Lysette

by Sylvia Halliday

  She grunted in assent, too tired even to speak, and snuggled against his chest.

  If, tomorrow, she must live with her fear of bearing children, and the responsibilities of life, and the thieving years that put a stranger into her mirror—tonight she was safe in his sheltering arms.

  Chapter Fifteen

  November brought with it a cold wind, the first light dusting of snow, and Rondini. More properly, as Jean-Auguste introduced him with a flourish, Giacopo Rondini, master glassmaker, and his son Guglielmo. Darkly handsome, father and son, with crisp black hair and liquid eyes, their faces spoke of olive groves in the warm sun, of the hills of Tuscany and the lagoons of Venice, of the heritage their ancestors had left a century before. Rondini swept off his plumed hat and bowed elaborately to Lysette with a flamboyant panache all the more remarkable because there was not a shred of arrogance in his manner. A proud man, sure of his skills, aware of the special place his art reserved for him in society—not quite the equal of the lord of the manor, yet far above even the most exalted servant. A young man about Lysette’s age, Guglielmo had the sparkle of his father but with the impetuosity of his own tender years; Jean-Auguste’s presence scarcely dampened the enthusiasm with which he kissed Lysette’s hand and appraised her with his dark brown eyes. Accustomed as she was to flattering glances and masculine admiration, she still found herself almost disconcerted by the openness of his regard; as though he deemed it perfectly proper to ravish her with his eyes as long as he respected her virtue as the wife of the seigneur.

  By the time they sat down to supper in the small salon, however, Lysette had begun to relax and enjoy Guglielmo’s approbation. He seemed to find her fascinating; he laughed delightedly at all her witticisms, and smiled dazzlingly only for her. Indeed, even the elder Rondini was more and more beguiled by her charm, telling her at great length about his ancestors who had been master glassmakers in Venice. In those days, he said, the glassmakers had lived as virtual prisoners on an island in the lagoon, enjoying great wealth and honors—the glassmakers of Murano being the only commoners allowed to intermarry with the nobility—but prevented from communicating with the outside world lest the secrets of their art be revealed. While Lysette sat spellbound he told her of one glassmaker who had managed to escape; members of the Guild had tracked him to the very gates of Paris, and there murdered him horribly. That was, of course, he said, in the old times, when the secrets were more carefully guarded; many men knew the formulas today, he said, though few possessed the fine skills of the past. That was why a man needed a son—to keep the art alive.

  After supper, armed with a bright torch, he insisted that Lysette and Jean-Auguste come to the stables to see the supplies he had brought with him; besides two geese, an old brown cow, and half a dozen sheep with which he and his son would set up housekeeping, there was a large, ox-drawn wagon piled high with the trappings of his trade. Iron rods and pipes and pincers. Sacks of fire clay to make bricks for the furnace and the kiln. Powders and salts and metal oxides that, used with skill, would clarify the glass, purging it of unwanted colors or adding hues developed through centuries of the art. A strange chair—a blower’s bench, Rondini called it—with disproportionately long arms extending out some fifteen to eighteen inches, at which the master sat and rested his blowpipe between prodigious puffs. A large barrel filled with cullet, bits and pieces of broken and discarded glass. Added to a fresh batch of sand and salt and lime, it would hasten the melting and aid the fusion of the ingredients.

  Proudly, Rondini pointed out half a dozen large clay bowls, as big across as the distance from a man’s shoulder to his fingertips; Lysette smiled in admiration, though she scarce could see what made them so extraordinary. Crucibles, he said, for melting the mixture in the furnace. It had taken many months to make them, he said, for if they were fashioned carelessly they might shatter in the heat of the furnace, spilling out their contents of molten glass. It was properly a potter’s skill, he said, but a master glassmaker, trained in the old ways, knew how to mix the fire clay, curing it for several months until it was the proper consistency. Like his father before him, he had been taught to knead the clay with his bare feet; the resilience of it under the weight of his body gave a more accurate reading than that produced by his hands. When the clay had been rolled into a rope it was spiraled into a pot shape, and then pounded into its final form. After more months of drying, it was baked in a kiln. Even after such care, there was always the possibility, however slight, that some small flaw, a tiny air bubble perhaps, might still live in the heart of the crucible, waiting to explode in the depths of the furnace. It was the glassmaker’s nightmare, he said with a shudder, making the sign of the Cross and glaring at Guglielmo until he too crossed himself to ward off the disaster.

  The next few weeks saw Chimère bustling with activity. The forester, Simon Vacher, set to work with his men clearing a space in the stand of beechwood near a wide stream. Workmen had been hired from Vouvray, carpenters and brickmakers and plasterers; the first order of business was a small stone and timber house in which the Rondini would live. There was a narrow pen for their animals, and space left for a garden to be planted in the spring; a widow from Vouvray, a robust woman with a young son, was brought in to run the household for the two men.

  A small kiln was fashioned of clay, protected from the elements by a shed; while the brickmakers baked their finished bricks within its heated interior, Vacher and his men used the roof of the shed to stack and dry the wood they had begun to clear from the forests.

  When the bricks were baked and cool, Rondini directed the building of the furnace: a huge dome shape, like a giant beehive, with a vent at the top and a stokehole at the bottom for feeding the flames and raking out ashes. There were two openings in the sides of the thick walls, large enough for the crucibles, and two smaller holes (“glory holes,” Rondini called them, for reheating the glass as they worked), placed to take advantage of the hottest portion of the fire. Attached to the side of the furnace was a large hollow space, like a bubble with an opening—the cooling oven, in which the finished glass could cool for the several days necessary to retain its strength. After the bricks of the furnace had been mortared into place, the whole was covered with a thick skin of plaster and smoothed over.

  Now the carpenters set to work building the glasshouse around the furnace. It was a rough wooden structure, open at the top, with an adjustable roof that could be slid open or closed to regulate the heat and drafts. There were large, paneless windows in the walls, with heavy wooden shutters to be used only in the most inclement weather, for without an outside breeze the heat within the glasshouse could be intense.

  Beyond the stream a wide but shallow pit had been dug; within it a large fire had been set, fueled by a steady supply of beechwood and oak and ferns. Even the children of the vignerons were put to work gathering ferns, and they danced merrily about the bonfire, throwing on armfuls of their gleanings, squealing in glee each time a burning log crackled and sputtered. After several days portions of the fire were allowed to die down; the ashes were raked out and placed in a wooden tub that was set over a large iron pot. Water from the stream was poured over the ashes until the solution leached from the tub into the pot. Finally the pot with its liquid was heated slowly over a small fire until the moisture evaporated and only a fine powder was left. “The salt,” Rondini called it in the manner of the old glassmakers, and if the fire was kept burning steadily and the ashes leached and evaporated, a great deal of this potash could be produced in a short time.

  Several workmen had been sent to the cliffs to gather chunks of the limestone and crush them with heavy sledges; poured into burlap sacks, the powdered lime had been trundled to the clearing and stacked in a sheltered corner of the shed. Rondini himself selected the site near the river from which the sand would be dug, running the grains through his fingers and examining them closely with a practiced eye before pointing to the very spot wherein the gravel pit was to be dug. Washed in the river, t
hen sifted and crushed, the sand would be the essential ingredient in the making of the glass. It was not, in itself, of a fineness that would produce anything but common glass (though Rondini possessed the oxides and salts necessary to purify the mixture should he wish to mold a fine piece of crystal); still, if he selected his sand with care, even the ordinary wine bottles would be pleasing to look upon as well as useful.

  Lysette was fascinated with all the activity; she rode often to the clearing or, heavy cloak bundled about her, trudged through the woods to watch the work in progress. The Rondini never failed to treat her with the dignity due her station, though Guglielmo could never quite hide his ardor, and even Giacopo’s soft brown eyes had begun to appraise the woman as well as the Lady. They answered her questions patiently, pleased at her interest. And, truth to tell, though she had begun out of mere politeness, she found herself more and more absorbed by the details of their work. It was odd. There surely had been glassmakers in Soligne as well as Chartres, yet her preoccupation with her own small world had precluded even the tiniest spark of curiosity; indeed, she had shattered half a score of goblets and vessels in some childish rage or fit of pique, and never once had wondered about the magical glass she destroyed so wantonly.

  She was surprised to find Dominique often at the glasshouse, bent on some errand or other; it was not like the maid to seek out extra chores (much as Lysette disliked admitting it to herself, Bricole had perhaps been right when he spoke of the girl’s idleness). Then she discovered that the young vigneron, Etienne, had been put to work helping the carpenters; as if by magic Dominique would appear at the glasshouse, bearing food and drink from the kitchens, and linger in the clearing long after the men had been fed.

  One day, just as Dominique was enjoying a coy flirtation with Etienne, he was sent up to the roof to fasten the crossbeams. The maid, fearful for his safety, and proud and shy all at once, moved back from the clearing until she stood on the path leading from the woods, from whence she could watch him at her pleasure, mouth agape, one hand clutched to her bosom, while he made his precarious way from one beam to another, calling down occasionally to his fellows on the ground below. So engrossed was Dominique that she did not see Simon Vacher and his men, laden with heavy branches and rotted tree trunks, coming down the path from the woods; when they stopped before her so that she might step aside and let them pass, she clucked her tongue in annoyance and moved reluctantly out of their way. But her interest in Etienne was not to be dampened; within a few minutes she had quite forgotten Vacher and had drifted back onto that spot on the path that gave her the clearest view of him, perched on the roof. When Vacher and his men returned from the wood shed, empty-handed, she glared defiantly at the forester and held her ground. Without a word, he picked her up, sunbrowned hands circling her narrow waist, and planted her in a patch of dried leaves beside the path. She squealed in surprise and anger; when he had passed, she lost no time in recapturing her place, hurling venomous curses at his retreating back. This time, when he and his men returned burdened with a fresh load of wood, the knots on Vacher’s brown arms swollen with the exertion until there seemed scarce any difference between his limbs and the gnarled tree limbs he bore, Dominique crossed her arms stubbornly and refused to budge, her narrow face pinched in belligerence. Vacher put down his log and sighed deeply, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm, but his eyes twinkled merrily. Then he smiled, his white teeth startling against the mahogany of his face, and took a step toward Dominique. She hesitated, wavered, stamped her foot as though she would halt his progress by the very movement, then scampered out of his way, fearful of the determination that lay behind his impudent grin.

  Watching the scene from her horse, Lysette frowned at Vacher’s behavior. It was scarcely fair to Dominique. While she herself found Etienne little to her liking—singularly handsome, with the arrogance of one who knows he is well-favored—the maid clearly was smitten by him and had no need to be humiliated so by Vacher in Etienne’s presence. Lysette determined to speak to Jean-Auguste; Simon Vacher should be made to understand that he must stop tormenting the girl.

  A new problem arose. While the work went on—the gathering of the materials, the finishing of the glasshouse—Giacopo Rondini and his son had begun to mix up sample batches to be melted in the kiln. So much sand and potash, lime for stability and strength, a handful of cullet—that store of glass shards—ground to a powder and added to the mixture. But they were hot-tempered and volatile, father and son, and each day the glasshouse shook with the arguments that raged back and forth; Guglielmo, young, imaginative, filled with new ideas and proposals, Giacopo just as firmly convinced that the old ways were best. In vain Jean-Auguste was sent for, and spent long hours closeted with the two; he emerged exasperated and haggard, convinced there would be no rapprochement, that the glassworks would fail before a single bottle had been molded.

  Lysette had observed the proceedings with a certain sense of annoyance: what impossible children men could be when they put their minds to it! After two days of listening to Jean-Auguste complain of the hopelessness of the situation, she marched resolutely to the glasshouse to beard the lions in their den.

  The Rondini, cowed by her flashing violet eyes, listened humbly as she chastened them for the turmoil they had caused; then she smiled sweetly at them both until they melted into malleable clay. How could Guglielmo play the ingrate, she chided gently? Was his father not wise and good, his teacher, his mentor? And as for Giacopo—did not he, when a young man, chafe with impatience to try new ways? Was not Guglielmo son to the father, touched by his wisdom and molded in his image? Surely there was a compromise to be striven for by two such fine men! She found them both so charming, she said—what a disappointment when they behaved thus, with such intransigence! When she left, having shaken the father’s hand warmly and patted the son on the cheek, the Rondini, all smiles and cooperation, had already begun again to mix their batches of glass, deferring one to the other—an extra grain of sand for Guglielmo, a pinch of oxide for Giacopo.

  For her part, Lysette was pleased at the reaffirmation of her power to charm and entrance. She was fond of the Rondini, of course, and truly had wanted peace between them; still, it was gratifying to see the influence she had over them. Gratifying, too, that Jean-Auguste seemed equally dazzled by her bewitchment of the glassmakers. Had he thought about it, she reflected wryly, he might have realized that, since his return, she had used that same charm to keep him at a distance and out of her bed as often as she could.

  It had become too cold for constant baths—her skin chafed and itched under the onslaught of the northern winds—and long wild rides left her shivering and numb. Dominique had discovered another preventive from a friend in Vouvray—something to do with drawing a cross on her belly with the ashes from the fire; but by and large, though Lysette was careful to make for the hearth as soon as Jean-Auguste had left her room at night, she was inclined to doubt the efficacy of the method.

  Of course, she could always prevail upon Jean-Auguste to withdraw at the precise moment when his seed was dispatched (what was the line from the play she had seen once—the heroine cautioning her paramour: “Ye may romp with reckless joy upon the shores of love, but not one drop shall ye spill!”), but while that might do for a mistress with an accommodating lover, she was scarcely sure that a husband would find it to his liking. Not even a husband as agreeable as Jean-Auguste!

  No. She did best to rely on her wits and her charm. It had become easy to read Jean-Auguste’s mood, to know when he would stop her on the staircase with his gentle question—“Shall you sleep directly tonight?”—and to compose her face into a mask of dolor long before she had crossed the hallway to the stairwell. Alas. A headache. A slight chill. A touch of dyspepsia. She begged his indulgence, her large eyes soft and helpless. As you wish, he would murmur, and turn away.

  And sometimes, when he seemed to be studying her over the supper table, his open face creased in a frown as though he woul
d brook no excuse that night, she would pout and find some small reason—genuine or invented—to quarrel with him and flounce angrily to her room.

  There were times, however, when they had laughed together at supper, or spent the afternoon riding in warm companionship, that he caught her unawares, his amiable request couched in such genial good humor that she could not refuse him. It always annoyed her, to be rendered helpless by his affability, to find she had lost the battle without a skirmish. Aggrieved, she would submit to him sulkily, so that he found no satisfaction in her, despite his ardor.

  But during the day she was charming and sweet to him, taking his hand, kissing him on the cheek, playing the helpless maiden victimized by her own feminine weaknesses, until—seemingly puzzled, confused—he almost forgave her her nighttime capriciousness. She was never completely sure, of course (the devil take those piercing gray eyes!), that he was not aware of her games and manipulations, but what did it matter? As long as he was willing to defer to her, let him think what he wished!

  Toward the end of November, word came that Corbie had been recaptured. It seemed the perfect opportunity to plan a soirée in celebration, as well as to introduce Lysette to some of the local gentry. She was delighted to leave the details to Bricole (once she had seen to it that André’s name headed the list of invited guests!), and concentrate on her gown, her jewels, her coiffure. My vain little wife, Jean-Auguste called her, though not with the same indulgence and lightheartedness he had shown heretofore. Indeed there was a growing coolness in his manner which disturbed her greatly, inasmuch as she found it more and more difficult to wring a compliment from him, a kind word, a flattering glance—the vital elixir that fed her spirit.

  She was surprised at how bored she was at her own party. Except for André, splendid in rich brocade, there was not a single noble or magistrate or government functionary in the whole district who was worth a second glance. She might have been amused had her young lieutenant appeared, but he had eased his disappointment at losing her to Narbaux by marrying some merchant’s daughter from Vouvray who guarded her prize jealously and kept him away from the society of other women.