carlo opera felt their dusty, gritty, dirty appearance to the full under that censorious gaze.

“The reason that God has not smitten this enemy, these heretics, this atheist—” Pure hatred illuminated the last word. “—Is that it is
our
task. The Heavens have not smitten your heretic opera because our first task is to wipe you out.”

Before Conrad could respond to Viscardo, or let loose the anger that boiled inside him, Leonora stepped past the Dominican canon and surveyed the whole amphitheatre of the Dead.

“God is capable of making that known, if it's His will,” she said, deceptively quiet.

Conrad caught Roberto in a wince, out of the corner of his eye.
He knows that tone too, does he? Yes, I suppose he would.

Lightly, as if he didn't feel that he bled to look at her, Conrad said, “Your Prince doesn't seem to be saying much.”

The younger Silvestri, the Conte di Galdi's son, raised his voice, glaring at Conrad, Ferdinand, and all and the group standing by the King of the Two Sicilies.

“We know the desires of the Prince!” A little sententiously, Niccolò di Galdi observed, “Our reward is in Heaven, but our work starts here—we will rule at the side of the Prince of this World! As for you, sire, I regret to say that the theocracy of the Two Sicilies will have no room for Kings.”

Conrad took a pace forward, putting himself in front of the group of singers and crew.

“To have a theocracy, you have to have a deity.”

Conrad waved a dismissive hand at the ranks of the Returned Dead.

“And to me, it doesn't sound as if you do.”

“He may.”

The interruption came unexpectedly from that quarter of the seating where Luigi Esposito sat among his fellow Returned Dead.

“We might be God. For example, we can tell you what happens now with Stromboli, Vulcano, Ætna—all of them break and send fire into the air. If I have such knowledge, am I not God?”