own words, that Tonio had indeed known in his father.
“What do you want of me, Signore?” Tonio said. He had drawn himself up and now he took a slow breath. “Lay it down for me, Signore, what am I to do?”
“Yield to me, I have told you!” Carlo’s voice again rose. “Do you see what he has done to me! Robbed me, that is what he has done, and now he seeks to rob me again and I tell you, it will not happen!”
“And how will it not happen!” Tonio demanded. He could feel himself trembling but there was now that exhilaration that overcomes all shrinking. “Am I to invent impediments, lie! Go against my father’s will because you have asked me to do it! Signore, there may not be iron in me, I do not know, but there is the blood of the Treschi, and you have so misjudged me I am at a loss as to how I might make your error plain to you.”
“Ah, you are not a child at all, are you?”
“Yes, I am, and that is why I am suffering this now,” Tonio answered. “But you, Signore, are a man, and must know surely I am not the judge to whom you should make your appeal. I did not hand down the sentence.”
“Ah, sentence, yes, sentence!” Carlo’s voice was unsteady. “How well you choose your words, how proud your father would have been of you, young, and clever, and yes, full of courage….”
“Courage!” Tonio said more softly. “Signore, you push me to rash words. I don’t want to quarrel with you! Let me go, this is hell for me, brother against brother!”
“Yes, brother against brother,” Carlo answered, “and what of the rest of this house? What of your mother? Where does she stand in all this?” he whispered, drawing so close that Tonio recoiled, still unable to turn his eyes away. “Tell me!” Carlo demanded. “How is it with your mother!”
Tonio was too amazed to answer.
He was pressed to the back of the chair, staring at his double. That vague feeling of revulsion returned to him. “Your words are too strange for me, Signore.”
“Are they? Use your wit, it’s sharp enough, you lead your tutors by the nose. Tell me, is she content to live out her life alone in her son’s house, a grieving widow?”
“What else can she do?” Tonio whispered.
The smile came back, almost sweet and yet so fragile. There is no true malice in this man, Tonio told himself desperately. There is no malice, not even now. There is monstrous dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction so terrible that it has not yet thought of defeat or bitterness.
“She is…what?” Carlo asked. “Twice your age? And what has her life been to her so far but a penal sentence? She was a girl when she came into this house, was she not? But you need not answer me, for I remember her.”
“Don’t speak of my mother.”
“You tell me not to speak of your mother?” Carlo bent forward. “Is she not flesh and blood the same as you or I? And fifteen years entombed in this house with my father? Tell me something, Marc Antonio, do you find yourself fair when you look into the glass? Do you find in me the same handsomeness you find in yourself? In lesser or greater measure?”
“You speak abominations!” Tonio whispered. “You say one more word to me of her…!”
“Oh, you threaten me, do you? Your swords are toys to me, my boy, and you as yet haven’t the slightest shadow of a beard on that handsome face, and your voice is as sweet as hers, or so I’m told. Don’t threaten me. I shall say all the words I want of her. And how many words with her would it take to make her rue these years, I wonder!”
“She’s your father’s wife, for the love of God,” Tonio said between his teeth. “You do your violence to me, if you will, I am not afraid of you. But her, you leave alone, do you understand, or child that I am I shall call to my aid those men who will stand by me!”
Oh, this was hell, hell, as surely as the priest or the painter had ever depicted it.
“Violence?” Carlo gave a soft laugh, seemingly sincere, and his face went smooth, his eyes widening slightly. “Who has need of violence? She is a woman still, little brother. And lonely, lonely for a man’s touch if she can even remember it. He