The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(93)

This, too, she understood.

He sighed. “Because of this, as a loyal follower, I was asked to do something that betrayed my oath.” She knew he meant his Hippocratic oath, to preserve life and cause no harm. He held it next to his devotion to God.

“You refused?”

Her papa looked away. “There was a man, particularly dangerous in his views and charisma. When he was injured in an altercation, I was summoned by the family, who were powerful enough to know the level of my skill and wealthy enough to appropriate it, though the mischief of this particular member threatened them.”

She waited, almost breathless. Had her papa helped the man and been exiled for it?

“Before I went to him I was contacted by an official of the king. He suggested that it would be in the country’s best interest if the man did not survive his injury.”

Carina could not hide her dismay.

“I went to the house and saw that the man’s situation was grave indeed. It would take all my skill to save him.”

“But you did?”

Her papa’s throat worked, and her heart sank.

“I did not. Perhaps I could not have anyway, but I withheld the skill God gave me. I worked on his body, but not thoroughly enough to sustain his life.”

She stood silent, unable to believe that was the choice her papa had made.

He drew a breath and released it. “For that reason I could no longer remain in Italy. I could not serve a king by whose order I betrayed myself and my God.”

Carina trembled. “Oh, Papa.”

He lowered his face, his eyes filled with grief. “I had seen the man, heard him speak. He was a hothead, full of dreams. His own family was afraid of him, of what he would cost them. When they learned that I was leaving Italy, they brought me his son. The mother had died in childbirth, and they feared the boy was . . . a liability. Indeed, at six he had his father’s beauty and nature.”

She clasped his hands between hers. “Did you take him, Papa?”

“He is your ‘cousin.’ Flavio.”

Her legs weakened. She gripped the desk. “Flavio?” It was Flavio’s father her papa had not saved? Signore, help me. She felt the burden of his guilt.





TWENTY

To be submitted, flesh and soul, that is my desire.

To give myself, my all, my whole, and ne’er in that to tire.

—Quillan

FLAVIO CARRESSED THE smooth wooden ball, then eyed the long gravel lane and the arrangement of the other wooden balls already thrown around the small metal bocce ball. He lowered his hand into position, hanging the ball beneath his palm. Then swinging his arm and flicking the wrist upward together, he sent the ball down the lane.

It struck Lorenzo’s and knocked Tony’s to the edge of the lane, stopping within inches of the target ball. His shot put him in the lead. But that did nothing to ease the awful strain inside him. It felt as though he were tearing apart, tendon from muscle, sinew from cartilage, organ from organ. Such a hatred he had not felt since the day they told him his father was dead.

He had only been six, and though thoughts of his papa evoked strong emotions, he could not remember him clearly. He had images, but when he tried to see his father in his mind, it was more a sensation than a picture. What he did picture was the man he’d first fixed his hatred upon: Angelo DiGratia. When the dottore came into the house where Papa lay dying, Flavio had felt awe.

This man had healing hands. Like Gesù. He had heard the others talking, knew he was the finest surgeon to be found. He would save Papa’s life, and everything would be right again. Flavio had trembled, forgotten, against one wall, as Dr. DiGratia struggled to mend the damage.

Flavio stepped back for Vittorio to take his turn. He cared little for the outcome of this game, though normally his sense of competition was extreme. Especially against the DiGratia brothers. He hadn’t known the doctor had a family, or else he might have seen him differently.

Flavio had never known his mother, since she died birthing him. But he had heard that if only a doctor had come in time she could have survived. Now that the dottore was there, surely his papa would live. But he had not. And Angelo DiGratia became the target of all Flavio’s grief and despair.

The horrible hollowness had put him into that black place where he could scarcely lift his head from the pillow. Liquid grief filled his veins. When, some weeks later, he learned his family was going to send him out of Italy with the doctor, he ran and hid in the alley behind the house. He would rather die on the streets than see that man again. Unfortunately, they found him and gave him no choice in the matter.

Flavio leaned against the wall enclosing the bowling lanes, remembering his arrival in Argentina with the doctor’s party. It was marked most strongly in his mind by the jungle smell of the air and the look of bafflement on the faces of his company. They were at their wits’ end to discover how to handle the young animal placed in their charge. Wrapped in fear and horror, he had been scarcely less than savage.

Vittorio’s next shot posed no threat to Flavio’s, but Flavio was struggling to concentrate. He recalled how one of the families traveling with the DiGratias, some distant cousin on the signora’s side, the Lanzas, adopted him, willing to do what they could for the difficult boy. But strangely enough, it was the doctor who healed him.

Day by day, Flavio would sneak out and spy on the man, wanting only to feed the terrible hatred. But day by day, watching the doctor apply his skills to anyone who asked, even the Indians who paid nothing but a pouch of corn or a handful of colorful feathers, he realized he might have been wrong in his judgment. Signore DiGratia was a good man, but he was not Gesù. Gesù was a fairy tale.