‘They’ve given me some kind of opiate to control the pain. I’m not always sure when I’m awake and when I’m dreaming.’ His words sounded slurred, his tongue moved slowly, clumsily, in his mouth.

‘I’ve brought a few little presents, miu caru, to distract you.’

Khassian blinked as the little room seemed to fill with hothouse flowers: scarlet trumpet-lilies, green-spotted orchids, bouquets and garlands which should have adorned the singer’s dressing-room after the first night of the new opera.

‘Cramoisy – you shouldn’t have.’

‘Nonsense. Nonsense.’ He settled himself down beside the bed.

‘The opera. It’s gone, Cramoisy,’ Khassian blurted out. ‘Burned. Destroyed.’ Damn it! He could feel tears welling in his sore eyes. He must not cry. Crying would not bring the opera back. Why this damnable weakness now, of all times, in front of Cramoisy?

‘I know,’ the castrato said softly. ‘I know, Amaru.’ His plump white hand reached out and rested gently on Khassian’s arm. ‘But there’s time now, time to recover your strength.’

‘Even the orchestral parts –’

‘You mustn’t upset yourself, caru. You must think beautiful thoughts to aid your recovery. Then, when you’re better, we’ll find a way to restore what’s been lost.’

‘All gone…’ Khassian whispered.

Orial checked the schedules for the week ahead, scanning to see when she had been assigned to look after the composer Amaru Khassian.

Not once.

It was as if her father had deliberately left her out, restricting her work to the treatment baths and massage room – even the laundry. What did he fear? That if she were to tend Khassian she would be infected with his music, that it might seep on to her skin as she changed the dressings on his wounds? Or did he suspect Cramoisy – who spent a large part of every day at Khassian’s bedside – of wanting to talk about Iridial with her?

‘Why?’ she whispered.

Her mother’s death cast a long, chill shadow over her life. But she had learned long ago, with the stoicism of childhood, not to ask questions.

‘You must not distress your papa. You must not worry him…’

The unanswered questions still haunted her. As if her mother’s death had not been hard enough to bear, the silence surrounding it had made it worse. To this day, no one would talk about it. And, for want of the truth, Orial had begun to spin strange and morbid fantasies to fill the void. Sometimes she even convinced herself that Iridial had not died at all but had fallen in love with a stranger and run away with him.