emanating from the man a feeling that was almost like sorrow. Almost like sorrow. There was some violence in this eunuch that Alessandro had seldom encountered. In a momentary but sweeping recollection, he was again confronted with the cruelty and sacrifice which he himself had endured in Naples. He felt some begrudging respect for Guido Maffeo.
“You will thank your young patrician friend for me, please?” Guido murmured, defeated.
They moved towards the door.
But with his hand on it, Alessandro paused.
“But tell me,” he said confidentially. “What did you really think of him?”
Immediately he regretted it. This dark little man was capable of anything.
Yet to his surprise, Guido said nothing. He stood glaring at the uneven candle, and his face became smooth and philosophical. And again Alessandro felt the emotions of the other, what seemed to him very excessive and puzzling emotions.
Then Guido smiled at Alessandro, wistfully:
“This is what I think of it: I wish I had not heard it.”
And Alessandro smiled, too.
They were musicians; they were eunuchs; they understood one another.
It was raining by the time he reached the palazzo. He had hoped that Tonio would be waiting for him outside the church, but he was not. And as Alessandro entered the library off the Grand Salon, he saw that Beppo was still in a turmoil. He had poured out this humiliating story to Angelo, who listened to it all as if he were witnessing some outrage to the name Treschi.
“It’s all Tonio’s fault,” Angelo said finally. “He should give up all this singing. Did you speak to the Signora? If you don’t speak to the Signora, I will.”
“It has nothing to do with Tonio,” said Beppo. “Why, how was I to know that he was looking for castrati children? I had no idea he was searching for castrati children. He spoke to me about voices, exemplary voices. He said, ‘Tell me where I might find…’ Oh, this is terrible, terrible.”
“It is also over,” said Alessandro quietly.
He had just heard the front doors of the palazzo shut. He knew Carlo’s step by this time perfectly.
“Tonio should be in this library now,” said Angelo emphatically, “at his studies.”
“But how was I to know this? Why, he said, tell me where I might find the finest voices! I said, Signore, you have come to a city where you can find the finest voices everywhere but if you…if you…”
“Are you going to speak to the Signora?” said Angelo looking up to Alessandro.
“And Tonio was magnificent, Alessandro, you know he was….”
“Are you going to speak to the Signora?” Angelo banged his fist on the table.
“About what, speak to the Signora?”
Angelo had risen to his feet. It was Carlo who had spoken as he came into the room.
Alessandro made a quick gesture of discretion. He did not look at Carlo. He would not give this man an edge of authority over his younger brother, and softly now, he said, “Tonio was off with me in the piazza when he should have been studying here. It was my fault, Excellency, you will forgive me. I will see that it doesn’t happen again.”
As he’d expected, the master of the house was indifferent.
“But what is all this you were talking about?” he said, rousing his interest almost stubbornly.
“Oh, a hideous mistake, a stupid mistake,” said Beppo, “and this man is now angry with me. He has insulted me. And he was so rude to the young master, what am I to say to him?”
This was too much for Alessandro. He threw up his hands and excused himself, as Beppo unwound the whole tale down to the very name of the hymn that Tonio had sung in the church, and how exquisitely he had performed it.
Carlo uttered a short laugh and turned towards the stairs.
Then suddenly he stopped. His hand was on the marble railing. He didn’t move. He looked precisely like someone who has suddenly suffered a sharp pain in the side and cannot move without making it sharper.
And then very slowly he turned his head, gazing back at the old castrato.
The disgusted Angelo was already reading a book between his elbows. And the old eunuch was shaking his head.
Carlo took several steps to the door of the room.
“Tell me this again?” he said softly.
4
THE SKY WAS mother-of-pearl. For a long while there were no lights across the water and suddenly it seemed there were many, scattered among Moorish arches and barred windows, flickering from the torches hung to light gates, doorways. Tonio sat at the dining table looking