He took Tonio by the arms, and his fingers closed on the flesh with uncommon strength.
Tonio breathed deeply, attempting to let this anger pass from him, saying to himself, This little pain is not enough.
“My lord, let me leave you now,” he begged softly. “Because I bear you only love, and want that you should be at peace.”
The Cardinal shook his head. He was glaring at Tonio, and there came from him a low humming sound. His breath was hoarse and his face was slightly flushed. The strength of his grip increased. Tonio’s anger began to mount.
It was infuriating him to be held like this, to feel the man’s urgency and power through his hands.
He was helpless, he was sure of it. And he could remember well enough the strength of these arms that had turned him so easily in bed as if he had been a woman or a young child. He thought of those arms clashing with him in the fencing salon, pushing him in darkened bedchambers, imprisoning him against the leather seat of the carriage, arms that might as well have been the branches of trees, and that smoldering energy that seemed to emanate from the very pores of a man as he sought the evidence of submission in the very midst of passion over and over again.
Tonio’s vision faltered. It seemed he had uttered some desperate sound. And all of a sudden he moved as if he meant to escape the Cardinal, or even to strike him, and he felt that grip infused with an incalculable force. He was as helpless as he imagined. The Cardinal held him so easily he might have broken the bones in his arms.
But the man was stunned. It was as if with this small convulsive gesture Tonio had awakened him and he was staring at Tonio as he might at a frightening child.
“Did you mean to raise your hand to me, Marc Antonio?” he asked as if he feared the answer.
“Oh, no, my lord,” Tonio said in a low voice. “I meant for you to raise your hand to me! Strike me, my lord!” He grimaced, shuddering. “I should like to feel it, that force that I do not understand.” He reached out and clutched at the Cardinal’s shoulders. He held tight to him as if trying to weaken the lean muscularity that was there.
The Cardinal had let him go, and backed away.
“Natural, am I, like the blossoms on the vine?” Tonio whispered. “Oh, if only I understood either of you, what either of you feels. You with your limbs that are weapons against me when I am unarmed, and she with her softness, and that tiny voice like little bells ringing and ringing, and beneath her skirts that secret yielding wound. Oh, if you were not both of you mysteries to me, if I were part of one or the other, or even part of both!”
“You’re speaking madness,” the Cardinal whispered. He put out his hand and felt the side of Tonio’s face.
“Madness?” Tonio murmured under his breath. “Madness! You have forsworn me, in the same breath called me natural and then evil; you’ve called me the thing that drives men mad. What could these words possibly mean to me? How am I to abide them? And yet you say I speak madness. What was the mad oracle of Delphi, but a wretched creature whose limbs had the unfortunate conformation of an object of desire!”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pressed his hand against his lips as if he meant to stop the flow of words by force.
He was aware that the Cardinal was gazing at him and that the Cardinal had become calm.
The moment lengthened in silence and stillness.
“Forgive me, Marc Antonio,” the Cardinal said slowly in a low voice.
“And why, my lord, for what?” Tonio asked. “Your generosity and your patience even in this?”
The Cardinal shook his head as though communing with himself.
Reluctantly, he took his eyes off Tonio and walked a few steps towards his desk before he looked back. He held his silver crucifix in one hand, and the candlelight brightened the red watered taffeta of his robe. His eyes were a narrow gleam beneath their smooth lids, and his face was ineffably sad.
“How appalling it is,” he whispered, “that I can better live with my self-denial now that I know you feel such pain.”