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 heavy 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 upward, 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 toward 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 toward 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 toward 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 recognized 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 Fred, 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 onto 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?”
“You are,” that gentleman replied. “Fitzraven was one of those individuals whose passion is to be close to those the public celebrates. He had a talent to amuse, perhaps, with his gossip and a sharp tongue, and he knew how to flatter. It was to that I ascribed his success in recruiting those singers of quality he brought us here. But he was desperate-and I use the word without unnecessary theatricality-desperate to be near those whose names we read in the newspapers, and think himself their friend. He would have done much to feel himself of significance in their lives. It is a sickness that comes over many. By the close of the season I will have another dozen men and women who will need to be watched for at the door, or they will create havoc and distress trying to get close to the objects of their devotion. They become convinced they have a particular bond with some performer they have spotted and made a focus for their admiration.” His eyes flicked up to Crowther. “I know a woman in Milan, of good family, was killed last year throwing herself under Manzerotti’s coach. She carried his portrait snipped from a newspaper in her locket as a lover would. She was not the first, nor will she be the last to die for love of a person she has never met.”