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I was greeted by the owners of the house with great fanfare. They knew of me. I must come in. I could have whatever I wanted under their roof. Just beyond the door lay paradise. Listen to the laughter, and the singing.

"What do you desire, Master?" a pleasant-voiced man asked of me. "You can tell me. We have no secrets here. "

I stood listening. How reticent I must have seemed¡ªthis tall, blond-haired man with such a chilly manner, who cocked his head to one side and looked away with his thoughtful blue eyes.

I tried to see the boy, but I could not. The boy was locked away where no one saw him. How would I proceed? Ask to see all of the boys of the house? That would not do it, for this one was in a chamber of punishment, cold and quite alone.

Then suddenly the answer came to me as though angels had spoken it, or was it the Devil? It came swiftly and completely.

"To purchase, you understand," I said, "with gold of course, and now, a boy you want to be rid of. One recently arrived here who will not do as he's told-"

In a flash I saw the boy in the man's eyes. Only it could not be true. I could not have such luck. For this boy had beauty as bountiful as Bianca's. I did not count upon it.

"Recently come from Istanbul," I said. "Yes, I think that is correct, for the boy was no doubt brought from Russian climes. "

I need say no more words. Everyone was scurrying about. Someone had put a goblet of wine into my hands. I smelled the lovely scent of it, and set it down on the table. It seemed a flood of rose petals descended. Indeed there was everywhere the perfume of flowers. A chair was brought for me. I did not sit on it.

Suddenly the man who had greeted me returned to the room.

"You don't want that one," he said quickly. He was greatly agitated. And once again, I saw a clear image of the boy lying on a stone floor.

And I heard the boy's prayers: "Deliver me. " And I saw the Face of Christ in gleaming egg tempera. I saw the jewels set into the halo. I saw the egg and pigment mixing. "Deliver me. "

"Can't you understand me?" I asked. "I told you what I wanted. I want that boy, the one who won't do what you try to force him to do. "

Then I realized it.

The brothel keeper thought the boy was dying. He was afraid of the law. He stood before me in terror.

"Take me to him," I said. I pressed him with the Mind Gift. "Do it now. I know of him and won't leave here without him. Besides, I'll pay you. I don't care if he's sick and dying. Do you hear me? I'll take him away with me. You'll never have to worry about him again. "

It was a cruel small chamber in which they'd locked him, and into that chamber the light of a lamp flooded upon the child.

And there I saw beauty, beauty which has always been my downfall, beauty as in Pandora, as in Avicus, as in Zenobia, as in Bianca, beauty in a new and celestial form.

Heaven had cast down upon this stone floor an abandoned angel, of auburn curls and perfectly formed limbs, of fair and mysterious face.

I reached down to take him by the arms and I lifted him, and I looked into his half-opened eyes. His soft reddish hair was loose and tangled. His flesh was pale and the bones of his face only faintly sharpened by his Slavic blood.

"Amadeo," I said, the name springing to my lips as though the angels willed it, the very angels whom he resembled in his purity and in his seeming innocence, starved as he was.

His eyes grew wide as he stared at me. In majesty and golden light, I saw again in his mind those ikons which he had painted. Desperately he struggled to remember. Ikons. The Christ he had painted. With long hair and burning eyes, I resembled the Christ.

He tried to speak, but the language had left him. He tried to find the name of his Lord.

"I'm not the Christ, my child," I said, speaking to that part of him deep within the mind of which he knew nothing. "But one who comes with his own salvation. Amadeo, come into my arms. "

Chapter 19

19

I LOVED HIM INSTANTLY and impossibly. He was fifteen years old at the most when I took him out of the brothel that night and brought him to live in the palazzo with my boys.

As I held him close to me in the gondola, I knew him certainly to have been doomed¡ªindeed, snatched at the last moment from an inconsequential death.

Though the firmness of my arms comforted him, the beat of his heart was barely sufficient to drive the images which I received from him as he lay against my chest.

Reaching the palazzo, I refused Vincenzo's assistance, sending him off for food for the child, and I took my Amadeo into my bedchamber alone.