Renzo almost hoped the bars would break before the dungeon doors were installed.
As they might.
Or the old ones might be discovered.
Truly, he could almost wish it.
Ahead now he could see the lagoon. An owl called from a nearby rooftop; Letta’s face swam before his eyes.
Was she cold? Was she hungry? Was she ill? And the children . . . How long would they last in the dungeon?
His father would have told him to give up his plan right now. He’d say that a man shouldn’t concern himself with the affairs of strangers. That his duty was to his family.
And yet . . . The children.
How were you supposed to know what was right to do?
How did a man decide?
35.
Keys
The old woman woke to the sound of running water.
She shifted on the cold, hard floor, tried to ease the painful imprint of the rough stones against her hip. She felt feet pressing against her legs, and a head tucked into the small of her back, and a small body cradled in the curl of her chest and belly and thighs. She touched her owl with a light kenning and sensed him asleep on her knee.
Carefully she sat up. The bodies shifted to accommodate her, then leaned into her again. Her owl, now awake, flitted up to perch on her shoulder.
In the dim light cast by the oil lamp, she could make out the outlines of the sleeping children and their birds. She smelled the familiar dungeon reek of dank and sour decay; she heard breathing all around.
And the gurgle of water flowing.
Something damp on her hip, her legs. She touched the floor.
Not just damp.
Wet. Water on the floor.
She sniffed her fingers.
Salty.
Acqua alta.
“Letta,” she whispered. “Wake up.”
◆ ◆ ◆
They roused the children, sent all the birds away, and gathered close together, standing in icy rising water halfway to the old woman’s knees. The two older boys hoisted Paolo and Ugo to their shoulders; Letta held Sofia. But how long could they go on like this?
Voices sounded through the corridors. Wailing. Shouts.
The old woman felt the children shivering against her; she felt them breathing — a trembling, many-stranded plant rooted deep in the stone floor of the dungeon.
Paolo began to cough.
“A rat!” Marina screamed. “ ’Tis swimming! It — ”
The group lurched, gasping. “Just kick it away,” the woman said. “Kick it away!” If a rat hooked its claws into Marina’s clothing, it would climb up to get out of the water, and more of them would follow.
She shuddered.
Likely it was only a matter of time.
The littlest children were sobbing now. Some had begun to cough. The woman’s feet had gone numb with cold. She felt the ghostly touch of a spider on her neck; she slapped it and shook it off her hand. Vermin of all sorts were on the move.
Light flickered brighter at the barred opening in their door.
“Shh,” she said. “Everyone, hush!”
Voices. Water swishing, louder. The darkness thinned. And now she recognized Guido’s voice, high and insistent — and Claudio’s, grumbling and low.
“. . . charged to keep ’em, not kill ’em.” This was Guido.
“. . . little water won’t hurt.” Claudio.
“. . . sickly.” Guido again. “. . . no shoes.”
“I’m wearing shoes. Much good they do me.”
“. . . trouble for us if they die,” Guido said. “The Ten want ’em alive.”
A snort. “Aye . . . spectacle when the witches swing.”
That one, the old woman thought. Scaring the children. She’d like to give him a piece of her mind.
The key grated in the lock. Guido entered, carrying a torch, and Claudio came in behind. “Everybody out,” Guido said. “Come on, come on. Stay close together; nobody stray.”
“Where are you taking us?” the old woman asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Claudio muttered.
But Guido said, “Upstairs, to the cells just under the roof.” He lowered his voice. “It’s better there, Grandmother. You’ll see.”
The first of the children had nearly reached the door when Claudio let out a yelp. “A rat!” He thrashed about, stumbled backward into Georgio and Ugo, who fell against Federigo and Paolo, who crashed into one of the twins.
Splashes. Thumps. Screams.
The old woman helped the fallen children to their feet and tried to calm them. Claudio was shouting, swearing at the children, at Guido, at the rat.
“Get ’em through the door, Grandmother,” Guido said. “Tell ’em to wait in the corridor. Let nobody stray.”
“My keys!” Claudio said. “Where are my keys?”
“Did you drop ’em?” Guido asked.
“They slipped out of my hand. If you hadn’t made me come here . . .”
The old woman herded the children into the corridor as Guido and Claudio hunted through the water, arguing fiercely.
“Let’s go,” Guido said. “Those rats give me the twitchies. We’ll lock the keys in here; you can fetch them when the water ebbs.”
“This is all your fault. Why can’t they stay down here like the rest of ’em? Upstairs is for prisoners of rank, not for the likes of these.”
Just before Guido shut the door, the old woman flicked a last, regretful glance toward the stone behind which her quill and ink and paper lay hidden.
But there was no one left to receive her messages. Everyone she cared for in the world was right here in this accursed dungeon.
◆ ◆ ◆
They trudged single file down a narrow corridor, and up a staircase or two, then down another corridor. And then it was staircase after staircase after staircase — more staircases, the old woman thought, than she’d have imagined possible, even in the palace. Her knees began to protest, and then they rebelled — grinding, clicking, wobbling. Paining her something fierce. Claudio forced the children to move ahead, which vexed her — she didn’t trust him — while Guido stayed behind, letting her lean on his arm. When at last she and Guido reached the cell, which truly was larger and airier than the last, the children had already settled in, and some of them were sleeping.
The guards left; the door clanged behind them. A single lamp flickered dimly at the center of the room, but it was nearly pitch dark in the corner where the old woman lowered herself to the floor. She felt a stir of quiet movement, and Letta came to sit beside her.
“Your knees?” Letta asked.
The woman nodded, rubbing them. “Stupid old things.”
“Sorry,” Letta said.
The woman shrugged. “No matter.”
“Listen,” Letta said. “Open your hand. Hold it out.”
The woman did.
There was a clank, and the cold of curved metal crossed her open palm.
A large ring.
The old woman felt along it with her other hand. There, clustered together at the bottom:
Keys.
“Letta,” she whispered. “How — ”
“They hit my toe when they fell. I picked them up and wrapped them in my skirts.”
The woman shivered. “This is dangerous, Letta! When they don’t find the keys down there, they’ll search here. Claudio will be enraged. No telling what he’ll do.”
“They won’t find them,” Letta said.
“What are you saying? They’re too big to hide, ’less in somebody’s clothes, and that’s too perilous.”
“The window.”
The woman looked up. High up on the wall of this new, larger cell was a lighter darkness in the gloom. A small, barred window — a blessing. She could detect a hint of sea air and the freshness of rain. When the sun rose, there would be light.
“S’pose Georgio stood on Federigo’s shoulders,” Letta said.
“And they’d throw the keys out
? But what if it’s pavement down there? The guards’ll look straight up at our window and know where they came from.”
“Federigo’s hawk could take them. It’s carried heavier things before, for true.”
“So . . . Georgio could stand on Federigo’s shoulders and hold the keys out the window. And Federigo could ken his bird to come and take them?”
“And put them on the roof.”
“The roof.”
“Yes.”
“Not in the canal?”
“No. Then we couldn’t fetch them back.”
“Fetch them? But they won’t do us any good. We can’t be reaching the lock through the window in the door, and . . .”
Ah. Suddenly she understood. “Oh, Letta. ’Tis the boy, ’tisn’t it? You’re still thinking he’ll come for us.”
Letta didn’t answer.
The old woman had hoped that Letta had given up on the boy. There had been two attempts to send him messages —once with the kestrel and another time with the owl — and both had ended badly. Neither Letta nor the old woman had been willing to put their birds in danger again.
The old woman reached for her hand. “Oh, Letta. Don’t — ”
Letta snatched her hand away.
The old woman sighed. Hope, she knew, could keep you alive . . . for a while. But in the end it could break your heart.
36.
The Beast
The captain stopped at the edge of the piazza, shielding his eyes against the glare. The acqua alta had nearly drained away from the stone pavements of Venice and back into the canals where it belonged. But a thin film of water collected in sunken spots and in the spaces between the stones, reflecting the dazzle of the morning sun. The captain squinted toward the dungeon entrance, at the mob that massed before the door.
They were a hundred strong, at least. Mostly men, but also women and troops of boys — an angry clot of humanity that seemed, to the captain, to be waiting for the slightest excuse to erupt.
Something odd about that door. He drew nearer, pushed a little way into the crowd. Above the ragged horizon of caps and hoods and shawls, he could see that a line of soldiers kept the mob at bay. And that the dungeon door stood wide.
No. Not open. It was gone.
Now, ahead and off to one side, he saw a group of men hefting something toward the dungeon entrance.
A door.
They were replacing the door.
With a low growl the crowd surged forward. The captain planted his feet, stood firm against the press of the mob. It was a thing of itself now, a feral animal. It smelled dank and sharp — of sweat and wet wool. Of bloodlust. Ahead the soldiers raised their pikes, drove back the beast.
“Witches! Hang the witches!” someone cried.
A single arrow arced up into the placid sky and clattered down on the roof of the dungeon, amid a gathering of birds. They rose up in a cacophonous cloud — not just the ever-present pigeons, the captain saw, but also crows, hawks, gulls, herons, a magpie, and other birds the captain couldn’t identify.
The memory stirred again — the misty morning on the lagoon, the little boat . . .
The captain shifted, uneasy. He turned to a woman who stood beside him.
“What is this?” he said, gesturing at the crowd. “What witches do they speak of?”
“The foreigners. The bird people.”
The beast lurched forward again, swallowing up the woman and her words.
The bird people. This was what he’d feared, though he wasn’t surprised to hear it. In the captain’s experience, traveling the world, he’d found that rumors of witchcraft often attached themselves to foreigners or those who seemed different. To people who were in some way strangers.
He questioned a well-dressed man and learned that the Council of Ten were said to be leaning toward a guilty verdict, and if they so decided, the witches would hang in the piazza on the day before Lent.
The captain swore. We humans! Blinded by our ignorance, consumed by our fears! Always looking beyond our own separate tribes for someone to scapegoat for our difficulties.
And yet, when he did business, man to man . . . With the artisans, with the traders . . . Especially when he broke bread with a man, seated at a table, warmed by the fire in his hearth . . . So often then — no matter how strange the customs of the place, no matter how far from home — he found little to fear and nothing to hate.
The beast surged forward again. “Hang the witches! Hang them!”
He saw her again, in his mind’s eye. The girl who had looked at him from that small, overladen boat in the fog. The girl with the other children, and the birds.
Might she be a witch?
Who could know for certain? Not he.
But for his money, she was no more than a frightened child.
◆ ◆ ◆
As it happened, he had business at a glassworks in Murano later that day — the one where they made the glass falcons. He recalled the uneasy silence when he’d mentioned the bird children before, and against his better judgment he brought up the subject again. Again, the uneasy silence.
Why?
Would no one stand up for the poor waifs?
Unwisely, he persisted. “What have they done that they should be hanged? They’re children, for God’s sake!”
The padrone smoothly diverted the captain’s attention to the glass birds he wished to purchase.
But when the captain left, a young apprentice came running after him, hailed him. They talked a little while, and then the boy told him a remarkable story.
And made him an offer he ought to have refused.
37.
The Tenth Falcon
Renzo’s heart hurt.
He wanted to stop right there in the street and press both of his hands against it. He wanted to let his knees fold, sit back on the paving stones, and curl up like a sleeping bird. Just breathe there for a while. See if that would ease the pain.
But he did not. He kept his hands down by his sides. Kept walking. Made for home.
Hanged, the captain had said.
They were going to hang them. Almost certainly.
In twelve days, on the last day of Carnevale, right before Lent.
Not just the old woman but the children as well.
Renzo’s feet dragged to a halt. A vast and terrible darkness welled up inside him. His hands moved to press against his heart. A woman, passing, looked at him with concern. “Can I help you?” she asked.
He shook his head, forced his hands back down.
Somehow he hadn’t believed that they would do it. That they would actually kill the children. And hanging . . .
He started running then, moving through streets and alleyways, weaving in and out through patches of bright sunlight and shadow. He jostled an old man, dodged a fisherman, then bumped into a woman with a basket on her arm. Dried beans leaped from the basket and spilled across the cobblestones.
She called after him, cursing.
He should go back and help her gather them up. He should tell her he was sorry.
But there was so much, so much to be sorry for. Where would he even begin?
◆ ◆ ◆
When Renzo arrived home, he found Vittorio bent over the kitchen table repairing a wooden shutter. A large pot bubbled on the hearth; Renzo breathed in the rich aroma of rabbit stew.
“Is Mama here?” he asked.
Vittorio looked up. His bandages were gone now, replaced by a patch over his blind eye. The bruises on his face had faded but were still a lurid mass of purple and yellow.
“No. She had some errands and took Pia. We can talk.”
Renzo related what he’d heard from the sea captain, about the dungeon door and the angry mob. About the Ten and the hanging.
Vittorio looked shocked. “Maria santissima. Hanging?”
Renzo nodded.
“In twelve days? I thought we’d have more time. ”
“Listen. I’ve found a way to get them out of Venice, out of the
lagoon entirely.” Renzo told how the captain had agreed to take the children when he left. For the sum of nine glass falcons — one for each of the children and one for the old woman, should she wish to go as well.
“Do you know this man, this captain? Know anything at all about him?” Vittorio asked, his voice rising in alarm.
“Well, but . . . It was he who spoke of them first. He’s angry about it. He wants to help. Anyway, what else can we do? You can’t arrange it now. You — ”
“You can take care! Don’t go about risking your life so cavalierly! Don’t — ”
“You of all people should reproach me for risking lives!”
Vittorio gazed at him a long moment. The stew bubbled on the hearth. Outside, a seagull called. “You’re right,” Vittorio said at last. “This is my fault. And I’ll make it good to you. I — ”
“You can’t.”
“I will.”
“You can’t break them out of the dungeon. Your ankle’s not healed yet; you can barely walk, much less outrun the dungeon guards.”
“I’ll do it,” Vittorio said stubbornly.
The pain had come again to sit in Renzo’s heart. There was only him to do it. If he did, and if he were caught, it would be a betrayal of Mama and Pia; it would be a betrayal of all Papà had ever wanted for him. But if he didn’t . . .
Renzo pressed his hands against his heart. Something was crumbling there, shaking apart.
“I will go,” he said.
◆ ◆ ◆
There were many things to plan before Mama and Pia returned. They spoke of boats, and of masks, and of the configuration of the palace, and of when and where to meet. Renzo told Vittorio about the broken bars; Vittorio said he was sure he’d heard of a small, barred door somewhere near the canal on the east of the palace. “The door they take the bodies out of,” he said. How could this door be found from inside the dungeon? Renzo didn’t know. Though Vittorio couldn’t go into the dungeon himself, he would steal into Venice the next day and make some arrangements.
“God willing, this will all work out, Renzo. You’ll be back to the glassworks the day after, and no one will be the wiser.”
Falcon in the Glass Page 17