them: Vesuvius belching flame and the eponymous Mute Girl hurling herself into its crater. In fact, Belaggio’s first performance would be
Le
Nozze di Figaro,
but January couldn’t imagine what playbill would draw Americans into the theater to see that. Cherubino flinging himself three or four stories from the Almaviva balcony into a particularly savage rosebush?
Davis shook his head. “My tenor and my soprano don’t arrive until the twenty-ninth. And Caldwell’s bought up every firework and flare and bolt of red silk in town, damn him. So when Mount Vesuvius erupts, I’m going to have to ask the audience to use their imaginations—not that the Creoles have them. . . .”
“Oh, give me a muse of fire!”
Davis laughed, a bright, infectious sound in the quiet street. “Or at least tell me where to hire one for the night,” he said. “And you know, I suspect three-quarters of the Americans in this town actually believe that’s a perfectly reasonable excuse to kill another man? Idiots, all of ’em.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked January, and Davis clasped his hand gratefully. “Shaw’s already hinted he’d be glad if I kept my ears open. . . .”
“Oh, nothing more than that,” said Davis. “I’m certainly not requiring death-defying leaps or hand-to-hand encounters with tigers. And I daresay it’ll all blow over, as King Louis said to Marie Antoinette. But I’d feel better knowing you were keeping an eye on things.”
“That I’ll do, and gladly.” January folded up the umbrella as the rain softened and eased. On the other side of the street, two children clothed as prince and princess in anticipation of some Carnival festivity peeked from a carriageway between two shopfronts, and squealed as the last raindrops plinked into their small, extended hands. “I still can’t imagine anyone taking these accusations seriously.”
“Neither can I,” said Davis. “Unless these assassins— whoever hired them—succeed next time.”
THREE
“Who would murder Belaggio?” Madame Marguerite Scie rose from her plié and stood by the rehearsal-room barre with her thin arms folded, such morning sunlight as managed to trickle between the back of the theater and the wall of the Promenade Hotel’s stable yard picking out streaks of silver in her tightly-bound fair hair. “Anyone in the company, I should imagine, with the possible exception of the little d’Isola chit. He isn’t well liked.”
She flicked her long legs into fifth position, demipliéd twice, and sank, flat-backed and upright, into a deep grande, her long fingers barely touching the support. She’d been eleven years old, and a pupil of the best dancing-masters in Paris in preparation for her eventual Court presentation, when the Bastille had been stormed in 1789. She still moved like a girl.
January rested his chin on his folded arms on the back of the chair he straddled before the piano. “You behold me agog, Madame.”
She smiled sidelong, like an amused snake. “It’s no accident he was putting on a Christmas opera season in Havana, of all places.” The inflection of her deep, velvety voice made the Spanish colonial capital sound like a muddy hamlet on the Mississippi. “I think the only reason he’s still able to do seasons in Milan is because his brother is a Commissioner of Police there, and can get the Austrians to make trouble for his rivals. Look where he works.”
She sank, and rose, in a graceful port-de-corps, the muscles of her back like a fencer’s above the short-sleeved camisole, the abbreviated corset, and schoolgirl skirts. “Milan, Florence, the Veneto . . . and America, where people haven’t heard of him. Lorenzo has a reputation for not having his books balance. If the Carbonari ever do manage to run the Austrians out of the peninsula, he’ll be behind a barrow in a market-place the following morning, urging housewives to buy tomatoes.”
Before his encounter with the assassins in the
Le
Nozze di Figaro,
but January couldn’t imagine what playbill would draw Americans into the theater to see that. Cherubino flinging himself three or four stories from the Almaviva balcony into a particularly savage rosebush?
Davis shook his head. “My tenor and my soprano don’t arrive until the twenty-ninth. And Caldwell’s bought up every firework and flare and bolt of red silk in town, damn him. So when Mount Vesuvius erupts, I’m going to have to ask the audience to use their imaginations—not that the Creoles have them. . . .”
“Oh, give me a muse of fire!”
Davis laughed, a bright, infectious sound in the quiet street. “Or at least tell me where to hire one for the night,” he said. “And you know, I suspect three-quarters of the Americans in this town actually believe that’s a perfectly reasonable excuse to kill another man? Idiots, all of ’em.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked January, and Davis clasped his hand gratefully. “Shaw’s already hinted he’d be glad if I kept my ears open. . . .”
“Oh, nothing more than that,” said Davis. “I’m certainly not requiring death-defying leaps or hand-to-hand encounters with tigers. And I daresay it’ll all blow over, as King Louis said to Marie Antoinette. But I’d feel better knowing you were keeping an eye on things.”
“That I’ll do, and gladly.” January folded up the umbrella as the rain softened and eased. On the other side of the street, two children clothed as prince and princess in anticipation of some Carnival festivity peeked from a carriageway between two shopfronts, and squealed as the last raindrops plinked into their small, extended hands. “I still can’t imagine anyone taking these accusations seriously.”
“Neither can I,” said Davis. “Unless these assassins— whoever hired them—succeed next time.”
THREE
“Who would murder Belaggio?” Madame Marguerite Scie rose from her plié and stood by the rehearsal-room barre with her thin arms folded, such morning sunlight as managed to trickle between the back of the theater and the wall of the Promenade Hotel’s stable yard picking out streaks of silver in her tightly-bound fair hair. “Anyone in the company, I should imagine, with the possible exception of the little d’Isola chit. He isn’t well liked.”
She flicked her long legs into fifth position, demipliéd twice, and sank, flat-backed and upright, into a deep grande, her long fingers barely touching the support. She’d been eleven years old, and a pupil of the best dancing-masters in Paris in preparation for her eventual Court presentation, when the Bastille had been stormed in 1789. She still moved like a girl.
January rested his chin on his folded arms on the back of the chair he straddled before the piano. “You behold me agog, Madame.”
She smiled sidelong, like an amused snake. “It’s no accident he was putting on a Christmas opera season in Havana, of all places.” The inflection of her deep, velvety voice made the Spanish colonial capital sound like a muddy hamlet on the Mississippi. “I think the only reason he’s still able to do seasons in Milan is because his brother is a Commissioner of Police there, and can get the Austrians to make trouble for his rivals. Look where he works.”
She sank, and rose, in a graceful port-de-corps, the muscles of her back like a fencer’s above the short-sleeved camisole, the abbreviated corset, and schoolgirl skirts. “Milan, Florence, the Veneto . . . and America, where people haven’t heard of him. Lorenzo has a reputation for not having his books balance. If the Carbonari ever do manage to run the Austrians out of the peninsula, he’ll be behind a barrow in a market-place the following morning, urging housewives to buy tomatoes.”
Before his encounter with the assassins in the
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