Read Falcon in the Glass Online

Authors: Susan Fletcher

Falcon in the Glass (6 page)

BOOK: Falcon in the Glass
6.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

The hair rose on the back of Renzo's neck, and the familiar fear came upon him, the fear that came when a man stood too long near their house; or when a footfall sounded behind him in the dark; or when, in the marketplace, someone gazed at him too long.

The shadow turned, headed back through the trees.

Something familiar now. Impossible, but familiar.

“Wait!” Renzo called. He started after the figure, hastening through the wet grass between the graves.

“Lorenzo!” Mama's voice was sharp. “Renzo, stop! Stop right now.”

Reluctantly he did. The shadow vanished among the trees.

Mama caught up to him, her face tight with anger. “What were you thinking?” she demanded. “Have you gone mad? You mustn't go seeking trouble — not ever.” She took him by the shoulders, shook him. “Lorenzo, look at me. Do you hear?”

He pried his gaze from where the figure had disappeared. He blinked at her. “Yes, Mama,” he said. But he turned toward the far side of the churchyard wall, where in a moment the figure reappeared. It climbed over the low wall, crossed the path, and slipped into a dark alley between two houses.

Renzo had not seen his face. Only his gait.

Familiar.

Was it only because Renzo had been thinking of him?

But surely, even if he had managed to escape the assassins, he wouldn't return now, bringing danger to the family. No. As reckless as he was, he still wouldn't do that.

Still, it struck Renzo with such force of recognition, that gait. The gait of one who in time past had been a great, tall stallion, laughing all the way to China.

8.
Letta

R
enzo thrust the stick of alder wood into the fire and was just reaching for another when he stopped, straightened, stepped away from the heat.

She was here.

Some disturbance in the air had alerted him, or maybe the sound of breathing, masked by the roar of the fire. He could not have said what told him, only that the back of his neck began to prickle, and he knew.

A shadow glided across the floor, and halted. Renzo sought along the flickering darkness to the root of the shadow, and there she stood — the girl — the little kestrel on her shoulder.

“Did you bring food?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

Renzo led her to a cool, dark corner of the glassworks, away from the heat of the fire. The napkin lay on the small shelf where he always kept his dinner. He opened it to show her the hunks of sausage and cheese, the small loaf of bread.
He had told Mama that he grew hungry in the small hours before the others came; she'd been giving him more food than before. He'd felt a pang of guilt; Mama would likely eat less herself to compensate.

But he would make it up to her, he told himself. If this girl would help him. If he could pass the test.

“I'll be needing more,” the girl said.

“It's all we can spare!”

“I need more, for true!” The girl picked up the ends of the handkerchief, knotted them together, then set the food on a shelf by the door. With a quick flick of her eyes, or perhaps some signal unseen by him, she sent her kestrel fluttering up to perch on a high rafter.

He would have thought that a hungry girl would eagerly snatch at the food, gobble it down. But she didn't eat a crumb.

“Well?” she said. “What now?”

He breathed out a silent sigh. He hadn't been sure until that moment if she was going to run off with the food or if she'd come to work.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“What's yours?”

“Renzo.” He took off his gloves. Held them out to her.

She hesitated. Then, taking the gloves, said, “Letta.”

He waited while she pulled on the gloves, which were way too big for her hands. He gave her a few sticks of wood and walked beside her to the furnace. She had watched him feed it before, but she'd never gone in close. Now she would feel the heat licking at her in waves so ferocious, it would
seem as if flesh were melting off her bones. She would feel the moisture being sucked from her eyes, feel her eyeballs grow granular and hot. He was accustomed to it, but she . . .

Her eyes set to blinking; the sticks wobbled in her hands. She thrust them into the opening and quickly backed away.

She turned to him, her face set, determined. “More?” she asked.

He nodded. “Until the fire is hot enough.”

Renzo watched at first, but after a while left her to her work. He cut up more wood. Added it to the pile.

When there was sufficient wood to last, and the fire well stoked, Renzo began to school her in the proper role of the assistant. He wanted her to affix the end of the long, iron
pontello
to the bottom of a glowing-hot glass vessel he had shaped with his breath. He wanted her to hold the
pontello
until he took it from her, so he could shape the vessel. He wanted her to bring him new molten glass to attach, so he could make handles, or a stem, or a base.

Though Renzo had practiced with his father, there were many skills he'd never mastered. He made a point to study the
padrone
at work whenever he could. But it was one thing to watch others create and another thing entirely to create on one's own. The mind may grasp the work, but the body must know it too, know it without thinking — in the memory of the hands, in the wisdom of the eyes to judge from the color of the glass when it's time to blow it, to spin it, to warm it again in the furnace.

He looked at Letta — ragged, skinny, dirty. She did not
demurely avert her eyes like a good Venetian signorina but glared back at him, as if to say,
What are
you
staring at?
Could he train this contrarious girl so that she would be of use to him? Or was that too much to hope for?

“Listen,” he said. “When I tell you to do a thing, you have to do it at once. No questions. Just do as I say.”

She shot him a skeptical glance.

“There's no time for explanations when the glass is hot. You've got to watch me closely, be alert to whatever I need.”

“Be your slave, you mean,” she muttered.

“The glass gets hotter than you can imagine! You have no idea how dangerous it is!”

She shrugged and turned away.

Clenching his jaw, Renzo laid out the tools he would need to make an urn with handles. He told Letta their names and functions. At last he picked up the blowpipe. “Are you ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

Renzo gathered the molten glass on the end of the pipe, and began.

But she did not stand where he told her to stand, not even when he reminded her, not even when he shouted. She knew a better place to stand, she said. He bumped into her; she trod on his heels and toes. She did not hold the
pontello
as he told her to, nor affix it to the bowl in the instant he asked. “I do it in my own time,” she said. “It can wait.”

“No. It
can't
! That's what you don't understand!”

Again and again she ignored him — when he told her to
hand him the
pontello
, when he told her to affix the molten glass just
here
, when he told her to step away pronto so he could rewarm the vessel above the fire.

And so it went — six times, seven times, eight.

After the twelfth time, Renzo set down the pipe, slumped onto a bench, and buried his face in his hands. She was willful, stubborn, unmanageable. He should just send her away.

A tapping sound. He sat up, looked at Letta. She was drumming the
pontello
against the floor, lips pinched in impatience. “What now?” she said.

Renzo shrugged.

“You're just going to quit?”

“If you won't listen, you're worse than useless to me. You might as well take your food and go.”

The tapping stopped. “Don't be shouting at me. I'm not deaf. I hate when people shout.”

“I'm not shouting!”

“You are!”

“Because you refuse to hear me!”

“You confuse ‘hear' with ‘obey.' Maybe I heard but had a better idea. Did you think of that?”

“A better . . .” Renzo stared, stunned at her ignorance, at her audacity. “What do you know of glass that you could even dream of having a better idea than the masters, after they've poured their very lives into the glass for centuries!”

“What d'
you
know of it?” she retorted. “You're a drudge. A wood chopper. A fire feeder. If you knew anything howsoever, you wouldn't be playing with glass in the middle
of the night. They'd let you help them in the daylight, for true.”

Rage struck him mute. What did
he
know? Well, he'd show her.

He picked up the blowpipe, thrust it into the crucible, and gathered an orange-hot blob of molten glass. He rolled it on the
malmoro
, then huffed gently into the pipe. The glass bellied out, just so. He leaned again toward the furnace, into the wall of blistering heat, and spun the glass above the fire, feeling it grow more fluid. He brought the glass out, wheeling away from the heat, and filled it with his breath. He spun it in the cool air to shape it, spun it in the furnace to make it supple, breathed into it, spun it in the air again.

Now he reached for the familiar tools to shape it —
magiosso, tagianti, borsella, supieto
— all the while spinning, spinning, spinning. His hands and arms and feet all had the dance of the glass inside them. His eyes knew from long practice when the glass desired the softening of heat, or the firming of cool air. Knew when it was ripe to be pinched, or pierced, or stretched.

And now the glass, spinning overhead at the end of the pipe, had turned into a bowl, small and smooth and curving. Renzo stilled it. Cracked it off the end of the pipe. Smoothed its base and mouth, and set it on the marble shelf.

It was a simple thing. No handles or stems to connect. Easy enough to make without an assistant. Renzo had made such bowls for years. Yet still . . .

It shimmered in the light of the fire, the bowl — a lovely, gleaming, graceful thing. Like a poem. Like a song.

Letta gazed at it for a long, silent moment. She turned to Renzo.

“Don't be shouting at me,” she said.

“I won't.”

“I'll do as you say.”

And she did.

9.
Poor, Crippled Things

E
ven so, the dance went badly. They were forever in each other's way — treading on toes and heels, bumping shoulders and elbows. Once, Letta grazed Renzo's cheek with the cool end of the blowpipe; another time she singed his arm with a mass of molten glass. She warped bowls in the furnace; she spilled hot glass all over the floor; she caved in the sides of urns by jabbing them with the
pontello
.

And it wasn't just she who erred. Renzo's hands seemed to have forgotten all they'd ever known. They spun too slowly and pulled too fast, they attached things in the wrong places, they misjudged angles and distances. Glass burst and shattered on the floor; slivers lodged in their clothes, their hair. Once, a shard nicked Renzo's temple and made it bleed; another time Letta stepped on splintered glass and pierced her feet.

Still, no one tripped and fell, as he had seen happen with some new teams of master and apprentice. Nor did they burn themselves, nor clout nor pierce the other with the
pontello
. And the finished vessels themselves — poor, crippled
things — were not quite so ill-formed as they might have been.

Renzo set down their latest effort — gouged, scratched, precariously atilt on its stem — and studied it to see what errors he must learn to avoid. He plucked at his damp shirt, plastered to his body. He wiped a drop of sweat from his eyes.

It was a relatively simple form, a footed bowl. There were many more difficult forms that he would have to perfect to show the
padrone
. And still so much to learn!

Less than two months!

Impossible.

A sudden weakness seeped into his limbs; he stiffened his knees to prevent them from buckling. If he couldn't do better than this, he would never pass the test. Never be a glassblower. He would disgrace his father's memory and condemn his family to poverty.

“ 'Tis far from perfect,” Letta admitted, studying the bowl. She shrugged. “But parts of it are nice. See how it curves, bells out at the lip — ”

“It's an abomination.” Renzo picked up the blowpipe and swept the bowl into the pail, where it shattered with a crash.

Letta gasped. She kept her gaze fixed on the pail of broken glass, as if mourning the death of the maimed little vessel they had birthed.

◆      ◆      ◆

By the end of the fourth night's work, they had produced two workmanlike bowls upright on their bases, and a large jug
with handles that was not nearly so drunken and listing as the ones that had preceded it. They would attempt another bowl the following night and, Renzo thought, if they succeeded at that, maybe it would be time for a stemmed goblet. He was still impossibly behind, but if they progressed at this rate, perhaps he would not humiliate himself so completely when it came time for the test.

Though, surely he would fail.

Unless the
padrone
saw enough improvement to satisfy him . . .

But in two months Renzo could never learn all that was required.

Unless the
padrone
took pity on him . . .

But he was not a pitying man.

And so Renzo reeled from fear to hope to fear again. The glass, he reminded himself. Just think about the glass.

Still, things had grown easier between him and Letta.

Since beginning his nighttime work, he had come to love the long stretches of solitude in the glassworks. When he could feel Papà's silent presence beside him, helping him. When he could design, in imagination, the exquisite vessels he might make one day. When he could try one thing and another, unobserved — just play.

BOOK: Falcon in the Glass
6.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Cradle by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee
Lost Desires by Rachael Orman
Critical Judgment (1996) by Palmer, Michael
The Crush by Scott Monk
Breaking Rules by Puckett, Tracie
Beguiled by Arnette Lamb