Then Isabella began to sing.
Her voice was clear as water and produced apparently without effort or any sign of strain. Strange pictures and memories began almost at once to dance behind Harriet’s eyes. She thought of her husband. She knew a little Italian, but not enough to understand what was being sung. The music had to bring everything to her and it seemed, as the music continued, as if it was sadly dropping rose petals into her palm. The melody that had begun simply, a lilting lost thought, circled and grew more complex till it took the soprano’s voice to heights that seemed to Harriet impossible, inevitable, then fell away again in a rapid waves of triplets that sounded like tears. Then, as Marin’s voice faded like a ghost, exhausted and distressed, Manzerotti began to sing. It was a sound unlike any other human voice she had ever heard. Its pitch was as high as Isabella’s but so strong it made her think of gold polished white. She thought of bells, hunting horns. It cut its way up and under and between the players in the pit like a scarlet ribbon woven into a cloth of some coarser stuff. The voices joined, waters flowing together, a strange alchemy.
Suddenly Harriet noticed that on stage in front of them, roses were beginning to bloom. Yellow roses, apparently drawn into life by the song, pushed their way silently out of the deep foliage around them. They appeared first severally as buds, then as the song swelled, each one opened a full and havy bloom till the stage was full of them. As the voices peaked once more, together, one lost in grief, the other tender but inflexible, the water of the fountain was transmuted into gold, and glittering showers ran over the carved muscles of the statues. The band yearned upwards, and as the lovers reached the end of their song, still separated and unresolved, the woodwind called out three high and reaching chords that made Harriet’s hands clench together in her lap, such was the force they carried, their bitter, painful sweetness. Mademoiselle Marin turned to the pit, and the young man at the harpsichord, and kissed her fingers to him. He blushed and looked down.
Silence fell. Harriet blinked and looked about her. All activity in the auditorium had ceased. The cleaning women stood mute and unmoving in the boxes, their cloths held unnoticed at their sides. The men and boy sweeping the pit had stopped their work and turned to the stage; the men changing the candles were held, open-mouthed, staring at the singers. All conversation between the ladies and gentlemen had ceased.
Manzerotti smiled and turned towards the King’s Box. The moment passed and the listeners began to go about their business again. Harriet saw the musicians in the pit lean back and sigh; the cellist covered his eyes with his hands briefly. Isabella turned and smiled frankly at them again, then without waiting for any sign, exited the stage. Only the young man at the keyboard did not move, but remained head bowed over the keys. Harwood nodded towards the stage, then seemed to slip back into himself, staring up at the painted ceiling of his little world.
‘Good,’ he said simply.
Harriet heard Crowther cough slightly and turned to look at him. He seemed as surprised as she felt herself. He wetted his lips slightly and said ‘Remarkable.’
Jocasta and Boyo had a long cold wait of it, but towards the middle of the afternoon the little terrier sat up and barked, and Jocasta turned to see Kate Mitchell stepping down the lane. She almost stumbled over Jocasta before she saw her, and gasped when she recognised the old woman.
‘Mrs Bligh! Are you waiting for me?’
Jocasta spat over her shoulder. ‘I am, lass. We are to have words.’
Kate hesitated for a second, then shook her head firmly. ‘No, Mrs Bligh. I don’t think we shall.’
Some children who had made the mistake of teasing Boyo had felt the surprisingly strong grip of Jocasta Bligh on their arm. Kate felt it now.
‘You spoken with your husband?’
‘No, not yet.’ She shivered a little. ‘He was home late last night, and out of sorts. I’ll pick my time.’
‘Pretty brooch you have there. That the one your boy got you?’
Kate looked down at the little paste flowers on her shoulder. ‘Yes, it was a present from F, Mrs Bligh. I told you. Do you – do you . . . want it?’
Jocasta flung her arm away from the girl and spat again. ‘I don’t want to rob you, you daft child. I want to know how a clerk affords such things. Doesn’t sound like you get much help from his mother.’
Kate rubbed her arm a little sulkily. ‘Well, I don’t know. They’ve been working awful hard. Perhaps they gave him a tip. When the Navy Board is sitting he can be there all night. There’s a war on, you know, Mrs Bligh. Or maybe he won it at the cockfight, and he just didn’t want to tell me he’d been in such a low place.’
Jocasta rolled her eyes. ‘He’s doing something, and he’s being paid. And you know as well as I do it’s not honest work.’
Kate folded her arms. ‘I know no such thing, and if I find it so, I shall make him stop. There. Now leave me alone, Mrs Bligh. I thank you for your trouble, but there’s no need for it.’
‘Look, you daft piece, I know some swift bad is coming to you.’ Jocasta jabbed Kate’s shoulder with her finger. ‘
You
, personal. Now you gather your papers and we’ll see what we can figure out. But if you stay in this house, St George and the dragon together wouldn’t be able to save you.’
Kate hesitated, her hands closed round the reticule. Jocasta wondered if she’d been hanging on to those papers all night and day. Jocasta willed her on in her mind.
See it, girly
, she thought.
See it how it is, then come away.
‘I can keep an eye on you, girly,’ she said, a little more softly.
Kate shook her head again. ‘No, Mrs Bligh. This is my husband you’re talking of. This is my place. I’m not leaving it.’
With that she turned to the house and let herself in. Jocasta watched the door and saw her shape moving round in the room at the front, but her eyes were clouded with The Tower card, the great cascades of sparks.
Mr Harwood made no immediate move to leave the King’s Box after the duet was done.
Harriet said quietly, ‘I can understand now how Fitzraven valued his connection to the opera. It would be hard to hear such things, be near to them and then give them up.’
Harwood was shaken free of his reverie. ‘You do him too much credit, Mrs Westerman. He did have musical ability, but he was not . . . sensitive. It was not the music that attracted him to us, that made this place valuable to him, but something else.’ ‘What else is there here but music?’ Harriet asked.
It was Crowther who answered, though Harwood gave a short, mirthless bark of laughter. ‘There is fame, Mrs Westerman. There is renown, and wherever fame and renown are known to be, there is money to be made. Am I correct, Mr Harwood?’
‘How . . .’ Harriet paused to pluck the right word out of the air ‘. . . oddly pathetic.’
Harwood tilted back his chair, running his eyes over the gilt and splendour of the King’s Box. It was twice the size of the other private boxes, though the Prince’s Box at the other side of the stage was also generous, and had a little divan at its rear. All the boxes were ornate, but here everything was just a little more. The velvet draperies had a few more folds, the chairs a little more room for gilded wreaths, the upholstery a little more plush. Harriet found herself thinking that where she sat this afternoon, a King would sit in the evening. It gave her a little cold thrill of connection.
‘Indeed,’ Harwood went on, ‘I know Fitzraven was not here for the music. He obviously made some useful connections in Italy. He told me he had received a letter of introduction from someone – he did not say from whom – to Lord Carmichael’s house, for instance, and had been invited back to attend that gentleman more than once. He did not go
there
for love of art. Lord Carmichael has little to recommend him, I believe, other than his wealth.’
‘Lord Carmichael?’ Crowther said. Harriet was impressed with how much disdain Crowther could invest only two words. She wondered briefly if there might be some sort of mathematical formula for it. Perhaps she should suggest it to her new acquaintances at the Royal Society.
Harwood smiled at the ceiling. ‘I see you know Lord Carmichael, Mr Crowther.’
‘I knew the
gentleman
in my youth. A man I would go some way to avoid. It seems Mr Fitzraven was not very particular in his choice of friends.’ Harriet looked at Crowther with surprise. He seldom spoke with such passion about anything he had not recently dissected.
‘I would agree,’ Harwood replied evenly. ‘However, he is a peer, very rich and since making his acquaintance Fitzraven revelled in the connection.’ He let the Queen’s chair tip back onto four legs and turned with a slight smile to Harriet. ‘I say this so you do not mistake Fitzraven’s devotion to this place,’ a casual wave of his hand took in performers, music, audience, waves of gilt, ‘for a devotion to art or music. He was one of those strange hollow men. I do not think he existed in his own self at all. He was all light reflected. Sometimes from us here, sometimes from a creeping acquaintance with the great and good.’
Harriet rested her chin on the palm of her hand. ‘Can you tell us, sir, what were Fitzraven’s last duties for this place?’
Harwood considered. ‘I should imagine preparing the parts for the duet you have just heard. He readied them on Wednesday for its first rehearsal on Thursday morning.’
Crowther turned towards the manager and said very evenly, ‘Mr Harwood, are you sure you have been quite frank with us about the nature of Mr Fitzraven’s duties here?’
Winter Harwood met his look, and said with a polite inclination of the head, ‘Of course, Mr Crowther.’
Jocasta was almost back at her own door again, and walking so quick that Boyo had a job of it to keep up with her, when she came to a sudden halt. He stubbed his nose on her ankle and yelped.
‘I don’t want to speak of it now, Boyo,’ Jocasta said. ‘I’m too ruffled and fretted.’ She stayed where she was, though, the people passing on the pavement occasionally turning to give her a quick, sidelong stare, then moving on. She sighed and thrust her hand into another pocket under her skirts, pulling out a handful of dirty coins.
‘All right then, Boyo. I will if it’ll keep you quiet. Though we must work in the morning if you want meat this week.’
Boyo smacked his lips and Jocasta turned again and made her way back towards the chophouse, jingling her money.
II.5
T
HE INVESTMENT IN transporting Isabella and Manzerotti from Italy had, it seemed, been justified. For an evening so early in the season the crowd that night at His Majesty’s was remarkable. The Hay Market was almost completely blocked with carriages from five o’clock. The torches outside the Opera House doors flared and roared, casting folding shadows up the brickwork. The scrum that thundered for entrance into the pit and stalls extended far along the pavements towards Northumberland Palace, and up and down its lengths went a dozen boys and girls selling copies of the libretto for a shilling and nuts for a penny. Two other children with piles of books in their arms like schoolboys late for the bell scurried between the carriages, handing more copies of librettos through the windows. Shillings were pulled from silk purses by long, gloved fingers and dropped into the boys’ waiting palms. A couple of street singers, one turning the wheel on the hurdy-gurdy round her neck, sang the crowd songs from the previous season above the general noise and put out their hands for tribute. A man with a brazier had set up shop roasting chestnuts beside them and the air filled with the sweetness of the black papery skins.
Amongst the general noise and excit>Boyothe Londoners were getting on with the serious business of looking at each other, till, as the bells of Westminster rang out six o’clock there was a groan from bolts in the locks and the high entrance doors were swung open by liveried footmen. At the same moment the door to the pit was loosed, and the stagehand who opened it was almost crushed by the weight of people rushing in waving papers and arguing for cheap tickets at the tops of their voices, long before they were in earshot of the harried clerk at his booth. Through the smarter entrance to the lobby and private boxes passed brocade and silk, feathers and high head-dresses all bulked up with horsehair and smothered in powder. Fans flicked open and closed, little high-heeled shoes in ivory and red picked their way over the grot of the pavement. Tail-coats flicked up as the men showed their legs and bowed to the ladies. A murmur of spray diamonds and stones glinted their way into the lobby. Those of the crowd who were not fighting their way in kept up a commentary on the dresses and faces passing by. When one lady descended from her carriage in a skirt of particularly daring design, a shout went up from the jostling observers. Mr Harwood heard it from the relative peace of his office and smiled.
The party of Mr Owen Graves, consisting of himself, Mrs Service, Miss Rachel Trench and Lady Susan Thornleigh, were not so extravagantly dressed, but the crowd knew them anyway. Susan heard her name whispered as she stepped through the throng with her guardian’s hand on her shoulder, and kept her eyes down till almost at her elbow she heard a voice ask her: ‘Off to listen to the music then, my Lady?’