The Secret of the Glass

by Morin, Donna Russo

  Sophia smiled at the antics of her friend’s most indolent sibling.

  “And your Mamma and Papà? How do they feel about it?”

  “They are just happy that he works. He never did have any interest in the glassmaking.”

  Sophia envied Martino’s careless dismissal of an opportunity she could only dream about.

  The group of young gallants traipsed down the fondamenta with all the swagger of male sureness and the camaraderie of good friends. One of them stopped with such stunning abruptness that the swirl of the crowd around him joggled, like hundreds of dominoes set to motion with the slight move of one. His head wrenched around over his shoulder.

  “What is it, Teo? What is afoot?” a companion asked, hardened eyes darting about as if set upon a search for danger.

  Teodoro Gradenigo intently scanned the throng of people milling behind them. Those eyes, he knew those slanted, elongated eyes, or did he again imagine he had seen them as he had so often since that night. In the flickering glow of torchlight, Sophia Fiolario’s eyes had glimmered like the ocean lit from within. And yet he’d failed to discern the source of the light, misdirected by the dichotomy they offered, so full of spirit yet so wary and tinged with sadness.

  Turning back, he chuckled at his own imaginings, certain they would not be the last.

  “Nothing, amici miei, it is nothing.” He set off once more and the others naturally followed, relaxing and reclaiming their strutting parade. “It would seem I am haunted.”

  The young veiled women lowered their heads as they approached the Albergo Leon Bianco at the corner of the Fondamenta di Cannaregio and the bevy of bravi who loitered at its door. These dashing adventurers, former mercenaries or seamen who made their living as perverted versions of the jack-of-all-trades, rarely strayed from the doors of this, the best hotel in the city, as they solicited their next paying customer. Preying upon the hordes of visitors arriving at the city every day, they knew the language, the money, and the customs. They knew as well the hidden places that offered the secret pleasures and specialized services of the sophisticated, hedonistic metropolis. As foreigners of every financial status esteemed travel as a valid and much desired form of education and leisure, Venice had become the premier destination for any voyager on a quest for beauty—both artistic and architectural—and pleasure—both innocent and indecent.

  The scandalous men, decked out in shiny leather and sparkling buckles, jeweled swords and mean-looking daggers, eyed the young women lasciviously, releasing low growls of appreciation for the young, innocent beauty. Sophia and Damiana gave no acknowledgement; they did their best to tread stoically past, ignoring yet keenly aware of these bravi, repulsed and yet enticed by their masculine mien and dangerous demeanors.

  The swashbucklers were not deterred by the girls’ lack of interest. They scuttled around Sophia and Damiana like tigers about to pounce upon their prey, the calls and jeers continuing as if they were serenades of love.

  Damiana grabbed her friend’s hand; the thin, curved nails bit into her skin.

  “Leave them alone.”

  The barked command rang out behind them.

  The girls looked up through the veils covering their bowed heads.

  Aldo Piccolomini, Damiana’s cousin, marched toward them. Behind him strode five other men, as rough and as burly as Aldo, attired alike in the rugged shirts and breeches of construction workers.

  With a wide-armed, flourishing bow of capitulation, one bravo led the others away. The men followed willingly, not wishing to turn playful teasing into a harmful conflict.

  “Mille grazie, Aldo.” Damiana exhaled a breathy sigh of relief. “I thought they would never leave us alone.”

  “You need have no fear, cousin. They are no more than braggarts.” The broad-shouldered young man gave his relation a familial embrace, their fair features appearing more alike when close together. “But I am glad if we could be of assistance.”

  “You remember my friend, Sophia?” Damiana asked as she returned his greeting.

  “Certamente.” Aldo released his cousin and bowed gallantly to Sophia. “It has been a long time, but I could never forget her.”

  Sophia curtsied, feeling a blush tingle upon her cheeks.

  “It is good to see you again, Aldo,” she said.

  “Are you still working on the church, cousin?” Damiana asked excitedly. “How many pilings are there now?”

  Like most of the structures in Venice, the most recent edifice was built upon pilings, large wooden posts driven into the ooze that was the land, so close together they formed a supporting platform, a foundation of sorts, with their sawn-off tops.

  Aldo smiled back at his colleagues. “We have just reached one million.”

  “No!” both girls exclaimed together.

  “Sì, it’s true,” an older, pride-filled man behind Aldo assured them.

  “Fantastico,” Sophia said, blocking the sun with one hand to see the site of the work better.

  The men behind Aldo offered their courteous bows, calling their co-worker with them.

  “Arrivederci, cara,” Aldo said, chucking his younger cousin playfully on the chin. He took Sophia’s hand and placed a longing kiss upon its back. “It was a pleasure to see you again, Sophia.”

  With a dashing smile, he sauntered away.

  “He would have married you,” Damiana said, almost wistfully.

  Sophia watched the handsome man cross the calle, seeing him with the clarity of hindsight. “I know.”

  She laughed but not without an astringent tinge of irony, and led her friend around the corner and onto the narrow Calle del Forno.

  They soon arrived at the small albergo, a few buildings beyond the populated corner.

  Sophia knocked on the narrow black door of the slim three-storied ochre building.

  “Sì?” A robust woman answered the door, cheeks puce with exertion, wiping her hands on a worn apron.

  “Is professore Galileo at home, per favore? I have a delivery for him.”

  “Ah, sì, come in, come in.” The middle-aged woman opened the door wide and gestured into the sitting room just beyond. “Your name, young lady?”

  “Fiolario. Sophia Fiolario.” Sophia raised the veil from her face.

  “I’ll tell him. Wait here, please.”

  Sophia and Damiana sat on the clean but threadbare furniture that crowded the small, cozy chamber, happy to rest their tired and burning feet after their long trek. The house was old, its furnishings just as ancient, but not a speck of dirt lingered in any corner and the smooth wooden surfaces shone free of dust and sparkled with a fresh layer of wax. The room boasted little in the way of ostentation or decoration, an impersonal room meant for public meetings of the inn’s transient residents and in no manner reflecting any individuality of the home’s owner. Masculine voices from the two floors of boarders above mingled with thumping and the creaking of wood. Enticing aromas wafted through the house on the cooling breeze, masking the ever-present, fetid odor of the canals running past both front and back doors.

  “Signorina Fiolario? How wonderful.”

  The ecstatic cry carried through the house, the sound of feet pounding down the stairs soon followed. Sophia jumped up as Galileo rushed into the small, public room, a frenetic mass of energy bundled into a corpulent and charismatic character.

  “Signorina, you are here. Come stai?” His pale gray eyes twinkled; a grand smile split his bushy facial hair.

  “I am well, professore.” Sophia curtsied. “This is my dearest friend, Damiana Piccolomini. Damiana, professore Galileo.”

  Damiana dipped her knees.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, signore.”

  “And you, young lady, and you. Do you have my pieces?” Galileo dipped his head to Damiana but hurried through the pleasantries.

  “I do, professore.”

  Sophia lifted her hand to offer the small velvet pouch she had carried the entire trip in her tight-fisted hand, when the excited ma
n snatched it from her. With two quick steps, he sat on the small settee, gently pulled open the drawstring ties, and peered into the pouch.

  “Dio Santo.” He inhaled sharply, straining the buttons of his already snug embroidered waistcoat. “They are just as I imagined, just as I drew them.”

  With a pinch of forefinger and thumb, he withdrew each lens from the bag, laying them alongside each other on the polished mahogany table in front of him.

  “The answer is here among these pieces, I just know it is.”

  The girls sat in the chairs across from Galileo, watching and listening in amazement. The path of age across his face disappeared, his eyes burned with intensity, and his skin glowed with excitement. His passion was a palpable, contagious entity.

  “With these I will open up the heavens for us mere mortals.” Galileo raised two of the lenses with joint-swollen hands, holding them one in front of the other, closing his right eye to look through them with his left. “All I have to do is find the perfect combination. It is like love, sì? The two parts must be in perfect cohesion or it is but a pretense of amore.”

  Captivated by his almost fanatical intensity, the girls smiled, nodding spiritedly, caught up by the engaging man’s charisma.

  Galileo’s light-eyed gaze fell on Sophia.

  “Thank you for bringing these to me, my dear. And thank your father for his superior craftsmanship; they are exquisitely made.”

  Sophia lowered her eyes with a small smile of satisfaction.

  “You are quite welcome, signore. I’m sure my father will be happy to hear you are pleased.”

  “I am not pleased, I am blissful, rapturous.”

  A grin spread upon Damiana’s sweet face and Sophia’s pleasure grew, delighted to share with someone, other than her father, the satisfaction of a task admirably completed.

  “Agnella!” Galileo’s unexpected bellow made the young women flinch.

  “Sì, professore?”

  The apron-clad woman who had answered the door rushed in, holding her bright tangerine print kerchief against the back of her head.

  “Some prosecco for me and my friends, per favore. We must celebrate.”

  Agnella gave a silent, shallow curtsy, spun toward the back of the house, and returned within minutes with a freshly opened bottle of the white, sparkling, lemony-flavored Venetian wine and three small pewter flagons. The girls sipped at their cups, enjoying the rare taste of the exquisite beverage, listening attentively as the professor’s enthusiastic rambling continued.

  “So many said it couldn’t be done, but it can, I know it. So many have said it shouldn’t be done, but of course it should. Why would God give us the intelligence to make new discoveries if he didn’t want us to make them?” Galileo paused long enough to imbibe a mouthful of wine. “So many say I take a great risk, but if so, it is a risk I take for my family, for my children, and for humanity.”

  Sophia’s head bobbed up and down—this she did understand.

  “For the sake of the family one must do whatever they must. My nonna told me that.”

  “Precisely.” Galileo clapped his hands. “It is the duty of every human to live up to the potential that is inherently theirs at birth. Our destiny lies in our own hands. I cannot allow fear to alter my destiny.”

  Sophia stared at the scientist, eyes aglow with admiration. Damiana stared at her friend, smile faltering at the bright sparks of fanatical inspiration in Sophia’s eyes.

  “Tell us about your children, professore. Do you have girls or boys?”

  “Both,” Galileo replied, launching into a detailed dissertation on his young offspring.

  It was over an hour before they took their leave of the enthralling man, over an hour and the consumption of the whole bottle of effervescent wine.

  “Thank you for taking me with you.” Damiana entwined her arm with Sophia’s as the friends strolled back along the fondamenta, the setting sun turning the canal beside them into a twisting ribbon of red. “I did not know who he was, but I will always remember meeting him.”

  Sophia smiled.

  “His intelligence is equaled by his courage. It has shown me the way.”

  “The way?” Damiana raised a quizzical brow.

  “Sì. I know what I have to do. I have to find out the truth…for myself. That’s why I’m going to follow him.”

  “Him, who? Pasquale, him?” Damiana squeaked.

  “Sì, Pasquale. I am going to follow him and you are going to help me.”

  “Me? How?”

  “I am going to tell my mother we are spending the day on the Giudecca; the weather has turned so warm she will believe me. But you must stay in the house all day. If she decides to make a quick visit to market, there can be no chance she may see you.”

  “But…but what if she decides to visit…” stammered Damiana.

  “She won’t, she wouldn’t leave my father for that long.”

  Damiana stopped, holding her friend back with her arm, shaking her head.

  “Sophia, this is not like you, you can’t—”

  Sophia wouldn’t listen; she jerked on her arm, forcing Damiana to keep walking.

  “I can and I will.”

  Fifteen

  The dissonant notes of tuning instruments reached out into the corridor like skeletal fingers. Pasquale escorted Sophia down the short, narrow stone passageway of the San Salvador Convent, the heat trapped and stagnant in the confined space; his beefy face glistened with a sheen of perspiration. Once across the threshold, he offered her a curt tip of his head, and stepped away without a word or grunt of acknowledgement. Here he need not stand on pretense. Indeed, his quick action revealed how little compunction he felt in taking advantage of the relaxed atmosphere of these informal musical gatherings, beginning the night by leaving her to her own devices once more.

  Sophia stood at the outskirts of the fracas, a lone tree grown beyond the forest’s edge. Though not as opulently appointed as the convent’s refectory, resplendent with stuccos and frescoes as that chamber was, this was a large theater-like room. Threadbare rugs haphazardly covered the floor, and beautiful, religious-themed works of art decorated the walls. The rows of chairs stood upon an unsloped floor, facing a small, low stage. She glanced shyly, furtively around the room, head lowered, the warmth of a blush upon her cheeks. The strangers milled around her like the rising water of a flooding tide. A few seemed familiar, but she hesitated to approach them, fearful her recollections of that strange, disturbing, and intriguing evening at the Ducal Palace were wrong and she would embarrass herself further.

  With as much nonchalance as she could muster, Sophia entered the room, moving toward one of the many, still-empty chairs scattered about, intent upon the twenty or so women crowded upon the small stage preparing their instruments.

  The San Salvador Convent had been a religious retreat for close to six hundred years, yet just recently it had, like many other cloisters, become a social vortex. For some, their piety had become merely a ruse, doubling as gambling houses or ridotti, men’s lounges, replete with all the masculine forms of entertainment available. These vestiges of virtue had been engulfed in the hedonistic behavior sweeping the land. Others, such as San Salvador, served only as music centers of a more cultured entertainment.

  “Are these seats taken?”

  Sophia jumped at the lilting voice so close to her ear. With a hand to her chest and a pale smile, she gave an agreeable nod to the two women standing just behind her left shoulder. She drew in her slipper-clad feet to allow them passage into the row of seats to her right.

  “You are Sophia Fiolario, are you not?” asked the petite woman now sitting beside her.

  Taken aback with surprise, Sophia replied cordially, “Yes, yes I am.”

  “I told you,” the other woman snipped at her friend, slapping her playfully on the arm. She smiled warmly at Sophia. “I thought it was you. I am Florentina Berton, my father Fespare owns the Lionfante.”

  Sophia smiled with recognition
and genuine pleasure.

  “Of course, of course, from way down the other end of the Rio.”

  As the desire for Murano glass had grown, so had the number of glassworks stretching along the winding Rio dei Vetrai. The growing but tight-knit community fostered many new acquaintanceships but fewer deep friendships. Sophia remembered meeting Florentina at the small marketplace in the Campo San Bernardo. She seemed to remember seeing her at a festival or two. The tall, slender young woman was a graceful dancer and Sophia had enjoyed watching her on an occasion.

  “Sì, sì.” The woman’s charcoal eyes sparkled, pleased at being remembered. Both young ladies sported the sienna hair made so popular by the artist known as Titian, whom his own people knew as Tiziano Vecellio, but the pale roots of the smaller woman and the dark roots of Florentina showed the natural color of each.

  “This is mi amica, Leonora Pinelli. Her father owns one of the largest book printers in the Cannaregio district. They are terribly rich,” Florentina giggled and Leonora as well, without a hint of awkwardness.

  Venice published more books than produced in all of Rome, Milan, Florence, and Naples combined. The men who ran those houses were among the land’s wealthiest.

  “Come stai, signorina?” Sophia inclined her head in greeting. “I am so very pleased to meet you.”

  “And I, you, Sophia. I am a married lady, but please, simply call me Nora.”

  “Grazie, Nora,” Sophia said readily enough, though a bit surprised. She seemed young to Sophia, perhaps as young as Oriana, as did Florentina and yet she was already a wife.

  “Is this your first time at a musicale?” Nora asked.

  “Sì, it is,” Sophia admitted. “Have you been here before?”

  “Oh, yes.” Florentina strained around in her seat to study the gathering group. “Many a time. Nora too.”