to this house to find myself slain here, and put to rest by others, and so I roam this place as if I were the ghost of myself, and in that state of mind come dangerously near to thoughts and words that are hellish.”
“Oh, please, come out of here, then. Please…His apartments on the main floor, Signore, you can take them….”
“Ah, do you give me those rooms, little brother?”
“Signore, I did not mean that I give them to you. I meant no such disrespect. I meant only surely you can take them.”
Carlo smiled, and looking up, he let the book drop to the table. Then he took Tonio’s head again in both hands almost roughly.
“Oh, why couldn’t you have been some spoilt and arrogant boy?” he whispered. “And I could have damned him further for so indulging you?”
“Signore, we cannot speak of these things. If we do, we cannot abide each other.”
“And wit and wisdom and courage, yes, courage, that is what you have, little brother. You come to face me and talk to me. You said, what, a moment ago, that I must show you a way for us to love each other?”
Tonio nodded. He knew his voice would break if he spoke just yet. And so close to this man that he held himself stiffly, he slowly bent forward until his lips touched his brother’s cheek and he felt Carlo’s sigh again as Carlo’s arm enfolded him.
“So difficult, difficult,” Catrina said. It was past midnight and all the house was dark save the room in which he was pacing. Tonio could hear the wine in his voice; it was erupting. There was no modulation.
“But you have come back rich, and you are yet young…and dear God, is there not enough in this city to content you without wife, children? You are free—!”
“Signora, I am done with freedom. I know what can be bought. I know what can be had. Yes, rich, and young, and free, for fifteen years I have been that! And I tell you while he was living it was the fire of purgatory, and now that he is dead, it is hell! Don’t talk to me of freedom. Penance enough I did so that I might wed and—”
“Carlo, you cannot go against him!”
Servants with dark faces swept the corridors. Young men lingered at the doors of Andrea’s old rooms, Marcello Lisani came early to breakfast with Carlo at the long supper room table.
“Come in, Tonio!” Carlo gestured, rising at once, the chair sliding back on the tiles, at the glimpse of his brother passing the doorway.
But Tonio, bowing quickly, escaped him. And once inside his room, stood silently against the door as if he had found some refuge.
“Resigned, no, he is not resigned.” Catrina shook her head. Her quick blue eyes narrowed just for an instant as she looked at Tonio’s lessons. Then she gave them back to Alessandro. She had a score of papers in a leatherbound folio, what to pay cook, what to pay the valet, these tutors, how much food to lay in, and what else was wanting?
“But you must bear this in silence,” she said, closing her hand over Tonio’s hands. “You must do nothing to provoke him.”
Tonio nodded. Angelo on the edge of the room, drawn and anxious, glanced up now and again from the pages of his breviary.
“So let him gather his old friends, let him see who has influence now, and who holds office”—Catrina’s voice dropped as she leaned close and looked into his eyes—“and let him spend his money if he wishes, he has brought a fortune home. He complains of these dark draperies. He is hungry for Venetian luxuries, for French trinkets and pretty wallpapers. Let him…”
“Yes, yes…” Tonio said.
Each morning, Tonio watched him leave the house, seeing him rush down the stairs with the jingle of keys and the clank of the sword at his side, his boots loud on the marble, sounds so unfamiliar here they seemed to have a life of their own, while through the crack of his door, Tonio saw white wigs in a row on polished wooden heads, and heard Andrea’s old whisper: foppery.
“Little brother, come dine with me tonight.” He seemed at times to appear out of the shadows as if he had lain in waiting.
“Please forgive me, Signore, my spirits, my father…”
Somewhere Tonio heard the unmistakable sound of his mother singing.
In the late afternoon, Alessandro sat so still at the library table he might have been the statue