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Authors: Susan Fletcher

Falcon in the Glass (5 page)

BOOK: Falcon in the Glass
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“If a friend stole in here night after night — even if he told no one — his family would sooner or later catch him leaving or notice he was gone. And then the secret would be out. But you — ”

“Oh, no one'd miss
me
. At least none who matters. Is that it? And I can't be telling your secret, 'cause if I did, your constables or your thugs would come for me. Is that what you think?”

Her voice had gone harsh. He'd angered her. But what could he say?

Slowly he nodded. The furnace roared behind him. His bloodbeat throbbed painfully in a spot just above his right eye.

“Well, then,” she said, “show me what work you're wanting from me, and I'll think on't.”

Renzo let out a silent breath.

The girl cast a glance toward the rafters. The kestrel fluttered down out of the darkness. It alit on a strip of tattered
cloth on the girl's shoulder and trained a wild black eye on Renzo. Something . . . odd about that bird. Some bond between it and the girl, more than just the bond between performers.

The girl feinted at Renzo with the blowpipe. “My bird stays here with me. And if you throw rocks at her again or harm her howsoever, I'll run you clean through.”

He didn't think she could. She didn't look strong enough. He would have bet a week's wages that he could grasp the blowpipe, wrest it from her, and pin her against the wall.

But still, with the bird glaring as if to pluck out his eyes, and the girl herself so wild and strange . . . He wouldn't want to try.

◆      ◆      ◆

She did not set down the blowpipe straightaway but kept it pointed in Renzo's direction while ordering him about.

First she demanded food. He hadn't brought an extra portion this night, not imagining that she would come. But Mama had packed him a small repast, wrapped up in a napkin: sausage, cheese, and a hunk of barley bread.

The girl took the food — all of it — but did not eat. She backed away from Renzo, still holding the blowpipe before her, and set it on a shelf near the door.

“Show me the work,” she said.

He did. He chopped alder wood and fed the fire, showing how to tell from the color of the flames when it was hot enough and when it must be fed again. He moved in close to the furnace and, as waves of heat leaped out and threatened
to blister his skin, stirred the melt in the crucible with a long iron rod. He stepped back, strapped a strip of wood to the front of his right thigh, and held out a hand for the girl's blowpipe.

She eyed him levelly, refusing to give it up.

He sighed, took another blowpipe from the rack, gathered a mass of molten glass from the crucible, and rolled it back and forth on the stone
malmoro
. Then he sat on a bench and, resting the blowpipe against the strip of wood on his thigh, spun the pipe. With his free hand he picked up the
tagianti
and pulled at the glass to elongate it.

All this he did while explaining what he was about, at the end of the girl's well-aimed blowpipe. Mostly she stayed behind him; he couldn't see her while he worked and had to twist round from time to time to talk to her. He began to wonder if she was paying heed to him at all. He began to wonder if she had any intention of helping him, or if she only relished watching him work, treating him as her slave.

Who was whose drudge now?

The next time he looked back, she had slumped down on the
padrone
's bench, eyes shut, the tip of the blowpipe resting on the floor. The bird, now a speckled gray puffball on her shoulder, had tucked its head beneath a wing.

Was she listening? Had she heard a single word he'd said?

Renzo sagged, feeling all his hopes collapse within him. How had he ever imagined that this half-wild, ignorant girl could be of use?

“Go,” he said. “Take the food, I don't care. Just go.”

She didn't stir.

He moved toward her and reached for her shoulder to shake her awake.

The kestrel roused and hissed at him. Its eyes, with dark vertical stripes beneath them, were eagle-fierce.

Renzo drew back. Who knew what that bird might do?

The girl, now awake, lifted the tip of the blowpipe to point at him — but absentmindedly, with no threat behind it. She seemed to be thinking. Then, “Why d'you keep the fire so hot all night? Whyn't just stoke it up next day?”

“Because. The glass won't be right if you don't keep the fire hot.”

She frowned at him, seeming unsatisfied. “Why d'you stir the glass? It's already well melted, yes?”

“To prevent seed and cord.”

“Seed?” she asked. “Cord?”

“Bubbles,” he said, “and stringy lumps.”

“Hmm.” She chewed her lip, seeming to consider. “And the
malmoro
? For what purpose is that?”

The
malmoro
? She remembered the
malmoro
? So she had been listening, after all!

“To shape the glass, make it even.”

“But then you go pulling at it with those pliers. Doesn't that do the same?”

Renzo wasn't certain which was more annoying — when she paid too much attention or not enough. “No. Both steps are necessary.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, chewing her lip again. She
pointed at the smaller furnace, a little way across the floor. “Is that for when you're making little things?”

“No. That's the
calcara
. It's for the first melt.”

“The first . . . You mean, you melt the glass twice?”

Renzo nodded.

“Always?”

“And often more than twice.”

“Why?”

“To get rid of impurities, to add certain ingredients, to make the glass more workable and consistent.”

These were basic questions that she asked — things well known in the glassmaking world, not things a spy would wish to know. Still, Renzo felt his irritation rising. What was this, an inquisition? She was supposed to be listening to him — learning — not questioning the ways of the trade.

“So many steps!” she said. “I'm thinking you could cut one or two to save time.”

“No step is too many! You don't understand. We pull vessels from the fire and shape them with our breath, as fragile as the skin of a bubble. No pits or bumps or nicks must mar them. They must be perfect, without flaw.”

She quirked an eyebrow, regarded him appraisingly. “So,” she said, “it's not only your wanting t' be a big man, like your papà. You crave to make them . . . beautiful.”

Renzo shrugged, discomfited. He had said too much. Revealed too much. Not of glassmaking — of himself. “So will we do this?” he demanded.

For the first time he saw a smile flicker across her face.
She feinted at him with the blowpipe. Playfully now. The kestrel hissed at him again, flapped its wings.

Renzo flinched.

“I'll ponder on't,” the girl said. She stood, set the blowpipe on the stand beside the other iron rods. She picked up the napkin of food from the shelf and headed for the door. There she turned to face him. “Next time bring more food. Unless you're wanting t' go hungry again.”

7.
A Shadow in the Trees

P
ia!” Mama dropped back, away from Renzo, forcing the line of departing churchgoers to bend its course and flow around her.

Renzo scanned the crowd for Pia. He caught sight of her as she handed a coin to a ragged beggar who hunched against the wall beside the path.

“Pia,” Mama called again. “Come here!”

The beggar closed his knobby fingers about the coin. Pia smiled at him, then hurried, half-skipping, half-dancing, to join Mama and Renzo.

Mama took Pia's hand and firmly tugged her along the path. “You were supposed to put that in the alms box. If you don't put the coins where I tell you, I won't give them to you anymore.”

“But he's hungry,” Pia said.

“The church will take care of him,” Mama said. “If you squander our money on beggars, we'll soon be hungry too.”

Renzo recalled a time when Mama had a quick smile and a spare coin for beggars after mass. Now the corners of her
mouth turned down in a habitual worried frown, and twin furrows etched themselves between her eyebrows. She never spoke to Renzo of money, and he didn't know how long theirs would last. But he knew that unless he got himself an apprenticeship, his family would certainly go hungry, in time.

If only the girl would return to the glassworks! He hadn't seen her since two nights before, when she'd said she'd consider his offer. He hoped he hadn't scared her away.

They turned off the path, squishing across the sodden grass toward a group of somber gravestones standing in a row in a corner of the churchyard. Tree branches sagged with the weight of the chill rain that had fallen earlier. The air was fragrant with the sharp smells of the cedars and the sea, and gravid with rain yet to come.

It was no longer new, the stone they sought, but showed a year's worth of weathering — a dullness in the surface from the mottled crust of mud, drips of cedar resin, and tiny pockets of moss that clung to bumps and crevices at the top and sides of the stone — a kind of settling-into-the-earth that made the marker seem permanent and natural, not so raw. The carved words and numbers were crisp, though, as if they had been cut out this very morning.

ANTONIO LORENZO DORO. 1457 – 1496. RIPOSA IN PACE.

Papà.

Renzo's heart shrank to a hard, sore knot in his chest. Papà's face, in memory, had grown dim. But Renzo could see his father's hands as if they were before him still. Large, muscular hands, with patches of thick, yellow calluses, as stiff
as the horn in a lantern window and begrimed with ancient dirt. Then there were the burns — one on his left thumb and another a puckered, crescent-shaped scar on the back of the selfsame hand.
That
time Papà had had to go bandaged for two weeks; he had nearly bitten off the heads of his assistants until the dressing came off and he could work the glass again.

Now another hand, small and smooth, slid into Renzo's. Pia gazed up at him.

As busy as he was, Renzo hadn't been the comfort to her that he should have been. He squeezed her hand. “Well, Pia. We have work to do. Come with me and help.”

They cleared away the scattered leaves and branches on the grave; they plucked out the stubborn, withered weeds that sheltered in the lee of the stones. Then Mama spread a folded cloth upon the ground; they knelt there together as she prayed.

She prayed for Papà's soul — that he had found his way through purgatory and into heaven, that they would all meet him there one day.

But she did not pray for Renzo's uncle Vittorio, who was surely also dead. By now the assassins would have found him.

The priests, thought Renzo, they say we must forgive. Yet how do you forgive someone who has stolen your father? Someone who has recklessly thrown away all he built up, leaving you pitied or shunned by neighbors, leaving you nearly destitute and wholly bereft?

How can it be right to forgive such a one?

Damp wicked up through the cloth and into Renzo's
knees as Mama prayed. Something hard poked his knee from beneath the cloth; he shifted to find a comfortable position, remembering the quarrel in the old glassworks. Uncle Vittorio raging at Papà for taking credit for
his
designs. Papà bellowing that
he
was
padrone
, that everything in the glassworks was made in his name. Vittorio retorting that they should be equal partners, share the burden. Papà shouting that Vittorio had little to contribute.

Renzo had crouched behind the woodpile, wanting to clap his hands over his ears, but he couldn't help but listen. Then the pitcher, hurtling across the space between them. The
thud
as it hit Papà's brow. The cry of outraged pain, the shattering glass. Then Papà's curse, ringing out across the glassworks:

“Damn you, Vittorio! God keep you from me; may I never lay eyes on you again.”

That night Vittorio had left. Knowing full well that glassmakers were not allowed to leave the lagoon, that they must stay within the borders of the republic to guarantee they wouldn't spread the secrets of the glass. Knowing full well that by leaving he was risking his own life and destroying the family's honor. Knowing full well that because of him Papà would be a pariah among the other glassmakers.

And after that . . .

No, Mama never prayed for Vittorio. Never mentioned his name.

Still, Renzo knew, lifting his bowed head to regard the tombstone, that Vittorio had never intended
this
. He was headstrong, quick-tempered, careless, but never before had
the assassins exacted such a price. The one who left . . .
Him
they would seek out and kill. But never his family. At least never before.

Renzo recalled how Vittorio used to play his lute for him and Pia, regaling them with silly songs that made them rock with laughter. “Another, Uncle!” they would plead. “Uncle, please?” Vittorio used to sneak them sweets that Mama did not approve of. He had loved sweets, and had the waistline to prove it. Renzo recalled how, when he was small, Vittorio would take him up on his shoulders and let him ride. As if Renzo were a great explorer, like Marco Polo, astride a tall stallion. Both of them — horse and rider — laughing all the way to China.

“Amen.” Mama rose to her feet; Renzo and Pia did likewise. Mama picked up the cloth, brushed it off, folded it. A wind gust lifted the branches of the cedars, turning up their pale undersides and loosening the frigid rainwater that had clung to them since nighttime. A spray of droplets rattled down. Something stirred in there, among the trees, half-hidden behind a wide trunk.

Renzo stared.

It was a shadowy figure — a man — not easy to make out in the sun-dappled gloom. Standing perfectly still.

BOOK: Falcon in the Glass
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