Her sister fell on her knees beside her and wrapped her arms around Harriet’s waist and called out to her through her own weeping. Harriet drew her husband’s lifeless arm across her shoulders and swore to die herself, go with him rather than carry on a moment alone.
Taking Stephen by the hand, Clode led him out of the door and called for Trevelyan in a breaking voice. The boy at his side began to cry and the man lifted him in his arms and held him so hard he feared the little bones might break under his hands.
Night began its slow belly-slide up over the streets as if it were escaping the Thames. No man or woman with anything worth stealing on their person should be abroad at such a time, but tonight they might walk unharmed. The rookeries swung open and from the hovels of St Giles, the doss-houses of Clerkenwell, the dens and pits of Southwark, the lost people of London began to move. Men and boys set down their drinks and shrugged into whatever clothing they had, the whores let down their skirts and walked with their eyes clear. So many people on the street, and so serious. They moved out like a fog across the city, nodding each to each, putting aside their other business for an evening. Death sat on their shoulder, pinching their cheeks and pulling their hair every day with his long greasy fingers, but some things should not be done, and some action could be taken.
At the opera house Mr Harwood sat in his office, his hands clasped on the desk in front of him as he listened to Graves speak. The noise of the arriving hordes danced in through the windows, fought at the padding of his office door, kicked up with the laugh of some diamondstudded female. Winter Harwood, however, heard nothing but Owen’s voice. After a few minutes he nodded, and Graves left the room. Harwood looked down at his hands and swallowed. He thought of the wreckage of his season and even while his mind was white with surprise, some part of him was already thinking of singers and composers who might be available, might be recalled to favour, might come scrabbling to him for another chance at glory in front of his silk-strangled crowd.
The carriage, over-decorated with footmen powdered and liveried, left from outside Carmichael’s porch. Mr Palmer stepped out of the gardens of the Square and whistled. At once there were men at every entrance to the house. As Mr Palmer crossed the road he continued to whistle, forming his lips around the aria of Manzerotti. When he reached the door it was opened and flung wide by his men. Others forced the servants to the walls and held them there to allow Mr Palmer clear passage through; still with the song on his lips, he made his way to the study, the brilliants on his evening shoes dancing with Carmichael’s candlelight. Finding the door locked, he turned and beckoned to one of his men. The man adjusted his cape – he carried a hammer in his arms like a child.
Johannes had managed to bind the leg as he lay in the muck of an overgrown ditch not far from Highgate. He had then set out as soon as he dared, knowing that the way between his hiding-place in the hedgerow and the security of his friends in Town was long. He leaned on a length of ash torn green from the tree and thought of his lost knife with apang, as a man remembers the lover he has just deserted and wonders if the new fields are greener, after all. Then he shuffled forward again along the road.
Despite the fact that the benefit had only been announced the previous afternoon, and the tickets engraved and printed with a haste not compatible with fine workmanship, His Majesty’s was brim full. Most of the women wore or carried a yellow rose, or a paper one, some of these so lush and elaborate in design they shamed nature. Lady Sybil had done something cunning with the family citrines, arranging them in her hair into the shape of the same flower. Many of the men wore red ribbons on their wrists. The applause when Manzerotti appeared on stage was immense. He stepped forward into the footlights and lifted his arms.
‘My friends,’ he said in that light and delicate voice, letting his eyes travel over the rows and boxes so it seemed to each person present he had called them by name, ‘for whoever shares this night with me, is my friend.’ He placed his hand over his breast, and the auditorium was filled with the breeze of a hundred feminine sighs. ‘We are brought here together by tragedy and love. This concert tonight is for the memory of my beautiful colleague, the singer who has thrilled kings, courts and emperors with her voice, her talent, her artistry.
Miss Isabella Marin
.’
The theatre flooded with cheers. ‘Bravo, Marin! Brava, Isabella!’ At the back of the gallery a little woman in black felt the noise break over her. It seemed she could gather it all in her aching heart like a cup, and it being filled, offer it up to Isabella.
Manzerotti waited, head bowed, till the waves of sound had ebbed a little way, then nodded to the florid-looking leader of the orchestra who began to play, and into the honey-coloured air, he unleashed his voice and let it lift.
Outside the chophouse three men embraced and hit each other across their backs, drawing a belch from the fish-faced man and laughter from all. They turned to go their separate ways, but before any of them had lost sight of the others, three King’s messengers, their shapes hidden by long dark capes and tricorn hats worn low over their eyes, had stepped free of the shadows. Each man felt a firm hand on his elbow, a murmur in his ear, a pressure pushing him towards the three separate carriages that were even now drawing out of the darkened side street. Two men turned to water and went like lambs. The third, a handsome blond man, began to wriggle and cry, protesting he knew not what through snot and misery. The man at his arm did not even trouble to pause. His grip was secure.
Johannes began to sense there was something wrong in the air as he hugged the shadows in Red Lyon Street. He stopped and lifted his chin. There was a sudden movement in the darkness behind him and a whistle. He heard it to his right, then its echo down the street in front of him. He stood still a moment and swung his gaze like a lighthouse beam around him. Nothing but dark windows. The streets were oddly quiet. A slight frown passed over his brow like the water stirred in a millpond. He hobbled forward his leg pulsing and aching.
Johannes was sure the wound was beginning to open again. Something curled and uncurled below his ribs. Again that whistle. It seemed to haunt him, gide him – but no one approached. He sensed eyes in the darkness. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and stung, and he realised with a detached surprise that he was afraid. He had seen fear on the faces of others, but had had no experience of it himself till now. He remembered seeing fear on Manzerotti’s face – but only once, when they were children and one of the young students in the musical academy who had not had the operation had struck Manzerotti down and called him a freak, an affront to God. Johannes had knocked the offender on his back and offered the little boy in front of him his hand. At that time Johannes had been the jewel in the school’s crown; his voice was of a clarity declared miraculous, his artistry exceptional. Since coming from Germany he had been treated like a little God. Now a boy brushed past him in the dark street, a fleeing shadow. He put his hand to his pocket and cursed. His money taken. He hissed into the thick gloom where the boy had disappeared. There was a laugh. A soft female voice called from some dark corner: ‘All fleeced, uncle?’ He took a couple of painful steps towards it, but heard the light step of feet running from him. The laugh again. More distant. The whistle, closer and from the other side of the road.
Johannes had begged for the operation; gone down on his knees to his father, a woodturner in Leipzig, with the priest standing behind him. The priest had told them he was a gift from God, that his voice could serve the Church in all its beauty for ever. The boy had begged to give himself to his Saviour’s glory. Reluctantly his father had agreed, and Johannes had thanked the Lord, though through his ecstasy he could still hear the softened clink of money being placed in his father’s hand. He had left his home that day; travelled with the priest to the local court where a doctor from Italy happened to be staying and seeing to several boys. He heard the soft exchange of currency again and travelled to Bologna at the doctor’s side, overjoyed that God was bringing him to His bosom. Manzerotti, by contrast, had
not
wished it. Had tried to run. Had failed. Had arrived at the school for a life of daily vocal and musical practice as a possible, a potential – his voice still all thin and empty. Then Johannes had helped him to his feet and looked into those black eyes for the first time.
‘You speak strangely,’ Manzerotti had said as he stood upright again.
‘I was born in Germany,’ Johannes replied in his clear bell-like voice. ‘I have studied here two years. Every language I speak now, I speak with a foreigner’s tongue.’
Molloy twisted the top of the table and moved away. The King’s Messenger with him stepped forward and pulled out a neat roll of papers.
‘There we have it then,’ he said. Molloy nodded and began to feel about in the hidden drawers a little more, but the Messenger put a hand to his sleeve. ‘Why don’t we have the witch woman with us, or that boy?’
Molloy pulled his hat down over his ears and wrapped his cloak around him.
‘Mrs Bligh has other business.’ He found and picked up the brooch of flowers. The Messenger watched him with narrowed eyes, but Molloy put the brooch in his pocket anyhow. The man would make nothing of it, and he had been asked to fetch it. He heard a whistle on the street outside’ has satisfied.
Johannes thought of the river. If he could get to the far shore, then to the anonymity of Southwark, he could send to Manzerotti for help from there. He limped towards the crowd of men at the Black Lyon Stairs. The whistle came from behind him. The watermen turned and looked at him a moment, then without speech to him or to one another, each retired to his boat and cast off. Johannes lifted his pocket-watch so it caught the light of the oil-lamp guttering greasily by the steps to show he had money, but the skiffs and wherries drew away. Johannes swallowed and put the watch back in his pocket. Fear flowered into a sweat on his brow. He turned up the hill again, making for the rookeries of Chandos Street, where he had tracked one of the witch’s spies. There a man could hide. The significance of the watermen pulling away from him so silent and of one mind, he would not think of.
Mr Palmer stood in the centre of Carmichael’s study, a still moment in the activity of the room, and looked through the papers that had been found behind the Latin texts and in the false front of the fireplace. There was a considerable amount of money in banknotes and gold, and a letter in French confirming ‘the recommendation of the man that carries it, who can be recognised in the usual way’. Fitzraven, Palmer supposed. There were four charts showing details of Portsmouth and Spithead and the arrangement of vessels within them, and a model of a gun he had himself given into the hands of his secretary to be placed in one of the vaults. There was also a dense page of notes full of fresh gossip from the Admiralty and the competing political factions within it. He paused in his reading to push the little model to and fro across Lord Carmichael’s desk.
‘Field?’ he said.
One of the men shaking out the neat volumes in the rear bookcase paused in his work and turned round.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Go and tell Lord Sandwich we are ready for him.’
Johannes did not know at what moment he realised his voice was leaving him. During a practice, a strange hum had begun at the back of his throat. When he spoke, the edges of his words started sounding a little shrill. He thought he was merely tired, as he had sung for the school several times in the evenings, and still had to be awake at dawn for the morning service. It was about a week after he had helped Manzerotti to his feet. He saved the little Italian boy and suddenly the boy’s voice was beginning to flower and grow. A few days later, Johannes had opened his lips to sail across the surface of Scarlatti’s
Stabat Mater
like a swan on water, and as the first phrase lifted into the second, the ice of his voice had cracked and a strange yelping croak leaped from his mouth like a toad. He had stopped. Horrified. The boys next to him began to look afraid. He gazed across to the singers on the opposite side of the choir, terrified, and had met Manzerotti’s black eyes. They were calm, loving; he gave Johannes the faintest ghost of a smile, then turned his attention back towards the priest.
Johannes bowed his head and submitted; his great grief seemed to rise from the centre of the earth, poured up his body through his throat and out into the world. ave of silence, taking whatever was left of his voice with it. He never opened his lips to sing again.
Mrs Service rapped lightly at the door and went in.
‘Mrs Bligh, a young man called Ripley just called. He said you and Crowther should attend at the place thought of. Do I have the message right?’
Jocasta swept up her cards and pocketed them. Crowther shrugged on his frock-coat and smoothed the sleeves.
‘Aye, Mrs Service. You have it right.’
When the audience heard the introduction to the ‘Yellow Rose Duet’ they called and wept afresh. The leader of the band stood and put his violin to his chin, and as Manzerotti gracefully stepped aside and offered him up to the audience, he began to play Isabella’s part. From the back of the stalls Mr Harwood observed his theatre. It was a world of light; the oil-lamps blazed above him and cast down across the gilt mouldings on the boxes, across the jewels and dresses of the women and threw their shimmerings to and fro like fireworks, blest by the colours around them.