“So,” said the choirmaster. “The choice is yours, Alfredo. Will you have the operation or not?”
“If it is your wish,” said Alfredo listlessly. “Provided I can go on singing.”
They looked at the fat little man behind the desk, who put the tips of his fingers together, pursed his lips and made a humming noise in the back of his throat to show he was thinking deeply.
“I think we may take that as willing consent,” he said at last. “Yes, indeed, I think so.”
He dipped a quill into his ink pot and started to write. The tension in the room relaxed.
There was a scratching at the door.
“Who is it?” said the Precentor irritably.
One of the vergers, Pietro, opened the door. Somebody was standing a pace behind him, a vague figure in the shadows.
“Beg pardon, Your Reverence,” said Pietro. “This gentleman…
But the gentleman in question had eased past him and was making a brief bow to the Precentor. He was a tall, elegant man, wigged, with a sword at his hip. He wore a brocade-trimmed gray dress coat, brown velvet breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes. His cravat was spotless white and he carried a tricorn hat under his left arm.
“The Cavalier Giorgio di Lucari, at your service, Holy Fathers,” he said in a slow, hoarse voice, as if he found speaking difficult. “I bear a letter of introduction to His Eminence from my friend the Archbishop of Ravenna, but I gather His Eminence is not in town, and my mission is urgent. It concerns, I believe, this boy, my brother’s son Alfredo.”
With an elegant movement he placed a wax-sealed envelope on the desk.
After a moment of baffled silence the Precentor said, “Your brother’s son, you say, sir? But the boy’s patronymic is Benotti.”
The gentleman sighed.
“Alas,” he said. “My unfortunate brother, despite my most earnest pleading, chose to demean his ancient lineage by becoming a tradesman. But at least I prevailed upon him to spare the family honor so far as to change his name. I have no children, and the boy is my only heir. I have come posthaste, as soon as I heard of my brother’s tragic death, to take the boy under my protection and bring him up in a manner proper to his inheritance.”
There was another silence. The Precentor looked to his right, but the fat little man refused to meet his eye. Beyond him, Father Brava shrugged. The choirmaster coughed.
“The boy has just now chosen to become a full member of His Eminence’s choir…,” he began, but the gentleman interrupted him. There was the touch of contempt now in the harshness of his voice.
“And this is the notary to engross the deed. And this, no doubt, is the surgeon to perform the operation. Fathers, I cannot permit it. The boy is the last of an ancient lineage. Would you snuff it out entirely, knowing that at the last day you shall stand before your maker and confess to such a deed?”
Yet another silence.
“In two days His Eminence will return…,” the Precentor suggested.
“Alas, I cannot wait,” said the gentleman firmly. “I have affairs to conduct. If my poor brother did not appoint a guardian for the boy, then in law that task falls to me. My consent would be absolutely necessary for the operation, no matter what the boy himself has said. Is this not the case, sir?”
The fat little man jumped as if he had been stung.
“Yes…yes, I believe so,” he said, with an apologetic grimace toward the Precentor.
“Well, I do not give it,” said the gentleman firmly, then added, in a quieter tone, “But, Fathers, I gladly recognize the kindness of your intentions, and the generosity with which you have educated and trained my nephew, and in settlement of all such debts I am happy to make a reasonable payment to the cathedral, to be spent for the benefit of the choir, as you think fit.”
He took a folded document from his breast pocket, opened it and laid it on the desk beside the envelope. The Precentor picked it up. His eyebrows rose as he studied it.
“That is indeed generous, sir,” he said.
“My pleasure,” said the gentleman. “Now I must be gone. I deeply regret that I am unable to have the pleasure of meeting His Eminence. You will give him my respects? If you need me, you will find me at the hostelry of St. Barnabas-by-the-Gate. Come, Alfredo.”
He bowed once more, turned and left. Alfredo followed him numbly. Never to sing again! Never again!
There was a closed carriage waiting in the courtyard, of the sort that plied for hire around the city. The gentleman opened the door and climbed in, Alfredo followed, and the horses trotted away toward the Northern Gate but, as soon as they were out of sight of the cathedral, swung left toward the harbor. The gentleman sat for a while, massaging his throat, and then opened a valise, which he had evidently left in the coach when he had come.
“Sit well back,” he said. “Take that thing off and put this on. It will be small for you, but most boys grow faster than their parents can afford to reclothe them.”
Still too numb to wonder what all this meant, Alfredo took off his ankle-length chorister’s gown and worked his way into a coarse fustian overshirt, much like the one he used to wear at home. Meanwhile, the gentleman removed his wig, coat, stock, sword belt and shoes, pulled a pair of gray woollen stockings over his hose and replaced the other garments with ones much like those any prosperous shopkeeper or small merchant might have worn, going about his business. He folded his gentleman’s outfit neatly and packed it into the valise, unscrewing the hilt from his sword to fit it in.
The coach stopped, they climbed out and the gentleman—gentleman now no longer—paid the coachman and led the way into the tangle of crowded streets above the harbor.
THREE HOURS LATER THEY WERE ON THE DECK OF a small boat watching the coastline dwindle behind them. After a while Alfredo’s companion looked at his watch, drew a flask from an inner pocket and sipped slowly at it, throwing his head back to swallow, so that Alfredo saw the effort he found it to do so. All that time they had hardly exchanged a word, but now the man smiled a strange, bitter smile, without warmth or mirth.
“Thank you for asking no questions,” he said in a grating whisper. “I have a constriction in my throat and must spare my voice, but the sea air is good for it, and my medicine helps for a while. Well, as you’ve probably guessed, I am not the Cavalier di Lucari, but I am your uncle Giorgio, and you may call me that. Aren’t you going to say anything? I have just saved you from a painful operation and a lifetime of regret and shame. At some risk to myself, what’s more. The penalty for forging a financial document is an extremely unpleasant death. You are not grateful?”
Alfredo looked up at him. He could feel tears starting to come.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to say. “But I really wanted to sing. It’s all I’ve got left.”
“Poor boy,” said Uncle Giorgio. “But it isn’t all you have left. And you shall sing. Would you like to sing to me now? Not church music, I think. Do you know any songs of the sea?”
Alfredo cast his mind back to the old days and remembered a silly song he had picked up in the harbor long ago while Father was haggling with one of the merchants about a consignment of fine flour from the south. It was about a sailor numbering off the girls he had in the ports along the coast, adding a fresh name and port to the list with each verse. It had a pretty, lively tune, very far from how he was now feeling, but almost as soon as he’d started the music took over and he sang for the joy of singing.