were striking him physically, and yet they receded so fast, he could scarce remember them, their sound, their literal meaning. There was only a relentless, muted hammering.
And all around him in this room there seemed a sadness building and building. It was like a great cloud collecting its deadly momentum. It shrouded him. It shut them away, concealing them. And it left him alone here in this shadowy place, staring mutely at the blurred lights that made their slow passage on the invisible stream beyond those windows that was the water.
He had known it. He had known it when this man first took him in his arms, he had heard it pressing through his dreams, he had known it when his mother ran about that darkened room whispering, “Shut the doors, shut the doors,” yes, he had known it.
Yet always, always, there had been the chance that it was not true, that it was but some groundless nightmare, some foul connection made more of imagination than real happening.
But it was true. And if it was, then Andrea had known it also.
It did not matter what happened now in this place. It did not matter if he turned to go, or what he said. It seemed he had no will, no purpose. It did not matter that somewhere someone had given a voice to this sadness. It was his mother weeping.
“You mark my words,” Carlo whispered.
Dimly Carlo materialized again before him.
“Oh, what is this, your words?” Tonio sighed. My father, this man. This man! “Is this your threat of death?” Tonio whispered. He righted himself peering steadily forward. “Your first council to me and we two so briefly reconciled as father and son!”
“You mark my council!” Carlo cried. “Say you cannot marry. Say you will take Holy Orders. Say the doctors have found you ill formed, I do not care! But say it, and yield to me!”
“Those are lies,” Tonio answered. “I cannot speak them.” He was so weary. My father. The thought obliterated all reason, and somewhere far, far beyond his reach stood Andrea, receding into chaos. And he knew the most bitter, the most terrible, terrible disappointment that he was not Andrea’s son. And this man, frenzied, desperate, standing before him, imploring him.
“I was not born your bastard.” Tonio struggled. It was such an agony to speak these words. “I was born Andrea’s son under this roof and under the law. And I can do nothing to change that, though you spread your abominations from one end of the Veneto to the other. I am Marc Antonio Treschi, and Andrea has given me my charge, and I will not bear his curse from heaven, nor the curse of those around us who do not know the half of it!”
“You go against your father!” Carlo roared. “You bear my curse!”
“So be it, then!” Tonio’s voice rose. It was the greatest struggle of his life to remain here, to continue it, to answer once and for all. “I cannot go against this house, this family, and the man who knew all of this and chose to plot the course for both of us!”
“Ah, such loyalty.” Carlo seemed to sigh and to tremble, his lips drawn back in a smile. “No matter what your hatred for me, your will to destroy me, you would never go against this house!”
“I do not hate you!” Tonio declared.
And it seemed that Carlo, caught off guard by the edge of this cry, looked up in one desperate moment of feeling.
“And I have never hated you,” he gasped as if just realizing it for the first time. “Marc Antonio,” he said, and before Tonio could stop him, Carlo had taken him by both arms, and they were so close they might have embraced, they might have kissed.
The look on Carlo’s face was astonishment and almost one of horror. “Marc Antonio,” he said, his voice breaking, “I never hated you….”
5
IT WAS RAINING. One of the last rains of the spring perhaps. Because it was so warm nobody much minded. The piazza was silver, and then a silvery blue in the rain, and from time to time the great stone floor seemed a solid sheet of shimmering water. Draped figures darted here and there across the five arches of San Marco. And the lights in the open coffeehouses were smoky.
Guido was not quite as drunk as he wanted to be. He disliked the din and glare of this place and at the same time he felt safe in it.