The figure approached, the black cloak swaying with that same eerie rhythm of those black skirts in the piazza. And Tonio looked down on the ruined supper, and out of the fowl he drew the long-handled knife.
Carlo's eyes, glassed over with tears of rage, did not flinch. It was not over yet. It was not finished. But if he thought for one instant that it was finished, he would start to scream in madness, it could not have come to this, it could not end in the same injustice, the same injustice, and there pounded in his head only hatred for Tonio and the awful regret that he had not killed him long ago.
"Do you know what I always thought I would do," Tonio whispered, "when this moment came?" He held the knife before Carlo. It gleamed with the grease of the fowl and the ebbing light.
Carlo shrank back against the chair.
"I always thought it would be your eyes I would take," Tonio whispered, lifting the knife carefully, "so that you who have loved as I shall never love, you who have fathered sons as I shall never father sons, you would be shut out of life as I was shut out of it, yet living as I lived!"
The glaze in Carlo's eyes broke and the tears slid down his face. Yet his mouth worked silently as he glared at Tonio. And gathering all his saliva, he spat it into Tonio's face.
Tonio's eyes widened.
With an almost involuntary gesture, he lifted the edge of the cloak and wiped the spittle away.
"Very brave, aren't you, Father?" he whispered. "You have such courage, don't you, Father? Years ago, you told me I had courage, do you remember that? But is it courage, Father, that causes you to defy me now when I have over you the power of life and death? Is it courage, Father, that not for your sons, not for Venice, not for life itself will you bow, will you bend?
"Or is it something infinitely more brutal than courage, more base? Is it not pride and selfishness that have made you nothing more than the slave of your unbridled will, so that any opposition to it must be your mortal enemy regardless of the stakes?"
Tonio drew closer, his voice more heated.
"Was it not selfishness, pride, unbridled will that drove you to take my mother out of the convent that sheltered her, to ruin her and drive her to madness when she might have had a dozen suitors, and married a dozen times over, well and content? She was the darling of the Pieta, her singing was a legend. But you must have her, wife or no!
"And was it not selfishness and pride and will that drove you yet to defy your father, threatening with extinction a family that had endured for a millennium before you were born!
"And when you came home and found yourself still punished for these crimes, what did you do but seek to take what you would have out of pride, selfishness, and willfulness, even if it meant cruelty, treachery, and lies! 'Yield to me,' you said, and when I could not yield to you, you had me gelded, driven out of my homeland and separated from all that I knew and loved. Banished from Venice rather than accuse you, disgraced rather than see you punished and my house endangered, and now you tell me all this, for which you mutilated me and wronged me, is but persecution and burdens and trials!
"Dear God, a house all but destroyed for you, a woman ruined and driven to madness for you, a son gelded and broken by you, and you dare to complain of accusations and suspicions and that you are forced to tell lies!
"What in the name of God are you that your will and your selfishness and your pride demand such a price!"
"I loathe you!" Carlo cried out. "I curse you. I wish to God I had killed you. If I could, I would kill you now."
"Oh, I believe you when you say that," Tonio answered, his voice shaken and frayed. "And you would tell me yourself again, if you were to do it, that in this as in all else you had no choice!"
"Yes, yes, and yes again!" Carlo roared.
Tonio stopped. He was trembling still with the force of his own words, and now it seemed he sought to calm himself, to let the silence drain away the anger that had risen, his eyes fixed on Carlo, but without expression, merely innocence again.
"And you would leave me no choice now, would you?" Tonio asked. "You would have it that I must kill you now, this very instant, though every instinct in me seeks to save you even against your own will."
Carlo's face, frozen in fury, underwent the smallest change.
"I do not want to kill you!" Tonio whispered. "For all your hatred, your recklessness, your endless malice, I do not want to kill you! And not out of mercy for you, the miserable man that you are, but for things you have never honored, and never, never understood."
He paused, catching his breath. His face had a sheen to it now that caught the gleam of the fire.
"That you are Andrea's son," he said slowly, almost wearily, "that you are his flesh and blood and my flesh and blood, that you are a Treschi, and master of my grandfather's house. That you have in your keeping my infant brothers whom I would not orphan, that you for all your bitter complaint against it, do in the government of Venice carry our name!
"For all this, I would let you live, for all this I came here seeking to let you live, and for the wretched truth of it that you are my father, my father, and I do not want your blood on my hands!"
Again Tonio stopped. He held the knife still, and his eyes grew distant and dim. It seemed a great exhaustion had come over him, a great revulsion suddenly.
And keenly, Carlo marked this, though his face was full of mockery, unwilling to be deceived.
"And maybe, finally," Tonio whispered, "because I will not allow you to force me to do it, I will not stand before God a patricide, whining as you have whined, 'I had no choice.'
"But can you fathom this? Can you accept a wisdom beyond your willfulness, your own pride? Is there no way yet to unravel this knot of vengeance, injustice, blood?"
Carlo had put his head to the side and looked at Tonio through one narrow eye. His hatred for Tonio pounded in him as if it were the rhythm of his heart.
"I am done hating you," Tonio whispered. "Done fearing you. It seems that you are nothing to me now but some ugly storm that drove my undefended bark off course. And what was lost to me will never be retrieved, but I want no more quarrel with you, no more hatred, nor spite.
'Tell me, Father, though you begged for nothing, can you yet accept that I want no more now than your vow? You will not seek my life after this, and I shall leave you here unharmed. I will go out of Venice as I came, and never seek to injure you or those you love. If you do not believe it this moment you will believe it when I leave you, but for that, Father, you must bend just a little. You must give me your vow.
"This is what I came for. This is why I have not killed you before now. I want that it should be finished between us! I want that you should be restored to your house, and to my infant brothers. I want that you should give me that vow!"
Carlo made a slow scowl. In a low guttural voice, he murmured, "You are tricking me...."
A sharp spasm divided Tonio's face. Then it was smooth again, seemingly incapable of malice. He lowered his eyes.
"Father, for the love of God!" he whispered. "For life itself."
Carlo studied him. His vision was clear now, painfully clear, though the room had fallen into darkness, and he felt such pure hatred for the shadowy figure that stood over him that little else filled his mind.
He saw the knife in Tonio's hands move. Gracefully Tonio had turned it and was now holding it so that Carlo could take it by the handle.
"Father, your vow. Your life for my life, now and forever. Say it!" Tonio whispered. "Say it so that I may believe you."
Slowly, Carlo nodded.
"Say it, Father," Tonio whispered.
"I vow...I will...I will never seek your life again..." he murmured.
And he watched in amazed silence as Tonio extended the knife. "Take it, cut the strap with it," Tonio said. "Let us be free of each other once and for all."
Carlo took the knife. He brought the blade up instantly to slash the leather just inside his left arm.
The strap gave with a loud snappi
ng and Carlo's chest and arms came forward. Cautiously, the knife in his hand, he rose to his feet.
Tonio had taken several steps backwards, but his movement was slow. The long cloak floated around him, the fire gilding the edges of it, and giving a glint still to his dark eyes.
Carlo's eyes grew slowly bigger. If only he could see what lay under those black wool folds that shrouded the figure so completely, if only he could better gauge the expression on that face, but all the capacity for reason in him was yielding to that hatred which fed itself upon the long afternoon, its outrages, that Tonio had held him here, Tonio whom he loathed and should have killed a long, long time before now, Tonio, the eunuch who had made a fool of him in this above all.
And in one final act of defiance he let his eyes move slowly, eloquently, up and down the figure before him as his mouth lengthened in a pure contemptuous sneer.
In an instant, he lunged forward, the knife jabbing in front of him, his left hand plunged into that black wool for the frail arm he knew to be there.
But the tall dark draped figure swept back from him as if it were an illusion, the gesture so swift he could not even see it, and turning, he heard the zing of Tonio's sword. A thin streak of light closed the gap between them as the pain shot through Carlo's chest.
The knife clattered on the floor.
His fingers reached for the blade of the rapier, the flash of fire that skewered him, and when he tried to speak his mouth filled with a warm gushing liquid that spilled down his chin.
It is not finished, not finished! But his voice was lost in a horrid gurgling sound.
And as he felt himself slipping down, and the darkness rising about him, and his mind was turned to absolute terror, he saw the glimmer in Tonio's eyes breaking and flowing, and he saw Tonio's face stricken just before it smoothed itself into that innocence once again.
2
FOR TWO HOURS Tonio remained in the room with Carlo.
Carlo's body grew cold, and finally all the lights were gone out, the candles melted away, the coals turned to ash in the fireplace. Tonio wanted to cover Carlo with his black tabarro. He wanted to gather Carlo's hands closer to his body. But he did not do these things, and when the room was dark, he rose and left the house silently.
If anyone saw him emerge from the side door, he had no sign of it. No footfall followed him through the calli he knew so well. No shadow stalked him across the vast emptiness of the piazza.
And when he came to the doors of San Marco and found them locked, he stood as a man in a daze, unable for the moment to understand that he could not gain entrance.
At last he rested back against the columns of the portico, and he looked at the black sky beyond the dim outline of the Campanile.
Only a few scattered lights burned in the Offices of State. Cafes on the piazza now and then opened their doors to the rain. And those who hurried against the wind took no notice of him.
Soon his face and his hands were iced from the cold. Yet he did not move, and the slanting rain gradually soaked through his garments.
The night wore on. The clock struck the hour over and over. The cafes went dark, and even the beggars deserted the arcades as the city went to sleep around him.
And all that was left of civilization here was the tolling of the clock and the uncertain glimmer of a few distant torches.
It seemed his pain and the cold he felt were one. And he could not believe in the rectitude of a single action. He struggled to envision those he loved, to feel their presence. It was not enough to say their names as if they were prayers. He imagined himself with the Cardinal Calvino in some quiet and safe place where he could try to explain what had happened.
But these were dreams.
He was alone and he had killed his father.
And if he were to go on from this moment now, it would be to carry this burden with him always. He would never tell anyone what had taken place. He would never ask anyone for absolution or forgiveness.
And finally, when it was very close to dawn, he pulled up the hood of his cloak to conceal his face, and he walked out into the piazza.
He looked on these monumental buildings that had once seemed to him the very limit of the world, and then he turned his back on Venice forever.
3
FOR DAYS HE TRAVELED south towards Florence. It was winter still, and a light frost lay over the fields. Yet he could not endure the company of others in the post carriages. Rather he took a saddle horse at each stop, and walking it along the edge of the road, was often far from shelter at nightfall.
By the time he reached the city of Bologna, he was on foot His cloak was caked with mud, his boots worn through, and had it not been for his sword, he would have looked like a beggar.
He was pushed about in the streets, the noises jarring him. He had eaten so little that he was light-headed now and could not trust his senses.
And when he reached the countryside again, he knew he could go no farther. Knocking on a monastery door, he placed half of all the money he possessed in the hands of the father superior.
He was grateful when they put him to bed. They brought him broth and wine, and took away his boots and clothes to be mended. He could see a little sun-drenched garden through the window, and before he closed his eyes, he asked the date of the day and how long it was before Easter Sunday.
Of one thing he was certain. He must be with Guido and Christina before Easter Sunday.
*
Days passed. They ran into weeks.
He lay on his pillow looking out into the garden. It reminded him of some other time when he had been content, the sun falling on the flagstone walks, flashing suddenly in the water of the little fountain. The cloister was full of tinted shade. But he could not remember anything clearly. His mind was empty.
He wished it weren't Lent so that he could hear the monks singing.
And when the night came and he was alone in this room, he knew a misery so terrible it seemed to him that each year of his life would mean only a greater capacity to feel it. And he would see his mother in her bed of drunken sleep, and it seemed she had known some wise secret.
No change was worked in him. Or so it seemed. Yet he took more food each day. Soon he was rising early to go to mass with the friars. And he found himself thinking more and more of Guido and Christina.
Had they made a safe journey from Rome? Was Paolo worried about him? He hoped Marcello, that Sicilian singer, had come with them, and of course they couldn't have left without Signora Bianchi.
Sometimes he did not think of them so much as he pictured them. He saw them dining together, talking to one another. It annoyed him that he didn't know where they were, really. Had they taken a villa in the hills with a terrace on which they might sit in the evenings? Or were they in the heart of the city, some bustling street near the theater and the palaces of the Medici?
Finally one morning with no decision or plan, he dressed, put on his boots and his sword, and carrying his cloak over his arm, went to take leave of the father superior.
The monks in the garden were cutting down the young palm branches and putting them in a wooden wheelbarrow. And he knew it was the Friday in Passion Week, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows. He had only twelve days until the opening of the opera.
*
By the time he reached the post house he was hungry. He ate a hearty meal and fell to watching with uncommon interest the comings and goings of other travelers. Then he hired the best horse he could, and rode south towards Florence.
It was just before dawn in the town of Fiesole that he saw the first playbill for the opera.
Old women and laborers were coming out of the early mass on Palm Sunday. They carried their blessed palms, and the open doors of the cathedral threw a warm yellow light on the stones before it.
Tonio was walking his horse through the piazza when on a weather-stained wall he saw his own name SIGNORE TONIO TRESCHI in high letters.
It seemed an apparition. Then he was seized with
an irrepressible excitement. And feeling foolish at the same time, he brought his horse up to the wall and peered at the wrinkled paper.
Richly bordered in red and gold, it announced the performance of XERXES at Easter at the Teatro Di Via Della Pergola in Florence. Even Guido's name was included in modest letters. And there was a portrait of Tonio too, an oval engraving very flattering indeed, and in praise of his voice a few florid verses.
He walked his horse back and forth, steadying himself with a hand on the wall. He could not stop reading the poster.
Then he asked the first man who passed how far was it to the city.
"Go up the hill and you will see," came the answer.
The sky was still a dark blue and full of tiny stars when he reached the summit, and the city of Florence lay spread out in the valley before him. Through a mist he saw its bell towers, a hundred flickering lights, and the motionless path of the Arno. It was as beautiful to him as the sleeping Bethlehem of Christmas paintings.
And as he looked on those distant spires, he realized that never in his life had there been a moment such as this one.
Perhaps when he had waited in the wings of the theater in Rome on opening night, he had known something of this mounting expectation. Maybe years ago in Venice, he'd known it when he went out on the water on the Feast of the Senza.
But he did not dwell on those times.
Before the sun rose he would be with Guido and Christina. And for the first time they would truly be together.
BY ANNE RICE
Interview with the Vampire The Feast of All Saints Cry to Heaven The Vampire Lestat The Queen of the Damned The Mummy
The Witching Hour The Tale of the Body Thief Lasher
Taltos
Memnoch the Devil Servant of the Bones Violin
Pandora
The Vampire Armand Vittorio, The Vampire Merrick
Blood and Gold Blackwood Farm Blood Canticle Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Christ the Lord: Road to Cana Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession Angel Time
a cognizant original v5 release november 24 2010
ANNE RICE has written more than twenty-five bestselling books. She lives in New Orleans.