Chapter 44: Fenice

After the Princess and her entourage had left, Admiral Hargreaves made port and the Imperial Voyager was quickly manoeuvred into the dry dock. They would be there for at least a couple of days, so the Admiral cast around on the Internet for some entertainment. He was suddenly taken with the idea of going to the opera at La Fenice in Venice. It had burned down the best part of forty years earlier, and the Italian Government had just finished rebuilding it. Rigoletto was playing and it occurred to him that Lama might like to go.

When he asked her she burst into tears, "Master, it is so long since I went to an opera. And I have never seen the Fenice, except only in very old films."

When he told her that Rigoletto was the first opera being presented at the newly re-opened theatre, she again surprised him with the depth of her knowledge by saying, "Of course they would choose that. It had its first performance there in 1851. Caro Nome is the very favourite aria of His Magnificence, the Emir Mahmoud Abdullah, may he live for ever."

Henry had never really talked to Lama; he had listened to her singing, and they had shared his bed from time to time, but this was the first intimation of her breadth of knowledge.

"Do you know where all the great operas were first performed?" he asked her incredulously.

"Master, I love music. Ever since I was a tiny child I have loved to sing and my father and then my Master, the Emir encouraged me. I know that Rigoletto was first called La Maledizione and was first performed in the Fenice on 11th March, 1851," she paused for a moment, "A man called Marés conducted it and Brambilia was the first to sing the rôle of Gilda. That was Teresa Brambilia, the youngest of the sisters. There were four of them..."

Henry held up his hand to stop the torrent of information; all this had happened almost a century and a half before this woman was born and she had been raised in a Kobekistani harem where, by Western standards, she had had almost no education at all. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to make it possible for her to learn a vast amount of detail about a very limited subject. He marvelled that her knowledge of world geography and history was confined to the facts about opera houses and their performances. She could barely write; and although she spoke four languages fluently, that fluency was confined largely to all aspects of bedroom gymnastics. Her vocabulary on any other subject was strictly limited.

'Except for operatic matters, ' he wryly reminded himself; aloud he said, "We shall go to the Fenice tomorrow."

After the opera, Henry had arranged a suite for them at the Hotel Cipriano, and the hotel's private motoscafo took them there. Nobody even looked up as a white man, resplendent in an Admiral's uniform crossed the reception hall followed by a woman in full purdah to the lifts.

In the suite, Henry asked Lama, "Can you prepare yourself for bed, or do you need a eunuch and a maid to help?"

"As the Master pleases," she replied, still humming Verdi under her breath.

Henry dismissed the eunuch who was waiting there, and told him to take the other attendants out.