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
Even 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.
But now he found there could be comfort in company, too — the presence of another quietly working there beside him, the companionable melodic clink of the iron tools above the ever-present roar of the furnace. Letta was not the chattersome type. She knew the art of silence. But she brought in a breath of the outside world: the smell of birds and the sea and the wind above the marsh. Her presence made him feel less cloistered, less alone.
Most nights her kestrel came with her. It perched up in the rafters, away from where they worked the glass. Usually it drowsed, fluffing out its feathers and tucking its head beneath a wing. At the end of every night’s work, Letta scoured the floor for feathers and pellets and droppings.
A cage would prevent that, Renzo thought. But he sensed that she would not welcome this idea, so he forbore speaking about the kestrel at all, until the first night she arrived without it. When he asked where it was, she gave him a hard, steady glare that told him that he mustn’t inquire about her bird — not ever.
Very well, he thought. He didn’t truly care. He didn’t care if she ever ate the food he gave her — which he never once saw her do. He didn’t care if she never ate at all. He didn’t care what she did — so long as she came to help him work.
On Letta’s fifth night in the glassworks, Renzo was stooping to pick up another log to split when he heard a sound — a sharp rasping noise. A cough?
He stood. Listened.
Rain, drumming on the roof. The roar of the furnace. His bloodbeat pounding in his ears.
He scanned the room, peered deep into the far, dim corners. Fear reared up inside him, twisted into the shape of an assassin, of a spy, of the padrone standing in the shadows, preparing to cast him out. Or . . . He remembered the shadow in the trees at the churchyard. Might it be . . . ?
“Did you hear that?” he asked Letta.
“Hear what?” she said. Head down. Tossing a stick into the fire.
The sound again. Clearer now. Definitely a cough — from the storage room.
“There. Did you hear?”
“Hear what?” she said again. Not looking at him.
She knew. Whatever it was, she knew.
A bright flash of rage engulfed him, burned away his fears. If she had betrayed him, he wanted to know how. He took up a torch from a cresset, thrust it into the fire.
“Sounds like a cat,” Letta said. “I must’ve left the shutters open. Stay here; I’ll see to it.”
“No.”
“Don’t,” she said. She ran to him, took hold of his sleeve. He shook her off, made for the storage room.
“Stay,” she pleaded. “You don’t have t’ know — you don’t want to. If you see, you’ll have to . . .” She caught his sleeve again. “Please.”
He’d never thought to hear her beg. He tore away from her and flung open the storage room door.
A fluttering noise. Something moving on the shelves above; Renzo held up the torch and found them one by one: a crow, a magpie, a sparrow, a marsh hawk.
Something smelled different. A smell of sweat, of loam, of dampness — damp linen, damp wool.
The cough sounded again. Renzo turned his gaze to the welter of lumps on the floor, a floor that should have been bare.
They huddled together — sitting, squatting, lying.
Children.
They gazed up at him. He brought the torch down, bathed them each by each in light. Seven children. A long-legged wading bird. A finch.
The children’s eyes were green. Bright green.
Every single one.
10.
Beware
The old woman felt it long before she saw it. Or rather, she felt her owl, who had been slumbering on her shoulder, rouse and fluff his wings. She kenned with him. Sensed curiosity. Excitement. Recognition.
Welcoming.
She rose painfully to her feet, hips popping, knees creaking as if rusted deep within the joint. The hard stone floor of the dungeon had cramped her muscles into knots; the damp cold crept numbingly into her bones and never left. She paced the perimeter of her tiny cell, stretching out the kinks in her spine.
She felt hope rising warm within her.
The woman stopped. Listened.
Nothing but dungeon sounds.
The faint drip of water. The scuttling of a rat nearby. The distant human moans and cries that echoed about the stone walls.
Likely the other bird was still out over the lagoon, for her owl could hear far and sense farther.
The woman’s own hearing had dimmed over the years. Voices had grown thinner, often blurring at the edges, bleeding indecipherably into other sounds. Noises that used to be small and crisp now eluded her altogether. She seldom heard, for instance, the death squeals before her owl returned with some unlucky mouse or vole for his dinner. But her ears themselves now produced a music of their own — a faint, high ringing that robbed her of the peace of silence.
Her sight had faded as well. Yet her sense of smell, perversely, had hung on. In this place losing that would have been a blessing. She would not miss the reek of the dungeon, nor the stench of the food they brought her. Crawling with maggots. Encrusted with mold.
Her owl roused again. He flew from her shoulder and perched — shot through with alertness — between the bars in the window of her cell door.
The woman drew in breath. She stood still, eyes fixed on the barred window. Waiting. Remembering.
As the present world had grown dimmer to her, the past had grown strangely bright. Sometimes when she closed her eyes the dead came to her. Her sister and her brothers, her very first owl. Her father’s rumbling laughter. Her mother’s touch, smoothing her hair, resting warm on the crown of her head. Matteo . . .
Sometimes she felt the pain of their absence — sharp and convulsive, a seizing of the heart. Other times she felt that they were with her still, watching over her. That they had never truly gone.
She had felt so safe back in the far country of her youth, in the mountains near Grenoble. But then the mobs came, and her people had been forced to flee and scatter.
For her people, nowhere was safe for long.
She’d known that they’d have to leave this place. She just hadn’t realized how quickly the noose would cinch tight.
The owl stirred, let out a soft, eager trill. Now the woman could hear a beating of wings. The new bird swooped between the bars and circled in the gloom of the cell, shedding drops of water. It landed at last on the woman’s wrist.
It was the one she’d most hoped for. And, tied to its leg, a message.
With practiced fingers she untied the capsule. It was wet. The new bird fluttered up to the sill, beside the owl. The woman unrolled the thin strip of parchment and squatted by the little oil lamp the guards had given her — a lamp that stank vilely and produced more smoke than light. She cursed her old eyes as she strained to decipher the tiny script. Fortunately, the rain had not penetrated to the ink; it had not smeared.
She read it twice.
Well. Her granddaughter had ever had her own ideas. Not biddable, that one. But she herself had never been biddable, even as a girl. She read the message a third time, to be sure she had understood it aright. Then she tore it into bits and strewed them among the heaps of dust and grime that collected in the corners of her cell.
“Take care, Letta,” she whispered. “Beware.”
11.
Blot Out the Sun
The children watched him, their faces standing out dimly in the gloom. Faces empty of hope or fear, but only waiting. As you would wait for a far-off storm to cross the sky. As you would wait for it to blot out the sun.
Rain drummed on the roof, rattled at the shutters. The wading bird with long, red legs fluttered up to perch on a shelf near the others. It tucked up one foot, then turned to regard Renzo with a quick, hard, pitiless eye.
Renzo turned to Letta. “What’s this?”
“They’re cold,” she said. “They’ve nowhere t’ shelter come nighttime.”
“You let them in?”
She stared back at him. Didn’t reply.
He glanced at the children. The weight of their gazes dragged at him. And those birds! He had seen the falcon and the wading bird without thinking too much about them. True, it was odd, keeping the birds about, uncaged. Especially the way Letta seemed to send her bird thither and yon without whistle, gesture, or word. But now, seeing all these birds together . . .
Wild birds.
Somehow, when he’d heard about a troop of children who performed with birds, he’d thought of doves, or maybe pigeons. But these wild birds, and the children’s green eyes . . .
He shivered. They were more than odd. They were spooky.
“Make them go. They can’t stay here. They’ll ruin everything.”
“Ruin?” A note of anger crept into her voice. “What d’you know of ruin? Ruin’s nothing to do with your precious glass. It’s three days with nil to eat, it’s every night wet and shivering in a marsh, it’s disappearing and nobody hears of you ever again.”
“You know nothing of me,” he said. “Or of my family, or of what we’ve endured.”
“I know you’re feverous t’ prove yourself. I know you’re to be tested. I know you’re needing my help.”
“I’ll find someone else, then!” Though, where else, he wondered, could he find someone so quick to learn? Someone who required no pay? He sighed. “Be reasonable,” he said. “If I let them stay, they’ll be discovered. You could hide easily enough alone, but with all of them . . .” He’d lose his position. He’d have to give up the glass, forever. And Mama and Pia . . . “My family will starve; they’ll be put out in the cold.”
“And what of my family?” She gazed at him, a flat, dead stare — as cold as the wading bird’s eye — and he heard the echo of his own words. As if it would be unthinkable for his own family to starve or be left out in the cold, but tolerable for these children. He felt a stab of embarrassment, of shame.
“These are . . . your brothers and sisters?”
She hesitated. “They’re family.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant. Not, he suspected, what he meant by the word. But in any case these children were nomads. This was the life they were accustomed to. It was none of Renzo’s doing.
“There must be somewhere else they can shelter,” he said.
“There isn’t.”
“There must be.”
“There’s only the marsh, and it’s colder by the day! Things’re happening now. Things that you, in your cozy little world, can’t imagine.”
“You know nothing of my world! You’re so full of your own righteousness, you think you’re so smart, but it’s you who know nothing.”
A long, hacking spasm sounded from the storage room. Renzo peered through the doorway, lifted his torch to see. It was the boy, the one from the marsh. He was shivering. None of them had shoes, Renzo saw — just rags, like the marsh boy and Letta. Some few cloaks there were, but most of the children wore nothing over their tunics, patched and worn and tattered. Their limbs looked nearly as thin and bony as the legs of the birds perched on the shelves above. Tangled hair hung across the children’s eyes; grime splotched their faces; their noses dripped.
The shutter flew open in a sudden gust of wind, banged against the casement. The torch guttered, sending black shadows flickering across the room. Needles of rain slanted in, tapping on the casement, on the floor. Renzo felt the chill creep inside, felt it thread in invisible currents across his body.
“They’ll take sick in the marsh,” Letta said. “They’ll catch the lung fever and die.”
He breathed in, filling his chest with a sinking heaviness. Bad enough that he was sheltering the girl, but if anyone caught the children here, the children and their birds . . .
“Only in the storage room,” he said. “Only when you’re here. And they’ll have to cage their birds—”
“No.”
“They must.”
“We never cage our birds. Not ever.”
“Well, then you’ll have to clean up after them — every single feather and dropping.”
She nodded.
“Promise,” he insisted.
“I promise,” she said. “For true.”
But Renzo
had a dark foreboding that he’d started down a path he’d soon regret.
◆ ◆ ◆
For a while they honored his wishes. Sometime after midnight Letta would watch for Taddeo to leave. Then she opened the unlatched shutters and helped the children crawl in through the window to the storeroom. She settled them in and then went to work with Renzo. Every morning, before she left, she and a few of the older ones cleaned up droppings and feathers.
Still, it distracted him — frightened him — knowing they were there. Knowing he could be interrupted at any moment. Imagining what would happen if someone came into the glassworks and found the children.
Sometimes, just when he was on the verge of attaching a stem to a base, or perfecting the lip of an urn, a small voice would call out, “Letta?”
She would say, “Wait!” and help Renzo finish what he was doing. But the rhythm had been broken; he could never quite get it back. Even after Letta returned from whatever crisis had required her attention — a bloody nose, a full bladder, another coughing spell — he seethed inwardly at the interruption. She always explained to him what had happened, but he didn’t want to know their troubles, nor even their names. Didn’t want to be responsible.
But the work went on, faring better than Renzo had dared hope. Letta seemed to have a natural grasp of what the glass wanted. Or perhaps it was that she could read Renzo in the eerie way that she and her kestrel seemed to read each other.
He quashed his curiosity. He didn’t want to know.
In any case, over several days they went from molded bowls with ribs to fluted drinking cups to long-stemmed goblets. Moving in and out of the wall of pulsating heat, the bright orange glow of molten glass before them, the roar of the furnace in their ears. Learning the wordless dance of master and apprentice — shuffle and pivot and dip. Soon Letta knew exactly where to place the tools so that his hands could easily find them. She knew to bear the cooling glass to the furnace to make it pliable again whenever he took a drink of water. She knew when to breathe into the blowpipe while, with the borsella, he coaxed the glass into a pleasing shape.
Falcon in the Glass Page 5