Falcon in the Glass

by Susan Fletcher

  PROLOGUE

  It was a ghostly sight, so startlingly strange that for some time afterward the captain wondered if he might have imagined it. It appeared out of the fog, out of the hush of the still waters before him, as he guided his ship among the haze-shrouded islands of the lagoon.

  At first it was a faint, darkish smudge on the water. As it grew near, the smudge thickened into the shape of a small, sail-less boat, filled stem to stern with . . .

  Children, was it?

  Children and birds?

  The little craft rode low in the water, packed tight with its odd, silent cargo. The birds, varied in size and shape, perched on shoulders, on arms, on wrists, on fingers, on heads.

  As the boat passed hard by his ship, a girl looked up and caught the captain’s eye. Her face was heart-shaped, elfin. Her eyes were fierce. For a long moment they gazed at each other, captain and girl. Then the little boat slid away behind him and vanished in the mist.

  PART I

  FALCON

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  1.

  Stranger in the Glassworks

  Something rustled in the dark — a sound so faint, Renzo barely heard it at all, but it told him he was not alone.

  Out of the corner of one ear, he heard it. His eyes and mind and heart had belonged entirely to the glass before him, and not to the signs of danger.

  It glowed copper-orange, the glass — a veined and stunted sun blazing in the gloom of the workshop. Renzo had gathered it, molten, on the end of the blowpipe; he had rolled it on the stone malmoro; he had shaped it in the magiosso mold. He had set the pipe to his lips and breathed — just long enough and hard enough to belly out the glass in the slightest curve and begin to make it his.

  Of sounds he’d taken no notice. Not the roar of the furnace, nor the splash of water when the magiosso dropped into its bath, nor even the soft, secret whoosh of his breath inside the pipe.

  He heard them but did not mark them. Not until the new sound came — the rustling, faint and quick.

  He stood still as stones now, waves of prickling gooseflesh coursing down his back. This was a different kind of sound, out of place in the glassworks in the dead of night. It was a sound an assassin might make, hiding deep in shadow, his legs beginning to cramp, not wanting to move but forced by pain to shift position. Or a hesitation sound, perhaps. The assassin wondering, Shall I make my move now, or later?

  It was a sound Renzo’s father might have heard these many months since, on the last night of his life.

  It came again:

  Rustle-shiver-scritch.

  Above!

  Renzo peered up into the shadows, where the furnace’s glow flickered across the rafters.

  And beheld a bird.

  Renzo’s knees went weak; his breath escaped in a sigh of relief.

  Only a bird.

  He wanted to laugh then, at his foolishness. At his heart, still clattering between his ribs. At the glass, now a misshapen lump — darkening as it cooled, crumpling in upon itself.

  Only a bird. A little falcon — a kestrel.

  He watched it for a moment, breathing, waiting for his heart to settle. The assassins would not return, he told himself. They’d done what they’d come to do. And whatever befell his traitor of an uncle, it would be far from here.

  The falcon rattled its feathers. Better get it out of here. The padrone did not tolerate birds in the glassworks. What if a feather — or worse — should fall on the smooth surface of a newly worked cup or bowl?

  Renzo knocked the blowpipe against the rim of the pail at his feet; the glass cracked off and clattered among the heaped remains of his earlier failures. Simpler forms gave him no trouble, but the complicated ones . . . Sometimes he wished he had three hands.

  He set the blowpipe on the rack beside the other pipes and rods, then made his way across the wide, open floor of the glassworks and opened the oaken door.

  Outside, still waters lapped against stone. The chill winter breeze touched his face, carrying the smells of the lagoon: fish, and salt, and tar. Mist rose from the dark canal and crept like smoke along the lane, blurring the silent houses, making them wavery, gauzy — homes for ghosts. The sweat grew clammy on Renzo’s body and made him shiver. His shoulders and arms and back all ached; a dark pool of weariness pressed down on the crown of his head and seeped into his eyes.

  Nothing had gone well tonight. And he was so far behind.

  He stepped back inside, clapped his hands, shouted at the bird. But it must have felt snug there, high up in the rafters. It did not budge.

  He scooped up a handful of pebbles from outside and tossed one at the bird. It let out a hoarse cry and took off flying. He pursued, throwing more pebbles, not trying to hit it, just drive it out the door.

  “Cease with that! Basta!”

  Renzo’s heart seized. He whirled round to see who had shouted.

  The figure came hurtling out of the shadows behind the woodpile. Came so fast, Renzo barely had time to put up his hands to defend himself before she was raining blows down upon him. He might have lashed out, except that she was smaller than he, and he saw that she was a girl. No more than twelve or thirteen years old, he thought. No older than he, himself.

  She dealt him one last shove and then bolted toward the open doorway. She twisted back and sent the kestrel a look — a strange look, like a summons. The bird sailed out of the workshop behind her.

  Astounded, Renzo stared after them — girl and bird fleeing together, dissolving into the dark, into the mist. Before they vanished entirely, he thought he saw the kestrel swoop down and come to perch upon her shoulder as she ran.

  But he must have imagined that.

  2.

  Prophecy

  Renzo! Did you hear me?”

  The padrone was frowning, his face etched deep with unhappiness.

  “What is amiss with you? Have you gone deaf? I told you to remove this bowl to the annealing chamber.”

  Renzo leaned his broom against the stacked crates of finished glass. He crossed the floor toward the furnace, the bright-hot roaring core of the glassworks, where the padrone and two other masters worked the glass. The heat licked at Renzo, drawing sweat from his brow; he picked up the goblet bowl with the lifting irons and hurried toward the rear of the furnace.

  Her face still swam before him — the girl from the night before.

  All that morning it had done so — in the slivers of glass he swept from the floor, in the mounds of sand and soda in the poisons room, in the surfaces of the worked glass he bore to and from the annealing chamber. He had glimpsed it for a moment only, that face. But now, in memory, Renzo found he could capture and explore it, discover far more than he had grasped in the quick blink of an eye when she had stood before him in the flesh.

  It was a small face, and thin. From the size of it he might have thought it belonged to a younger child, in her tenth year or maybe eleventh. But he had seen something older in her eyes — green eyes, intensely green — and something terrible, too.

  Terribly afraid. Terribly fierce. Both at the selfsame time.

  He had not seen her before. He would have remembered.

  Renzo set the bowl in the annealing chamber, high in the dome above the main furnace. Thinking back, sifting through his recollections. A dark, ragged cloud of hair. A thin cloak, shaggy with tattered threads and fringes.

  “Renzo! Pick up the tagianti and fetch them here. No, not those. The rounded ones. Have you gone blind? Pay attention! And the compass, if I may disturb you to bestir your feet. Presto! The glass will not wait for you; it is cooling as I speak.”

  The padrone’s habitual thin-lipped scowl deepened as Renzo handed him the tools, but Sergio, the padrone’s eldest son and apprentic
e, was smiling. A mocking smile.

  Renzo lingered to watch as the padrone stretched out a long, narrow cord of glowing glass. He was not a large man, but he was strong; ropy muscles stood out on his arms and neck. Renzo drew closer, until the heat came at him in waves, as the padrone handed Sergio the borsella and instructed him how to persuade the glass to transform itself into something new.

  It would be a wineglass stem, Renzo saw — a lovely, delicate thing shaped like two interwoven vines. His weariness lifted as he watched Sergio’s hands, clumsy at first, and then slowly learning what was required of them as the vines twined upward, seemingly hungry for sunlight. Renzo fixed every movement into memory, his own fingers itching to work the glass.

  He recalled what it was to stand in the savage, shimmering heat with his father close beside him. To breathe the familiar smell of wood smoke, to hear Papà’s voice, above the deep throb of the furnace, rumbling in his ear: Just a little twist, Renzo, is all that is required here. Then pull. Now, now, now, just now, but more fluid with the twist. Do you see it? Do you see?

  Renzo swallowed. Cleared the thickness from his throat.

  Sergio glanced up. “The furnace needs stoking,” he said.

  Renzo waited. It was not his duty to stoke the furnace. That was for Anzoleto, who had stepped out to obey the call of nature. Renzo was a laborer, a drudge, but it was possible to go lower. Cutting wood and feeding the fire were the lowest jobs in the glassworks.

  “Perhaps,” Sergio said, “the drudge prefers not to work himself. Perhaps we should hire a drudge for the drudge.”

  He laughed, but the padrone did not. He grunted, then glanced up as Anzoleto appeared in the doorway. “Tend to your own work, Sergio,” the padrone said. “Do not disappoint me. You must do better than this.” He broke Sergio’s wine stem from the pontello and flung it into the bucket of broken glass. The padrone turned to Renzo and Anzoleto. “Everyone! Tend to your work.”

  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 c
hildren?” 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!