There was a long pause. Mr. Pither could hear Mrs. Westerman’s gloved fingers beating a tattoo on the cloth of her dress, and some part of him began to hope.
“Oh dear,” said Harriet at last. “Now you have made us your allies in a way all the influence in the world could not. Do you not fear it to be so, Mr. Crowther?”
“I do, Mrs. Westerman,” that gentleman replied.
Pither almost shook with relief. Harriet offered him her hand and he snatched it up in both of his own, his total confidence in their abilities shining out from him.
“Thank you.”
Harriet patted his hand and released herself with a slight wince. “We shall regret it, I imagine. I hope you shall not, sir. We are at your service.” She glanced at the clock on Mr. Pither’s mantel. “Or at least we shall be so in the morning. The dinner hour approaches and Mr. Graves’s house keeps careful hours.”
Graves took advantage of the carriage trip returning them to Berkeley Square to tell them what he could of Nathaniel Fitzraven, musician. It became clear at once that he had not liked the man, and as Graves seemed to like and value most people to a degree Harriet found frustrating, she had pushed him for his reasons and impressions. He had spoken haltingly at first, watching the damp, darkening streets pass by through the carriage window. He shivered.
“He liked to pretend intimate knowledge of his betters. He played in the band of His Majesty’s Theatre for some years and the association with the singers and patrons there was a tonic to him. To hear him speak, you would have thought him the confidant of every music lover of note in the city. Then his talents began to desert him; his fingers stiffened to the point he could no longer perform what was required.”
“The swelling of the joints was not extreme,” Crowther said, his eyebrows raised.
Graves looked down at his own young hands for a moment, then hid them in his pockets. “It does not need to be extreme to lose a musician his livelihood. He managed to wheedle himself back into the employ of the Opera House, however. Perhaps the manager there, Mr. Harwood, pitied him. This year and last he was running errands for them, and acting as if he was Harwood’s right-hand man. He bought last season’s selections to be made up into songbooks.” Graves, among his other responsibilities, also managed a small music shop in Tichfield Street, a much less fashionable part of Town. He continued: “I did not like the way he treated the children. As soon as their true lineage and worth was acknowledged, he became ingratiating. My heart sank if they were keeping me company in the shop and he entered on some pretext or other. I am sure he told everyone he stood like an uncle to them.”
Harriet smiled gently at him as she pulled her cloak more tightly round her throat. “Lord Sussex and Lady Susan know who their friends are, Graves.”
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Susan does, I think. But Jonathan is still very young. However, whatever my doubts about Fitzraven, Harwood placed great trust in him this summer. He sent Fitzraven to the continent to recruit singers for the current season. Fitzraven came back bristling with pride, and looking rather sleek. He had engaged Isabella Marin in Milan and, indeed, this new castrato of whom such praises are spoken-Manzerotti. They say he is the greatest singer to come to London since Gasparo Pacchierotti’s debut of seventy-seven. One of my customers heard him at a party in Devonshire House some days ago and was all but overcome.”
Harriet and Crowther must have looked a little blank at the names. The noise of London was crashing in on them through the windows of the carriage as it bullied its way along Cockspur through horses, carts and bobbing sedan chairs in the gathering dark. The carriage wheels spat mud up the doors as they jostled between ruts, the light had bled out of the day and already the shadows were deepening and the colors folding in on themselves. A pieman, his tray almost empty, chucked the last of his wares to a group of dirty-looking boys who had been following him down the road. After a brief struggle the strongest of them emerged in victory and held his prize high above the heads of the others. He tore pieces of the misshapen pastry off and stuffed them into his mouth, while keeping the rest out of the reach of his mewling, begging band and their long skinny fingers. Hawkers and song sellers walked by them shouting out their produce and prices, occasionally running a casual, assessing eye over the carriage, which here at least moved scarcely faster than they did, and over its occupants. A girl, no more than fourteen but already pox-marked and old in her expression, peered in and whistled at Graves, then noticing Harriet winked at her, and with a swing of her hips was gone. Graves was too busy marveling at his companions’ expressions to notice her.
“Really, Crowther, Mrs. Westerman,” he said, “you are educated people but your ignorance of music is astonishing.”
Harriet looked very serious. “Forgive us, Graves! We are new to the capital, and I was in the East Indies in seventy-seven and Crowther was in-?”
Crowther looked up from his fingernails. “Oh, I was in London. And I went to a concert or two, but my occupations were in general less polite.” And when Graves looked inquiringly at him, Crowther met his gaze and said very evenly, “I was cutting up dead people.”
Graves cleared his throat and crossed his legs.
“Then Graves, my dear boy, you must educate us.” Harriet smiled and folded her arms. “Who is this Manzerotti? And who is Isabella Marin?”
Graves leaned forward with a sudden enthusiasm that reminded Harriet that, for all his cares and responsibilities, he was still not yet twenty-five.
“Manzerotti is said to be the greatest soprano castrato living. He is much spoken of. It is a marvelous thing to have him in London! They say that with both him and Marin in the company, the serious opera or ‘opera seria’ could equal the success of Creso in seventy-seven, and there were sixteen performances that season.” He sat back again with the air of having delivered a startling revelation.
Crowther exchanged a glance with Harriet, and lifted his eyebrows, murmuring, “Is that good?”
Graves gave an exasperated sigh. “It is remarkable! An opera is judged a great success if it manages a dozen performances. And Isabella Marin! Her name is pure gold on the continent, and it is her first appearance on the English stage. It is a sensation.”
Harriet pulled absentmindedly on one of her red curls of hair, saying, “Are there no English singers who can hold a tune? Why did Harwood need to send Fitzraven to the continent to recruit? Are we not at war with most of our neighbors over there?”
“Art knows no boundaries or borders,” Graves said a little stiffly, then, throwing his body back into the corner of the coach and smiling, “but it is partly fashion. We English love to see something new at the opera. I think bringing in singers from hundreds of miles away to serenade us makes us feel more important. What is nearby is necessarily unexceptional.”
He looked up and to his right into the dark of the carriage. Harriet could tell he was imagining the sound of this Manzerotti’s voice in the private auditorium of his mind. Then, coming to himself and noticing the streets outside, he said, “We are nearly arrived. I hope you dine with us this evening, Mr. Crowther.”
Mr. Crowther bowed and the carriage came to a halt.
Mr. Crowther was not a regular guest at dinner in Berkeley Square; however he thought it might be politic not to return to his own rented house as yet. He had been late at work the previous night; indeed, dawn had already begun to cough at the windows when he ceased his examination of small lesions on the brain of a young man who had died of a seizure. It had been a fascinating study, but he was not entirely confident that he had tidied away all his samples before retiring at last to bed. If he had been remiss it was likely the maid would have been thrown into hysterics by the discovery of part of a brain in a jar and left her post. He had lost two maids in this way since coming to London, and his housekeeper, Hannah, though loyal, had limits to her patience. He hoped to avoid the punishment of a bad dinner by taking a seat at Graves’s table. However, although the food was excellent, the table was so crowded with good humor he feared his digestion might still suffer.