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Authors: Susan Fletcher

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BOOK: Falcon in the Glass
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So then it was back to sweeping the floor, to sorting and crushing the broken glass, to grinding the soda to powder.

Back to wondering about the girl.

After she had left, Renzo had searched all through the glassworks trying to discover how she had broken in. He had found his answer in a small storeroom at the rear, where a narrow window opened onto an alley. The shutter hung crookedly from a single hinge, unlatched.

Renzo had told the
padrone
about the broken hinge but not about the girl. He ought to have reported her. She might be a spy. Always there were spies near glassworks, sent to ferret out secrets of the craft. Even worse were the government spies sent by the dreaded Council of Ten to make sure the glassmaking secrets never left the lagoon.

Spies — and also assassins.

As Renzo knew only too well.

Yes, the
padrone
would want to know about the girl. He would want to catch her, discover who she was and what she'd been doing.

Still, Renzo hesitated. If he told, others might come into the glassworks with him at night. Everyone knew that Renzo worked the glass when all but the night furnace tender had left; that was not the problem. But they might shunt him aside; they might foist other chores upon him. They would almost certainly disrupt his work.

And he was way behind.

He glanced back toward them, the
padrone
and his son. Sergio was looking at him again. Suspicious. As if to say,
Don't
think I don't know what you are doing. That you're trying to take my place.

But if Sergio thought that, he was wrong. Renzo didn't want Sergio's place.

He wanted his own.

◆      ◆      ◆

“Lorenzo, did you hear me?”

He sat bolt upright, tried to pretend he had not just nodded off on the bench at the table. But Mama had twisted away from the oven to frown at him, and he could tell by her look that she knew.

“Lorenzo, when did you leave for the glassworks last night? Tell me the truth. Was it midnight again? Don't even try to lie to me; I will know.”

“Yes, Mama,” he said. “But — ”

“But me no buts. What have I told you of this? Do you listen only to humor me? Do I get any respect from my only son? Any at all?”

Renzo sighed. “Yes, Mama.”

“Yes, you listen? Or yes, you will obey?”

“I listen, Mama.” He turned to her, looked straight into her worried eyes. “I do.”

“Still you are determined,” she said, “to leave long before you ought. To deny yourself hours of sleep and put yourself at risk. Your father would not approve of this, Lorenzo. He would not.”

Renzo sighed. This was true. In his mind he could hear Papà's voice:
The glass will not give up its secrets to a man who is not alert, and it may well cut or burn him.
But now, three days before
the New Year, Renzo didn't have the luxury of sleep. Just two months until the test, and he still had far too much to learn.

The first time he'd been tested, Renzo had failed miserably. The glass had slumped in his hands; it had spilled on the floor; it had cracked; it had splintered; it had burst. The few cups and bowls that had survived his clumsiness had been lumpish, crooked things, fit only to be returned to the crucible.

It was true that he had been grieving and had not been able to fully mind his work. It was true that he had been tense, with so much at stake. In all of Murano this was the only glassworks that had offered him work after Papà had died. The others wanted nothing to do with his family, nothing to do with the disgrace.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was that he had failed.

The
padrone
had been disappointed. Angry, even. Renzo realized that the
padrone
had counted on Renzo taking up the blowpipe and beginning to produce forthwith. Maybe he had hoped that Renzo had brought some secret skills learned from Papà, who had been
padrone
of a rival glassworks.

Mama had begged the
padrone
to give Renzo a lowly job so that he could practice at night, and to give him another test when a year had passed.

The
padrone
had consented, grudging Renzo a pittance for his work, enumerating the skills he expected Renzo to master. More skills than could be claimed by any apprentice
Renzo had ever heard of. Skills nearly impossible to learn on his own. In the meantime Renzo had his other duties, and was not to interrupt the glassworkers to ask for help. No one — not even old Taddeo, who fed the fire at night.

Renzo suspected that the
padrone
enjoyed watching his old rival's son perform menial chores. If Renzo could prove that he could do a master's work for an apprentice's pay, well and good. If not . . .

If not, he would never get the chance to apprentice. He would be a drudge forever.

Now Mama set three steaming bowls of stew on the table. She called for Pia, who was feeding the chickens in the yard. Pia skipped into the cottage, threw her arms around Renzo, and settled herself lightly on the bench beside him. Mama gave him a pointed look, as if to say,
See who else you are jeopardizing with your foolishness?

If she only knew, Renzo thought, what jeopardy they were in. How much he still had to learn, how slow his progress. How impossible it was to learn what he needed to know without an extra pair of hands to assist him. If she could only see how the glass wobbled at the end of the blowpipe, or hardened before its time, or sagged and dropped to the floor.

But he couldn't bring himself to tell her.

A shaft of sunlight slanted through the window and warmed the goblet at his father's place, making it glow like gold. Mama set four places at the table every meal, as if she expected Papà to come striding through the doorway, twirl her in his arms, and sit down to carve the roast.

“Renzo, did you hear me?” Pia looked up at him reproachfully.

“No,” he said. “I'm sorry. What did you say?”

“I saw the bird children. In the marketplace today.”

Bird children?
He saw it again in his mind's eye — the girl's summoning look, the bird following, seeming to perch on her shoulder before they disappeared into the fog and the dark.

“Bird children?” he asked.

“The ones who talk to birds! They tell them what to do.”

“What do you mean, ‘They tell them what to do'?”

“I saw a boy call five pigeons from a rooftop. They flew down to his arm.”

“That's no great feat,” Renzo said. “Those birds are gluttons; they'll do anything for food.”

Pia was indignant. “There was no food! And then a littler boy stood on the other one's shoulders, and he held out a basket, and a big bird flew by and took the basket in its claws. It flew all around above the
campo
, and then it gave back the basket to the boy.”

Bird children.
Performers.

Renzo looked at Mama. “Do you know about this?” he asked.

She regarded him, half-amused and half something else, something he couldn't quite place. “Of course,” she said. “And you would too if you didn't live so deep inside that head of yours.”

Renzo opened his hands in silent admission.

“They came to Venice in the summer. A few adults but mostly children, I think. They did tricks with their birds in the Piazza San Marco, and were a good amusement, I hear tell.”

“But why have they come to Murano? What happened?”

“Winter happened. They slept in doorways, cut purses, begged for food. They wouldn't stay where they were told. They kept their birds with them, uncaged. They were . . . indecorous. The Ten were not pleased and took steps to let them know they were not welcome in the city. Apparently the children scattered to the four winds, and two or three of them fetched up here.”

Mama rose from her bench, cleared the bowls from the table.

The girl's face rose up again before him; Sergio's voice echoed in his ears:

A drudge for the drudge.

And a new thought began to glimmer in Renzo's imagination. What if
she
could chop wood, stir the melt, and feed the fire? What if she could act as his assistant? She could bring new glass from the furnace, so he could attach a handle or a stem to a glowing-hot cup or bowl.

But . . .

Females were
never
allowed in the glassworks. Worse still, she was a foreigner. If she were caught helping him . . . Disaster!

Still, there was no one else he could ask. A grown beggar would be dangerous, and there were no other homeless
children that Renzo knew of. And, among people who lived here — impossible. In the world of glassmaking in Murano, everyone knew everyone. Word would get round to the
padrone
that Renzo was asking for help, which the
padrone
had expressly forbidden. But this girl . . .

She was a stranger, an outcast. She had come to the glassworks for warmth, for a safe place to shelter. If he offered food as well, in exchange for work . . .

Surely she'd leap at the chance!

Wouldn't she?

From outside the window he heard a rippling of water and the scrape of a boat against the wall of the canal. Then voices: a wife greeting her husband, children greeting their father. The weariness pressed down on him again — seeping through his scalp and into his shoulders, into his heart. The sunlight had shifted away from the table to huddle in a small corner of floor. He looked at the goblet at Papà's place — a goblet Papà himself had wrought. It stood gray and dim and cold.

Renzo remembered rising with him before sunrise every morning. They'd break their fast and walk together along the quiet, dark canals to the glassworks where Papà had been
padrone
. Renzo had labored over one pitiful artifact after another, not keeping any but returning them to the pail when they were done. Listening to Papà tell him that there would never be a greater glassmaker than Renzo himself would be, that he had the eye and the hand and the heart for greatness, that he would bring honor to the
family, that they would build on Renzo's legend for centuries.

And Renzo had believed him. The maimed little things he'd returned to the pail troubled him not at all, even though he could see that they were abortions. Because he'd believed his father, believed with all his heart that his prophecy would come to pass.

He believed it still.

Papà's curse had been fulfilled. Why not his prophecy, too?

3.
A Drudge for the Drudge

T
he idea clamped on to him like a rat on a string of sausages:

A drudge for the drudge. Such a simple plan!

Renzo lay on his cot, listening to rain rattling on the roof. He had dozed but briefly, and then awakened in the dark, his mind restless, astir.

Perhaps, he thought, he could contrive a way for the girl to slip into the glassworks every evening. It would have to be after the daytime crew left, and the man who mixed the batch — but before Renzo himself arrived in the middle of the night. He could leave the shutter closed but unlatched when he left for the day. Who would ever notice? And deaf old Taddeo likely wouldn't hear her come in. She could steal in through the window; she could stay warm and dry in the little storeroom while Taddeo, none the wiser, fed the furnace and nodded off in the heat.

Renzo jumped up, wrapping his blanket about him. He padded across the cold floor tiles, following the red-orange
glow of embers to the fireplace. He paced before the fire, warming one side, then another.

He would have to watch her, make sure she wasn't a thief or a spy. He would have to judge whether she could keep a secret. He would have to send Taddeo home early; someone else would have to chop wood and feed the fire. And it was possible the girl would refuse to work at all.

But still. Maybe . . .

Renzo stared into the fire. He ached to take up the blowpipe, to stand in the heat of the furnace, turning a lump of molten glass into a vase or a goblet or a plate of such surpassing beauty that people would stand before it and gape in mute astonishment.

When he had watched Papà at this work, it had seemed a kind of sorcery. But Renzo knew it was a sorcery that must be earned, early and late, by diligence and hard labor — labor he could not do without help.

A drudge for the drudge.

But how could he find her to make his offer? Would she return?

If only he hadn't thrown those stones! If only he had talked to her, or . . .

A wind gust shook the house. The rain grew suddenly violent; it thundered on the roof. A damp chill prickled at his neck, his shoulders. He shivered.

This storm, though, was all to the good. She would be
forced
to seek out shelter.

Wouldn't she?

He tiptoed to the bedroom, opened the door a crack, peered inside. Dimly he could make out the shapes of Mama and Pia on the bed. He hoped Mama was asleep. She'd be distressed that he was leaving so early, well before the midnight bell. But there was no point in his staying here, wide awake.

He waited. Mama did not stir.

He shrugged on his tunic and found the pouch of food Mama had left for him. At the door he pulled on his boots and cloak. He fastened the cloak pin at his neck, fingering its smooth silver surface.

Papà's pin.

Now off to the glassworks. If the shutter had been repaired, he would unlatch it and leave it ajar. If not . . .

She might be in the storeroom right now!

A drudge for the drudge!

She was homeless. Likely hungry. Surely cold.

How could she refuse?

◆      ◆      ◆

Taddeo sat hunched on the
padrone
's bench. His wrinkled eyelids drooped; his mouth hung open; a string of spittle dribbled down his grizzled chin. But the fire blazed hot in the furnace, so he must not have been sleeping long.

BOOK: Falcon in the Glass
5.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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