brown hair and rested his hand on Paolo’s neck. It felt fragile to him; the boy felt fragile. And then he was so overcome with love for Paolo that for a moment he did not speak. The warm air of the chapel was full of the scent of wax and incense, and it seemed the gilded altar drained all the sun it could from the dusty shafts of light that cut to the marble floor.
“Close your eyes and dream for a moment,” Tonio whispered. “Do you want to live in a fine palazzo? Do you want to ride in fine carriages and dine on silver plate? Do you want for there to be jewels on your fingers? Do you want to wear satins and silks? Do you want to live with me and with Guido? Do you want to come with us to Rome?”
The boy turned on him with an expression so savage his breath was taken away.
“That’s not possible!” Paolo said in a strangled voice as if it were an oath.
“But it is possible,” Tonio said. “Anything is possible. When you least expect it, it’s possible, to be sure.”
And as belief and trust came into Paolo’s face, as he moved to lock his arms around Tonio, Tonio drew him up.
“Come,” he said. “If you have anything in this place you want to take with you, get it now.”
It was noon when the carriages finally commenced to roll. Guido, Paolo, and Tonio were in the first, while behind came the servants and the great bulk of the trunks.
And as they drove down through the Via di Toledo towards the sea for one last glimpse of the city itself, Tonio could not take his eyes off the bluish camelback of Vesuvius sending its faint plume of smoke into the sky.
The carriage swayed onto the Molo. The glaring sea seemed to fuse itself with the horizon. And as they turned north, the mountain was lost.
And hours later, it was Tonio and only Tonio who was crying as night fell over the endless and beautiful wheat fields of Campania, and the carriage struggled on towards the gates of Rome.
PART V
1
THE CARDINAL CALVINO sent for them as soon as they arrived. Neither Tonio nor Guido had expected this immediate courtesy, and with Paolo hurrying after them, they followed the Cardinal’s black-robed secretary upstairs.
Nothing Guido had ever seen at Venice or Naples quite prepared him for this immense palazzo right in the center of Rome, no more than twenty minutes’ stroll from the Vatican in one direction, and perhaps the same distance from the Piazza di Spagna on the right. Its somber yellowish exterior enclosed corridors lined with antique sculptures, walls hung with Flemish tapestries, and courtyards virtually peopled with Greek and Roman fragments as well as colossal modern statues guarding gateways and fountains and ponds.
Noblemen were milling about in great numbers, clerics in cassocks came and went, while a long library revealed itself through one pair of double doors after another in which black-clad clerks bent over their quill pens.
But it was the Cardinal himself who proved the most interesting surprise. It was rumored he was deeply religious, having come up from the priesthood, which was not so common for a cardinal, and that he was a great favorite with the people, who were always hanging about outside to see his carriage pass.
The poor of Rome were his special concern; he was the patron of numerous orphanages and charitable institutions which he visited constantly; and sometimes, letting his crimson robes drag in the mud, his retinue waiting, he visited in hovels, drank wine with workingmen and their wives; he kissed the children. He gave of his own wealth daily to those in need.
He was almost fifty now, and Guido anticipated great austerity in him, some pious contradiction to this highly polished splendor, the floors patterned so freely in varicolored marble they rivaled the floors of San Pietro itself.
But the Cardinal exuded good humor.
His eyes crinkled with immediate cheerfulness, a vitality that seemed the fusion of grace and love for everyone he saw.
A sparely built man with hair of an ashen color, he had the smoothest eyelids Guido had ever seen. They had no indentation, no fold. And with the few lines in his face, so seemingly deliberate, he had a graven look, like those gaunt figures on very old churches who in this time appear emaciated and distorted, often grim.