2. Chapter 2
Hold.
Baton raised, Cassius stretched out the music.
Onstage, Romeo declared his love for Guiletto one last time, swallowing poison.
The strings, plump with emotion, swelled beneath the singers…
and faded into nothingness. For a moment the orchestra lay silent—then burst into full volume once more as Guiletto woke to find her beloved’s lifeless body.
The air vibrated, stiff with tension, the focus of the audience palpable, and Cassius melded the notes into the perfect mix of melody and bass to turn their skin to gooseflesh.
For closing night, he wanted them to weep.
He brought in brass, percussion, all the instruments fast, the chorus sang, and then the performers above and below the stage were making music as one, holding the audience as one.
And he, suspended between stage and pit, was linking them all.
He lifted the orchestra to a crescendo as Guiletto collapsed over Romeo.
Capellio, the arrogant fool of this rendition of Romeo and Juliet, walked away from the tragic lovers while the chorus raised their rapiers at one another.
Played by an old hand named Gustav, he would sing the last note, but the audience still belonged to Odette.
It always did.
Cassius pinched his fingers, gave one final flourish of the baton, then drew an invisible line before him.
The orchestra fell silent.
Beat, beat, beat.
He always heard precisely where the applause began, because that’s what he did.
He listened. Tonight, the first few claps came from over his shoulder in the stage-left box, but they were quickly rivalled by the box on the right, slightly higher, slightly louder.
Duelling princes once again, as had been the case for the past three performances.
The red velvet curtain lowered, and the lights extinguished, but in the moment before darkness swallowed the stage, Cassius allowed his gaze to linger.
Perfect, unmoving, believably lost to life—even as Maria’s chest rose and fell visibly, Odette’s did not.
One day, he would tell stories about how the last time he’d conducted in London, he’d led the orchestra for one of the greats of the age.
Damn her.
Applause bounced into the brief gloom, some of it absorbed by the curtains, but most of it jostling to rise towards the ceiling.
Cassius stayed motionless as it engulfed them, washing like a wave across the depths of the pit.
Another full house, another string of glowing reviews.
Newly rebuilt after last year’s fire, the Constellation Opera House had rejoined the world with praise that any conductor would give his best hand for. Even a cursed left hand like his.
Cassius lifted his baton as the curtain rose for the final time.
The lights flared, and he brought the orchestra back to life to accompany the performers during their curtain call.
In ones and twos, the chorus and cast moved to the front of the stage to take a bow, then lined up along its edges, clapping.
Applause waxed and waned as each of them took their turn until, finally, the fresh star Maria met her praises.
Then—last, but never, ever least—came Miss Odette Delaney, the darling, the star, the soprano who commanded a thousand pounds a performance.
Theatre owners were only too happy to pay such a hefty fee because they knew keeping her name on the showbill for a few weeks would pay the receipts for half a year.
As the auditorium erupted into even louder cheers than before, Odette swept her arm in a wide arc of acknowledgement, leading the cast to give thanks to the stagehands and the orchestra below. Then, she singled out Cassius to blow a kiss in his direction.
A picture of absolute perfection. Even as she shared the lights, she owned them.
God damn her. Why did she have to be so good at this?
He wasn’t expected to clear the orchestra pit, but Cassius kept the habit of waiting behind regardless, to be the last to leave like a captain aboard his ship.
Perhaps in a few seasons, the innovation of the newly constructed space would be so familiar that it would meld into the rest of the building.
But for now, the little cove concealed beneath the stage, which exposed only him fully to the audience, was such a novelty that he found himself lingering after every performance to enjoy its architecture and acoustics.
Instead of sharing the stage with the opera singers or butting up against the audience as before, the orchestra now possessed a space of its own.
In the pit, the musicians could hide behind their instruments, enjoy the applause, and avoid being pelted with fruit or stones if the spectators were in a mood.
Wagner’s innovation had first been built in Germany only two years ago, but it had proved incredibly popular with musicians, performers, and audiences alike.
And as opera houses and music halls burnt down as regularly as kitchen maids burnt toast, it had taken no time for the new design to spread across the continent and cross the channel to become a fixture of every theatre build and rebuild.
‘Mr Zadora?’
Cassius pushed off the pit wall and turned to look up into the auditorium. He hadn’t heard that voice since last season, and she’d not called him mister at the time.
‘Lady Ofner,’ he said, reinforcing the distance between them.
She’d not looked so elegant and poised the last time he’d seen her, either.
He climbed a few steps of the conductor’s podium to be closer to her level and scanned the room.
Chatting stragglers were still ambling towards the exit, and her husband stood near the doors at the back, engrossed in conversation with some other trussed-up aristocrat.
‘I came to congratulate you on your new position,’ she said.
Cassius stiffened. ‘How did you…’
‘Embassies gossip, and not only about politics and intrigue. Vienna will be a good place for you. The musicians are the best in the world, and the audience appreciates them for it.’
‘It’s not confirmed. Karl—I mean, Mr von Miller is yet to release me from my contract here.
’ Cassius spoke of the last hurdle with nonchalance.
The theatre owner had never held anyone back from an opportunity.
Now that this show was finished, he’d sign off on Cassius’s early termination without argument.
‘Perhaps, next time I am in Vienna, you might come to call—’
Cassius lowered his voice. ‘Kalina, I am not sure that would be a good idea. Your husband was already suspicious…’
‘Just to talk, Cassius.’ She made as if to reach for him, then pulled back. ‘It is nice to talk about Poland even though she is gone, is it not?’
‘Not gone,’ he corrected, with the old fire in his belly sparking at the suggestion that his divided and occupied homeland was lost forever. ‘Just sleeping. She lives on in all of us.’
‘Sleeping, yes.’ She gave him a nod and a sad smile. ‘Godspeed, Mr Zadora. My husband is waiting. I’d better go before he is entranced by your Miss Delaney.’
‘She’s not mine—’ he began, but Kalina had already turned away.
It didn’t matter. As powerful as he was, the Austrian diplomat might well imagine an affair, but he’d never be able to seduce Odette.
The man would have to settle for a ballerina or a member of the choir, in the hope that she’d become famous and he would possess a mistress he could quietly brag about.
Or he could settle for his wife, who was beautiful and obliging, but that was not how a man like Lord Ofner treated the women of the world.
All the better for Cassius. He could keep them warm while their husbands amused themselves elsewhere without having to deal with the bother of more.
The last of the musicians—an old cellist named McCauley and one of the newer ones whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn—dawdled out.
Cassius bent low beside the podium to retrieve the bottle he’d stowed away earlier, then climbed deeper into the pit and headed through the door that led to the cavern of rooms and cupboards beneath the stage.
He wandered past the green room where chorus members were changing out of their costumes, still full of song, and along the hallways where stagehands were singing sea shanties and teaching them to landlubbers.
Men made eyes at men, some of them clearly in established arrangements, while others were still gathering courage to suggest a liaison.
The workers here were a motley crew. People from forgotten places, those who sought illusions and those who could only be themselves in a make-believe world—in the theatre, anyone could be anyone.
The world of wooden floorboards and red curtains with gold fringes made room for them all.
Cassius tapped at the door. No answer. He knocked again, louder.
‘I do not have time for autographs,’ Odette’s voice filtered through the wood. ‘If you wanted one, you should have asked me sooner.’
‘And I was going to make my fortune by selling it on the high street. Whatever will become of me?’
‘I doubly don’t have time for you, Zadora. Especially after you made that tempo change at the end of the first act.’
‘It’s bad luck to break a tradition.’ He sang the taunt as he tapped the bottle against the door.
‘You don’t believe in luck,’ she shot back, her voice clearer and closer now.
‘I don’t. But you do.’
Was that a grumble? He couldn’t be sure because the theatre swelled into raucous celebrations behind him. The door opened, and Odette stood before him, half a foot shorter, yet still levelling him with a glare. ‘You are terrible to tease me.’
And before he could reply, she turned back into her dressing room, leaving the door open for him to follow.