And when the Cardinal, whom he had not visited in over a fortnight, sent for him, he rose from the keyboard with a faint exasperated sound. No one heard him. Nino was already laying out his clothes. Red velvet for the Cardinal, a waistcoat threaded with gold. Cream-colored breeches and high arched white slippers that would leave a cruel mark on his instep that the Cardinal might later lovingly touch.
It didn’t seem possible to him now that he could please His Eminence. But he had gone to it wearier and more distracted even than this, and had done it well.
Not until he approached the Cardinal’s door did he realize this was far too early for them to be together discreetly. The house was full of busy clerics and idle gentlemen. Yet it was to the bedchamber that he had been called.
He knew something was not right when he stepped into the room.
The Cardinal was dressed for ceremony and duty, the silver crucifix gleaming on his chest. He sat at his desk behind a pair of large candles, his hands folded on the open face of a book.
There was a rare light to his expression, an innocent exuberance to him that Tonio had not seen in months.
“Sit down, beautiful one,” he said. He told his attendants to go out.
The door shut; the quiet seemed to close around them like water washing back from a shore.
Tonio looked up with just the slightest hesitation; he saw the Cardinal’s gray eyes were filled with an infinite patience and wondering, and Tonio felt the first pang of warning. A dull sense of finality slowly came over him before the Cardinal spoke.
“Come here to me,” the Cardinal whispered as though summoning a child. Tonio had slipped far, far away into some realm that was not even thought, and he rose slowly and approached the Cardinal, who had risen from his chair. They stood almost eye to eye, and then the Cardinal kissed him on both cheeks.
“Tonio,” he said softly, confidentially, “there is but one passion for me in this life and that is the love of Christ.”
Tonio smiled. “I am relieved, my lord, that you are no longer divided,” he said.
The Cardinal’s eyes appeared hazel in the candlelight, and he narrowed them now, studying Tonio before he answered:
“You mean this, don’t you?”
“I feel love for you, my lord,” Tonio said. “How could I not wish for your good?”
The Cardinal weighed this with far more care than Tonio expected, turning away for a moment and again motioning for Tonio to sit down. Tonio watched the Cardinal seat himself again at the desk, but he remained standing, his hands clasped behind his back.
The room seemed filled with gray, almost ashen light. Its objects seemed alien to Tonio and unimportant; he wished only that the candles could give a greater illumination, and not merely a dismal shape to the gloom. He turned his eyes to the high mullioned window and the first sprinkling of evening stars.
The Cardinal sighed. He seemed lost in his thoughts for a moment and then he said, “This morning for the first time in months I said my mass in the state of grace.” But now he looked up at Tonio, and his face filled with trouble, and gently, as if with respect, he asked, “And what of you, Marc Antonio, what of the state of your soul?”
It was no more than a whisper, and it carried with it no judgment.
But Tonio wished for anything now but this exchange of words. He knew only that this chapter of his life had come to an end. He did not know whether or not he would weep when he left these rooms, and maybe he wanted to find out. He felt strangely vulnerable to remain here now.
“My feeling for you was evil, Marc Antonio.” The Cardinal struggled. “It was a depravity that has destroyed men infinitely stronger than I. But try as I might…” He faltered. “Try as I might I cannot find in you the evidence of evil, I cannot find the malice and the decay that must follow the willful commission of such sin.” He implored Tonio. “Help me to fathom this. Have you no guilt, Marc Antonio, have you no regret? Help me to understand!”
“But why, my lord!” Tonio answered suddenly, without thinking. It wasn’t anger he felt so much as astonishment. “Anyone who has ever known you but for a little while knows you belong to Christ. When I first set