Valour and Vanity (12 page)

“It is just an experiment.” Vincent sat up. “Nothing more.”

If Signor Querini was jealous of his techniques, they could be jealous of theirs. Privately, Jane saw no harm in answering the apprentice’s questions, but if he understood what they were after, then Querini would as well.

That evening, Querini reported that their first attempts at the glass spheres were finally cool. The Vincents wrapped them in velvet and took them back to Ca’ Sanuto. Jane thought that she would not be able to sleep, wondering if the spheres would work in the morning. She curled up next to Vincent, cradling her head on his shoulder. He turned his face toward her, but, in the next moment, gave a paltry snore like a kitten sleeping. A moment after that, Jane was asleep as well.

*   *   *

In the morning, she
awoke to an empty bed. Vincent sat in the window of the palazzo, with his drawing-book on his knee. “Do not move, please.” A stub of a pencil worked across the page.

She blinked sleepily at him, content to lay in the bed for the moment and be his model. He still wore his nightshirt, unbuttoned at the throat and exposing the spot where his neck curved into his shoulders. His hair stood out from his head in a mad tangle. Though a line of concentration creased his brow, his countenance had none of the exhaustion that still claimed her limbs. “Feeling better?”

Still focused, he nodded, adding another scratching of shadow to part of the page. “You?”

“Tired.” She let her gaze drift to the spheres wrapped in velvet. “Are you going to let me up so we can try them?”

The corner of his mouth curled in a smile. He made one more mark and set the drawing aside. “Yes. It was all I could do to not look while you slept.”

“You could have woken me.” She sat up, stretching.

“I tried.” He stood, holding out his hands to her. Without effort, he lifted her to her feet, and then planted a kiss on her forehead. “So I hope you appreciate how very good I was in not peeking at them.”

“I am proud of you.” Jane went to the window and pulled the curtains back fully. The light showed that it was earlier in the day than they had been rising this week. She turned to face Vincent, who stood by the desk. A beam of sunlight stretched across the room, lighting the gilding on the mirrors and catching in their surface. Biting the inside of her lip, she nodded to him.

Vincent unwrapped one of the spheres. As the cloth fell away from the glass, Jane found that she had stopped breathing. For a moment, it lay in the shadow still, but then the sunlight caught it.

Vincent vanished. Jane gasped.

“May I take it that it worked?” His disembodied voice sounded on the edge of laughter.

Jane nodded. Even knowing what they were attempting, even having seen it work before, she could not help but be filled with wonder that the sphere worked. Without either of them touching so much as a strand of glamour, the glass remembered the pattern that they had created in the glass factory. The twist of glamour had marked its passage through the glass and left a record there that light followed as willingly as it obeyed a glamourist’s hands.

The desk had vanished as well, which meant that this
Sphère
was somewhat larger than the previous one they had created. A
Sphère Obscurcie,
in the hands of a glamourist, was a thin twist that reflected light back outward. Spun at a gossamer weight, it hid everything within it from sight while bending around objects that intersected its perimeter so that they remained visible, such that the floor would stay in view but the desk would not. A
Verre Obscurcie
was the same effect, captured in glass.

“We have done well, love.” Jane tilted her head, studying it. “Shall we test the size of this one or look at the others?”

The desk melted back into view. “Test this, I think.” Vincent’s voice was closer.

Jane waited till he appeared. “Hold.”

He halted with a grin. Jane answered his smile. She was fully within the
Sphère
’s influence now, and could see everything within it clearly. Vincent stood perhaps seven paces in front of her. She took a step back, and he vanished again.

Forward once more into the circle. “This is larger, is it not?”

“I believe so.” He rolled the sphere in his hand. “I wonder how large we could make one.”

“Is it dependent on the glass, or the weave we encase?”

“Shall we look at the others to see if we can find an answer?”

The rest of the morning was spent in happy examination. Not all of the spheres had been successful, but they had managed to create four of the
Verres Obscurcis
in various sizes. The effect appeared to be related to the size of the glamour when they wove it, but with such a small sample, that was by no means certain.

*   *   *

After a morning spent
studying the spheres, Jane declared the desire to do something in celebration. At Vincent’s suggestion, they took a gondola into Venice with the intent of spending the rest of the day as tourists before returning to work with the glassmaker. The Basilica Di San Marco, with its mosaics and glamours, was to be a principal destination. They engaged a gondolier and set off. Jane leaned back in the little cabin with Vincent’s arm around her. The gondola slid into the Grand Canal, which was full of traffic. She watched her husband out of the corner of her eye and was pleased to note that he showed no ill effects from being on the water.

She was able to relax, then, and enjoy the sights as they followed the canals of Venice. Pleasure craft vied for space with merchants floating rafts of goods to their warehouses. Gondoliers slipped through the spaces between, ferrying passengers about the city.

In the midst of this, a man swam towards them.

Vincent sat up. “Is that—?” In a moment, he had the door to the cabin open and had clambered out onto the bow of the gondola. It rocked with his movements, but did not seem to trouble him. Jane slid forward on the seat, unable to discern what had caught his attention, until he raised his hand and waved. “Byron! What the devil are you doing?”

In the middle of the Grand Canal, Lord Byron stopped and treaded water. “Vincent? I should have thought that was obvious. I am swimming.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Racing, actually, but I seem to have left the others behind. Still … I should continue on.”

Vincent turned to their gondolier. “Can you accompany this gentleman without interfering with his movement?”

Jane could not hear his response, but a moment later the gondola turned and began to pace Lord Byron, who changed to a sidestroke, which kept his head above water.

He carried on his conversation as though they were in a drawing room. “I expected you weeks ago. What held you up?”

“We have been here for almost two weeks. Your landlord said you had left town.”

Byron cursed with an easy fluency. “Signor Segati must have realized that I have been seduced by his wife. This is the first time he has interfered. I am sorry that you were the recipient of his mischief.”

“We may have met his wife as well … Are you still in her favour?”

“Ah—oh. You arrived on
that
day. Truly, I am sorry. She is sweetness embodied at all other times.”

Jane had her doubts about that.

Vincent cleared his throat. “I take it she said nothing about us?”

“Truth be told, she said that some friends of mine had come begging. I should have realized that it was you, but—well … we had to repair our relations, and that is always such a sweet duty.”

“Fortunately, there was no harm done. We—we had the opportunity to meet a local gentleman on the way here and have been staying with him.”

“Speaking of ‘we,’ is that the famed Lady Vincent I see behind you?”

“It is.” Vincent turned with a rakish grin. “Jane, may I present Lord Byron.”

Jane climbed forward to sit in the door of the gondola cabin. “How do you do, sir.”

“Generally very well, I have been told.” Water cascaded down his arm as he pulled himself through the canal. It imperfectly veiled his form, which appeared to be dressed in nothing more than—Oh. He appeared to be dressed in nothing at all. The saucy look he gave her reminded Jane of why he had been called “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

Jane averted her gaze, finding a sudden need to examine the horizon. He laughed. “She blushes! Oh, well done, Vincent. Well done. I like a woman whose feelings are not hidden behind artifice.”

He began to recite:

I like the women too (forgive my folly!),

From the rich peasant cheek of ruddy bronze,

And large black eyes that flash on you a volley

Of rays that say a thousand things at once,

Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,

Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies.

In spite of her best efforts, Jane’s gaze was drawn irresistibly back to the celebrated poet. Had he just invented that verse while swimming in the Grand Canal? Based on what she had heard of him, she would not put it past the man.

Vincent cleared his throat. “Please recall that you are speaking to my wife.”

“I have not forgotten.” Barely slowing his pace, he splashed the water and sent some spray at Vincent. “Why do you think I am flirting? There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman, some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them, and a married woman comes without complications. But my apologies, madam, for the manner of our meeting, as well as for my manners. Come to call, and I shall be on my best behaviour.”

In this moment, Jane was at once strangely charmed by him, and also quite grateful that they were staying with Signor Sanuto. “Not your
best
behaviour, sir. How should I recognise you then?”

He laughed, not at all offended. Looking ahead, he pointed to a gondola moored at the end of the Grand Canal. “That is the finish line. Once there, we shall go back to my apartments together. You can send for your things.”

Vincent hesitated and looked back to Jane, who gave a minute shake of her head. “I think … that we may be settled with Signor Sanuto. We have business in Murano, and that is where he lives.”

“I suppose that is just as well, as I am leaving town in the next day or so. Whenever I can make up my mind to actually go, which is so difficult sometimes to put into action. In this case, however, there is a young lady who has quite caught my attention, and I feel compelled to pursue her.”

He had no shame in his nature, it seemed. Jane asked, “To La Mira?”

“Heavens, no. That affair was over last month, when the lady threatened to jump into the canal and then did.” He shook his head. “No, this young lady is in her appearance altogether like an antelope. She is a famous songstress—scientifically so; her natural voice (in conversation, I mean) is very sweet, and the naïveté of the Venetian dialect is always pleasing in the mouth of a woman. Now, if you will excuse me.” He lowered his head and began to swim in earnest, moving away to the gondola marked as the finish line.

Vincent drew back into the cabin and whispered, “When he gets out of the water, do not stare at his feet. The right is a club, and he loathes having attention drawn to it.”

Do not stare at his feet? The man was without clothing. Jane had no intention of watching him
at all
when he emerged from the canal. She resolutely kept her eyes on her gloves as he hoisted himself out of the water and into the gondola.

Vincent leaned closer to her. “It is safe to look now. He has a blanket wrapped round him.” That made her blush even more deeply, yet Jane lifted her eyes. Lord Byron sat in the prow of his gondola with his feet out of sight. Bending down, he lifted a bottle of champagne from a bucket of ice. “Look what I have won. Join me?”

*   *   *

The interior of Lord
Byron’s apartments was in better condition than the walls outside had suggested. Tall ceilings with friezes and gilt murals surrounded moth-eaten carpets, which lay over vast marble floors. In places, the walls had been replaced by glamour to mask crumbling plaster. Other holes had been papered over to keep draughts and rats out.

Yet the rooms were comfortable and had clearly been designed to be lived in rather than simply viewed. Lord Byron had set his own stamp upon the space with his collection of oddities picked up in his travels. Key among these was his ménagerie of animals. Dogs roamed the palazzo freely, lounging on sofas or curled in front of the hearth. A monkey sat perched atop the valance spanning a great window overlooking the canal, and another hopped on to Lord Byron’s shoulder the moment they entered the palazzo.

The little grey creature remained there as they entered the drawing room, and Lord Byron reached up to scratch the fur under its little chin. He walked with a slight roll that nearly masked the lameness in his right foot. As much as he collected animals, the poet appeared to collect people as well. He nodded to several individuals as they passed through the palazzo: a man in a gondolier’s uniform read with his feet up on a coffee table, an odd young man in a fez fiddled with a lock on a door, a young woman in half dress ate bonbons on the balcony, and another man wrote at a desk.

Lord Byron patted a bulldog who rose to meet him with stumpy tail wagging. “Moretto, were you a good boy today?”

“He only ate one of my papers, but he also made off with
il dottore
’s shoe.” The man at the desk rose, setting his quill down as he did. He was a compact man with an aquiline nose and dark hair brushed forward around his face.

“He did bring it back, to be fair.”
Il dottore,
the man with the fez, continued to examine the lock. “How did the race go?”

“I won, of course.” Lord Byron flung himself down on a sofa, putting his feet up on the cushion. “Mingaldo was miles behind and hallooing for a boat. Utterly knocked up. He says he was undone by bad shellfish yesterday.”

The man by the desk
hmm
ed, and then crossed the room to Jane and Vincent. “I am John Hobhouse, at your service.”