And Sebastian, too, actual-choir-boy Sebastian Vael, who at first represents all the young men that Maestro Orsino has directed in the Chantry choir, all these straight-backed and broad-chested young men with their robust voices and their unshakable faith, who make Orsino both proud and ashamed.

The Chantry had quietly given up the making of castrati, and Orsino is a relic, a novelty. (Many of his fellows had sickened and died early, their bodies imbalanced and their vices vicious.) Orsino’s passion for music had kept him going, and to be called Maestro gave him a sense of purpose, a place in the microcosmic society of the Chantry. And he loved the boys and young men he directed, loved watching them grow, watching their bodies grow tall towards heaven and their voices grow stronger to match.

That love was mirrored by the despair and sometime-revulsion he felt when he beheld himself, soft, rounded, sway-backed, grey; when he caught his fey, fluttering gestures and the atypical sweetness of his voice; when he touched his hungry flesh and felt what was missing. Who could love him? Surely not even the Maker.

But Sebastian loved him. Sebastian, prince-turned-soloist, bronze-skinned and broad-shouldered, whose fingers were equally at home on a bow string as they were leafing through hymnals. Whose fingers were equally at home on Orsino’s skin, delighting in its yield, in the flush that rose to the surface. Sebastian worshipped Maestro Orsino, and his worship took many forms -- in rising to every challenge to become soloist, in indulging Orsino’s sheepish but fervent philosophical and theological discourse, in the sweet-tongued earnest praise of Orsino’s body and the way Orsino surrendered to his touch.