Whispers of Vivaldi Read online

  A sigh of relief escaped my lips. I’d half expected Aldo to go back on his promise.

  But there he stood in the lantern light filtering through the open door of his office cubbyhole. Frowning, he stroked the gray bundle of fur snuggled into the crook of his arm. Isis. I could hear tiny, plaintive mews sounding from his office. Aldo shifted the cat from one arm to the other. “You’ve brought Signor Rumbolt, I see.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Surely the stage manager wasn’t going to object. “Two pairs of eyes,” I replied. “We’ve many scores to look through and only so many hours.”

  Aldo nodded slowly. He looked haggard, with deep blue shadows dragging at the skin under his eyes. It must be difficult for him, I thought. Over his years as stage manager, Aldo had developed his own comfortable routines. Maestro Torani’s murder and the change in directors had thrown a wrench into his well-oiled machinery. He had much to contend with; no wonder he looked exhausted.

  “You have the key,” Aldo said. “I’ll stay here until you’ve finished in the maestro’s office.”

  “There’s no need. I’ve put the theater to bed many a night. Rest assured I’ll lock her up tight. You go home and get some rest.”

  “Well…” Aldo gently deposited Isis on the floor, and the animal ran to nurse her offspring. He moved toward the stage, rubbing his chin. Gussie and I followed. From around the edge of a canvas flat, the stage manager peered into the velvety, silent blackness of the auditorium. “I suppose everything is in order.”

  I was more interested in the stage. The backcloth had been raised into the flies, revealing a deep forest of dangling ropes and sandbags partially obscured by a massive shadow. Before I could make sense of its contours, Gussie whistled appreciatively.

  “I say, that’s a fine ship. It covers nearly a third of the stage!”

  My eyes adjusted, and I began to discern the contours of the dark hulk. A pointed bow. A broad stern with a raised captain’s deck. And amidships, a mast that rose as straight and tall as the trunk of a hundred-year-old oak. Crossing the boards for a closer look, I burst out in admiration. “Ziani has spared nothing. This is twice the size of any ship he’s built before. Has he completed the mechanism’s overhaul?”

  “Ziani certainly hopes so.” Aldo was suddenly at my elbow. His voice had changed. No longer hoarse with weariness, it held a new energy. “He demonstrated it for Rocatti just an hour past. Our new taskmaster seemed to approve. I hope the Savio will agree—he’s the one who must be pleased in the end. Would you like to see it in action?”

  I was about to refuse—we had much work ahead of us—but caught sight of the excited glint in Gussie’s eyes. He loved these mechanical marvels almost as much as the Savio. “All right,” I said, “but be quick.”

  Aldo pointed downstage. “You two stand there, by the foot lamps.” As Gussie and I complied, he disappeared behind the huge set piece. After a moment the stage manager’s head popped up near the steering wheel, and he clambered onto the deck. “Imagine the billows rolling in the background,” he called. “They swell higher and higher, tipped with white sea spume. The duke and his lady have lashed themselves to the steering wheel. A huge crack of lightning splits the sky. It actually seems to hit the mast. And…”

  Aldo braced his feet in a wide stance and bent his back to the wheel. He cocked it right—once, twice—then left. With a groan I could feel through the floor boards, the great ship lifted several feet. When it seemed the ship could rise no farther, its deck gave a sharp, sudden creak and split directly in half. Each end hit the stage with a thunderous crash, raising a cloud of dust that swirled in the beams of light filtering through the wing flats. What a miracle of automata Ziani must have created below stage!

  Gussie whooped. I applauded. From the sloping deck, holding tight to the wheel with one hand, Aldo bowed as if he’d designed the shipwreck himself.

  The effect would be even grander once all the accoutrements were in place. A long wooden box filled with stones would be hauled up to a catwalk in the flies; when the box was tipped end to end by means of a block and tackle, rolling thunder would sound from the heavens. A boy would shake a smaller box filled with dried ceci beans to serve as pelting rain. The howling of the wind came from machines set up in the left-hand wing. Gianni, the burliest of the stage hands, would put his muscle to turning the crank attached to a barrel-like wheel loosely covered with canvas. The faster Gianni turned the crank, the harder the wind howled.

  And the lightning! What a show, but so terribly dangerous. In my opinion, fireworks should be confined to the out-of-doors. There’d be fewer theaters destroyed by flame if they were.

  As Aldo went below stage to reset the complex machinery, I dragged Gussie away, and we traversed the long corridor leading to Maestro Torani’s office. The brass key grated in the lock, at first stubbornly refusing to turn, then giving way all of a sudden.

  I expected to be greeted by the smell of stale air and musty scores. Instead, a draft of cold air whistled past my ears. Shafts of blue moonlight falling through the casement windows revealed the source. One of the diamond-shaped panes had been broken out. Gussie located a tinderbox and candles, and we examined the damage by their wavering light.

  “Broken from the outside,” my brother-in-law said, poking at the shards of glass on the wide sill. “Was someone trying to get in?”

  “Unlikely. At this point the exterior wall drops sheer to the water. There are other, easier windows to breach on the landward sides.”

  “But this is the only set of windows in Maestro Torani’s private office.” Gussie sent me a meaningful look.

  “True.” I took up a branched candlestick and bent nearly double to hunt the terrazzo floor. I found the culprit under Torani’s desk: a rock of the sort you find in mountain streams, its sharp contours smoothed by centuries of running water. It fit into my palm as if it had been made for it.

  But that wasn’t all. Wrapped around the missal was a picture of some sort, held firmly in place by an overlay of twine. I rose, divested the rock of its wrappings, and tossed it to Gussie.

  “What have you there, Tito?” He asked, snatching the stone from the air with one hand.

  “An angel—at least a picture of one.”

  “Well, I’ll be blistered.” He covered the space between us in two bounds.

  “It’s a card from a tarocchi deck.” Indeed, it was the very card that had fallen from Liya’s deck earlier that day—a winged angel pouring water into a wine goblet. I handed it to my brother-in-law.

  “How long has it been here, do you think?”

  “A storm came through early this evening. It rained quite hard.”

  “So it did. It didn’t stop until…” Gussie thought for a moment, still studying the creased card. “Oh, eight o’clock or so.”

  I crossed back to the windows. Avoiding the broken glass that glittered like scattered diamonds, I patted my hand along the sill and the floor beneath it. “Dry,” I announced, straightening. “The stone was thrown during the last several hours.”

  “Who knew you were coming here?”

  “Just Aldo.” I shrugged. “And Liya, of course. I don’t think this card was meant for me to see. No, I think it was meant to send a message about Angeletto taking on the primo uomo role.”

  Gussie handed over the card, accompanied by a wry look. “For or against?”

  I shook my head. “Only the one who threw the rock could tell you that.”

  ***

  Once we’d settled in to survey the music that filled Maestro Torani’s cabinets, our search moved along faster than I’d expected. We quickly discovered that, while bound and printed scores, fragmentary manuscripts, and libretti appeared to be piled haphazardly, each shelf was actually devoted to one letter of the alphabet and arranged by the composer’s surname.

  I’d already cleared the desk of clutter and stained chocolat
e cups. The only thing that remained was the bust of Minerva. I placed her in the center of the battered mahogany surface. Perhaps she’d imbue us with some of her reputed wisdom. Then Gussie and I surrounded her with all the manuscripts from the “V” shelf. We lit a few more candles, pulled up chairs, and went to work. My brother-in-law sorted out the operas by Valentini, Veracini, Vinci, and the like, while I skimmed through the compositions by Vivaldi. There were many that I knew, more that I didn’t—the maestro of the Pieta had certainly wielded a prolific pen. Vivaldi had the reputation of making music in his head while his hands were playing billiards, carving a joint of beef, or caressing his mistress. He would later set the tunes to paper in a fury of composition. Unfortunately, I found nothing in Maestro Torani’s stock of Vivaldi that remotely resembled the arias and ensembles that made up The False Duke.

  Gussie had thrown up his hands in frustration and gone to look out upon the moonlit canal, when it struck me all at once: Torani wouldn’t have left Vivaldi’s score sitting in plain sight. In his last letter, the old man had referred to something that brought him shame. He’d asked me to forgive him. I interpreted his words to mean that although he knew Rocatti was not The False Duke’s true composer, he was so set on using the opera to reinvigorate the Teatro San Marco that he was going along with Rocatti in presenting one man’s work as another’s. I could follow his flawed line of reasoning. Maestro Vivaldi had enjoyed his time in the sun; now he was dead and gone. Who would be hurt? And who would be the wiser?

  To cover this contemptible act of piracy, Torani would have hidden the original Vivaldi manuscript. Or perhaps destroyed it altogether. But if he had kept it…

  My gaze darted around the office. It wasn’t a large chamber. The door on one wall, then windows overlooking the water, glass-fronted cabinets covering the two other walls, desk and three chairs in the center. The floor presented a surface of hard, smooth terrazzo. No loose boards to pry up.

  I sighed, drumming my fingers on the desk top. Minerva’s enameled eyes stared at me over the piles of scores which had grown to reach her nose. In the candle flame, her blue eyes glowed like lapis lazuli instead of mere paint. “If only she could talk,” I said to Gussie as I gestured toward the statue. “She could tell us if Maestro Torani hid the score in this office.”

  “She’s a pretty thing.” Gussie came back to the desk and ran his hand along her crested helmet. “This looks to be gold leaf. I wonder why Torani didn’t sell her when his creditors were at his throat.”

  His words jerked me up straight. “Why, indeed?” I asked, my skin suddenly crawling with anticipation.

  We fell on the statue in the same breath, prodding, stroking, pulling, twisting.

  “It’s hollow,” Gussie cried, rapping his knuckles on Minerva’s relatively flat back. “Hear that?”

  I didn’t, but I knew he was correct. He had to be. “Let me see the other end, Gussie.”

  He pulled the bust’s helmet into his generous midsection and balanced the rest of her on some bound scores. Immediately I saw that the bottom of Minerva’s square pedestal was covered with a thick, felted pad. It wouldn’t give to my fingers so I unsheathed the stiletto I should have carried with me last night—if I’d had it when Grillo attacked me, we might not be here now. Under my blade, the felt peeled away to reveal a lighter circle within a darker square.

  “He’s plugged it.” I grunted, digging the stiletto point into the newer plaster.

  “Here, Tito. That’ll take all night.” My brother-in-law grasped Minerva’s helmet in one hand, her pedestal in the other. He moved away from the desk, raised the bust high above his head. Looking as stalwart as the hero Horatius at the bridge, Gussie questioned me with a twitch of his eyebrow.

  At my nod, he dashed the statue to the expanse of bare terrazzo with all his might.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Coughing my way through a haze of plaster dust, I retrieved a tightly rolled sheaf of papers from the litter-strewn floor. I carried it to the candlelit desk and pinned the corners down with spread fingers. The first page displayed the handwritten title followed by the obligatory dedication. Vivaldi’s own hand—I recognized it from the jottings on the aria I’d found in Maestro Torani’s study. Peering closely, I took an involuntary gulp when I read what Venice’s beloved Red Priest had written.

  He had entitled this opera The Noble Peasant, a much more inflammatory title than The False Duke. The sentiment was flagrantly defiant, especially for 1713, the date of the composition. Then, the ruling aristocracy still enjoyed their God-given powers with few challenges. I shook my head—how tremendously the world had changed in my short lifetime. Now the sentiments of revolution were in the very air.

  There was more. Instead of a flowery piece of grateful prose dedicating the work to a patron or ruler, Maestro Vivaldi had inscribed it to All tyrants, degenerate, deceitful, lustful, and depraved. Those whose foul deeds are covered by their cloaks of nobility. Those mediocrities elevated by their happy accidents of birth—

  I had to stop and wipe my brow before following the scathing language as it burned its concluding way to the bottom of the page.

  “That’s it? That’s what you were looking for?” I looked up to find Gussie regarding me with wide blue eyes. His jacket and breeches were coated with plaster dust, his ruddy cheeks streaked with gray. I must have looked an equally frightful sight.

  “What? Oh, yes, I think so.” I leafed quickly through a few pages, scanning measures here and there. I nodded. Yes, it might carry another title, but this was the original manuscript for The False Duke. Besides the matching music, even most of the comments on the singers’ positions and the cues for sound effects were the same as those I recalled from Rocatti’s score. The young Pieta violin master had simply transcribed his master’s opera into his own handwriting, given it a more innocuous title, and meekly dedicated it to “our gracious prince,” the reigning Doge.

  I dropped into a chair and propped my chin on my hand. “This is the same opera, all right. And I can see why Vivaldi never had it produced.”

  “That’s something I’ve been wondering about.” Gussie moved into the circle of candlelight around the desk. “If this opera is such a marvel, why did Vivaldi hide it away?”

  I passed the title page to Gussie. His eyes narrowed and his forehead crinkled as he read.

  “You can see what a monstrous slap in the face this opera would be to his benefactors,” I continued. “The Pieta has always been supported by the aristocrats whose bastard daughters are raised there. If the headmaster had seen it…or worse, the board of governors…” I shook my head, scarcely able to imagine the consequences. Instead of becoming one of Venice’s treasures, Maestro Vivaldi might have found himself under the Leads for the rest of his natural life. “You notice the date?”

  “Here.” Gussie stabbed the page with a grubby forefinger. “1713.”

  “Thirty-one years ago,” I rapped out before Gussie could even begin to do the sum on his fingers. “My birth year. Maestro Vivaldi must have been a young violin teacher at the Pieta then, much like Rocatti is now.”

  My brother-in-law nodded thoughtfully.

  I continued, “What would once have been roundly condemned now makes The False Duke exciting—it’s the story of a master becoming aware of injustice and the power of Reason, and of a servant learning to think of himself as an equal—it’s still revolutionary at its core, but people are primed to take in the message. Especially as it’s presented with plenty of humor.”

  “Maestro Vivaldi was ahead of his time, then.” Gussie replaced the title page, smoothed it out, and tented his fingers on the stubbornly curling papers.

  “I suppose he must have written it for his own amusement, during his leisure hours, then hidden it away. Perhaps he anticipated a day when the opera could be safely performed before a public audience. A day when freethinking had spread.”

  “But,
Tito.” Gussie smacked a heavy hand on the opera score. In his simple, direct way, my brother-in-law swept the philosophical cobwebs away and bore straight to the heart of the issue. “How do you suppose Maestro Vivaldi’s opera came into Torani’s possession?” After a slight pause, he added, “And how did Rocatti come by it?”

  “Oh, Gussie, I have no idea.” I hung my head. With one hand, I massaged the aching muscles at the back of my neck. With the other, I rubbed the cut across my chest, which now felt warm and tingly. Instead of answers for Gussie, other questions spun round and round in my mind: Why had Signora Passoni been so anxious to see the opera produced? Was she aware of its content, or was she more interested in its composer? If it was the composer who had stirred her to have Franco give me the purse filled with zecchini, whose opera did she believe The False Duke to be—Rocatti’s? Or Vivaldi’s?

  “Look here, Tito.” Gussie consulted his watch. “It’s nearly two. Can’t I persuade you to come away? We’ve found what we came for. There’s no sense in combing through that score here. Take it home and look at it tomorrow.” Gussie stretched his arms over his head and emitted a mammoth yawn.

  The back of my throat itched to follow suit. I was as tired as if I’d sung two four-act operas back-to-back.

  “Wait!” Gussie dropped his arms and whirled toward the door. “What’s that?”

  I heard it, too. Footsteps slapping down the corridor, making no attempt at stealth.

  “Is Aldo still about?” he asked in an urgent whisper.

  “That’s not Aldo.” Tensing, I bounded to my feet. “He wears soft-soled boots.”

  Gussie handed me my stiletto, forgotten on the desktop, and made fists of his meaty hands.

  A tall figure stepped through the doorway. In the dimness beyond the candles’ glow, it took a few tense seconds for his face to become recognizable.