Read Online The Black Opera by Mary Gentle - Free Book Online Page B

emotion; subject matter is irrelevant. Create a tragedy or the lieto fine , the happy ending; have your hero atone, or be dragged off to Hell—I give you complete freedom. Just give your audience no option but to feel .”
    If it were that easy to write a success—!
    Conrad imagined the reality of writing without censorship, and without an impresario’s interference. If no one else had been present, he thought, he might have disgraced himself with a triumphant yell, or a war-dance of joy.
    â€œConrad, a warning before you do decide. I know organised crime has its fingers in the opera house business. The Local Racket, here. Some influence from the Honourable Men on the other island.”
    Conrad nodded, no more willing to say Camorra and Mafia overtly, and rubbed his thumb across his fingers.
    â€œThen you also know their methods.”
    Ferdinand’s words woke memories of being pushed behind his mother’s skirts, gazing up at sharply-dressed young ruffians as they demanded both his father’s presence and money—neither easily to be had. Holding his baby sister, who could not yet walk; so Conrad must have been only a handful of years old himself.
    â€œâ€¦Blackmail. Extortion. Violence. Murder. Those are the same dangers you’ll run, Conrad, if you involve yourself with this.”
    Conrad made an awkward, automatic bow. Questions scurried around his mind, but nothing would come into focus. He glanced across at Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily, who gazed down at the ever moving waves.
    Conrad frowned.
    â€œSir… Are you trying to scare me off?”
    The King of the Two Sicilies looked at him cheerfully.
    â€œWhy, yes, Conrad. If it’s possible that you can be scared off, I am. But what I’ve told you is true. Think seriously.”
    â€œAnd if I refuse, I would go—?”
    He couldn’t voice it. Back to the Dominicans and the Holy Office?
    â€œInto exile from the Two Sicilies, to a place of my choosing. With sufficient funds to establish yourself in your career. After you’d sworn a solemn oath to speak of none of this, ever, even on your death-bed.”
    â€œYou’d send me away, rewarded with money, just for listening to you about this?”
    â€œCertainly.” Ferdinand momentarily sounded amused. “I’d thought of settling you in Istanbul.”
    â€œIstanbul!”
    â€œIt seems an ideal city—you could be atheist to the Turks, Conrad, instead of to the Holy Father.”
    Conrad gaped.
    For the first time since the brick had smashed through his window, he laughed in pure delight.
    â€œPerhaps I could take over from Signore Donizetti’s brother, sir, as Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music at the court of Sultan Mahmud…”
    But whether I’d be Master of the Sultan’s music or not, I’d be too far from the Italian opera houses . And the King will have agents there who’d make sure I didn’t try to come back.
    Conrad took a breath deep enough to bring him, under the smell of the sea, the scent of smoke from innumerable chimneys. A few hundred yards away is brawling, bubbling Naples, outside the walls of the Palazzo Reale. Even here, he could hear the calls of the sellers of pollanchelle —Indian corn attached to the stem and boiled—and the vendors of iced water and aniseed candy. And the shouts and insults of some quarrel that will not quieten down until long after both parties ( and their families, and their friends) are back in their own houses.
    I’ve hardly been back long enough to consider it home .
    That’s not to say I’d welcome permanent exile.
    In the mountains of the north, Conrad found that men don’t, on the whole, fight for great causes. They fight for the man next to them. JohnJack Spinelli risked the Dominicans for no better reason than rescuing one Conrad Scalese’s skin. Tullio Rossi will look askance at him if he turns down a