The Black Opera by Mary Gentle Page B

put his finger against the painted wall. Conrad craned his neck to look at the vast crescent of island-chains running on a slant from the desert browns of Australia, green New Guinea, up to Malaysia and the China coast. Indonesia.
    â€œHe was taken to a ship, that immediately set sail for the Far East. He was accompanied by six men and two women, all of whom were only known to him by false names. Their leader was one Signore Matteo Ranieri. At the end of many months, they reached the vicinity of the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. There they divided into groups; some to stand further off from the island, and some to go in close. Adriano tried to board the ship of those latter men and women who would be close to the island, but failed. He did discover that they were expected, when they got there, to sing.”
    Conrad, social manners abandoned, demanded, “Did he hear it?”
    â€œAdriano heard them rehearse. It was bel canto at its most glorious; a fragment of an opera that no man can trace. Neither he nor I have been able to find the composer. Perhaps it’s a young man just out of some Conservatoire. I doubt a known composer could disguise his style so as to be unrecognisable.”
    Enrico Mantenucci put in gruffly, “Adriano’s no singer, but he has some of it memorised, he thinks, Conrad; he’ll let you hear it on the forte-piano.”
    Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily reached back, without looking, and Enrico Mantenucci put his coffee cup into his hand. The King swallowed the black brew down, and with his free hand traced a course of the wall map.
    â€œThe two ships separated… On Sumbawa there is a volcano called Mount Tambora. Tambora erupted. It was so huge an explosion they say it was heard over a thousand miles away. The eruption killed tens of thousands of the native peoples. Terrible waves devastated the nearby islands. Adriano and the surviving conspirators only stayed alive because they were aboard a ship that could reach deeper waters, and ride out the cataclysmic tidal waves. The inciting singers and their ship were lost.”
    The Mediterranean may be calm, but Conrad has experienced Atlantic rollers and the Baltic. It’s nauseatingly easy to imagine men and women swept away among the detritus of a manic sea. Who knows how truly violent a Far Eastern ocean might be?
    The gallery was quiet enough that the infinitesimal rub of skin against paint became audible. The King’s finger tracked to the next map, which was of theworld, ticking off North America, Spain, France, the Slavic countries.
    â€œMillions of tons of pulverised rock and lava were blown into the sky. My Natural Philosophers, here, tracked the clouds that spread—well, spread as far as we had people to observe them, and further. The world had a year of refulgent sunsets. And the average temperature, recorded here and in Palermo, was several degrees lower, both winter and summer. Hence, the Year Without a Summer.”
    Ferdinand abandoned the maps, and sank back down in his chair.
    Conrad followed, relieved to be able to sit. He leaned his elbow heavily on the map-chest for support. A year without summer is, in reality, a year—and more— with endless winter.
    Ferdinand held up a warning hand. “My people are divided on whether that was the intention of the Prince’s Men, or whether Tambora’s eruption was what they desired, and the year 1816 an unintended consequence of their true objective. You must listen and judge for yourself.”
    Conrad couldn’t help snorting. “Sir, if that was an unintended consequence—what the hell is it they do want?”
    Conrad became abruptly aware of his tone—a faux pas bordering on lèse majesté . Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily only seemed amused.
    To hear the atheist swearing by Hell , Conrad realised.
    Ferdinand added lump after lump of brown sugar to a treacly second cup of Turkish coffee, replaced the tongs, and took a testing sip. Not