Die Upon a Kiss Read Free Page B

perhaps not so curious at that.
    “I faint!” croaked Signor Belaggio when January tried to get him to his feet. “I die!”
    January had the distinct impression that the impresario was angling to be borne upstairs like a slaughtered hero. January could have done it—he’d lugged and manhandled bigger men in his years as a surgeon—but his slashed arm smarted and he was beginning to feel light-headed himself. “Signor Ponte,” he called out as the chorus-boy darted down the stairs with voluble excuses about not having been able to find bandages or brandy or anything else where they should have been. “Help me, if you would be so kind.”
    “Keep him from me!” Belaggio directed a withering glare at Bruno Ponte. “It was he, he and his keeper, who attempted to assassinate me! You think he would not take the moment of holding me up to slip a little dagger between my ribs?”
    Ponte’s cupid-bow lips pulled back in rage.
“Pisciasotto!”
    “Recchione!”
    “Fregatura!”
    “Gentlemen!” Hannibal shoved two candles into Ponte’s hands and went to help January himself. “There are ladies present.” And it was a good bet, thought January, that though La d’Isola was unconscious, both Madame Scie and Madame Montero knew enough Italian—even the highly dialectical Sicilian and Milanese— to understand what was being said.
    Between them they got Belaggio up the wide stairs that ascended from the brick-pillared gloom of the prop-vault to the backstage. This cavernous space was already a jumble of wings and flats, cupid-bedecked gilt furniture from next Tuesday’s presentation of
Le Nozze di Figaro
mixed with blue and green glass lamp filters and a nearly full-sized gondola from the melodrama
The Venetian’s Revenge,
which had been staged that evening for an audience that consisted largely of Kentucky backwoodsmen, filibusters, gun-runners, and riverfront rowdies. In the background loomed the half-finished plaster sections of what would hopefully become Mount Vesuvius in time for next Friday’s performance of
La Muette de Portici,
though at the moment the ramshackle collection of lathe, canvas, and sheets of red and orange silk bore little resemblance to the fire-spewing colossus that dominated the posters pasted to every wall in town.
    “Would someone stir up the fire in Signor Belaggio’s office? Madame . . .” Hannibal suggested as Belaggio jerked the key back from Ponte’s extended hand.
    With a sigh, Madame Montero took the key and went to open the office, the ballet mistress following with still more candles. Since these were tallow work-candles from the chorus-men’s dressing-room, the office quickly filled with their faint, sheep-like odor. January and Hannibal deposited Belaggio in the massive armchair beside the desk, then withdrew to the backstage again.
    “I’ve taken the liberty of carrying Mademoiselle d’Isola to her dressing-room.” The planter Marsan descended the stairs from the gallery off which the principals had their dressing-rooms, resplendent in waistcoat, shirtsleeves, and a pale-purple glitter of amethyst and silk. “Perhaps if you would be so good as to see to her, Madame . . .” Marsan divided his glance equally between Mesdames Scie and Montero; Hannibal bowed tactfully to Marguerite and said, “Might I escort you up, Madame? The stairs are very dark.” He took a candle and guided her out; the Mexican soprano’s scarlet-painted lips twisted with scorn and January reflected that it was just as well Montero wasn’t going to be left alone in a room with the unconscious prima donna—not that he supposed for a moment Drusilla d’Isola’s swoon to be real.
    “Five cents says La d’Isola’s back inside ten minutes.” Hannibal clattered down the steps again and led January to the carved and gilded throne of the Doge of Venice. “Seven, that she faints again the minute she’s got an audience. I nicked Belaggio’s brandy from his desk.” By the light of his single