He stared at the boy’s organ as it lay in repose and saw that it had gained its first inches of manhood.
A sharp terror seized him, even in the midst of the blatant horror of this room, the blood-smeared bruised boy, the leering bravo who hovered beyond the open doorway.
Guido did not understand the human body. He did not understand the mysteries that had defeated him when his own voice was lost on the very threshold of greatness. He knew only that mingled with this monstrous violence, there was perhaps another appalling injustice.
And slowly, he touched the sleeping boy’s white face, probing for the slightest roughness of a man’s beard.
But he found none.
Nor was there hair on the chest. And shutting his eyes, Guido invoked with faultless memory the sound of that high clear voice he had heard so magnificently amplified under the domes of San Marco.
It was clean, it was perfect.
And yet here lay the first evidence of manhood.
Behind him, the bravo stirred in the door. He filled it with his massive shoulders so the light died and nothing could be seen of the features of his face, as his voice came again low, full of menace.
“Take him to Naples, Maestro,” he said. “Teach him to sing. Tell him if he doesn’t stay there, he’ll starve, as he will get nothing from his family. And teach him furthermore to give thanks that he left with his life, which he will surely lose should he ever return to the Veneto.”
6
AT THE SAME HOUR in Venice, Carlo Treschi was being roused from his bed by a frantic Catrina Lisani, who had in her hands a long and elaborate letter from Tonio in which he confessed his intention to submit himself to the knife for the sake of his voice, and enroll himself in the Neapolitan Conservatorio San Angelo.
Messengers were at once dispatched to the Offices of State, and by noon every government spy in Venice was searching for Tonio Treschi.
Ernestino and his band of singers were arrested.
Angelo, Beppo, and Alessandro were summoned for questioning.
By sunset, news was out in all the quarters of Venice of the “sacrifice” made by the vagabond patrician for his voice, it was the talk of the town, and one physician after another was hauled before the Supreme Tribunal for questioning.
Meantime, no less than seven different patrician men and women confessed to having wined and dined the young maestro from San Angelo in Naples who had asked repeatedly about the patrician street singer.
And Beppo, in a flood of tears, finally confessed to having brought the man together with Tonio at San Marco. Beppo was at once imprisoned.
Carlo, with heartfelt tears and a raw eloquence, blamed himself for this appalling turn of events because he had not curbed his brother’s unwise and extreme addiction to music. He had not understood the danger in it. He had even heard of this meeting between Tonio and the maestro from Naples and foolishly discounted it.
He appeared inconsolable as he murmured these accusations against himself before his interrogators, his face swollen from weeping, his hands trembling.
And all of this was very genuine, because at this point he was beginning to wonder if all this was going to work and he was absolutely terrified.
Meanwhile, Marianna Treschi attempted to throw herself from a window of the palazzo into the canal, and had to be restrained by the servants.
And little Bettina, the tavern girl, wept as she described how neither food nor drink, nor sleep, nor the pleasure of women, could keep Tonio from singing.
By midnight, neither the maestro from Naples nor Tonio had been found, and police were in all the small towns around Venice, dragging from bed any physician who might have ever been connected with the castration of singers.
Ernestino had been freed, now to tell everyone how concerned Tonio had been over the imminent loss of his voice, and the coffeehouses and taverns were alive with talk of nothing else, including the boy’s talent, his beauty, his recklessness.
In the early hours of the morning when Senator Lisani finally came into his house, his wife, Catrina, was hysterical.
“Has everyone in this city gone mad to believe this!” she screamed. “Why haven’t you arrested Carlo and charged him with the murder of his brother! Why is Carlo still living!”
“Signora…” Her husband sank wearily into his chair. “This is the eighteenth century and we are not the Borgias. There is no evidence here of murder, nor any crime, for that