mystery of it all, that organ, longer, thicker than his own, into his mouth immediately.
He needed no instruction. He felt it swelling as he stroked it with his tongue and his teeth. His body was becoming his mouth, while his fingers pressed into the flesh of the maestro’s buttocks, urging him forward, Guido’s moans rhythmic, desperate, over the man’s deliberate sighing.
“Ah, gentle…” breathed the maestro, “gentle.” But with a thrust of his hips, he pressed against Guido all the mingled scents of his body, the damp curling hair, the flesh itself, full of musk and salt. Guido gave a guttural cry as he felt the dry, raw pinnacle of his own passion.
But at that moment, as he clung, weakened and reverberating from the shock, to the maestro’s hips, the man’s seed flowed into him. It filled his mouth, and he opened to it with an overpowering thirst as the bitterness of it, the deliciousness of it, threatened to choke him.
He bowed his head; he slumped down. And he realized that if he could not swallow it, in an instant, it would revolt him.
He had not been prepared for this so abruptly and totally to finish.
And then sickness did constrict him, causing him to pull away, struggling to keep his lips sealed against it.
“Here…” whispered the maestro. He tried to take Guido by the shoulders. But Guido had lain down on the floor. He had crawled under the harpsichord, his forehead pressed flat against the coldness of the stones, and the coldness was good to him.
He knew the maestro had knelt beside him. He turned his face away.
“Guido…” the man said gently. “Guido…” as if scolding him. When had he heard that same beguiling tone before?
And when he heard his own moan now, it was filled with such anguish it surprised him.
“No, no, Guido…” The maestro crouched by him. “Listen to me, young one,” he coaxed.
Guido pressed his palms to his ears.
“Listen to me,” the man persisted, his hand scratching the hairs of Guido’s neck. “You make them kneel to you,” he whispered.
And when there was only silence, the maestro laughed. It was low, soft, not mocking. “You’ll learn,” he said. He gathered himself to his feet. “You’ll learn, when you hear those Bravos in your ears, when they’re pelting you with tributes and flowers.”
5
MARIANNA RARELY STRUCK Tonio anymore. At thirteen, he was as tall as she was.
He hadn’t inherited her dark skin, nor her slanting Byzantine eyes; he was fair, but he had the same rich black curls and spry, almost feline, figure. When both of them danced, which they did all the time, they were twins, the light and the dark, she swinging her hips and clapping her hands, Tonio tapping the tambourine as he moved in rapid circles about her.
They did the furlana, the frenzied dance of the streets which the maids of the house taught them. And when the ancient church behind the palazzo held its annual sagra or fair, they hung out the back windows together to see the servant girls whirling in their short skirts, so they might learn to dance all the better.
And in their shared life, whether it was dancing or singing, games or books, it was Tonio who had become the leader.
Very early, he’d come to realize she was much more the child than he was, and that she’d never meant to hurt him. But she was helpless in her darker moods; the world collapsed upon her, and when he had clung to her, crying and afraid, he had terrified her.
Then had come the hot slaps, the growls, even objects pitched across the room at him as she raised her hands to her ears not to hear his wailing.
He learned now to mask his fears at such times, and strive to soothe her, distract her. He would draw her out if he could, he would entertain her.
The one infallible way was through music.
She’d grown up on music. An orphan shortly after birth, she’d been placed in the Ospedale della Pietà, one of the four famous convent conservatorios of Venice, whose choir and orchestra, made up entirely of girls, astonished all Europe. No less a man than Antonio Vivaldi had been the Maestro di Cappella there when she was small, and he had taught her to sing and to play the violin when she was only six and already exquisitely talented.
Vivaldi’s scores lay in stacks in her rooms. There were vocalises in his own hand which he’d written for the girls, and she