pain in his head throb.
He gulped the wine without realizing it and as his hand strained for the bottle, he saw it slide forward, and then the liquid splashing into the cup.
“Unwise, am I?” He laughed and laughed. “If you want denials from me, if you want begging, then you will be very disappointed! Take that sword of yours, that famous sword of yours, for surely you’ve got it hidden somewhere, and use it! Shed your father’s blood! Show me none of the mercy I showed you!”
And the deep drafts of Burgundy cooled him for a moment, washing over the pain and over the dryness of that laughter that seemed to carry his words along.
He wanted to wipe his mouth with his hand. It was maddening that he could not touch his mouth.
He let the wine lap against his lip as again he felt a shudder and that panic, that urge to struggle again to no avail.
“I didn’t want to send those men to Rome!” he said. “I had no choice! If it had worked differently, if they’d come and told me you’d grown meek and diffident, afraid of your own shadow! I’ve known eunuchs like that, that despicable old Beppo, who hanged himself in his cell after you left, that slinking Alessandro, for all his insolence, absolutely spiritless. There’s nothing to fear from a gelding like that. But you, oh, it had not done its work with you! You were too strong for it, too fine for it, too much of my father’s mettle, too old for it, perhaps! And there was no end to hearing of you, I tell you it was as if you lay on the very pillow beside me, as if you lived and breathed under my roof! What was I to do! You tell me! I had no choice!”
Through the haze of the smoking candles he saw the distant face still shocked with amazement, but it had become more remote, and almost sad.
“Ah, you had no choice!” Tonio whispered almost bitterly. “And what if you had come to Rome? What if we two had met as we are met now, and discoursed as we are discoursing now?”
“Met? Discoursed?” Carlo demanded disgustedly. “To what end? So that I might have begged your forgiveness for having you gelded?” He almost sneered. “Well, I begged you once over and over again to yield to me, my bastard son! And you refused. You made your fate! It was your decision, not mine!”
“Oh, you cannot believe that!” Tonio whispered.
“I had no choice!” Carlo roared. He bent forward. “Again, I say to you I had no choice! And damn the men I sent after you in Rome, that was nothing. If they prodded you on your errand, so much the better, for you would have come and you know it, and I say to you I had no choice!”
His vision clouded, but oh, that face was so beautiful even now, demon thing, the irony of it, and youth, youth, the thing he lamented most of all.
But he was seeing the bottom of the cup again. He felt the wine running down his chin. He reached for the bottle.
“Met with you, discoursed with you.” He sighed, his chest heaving, his eyes half mast.
But what was he doing, what was he saying?
His eyes moved over the distant ceiling, the great shadowy vault that shivered slightly with the flames of the candles, where spiders lived, and the rain, seeping in, shimmered in droplets through hairline cracks.
It was time he needed, time for it to get dark, and what had he been saying, what had he let pour out of him, all the poison from these old sores.
But as he felt his body flooded with the warmth of the wine, and a great soft exhaustion, he did not care!
What he cared about was all the injustice of it, the brutal and relentless injustice of it that had gone on and on for years. Lies and accusations that were never ending, and all that he had paid and paid and paid! That was the mystery of it, that each dung he had sought had cost him so dearly it was not worth it in the end. Oh, what had he ever enjoyed that had not cost him youth, blood, and endless wrangling, and when had there ever been any understanding, any moment when he could lay down the whole of it before any judge?
“What do you know of it?” he demanded. “Of all those years