Cry to Heaven (78 page)

“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 snapping 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.

F
OR 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. Cafés 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 cafés 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.

F
OR 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.

C
RY TO HEAVEN
could not have been written without extensive research, and I am deeply indebted not only to many writers of the period, but to the authors of numerous scholarly and popular works on the opera, the castrati, the eighteenth century, art, music, Italy, and the cities of Naples, Rome, and Venice.

In addition much material was consulted on the physical characteristics of eunuchs, and I express my special thanks to Robert Owen, M.D., for helping me make my way through the morass of medical literature on the subject.

I would also like to thank Anne-Marie Bates, who very generously made available to me a tape recording of Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato to sing in the Sistine Choir, and the only castrato ever to be recorded.

All the main characters in the book are fictional. And though every effort has been made to portray the castrati and the century accurately, some liberties have been taken with persons and time. Nicolino, Farinelli, and Caffarelli were real and famous castrati; however Caffarelli’s appearances in the book are invented.

Guido’s teaching methods are based upon
Early History of Singing
by W. J. Henderson, and I must bear the responsibility for simplification and any inaccuracy.

“
Baroque Venice
, Music of Gabrieli, Bassano, Monteverdi,” recorded by the Decca Recording Company, 1972, with its album notes describing Jean Baptiste Duval’s visit to San Marco
in 1607, was the direct inspiration for Tonio’s first musical experience there.

Alessandro Scarlatti’s
The Garden of Love
(Catherine Gayer, soprano, as Adonis, and Brigitte Fassbaender, contralto, as Venus) on Deutsche Grammophon, 1964, was the inspiration for Tonio’s duet with the Contessa in Naples, and this was the only portion of the book actually written to music.