wine would come back up and spew. I made it go down. I looked at my Master.
"This is ugly, I hate it."
"Oh, nonsense," he said, barely moving his lips. "There's beauty all around!"
"Damned if he isn't dead," said the gray-haired man. He kicked the body of Francisco on the floor. "Martino, I'm out of here."
"Stay, Sir," said Marius. "I would kiss you good night." He clapped his hand over the gray-haired man's wrist and lunged at his throat, but what did it look like to the red-haired one, who gave it only a bleary glance before he continued his worship? He filled my goblet again.
A moan came from the gray-haired man, or was it from Marius?
I was petrified. When he turned from his victim, I would see even more blood teeming in him, and I would have given all the world to see him white again, my marble god, my graven Father in our private bed.
The red-haired man rose before me as he leant over the table and put his wet lips on mine. "I die for you, boy!" he said.
"No, you die for nothing," said Marius.
"Master, not him, please!" I cried.
I fell back, nearly losing my balance on the bench. My Master's arm had come between us, and his hand covered the red-haired man's shoulder.
"What's the secret, Sir?" I cried frantically, "the secret of Santa Sofia, the one we must believe?"
The red-haired man was utterly befuddled. He knew he was drunk. He knew things around him didn't make sense. But he thought it was because he was drunk. He looked at Marius's arm across his chest, and he even turned and looked at the fingers clutching his shoulder. Then he looked at Marius and so did I.
Marius was human, utterly human. There was no trace of the impermeable and indestructible god left. His eyes and his face simmered in the blood. He was flushed as a man from running, and his lips were bloody, and when he licked them now, his tongue was ruby red. He smiled at Martino, the last of them, the only one left alive.
Martino pulled his gaze away from Marius and looked at me. At once he softened and lost his alarm. He spoke with reverence.
"In the midst of the siege, as the Turks stormed the church, some of the priests left the altar of Santa Sofia," he said. "They took with them the chalice and the Blessed Sacrament, our Lord's Body and Blood. They are hidden this very day in the secret chambers of Santa Sofia, and on the very moment that we take back the city, on the very moment when we take back the great church of Santa Sofia, when we drive the Turks out of our capital, those priests, those very priests will return. They'll come out of their hiding place and go up the steps of the altar, and they will resume the Mass at the very point where they were forced to stop."
"Ah," I said, sighing and marveling at it. "Master," I said softly. "That's a good enough secret to save a man's life, isn't it?"
"No," said Marius. "I know the story, and he made our Bianca a whore."
The red-haired man strained to follow our words, to fathom the depth of our exchange.
"A whore? Bianca? A murderer ten times over, Sir, but not a whore. Nothing so simple as a whore." He studied Marius as though he thought this heated passionately florid man was beautiful, indeed. And well he was.
"Ah, but you taught her the art of murder," said Marius almost tenderly, his fingers massaging the man's shoulder, while with his left arm he reached around Martino's back, until his left hand might lock on the man's shoulder with his right. He bent his forehead to touch Martino's temple.
"Hmmm," Martino shook himself all over. "I've drunk too much. I never taught her any such thing."
"Ah, but you did, you taught her, and to kill for such paltry sums."
"Master, what is it to us?"
"My son forgets himself," said Marius, still looking at Martino. "He forgets that I am bound to kill you on behalf of our sweet lady, whom you so finagled into your dark, sticky plots."
"She rendered me a service," said Martino. "Let me have the boy!"
"Beg pardon?"
"You mean to kill me, so do it. But let me have the boy. A kiss, Sir, that's all I ask. A kiss, that is the world. I'm too drunk for anything else!"