Lucifer's Shadow

59 Dissonant notes

Delapole was right in one respect. The Venetians can be an ugly lot when they are crossed. The scribbled messages I had dropped in those lions’ jaws had done their trick. I had not sought to accuse Delapole of Leo’s murder. Such a ruse would be hard to sustain without evidence; the anonymous writer would be deemed a mischief-maker or worse. Instead, I chose a subject which I knew no self-respecting clerk of the Republic could fail to extend to a wider audience: the authorship of that mysterious concerto.

With a little variation in each, my messages foretold that Delapole would claim the prize and, in so doing, seek to deceive the city. He was, I hinted, a thief, and perhaps worse. This crime was to be perpetrated on an unsuspecting Venice in order that he might fleece the citizens of their money, then disappear into the night. To establish my case, I suggested the readers spread the word and ask those who heard it to demand some proof from the Englishman when he appeared on the podium with Vivaldi’s players. If he could lead the players through the opening of the piece — or anything else, for that matter — then let him be acclaimed. If not, then the city should draw its own conclusions and act accordingly.

When I penned those messages, I firmly believed Marchese would be in the city at any moment, walking to arrest the Englishman at the head of a troop of city guards. So much for my prescience. But this was a game of chess, with human players. A precautionary move might turn the balance of a match several steps on from the point at which it is played. The mob was angry. Marchese’s murder had spurred their already foul mood. The word was spreading through the crowd that the beloved concerto would not, after all, be played. From his place on the platform, where he paced up and down, looking increasingly nervous, Delapole could see the moment of his triumph turning to catastrophe.

“Music, Maestro!” one wag yelled. “Or has the cat got your English tongue?”

Delapole bowed to his tormentor and walked to the other side of the stage. There was no more sympathy for him there. The rabble was restless. Vivaldi stood immobile, offering not a whit of assistance. The musicians shuffled sheets awkwardly in front of them. Then a drunk came out of the crowd, clambered onto the platform, and snatched the first page of a cellist’s part.

“This ain’t the concerto,” the fellow yelled. “I can read a title page. We’ve been robbed. They’re going to play some of the Red Priest’s old stuff, and I’ve heard that till it’s coming out of me ears.”

Vivaldi stared at Delapole. The Englishman listened to the baying of the hoi polloi, then walked, with a fixed smile upon his face, to the front of the stage and waved for them to be silent.

“Ladies,” he implored. “Gentlemen.”

A gang of armourers from the Arsenale, well in their cups, had gathered at the front to taunt him. “Get on with it, you pomaded bastard!” the largest one shouted. “We came here to listen to them, not watch you parade around like some peacock looking for a mate.”

“We will, sir,” Delapole replied, glowering at the fellow. “In due course.”

“And that new one too!” another yelled. “Not any old rubbish.”

“Ah,” Delapole said. “If only I could oblige.”

With that the crowd fell silent, waiting for his explanation.

“You’re the one what wrote it, aren’t you?” demanded one of the armourers. “You damn well best oblige us.”

The Englishman held his arms open wide. “I had promised to wait to break this news. But yes. I am the one.”

He gave them that charming English smile. Not a single pair of hands applauded.

“Prove it, then,” the armourer bellowed. “You run your girls through that pretty piece of yours and let’s have done with it.”

Delapole shook his head. “Nothing would please me more, sir. But we are victims of a criminal. He has stolen our work and left me with too little time to reproduce it for our orchestra here. Next week, I promise. Then I’ll have it played for all of you, and free, too, for any who’s paid today.”

The crowd turned even more sullen at that. Delapole brazened it out.

“We’ve been robbed, sirs!” he pleaded with them. “By that scoundrel boy Scacchi, who murdered his own master — and his uncle! — only last night. And did so to steal my manuscript from his master’s safekeeping, where I believed it would be printed for today. We have no notes, no score, no inspiration for our sweet musicians. What would you have me do but beg my friend Vivaldi play for us and let me work my fingers to the bone into the small hours of the night, re-creating that which I have already once written, as you know well?”

“We don’t know nothing,” Delapole’s nemesis yelled from in front of the platform. “You prove it to us, eh. You make ’em play.”

The Englishman’s composure broke at that. It was a development he had not forecast. “Why, sir. I do not know this piece as well as my friend. I would not do it justice.”

The crowd was enjoying every moment of this. “Oh, come on!” a voice cried. “You’re the great composer, ain’t you? If you could write that marvel what we heard before, you can surely wave them girls through their paces, eh?”

Delapole glanced nervously at Vivaldi, seeking support. “It would be an impertinence to my friend here.”

The Red Priest rose from his seat, walked over to Delapole, and politely placed a baton in his hand, then returned to watch what ensued.

To a man the crowd roared: “Play! Play! Play!”

The musicians followed him, waiting for that piece of wood to move and give them direction. There was, he must have realised, no escaping this. He turned his back to the mob, gestured with his hand, and launched into the piece.

I wonder about what happened thereafter. Did he fail through his own efforts or those of the young band of female players who sat before him? Only Rebecca knew his true nature. The rest, I believe, must have guessed it the instant he took his charade one step too far. As he gesticulated hopelessly in front of them, he was revealed. The musicians knew Delapole could no more be the anonymous composer than any of those who baited him from the crowd. He was a fraud, and, to seal his perfidy, he sought to implicate them in his deceit.

So they played as badly as they could while still retaining some dignity. Not a single note was wrong in pitch or duration, but each made its entry into the piece a fraction of a second too soon or a moment too late, so that the movement lurched forwards, then backwards, and finally collapsed into an unrestrained cacophony that stumbled nowhere, like a team of horses that has lost its driver.

The mob began to bay for blood. Gobbo leapt upon the stage and whispered in his master’s ear. He had, I suspect, realised that Marchese might have spoken to others before he died. The authorities would take a leisurely interest in Delapole’s manifest fraud over the concert. If there was other intelligence to whet their appetites, it might add some urgency to their desire to escort the pair of them into those dark rooms by the Doge’s Palace and invite them, under pain of torture, to talk a little of their past.

In my hiding place by the Arsenale, I heard the angry howling of the rabble. That gave me opportunity, for its attention was diverted to the piece of theatre being played out on the platform. Half drenched, I slunk back to the waterfront and cautiously made my way towards the hordes outside the church. Canaletto could have painted this, I thought, and made it look a distant, pretty picture of Venetian pomp and ceremony. From his far-off viewpoint, no one could see the seething hatred that ran through this ugly mass or guess what macabre outcome was now being engineered by Delapole at its heart.

The focus shifted. Someone was moving, but it was impossible to see a thing. A flurry of bodies flocked to a single point by the stage, then flowed forwards. I saw a glimpse of Delapole’s silk garments and something else, the black dress of one of Vivaldi’s musicians. They had fled down to the waterfront, and there leapt into a waiting boat. Not caring who saw me, I dashed to the edge of the promenade. There, under a rain of eggs, rotten fruit, and less harmless objects, the Englishman was making his exit from Venice. Gobbo sat on his left. To the right, wrapped in her cape, was Rebecca, face as pale as the moon, that fiddle case still beneath her arm.

Delapole waited until his vessel was beyond the reach of the mob’s missiles, then rose in the stern and raised his arm in a single salute. He barked at his crew. His gondolier sculled hard for the Grand Canal. The Englishman stood upright in the back of that vessel, not flinching, his lips set in a cold, tight smile. It could only be my imagination which made me fancy that his eyes never left my face.