His papers assembled, Graves began to look for his gloves. Worried that the search might dislodge his load again, Harriet picked them up from the side table and handed them to him.
“Thank you,” he said. Then: “Who can say? I think there is a growing fashion against the use of castrati in the current age. We are beginning to prefer it when our romantic heroes look and sound a little more like real men. Perhaps in time Johannes will be the most gainfully employed of the two.”
2
It was a little early to call on a gentleman. Harriet and Crowther were forced to wait in Lord Carmichael’s drawing room for almost half an hour before Manzerotti made his appearance. If the home that Graves had leased for the children in Berkeley Square was rather more opulent than he might have wished, it still looked no more than quietly genteel in comparison with Lord Carmichael’s home.
This was designed as a place to entertain and impress. No surface was without a display of elegant china, no niche without some antique head or fragment of some ancient Colossus. There was a profusion of molding. Above each door hung golden festoons of plaster fruits and above them, oils of Gods and Monsters. Each room therefore had its crowds of the celebrated and worshipped sneering at each other before any living beings entered. Harriet peered at the marble head of a young woman caught, her lips slightly open and now shyly turning her face away from Lord Carmichael’s guests for as many years as he chose.
“Our host appears to be a collector,” she said, straightening again. “Do you think that is why he invited Manzerotti to reside here?”
“Undoubtedly,” Crowther replied. He was standing in the middle of the room and looking down at the top of his cane. It was as if, Harriet thought, he would refuse Lord Carmichael the compliment of even seeing his collection of treasures.
She tried to think clearly about the room in which she found herself. Many of the pieces were very good, even beautiful. There was a sense of harmony and balance in the decoration of the room, yet the overall effect was subtly disturbing. She made a swift inventory of the artworks in front of her. There was a small sculpture of a Spartan, lying dead on his shield; above the door was an image of Paris choosing to whom of the three goddesses he would hand his apple. In the alcove that twinned the one with the girl with her lips parted and face turned away, was a larger piece. A young god held a woman in his arms: tears were visible on her face, and her hands were in the process of transforming into leaves. With a shock, Harriet realized that the large oil opposite the fireplace, which at first glance she had taken to be a standard rendering of a great crowd jostling in the middle of some scene of classical antiquity, was in fact a depiction of the Rape of the Sabine Women. She shivered, and found she had no desire to examine the elegant paintings on the various amphorae that the room offered up for her inspection.
There was a movement in the corridor outside. Harriet expected him to fling open the door, one foot forward and his free hand raised, but Manzerotti entered quietly and bowed to them both with grace, but without great show. She looked up at him from under her lashes as she made her curtsy. He was beautiful. He had looked so on the stage of His Majesty’s but, having been tricked by other performers, Harriet had assumed the effect was one of lighting and paint. However, Manzerotti was more lovely in person than she could have imagined. He looked like a great romantic’s conception of what a human being should be-the pattern, rather than the faulty and various copies that stumbled about the earth calling themselves the children of God. His face was, like Johannes’, entirely smooth, softly rounded and perfectly white. His lips were full and dark, though the mouth through which the miracle of his voice was gifted to the world was small. It was a bud at first light in the rose garden. His eyes, though, were large, and a deep brown that blurred into darkness. They seemed to pull the light of the room into their depths and give nothing back, oddly passive like black, polished marble.
Harriet felt she must fight the impulse to stare at him as she would a creature set up for display at Smithfield’s Fair. There was something unsettling in his physical proximity. He seemed in the drawing room-and, she imagined, in any company of ordinary men and women-a beautiful but alien bloom. It was as if in her walks around her estate in Sussex she had found an orchid from the West Indies planted among the flowering grasses at the edge of the lawn, or in the shade of her oak tree. His presence had something of the fever dream about it.
“Forgive me for keeping you, madam, sir. We performers are not the earliest of risers. I hope that Lord Carmichael’s collection has been entertainment enough in my absence.”
His voice was unnerving. A falsetto almost, high but gentle, and without the shrillness of a child. His English was perfection, nothing but a trace of an Italian accent.
Harriet said, “The room is full of many treasures, though their subject matter seems uniformly dark.”
Manzerotti smiled. “Do you not think, madam, that the greatest art is inspired by tragedy? The most beautiful songs I sing are of loss and grief. Joy leaves no lasting impression on the world.”
“That seems a rather depressing philosophy.”
He was watching her as she spoke and Harriet found the completeness of his attention settled on her like sable, and made her long for luxury. “I do not mean to suggest there is no place for joy in life, Mrs. Westerman. Only that as life reveals its true self only in death, and that as love shows itself most fully in its loss, it is perhaps no surprise that the glories of great art often treat with subjects of suffering.”
Crowther spoke: “Our apologies, sir, for calling on you so early. You know the reason for our visit.”
Manzerotti with a gesture invited them to take their seats and nodded, suddenly practical.
“You wish to know of my dealings with Fitzraven. It is simply stated. I was pleased and flattered to be offered the opportunity of singing here. I know I have been spoken of in London, and I wished very much to give substance to the kind words of praise that have been carried across the Channel to this place. A successful season in London is an important thing.”
Harriet looked directly at him. “Did Fitzraven expect you to pay him for the opportunity?”
Manzerotti smiled at her again and she thought briefly of the woman who had thrown herself in front of his coach.
“He did, madam. I found on my arrival here that it had been an unnecessary expense. Mr. Harwood told me he had expressly instructed Fitzraven to secure my services, and those of Johannes, if he could.”
Crowther examined his cuffs. “That must have been an annoyance, sir.”
“It was. I was angry. But not enough to kill him, if that is your implication, Mr. Crowther.”
The two men looked at each other for several silent moments. Harriet’s eyes rested on a small painting of a slave market that hung to the left of the doorway.
“Bribery seems common practice in opera,” she remarked.
Manzerotti stood and crossed to the fire and held his hands out toward the flames.
“I am glad to be singing in London, but I miss the warmer weather of my own city,” he remarked. There was a strange muscled grace apparent even in his most ordinary movements. “It is perhaps more common than one would like, Mrs. Westerman. But the arts require the patronage of the rich and influential. A recommendation here, an introduction there, the chance to sing for an emperor or some lady of taste and influence-on such things we poor servants of music must build the fragile structure of a career. Where such things matter, you will always find people looking to make a little profit of their own. I myself am ready to tip the gatekeepers to gain an audience.” He looked back into the flames. “Sometimes I make an introduction or recommendation of my own. Sometimes it becomes necessary to use more blunt forms of payment.”