The Secret of the Glass

by Morin, Donna Russo

  At the base of the Staircase of Giants he was met by a page, a young man in puffed trunks and tabard, who bowed without a word, extending his hand upward toward the rising stairs and the giants standing guard at the summit. Galileo leapt up the marble steps and took the three flights of stairs at a run, the page following breathlessly behind. At the top he stopped, allowing the squire to take the lead, unsure of which of the many chambers to enter.

  The gangly equerry strode down the long hall toward the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, his wooden heels clacking in the silence of the unpopulated passageway, but instead of entering the door on the right, he turned left and opened the portal to one of the smaller rooms along the backside of the palace. Galileo stepped through the door of the Sala della Quarantia Civil the boy held open for him.

  Forty-two men sat in wood and polished leather chairs arranged in a large circle in the small room, their deep voices rumbling like a constant storm in the distance. Muted late afternoon light filtered through the east-facing windows, overpowered by the illumination of the candles in the chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling, their waxy aroma filling the room. This was the meeting place of the Quarantia, the law-making body of the Venetian government. Sitting among them, as he often did, was the Doge himself. When Galileo had sent a request to meet with the Doge, he never expected the audience to take place here, in front of this group of men. Tightening his grip upon the case as if to gain strength from the object within, he threw off his astonishment and hesitancy, stepped forward, and bowed.

  “Come in, Galileo, come in.” Doge Donato beckoned him forward. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Grazie, la signoria vostra.” Galileo offered his characteristic, crooked bow to all the corners of the room. “And I thank all of you gentlemen for this opportunity.”

  Donato stood and crossed to Galileo, grasping the scientist’s hand, and pumped it with enthusiasm.

  “We are pleased to see you again, professore. I have been talking about you for days now, you and your miraculous device. I still sometimes cannot believe what my own eyes showed me.”

  Galileo beamed. “Then I have come just in time. I have brought this for you and for the Serene Republic of Venice.”

  With a flourish, Galileo thrust the leather satchel to the Doge with both his hands, arms outstretched in a benevolent, dramatic offering.

  Donato’s eyes lit up; the shape of the bag was uniquely distinctive and unmistakable, constructed to fit the device like a glove. He took the gift with a deliberate and careful motion, opening the ties of the bag and lifting the instrument from its cradle with a tender touch.

  Gasps rang out, cries of amazement and wonder filled the room. This cannoncchiale was much more elaborate than the one exhibited at the top of the campanile; gilded with gold bands at four points along its length, it was constructed of golden oak and polished to a shimmering gleam.

  “It is beautiful.” Donato bowed to Galileo.

  Galileo lowered his head. “It is but a token from your humble servant to the land that has given him so much.”

  Many of the small council of forty-one had jumped up when the Doge revealed the device—now they crept closer and closer, straining to get a better look at the instrument, crowding around the small scientist and the large ruler who refused to relinquish the gadget but held it out for inspection. A small group hung back, huddling together, their frowns and narrowed, suspicious leers all too apparent. Galileo took little notice of Eugenio da Fuligna and the pack of men who stood with him or the whispered words of heresy and crimes against the church that hissed between them.

  “Let’s take it to the balcony,” one of the men closing in on Galileo and Donato called out and the cries of agreement rang out like alleluias during high mass.

  Donato raised his hands for calm. “We will, gentlemen, we will, but I ask you to thank our benefactor once more before we do.”

  A long line of men formed before Galileo, taking turns shaking his hand and offering words of gratitude and congratulations as they filed from the room.

  As Doge Donato began to follow them, the fancy cannoncchiale still gripped in his large hand, he turned back to Galileo.

  “Come to the palazzo in four days—no, come four nights from this very night. We will have a grand fete in your honor and we will award our recompense at that time.”

  “Of course, Your Honor.” Galileo bowed, his voice small, his throat tight with emotion. “Thank you.”

  Twenty

  Girolamo Cellini had served as the stizzador at La Spada since before Sophia’s father was born, an orphan given a home and a purpose, one he still took seriously after all these many years. Night after night, he kept the fires of the great vetreria burning, moving about the deserted building through the loneliest hours like a ghost intent upon his haunting. He took to his bed in the early light of dawn, when the others gathered for work. His eyes had grown weaker and weaker; his vision burned away by the very task he completed with such pride. He would not relinquish the post to anyone and the Fiolario family allowed him his dignity, a reward for his years of devotion and hard work, never contemplating another man serving in his stead.

  In the forefront of the workshop, Girolamo shuffled between each fornace and the woodpile, carrying two pieces of wood with each trip where he used to carry five or more. His back curved into a half circle as he shoved them into the gaping, hungry mouths of the ovens, a perpetual smile on his shiny, almost hairless, face, his skin’s natural pelt singed off by exposure to the grasping flames over the long passage of time.

  Sophia blessed the dear man’s waning vision and the freedom it afforded her. Working in the farthest-back furnace, she watched him through the side of her eyes, listening for his footfalls to alert her to his nearing presence. She wondered if he knew she made the glass; he was not a dim-witted man after all, and though she pretended to do other things when he neared, his keen sense of smell would reveal far more than his evaporating eyesight. Sophia worried little; she felt safe he would guard her secret as he had guarded the flames through his long life.

  The creaking of the door was like a long, slow tear of fabric; it stretched out into the factory like the tendrils of fog floating from the ocean onto the shore. Sophia spun toward the sound, thrusting her ferro out and away, prepared to dump the already coalescing material back into the calchera and to drop the rod onto the floor, fear thudding in her veins.

  Damiana’s face was the last she expected to see, and she stared at her friend across the vast expanse, drop-jawed. Her fear abated, true joy lit within her, and she tapped the molten glass off the end of her tool, back into the pool from whence it came, and abandoned the long metal piece beside the furnace.

  “Cara, what are you doing here?”

  It was an odd greeting, but not insensible. Damiana rarely frequented the factory, any factory, not even that of her own family.

  With her long skirts bunched in fisted hands, her friend flew down the steps, rushing to her, heedless of Cellini as he watched her dash by him, his craggy face swiveling on his turkey-throat with a squinty-eyed, inquisitive stare. Damiana rushed to Sophia, delicate wavy wisps of strawberry blond hair streamed out behind her, hurling herself at her friend, and wrapping her in urgent, clasping arms.

  “I had to see you…for myself.” Damiana panted, holding Sophia tight against her.

  Damiana’s gasping breath tickled the small hairs on Sophia’s neck, she laughed with the delight of her nearness.

  “Whatever do you mean?” Sophia asked, rubbing Damiana’s slender back with pacifying strokes.

  “What do I mean?” Damiana thrust her an arm’s-length away, dainty hands still clenched upon her shoulders. “I have not seen nor spoken to you in days, not since before…” Her voice trailed away, her bright blue eyes flinching over her shoulder to fathom Cellini’s nearness. But the man was still at the opposite end of the massive glassworks, so there was little chance he heard them from there. “…since your adventure. I�
�ve been worried to a frazzle.”

  “Ah,” Sophia murmured with dawning comprehension. “I am fine, you see?”

  “Yes, I can.” Damiana’s relief changed quickly to ire. “You could have sent word. You knew I would be frantic.”

  “No…of course, but…” Sophia sighed. “You are right. I should have realized you’d be concerned. Mi dispiace, can you ever forgive me?”

  Damiana’s pert nose wrinkled, she bared her teeth like a dog about to pounce, but her fierce façade cracked and she giggled instead, her nose crinkling with her smile.

  “Sì, I will forgive you…if you tell me everything.”

  Sophia wrapped an arm around her dearest friend. “Don’t I always?”

  As Sophia cleaned her tools, she told Damiana of her night at the concert, of all that she had seen and heard at the top of the campanile, and all that she had learned from it. Damiana applauded Galileo and his accomplishment, laughed at Priuli and his predicament, and clutched her chest in fear at the presence of the mysterious man at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Then perhaps da Fuligna’s secret, the one your father spoke of, is the man’s connection to Galileo?” Damiana studied Sophia’s ministrations carefully as she listened to the thrilling tale.

  Sophia shook her head as she scraped the end of the ferro with a file, the raspy grating setting a tingle into their teeth. “I’m not sure.”

  Damiana squeezed her eyes shut against the grating noise. “Why not?”

  “His association could get him into serious trouble, it’s true. But many people are devoted to Galileo, my papà included. I’m not sure if it would be enough to make my father so leery of him.”

  “Then what could it be?”

  “I don’t know.” Sophia dropped the slim metal file upon the table with a sharp clink. “But I am bound and determined to find out.”

  Damiana stared at her, pale eyes troubled by fear.

  “Tell me of yourself,” Sophia inquired, dismissing the trepidation huddling around them. “What is happing at your house?”

  “My older brother is to marry.”

  “To Zarah? Finally.” Sophia patted her pale hand. “What about you? Any news of a marriage yet?”

  Damiana dropped her eyes morosely. “I’m afraid a good husband is a bit more expensive than my father anticipated.”

  Sophia’s brows rose quizzically. “Their prices vary?”

  Damiana’s hair flounced as her head bobbed. “Oh, sì, and it would seem that the nicer they are the more costly.”

  Teodoro’s face flashed into Sophia’s mind. He could not be had at any price, yet he was one of the nicest, most intriguing men she had ever met.

  “If things continue, I will become no more than a servant in my sister-in-law’s kitchen.” Damiana shivered, shrugging the pall of the bleak thought from her shoulders. “Have you met anyone?”

  The question shattered Sophia’s musings.

  “Scusi?” A warm blush marched across her cheeks.

  Damiana frowned with confusion. “Have you made any new friends? You’ve been to these interesting affairs. There must be some nice people amongst the nobles.”

  “Oh, sì, a few, perhaps,” Sophia said. “I sat with Florentina Berton. Do you remember her, from Lionfante?”

  “Of course.”

  “She is married now to a noble. She introduced me to a friend of hers. We watched the performance together.”

  Damiana leaned forward, engaging Sophia’s downcast eyes.

  “Are they nice?”

  Sophia shrugged, tilting her head to the side in a forced, dismissive gesture.

  “They are…pleasant.”

  Damiana slipped her hand under Sophia’s where it tapped an arrhythmic beat upon the cold, metal surface. “I want you to make friends. I know I will never lose you, but neither can I bear to think of you so lonely among all those people.”

  Sophia smiled at her loving friend, squeezing back the hand in hers.

  “Your father will find you a husband, a nobleman he can afford, then you will come and be as bored as I and I will never be alone.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Damiana agreed. “We will be two of the haughtiest nobildonne in all the land.”

  Sophia chuckled as Damiana craned her neck, looking over her shoulder toward the old man still off at the far end of the room.

  “Until then, may I ask a favor?”

  “Anything, Damiana, you need not question.”

  The petite pale girl stepped around the table to stand close to Sophia.

  “Show me how.”

  Sophia’s brows knit in puzzlement. “Show you how…to what?”

  Damiana smiled impishly, a grin Sophia recognized from their days as naughty schoolchildren.

  “To make the glass.”

  Sophia’s head jutted out from her neck like a goose waddling hastily along the road and her indigo eyes popped from their lids.

  “Really?”

  “Sì.”

  Sophia stood on tiptoes and craned her head about, searching for Cellini. He kept to his duty, his slow trudging progress drawing him closer and closer.

  “But we can’t let him see, keeping my secret is one thing, seeing me teach another, well…”

  “Call him over,” Damiana urged.

  “What—”

  “Call him over and tell him my beau has left me, I will take care of the rest.”

  Damiana winked and Sophia’s lips flapped with a puff of laughter.

  “Go on,” Damiana insisted.

  Sophia raised a skeptical brow at her friend, then shrugged with capitulation. “Signore Cellini, could you come here a moment?”

  The man shuffled toward them. As he bowed gingerly, Damiana erupted into fake yet disconsolate tears. Sophia flinched as much as Cellini.

  “Dear child,” he warbled, patting her shoulder. “Whatever is the matter?”

  Damiana wailed louder, covering her face with her hands, bending over with her weeping. Sophia rolled her eyes at her friend’s exaggerated performance.

  “Her paramour has passed her over for another,” Sophia explained, biting on her bottom lip to hold back her smile.

  Damiana looked at her incredulously from between her fingers, her wail now verging on a howl.

  “Could you give us some time alone, signore? Let me console her in private?”

  Girolamo Cellini peered at her with silent curiosity. Just as Sophia thought he would question them, he nodded.

  “The fires should be fine for an hour or so, no more,” he said, grabbing a table with an age-spotted hand to steady himself, and turned. “I’ll be back then, no later,” he tossed over a sloping shoulder.

  The girls watched his bowed retreating figure, held their breath as he inched his way up the stairs and out the creaking door. As it clanked to a close, the girls fell upon each other, sputtering, eyes tearing as their released laughter burst forth like the ocean into a ruptured keel of a mighty sailing ship.

  Sophia clasped her hands together in delight.

  “This will be such fun,” she exclaimed, taking Damiana by the hand and placing her before the furnace.

  Opening its small square door, she thrust a ferro in her friend’s grasp. The rod dipped toward the ground and Damiana let out a gasp of surprise at its weight.

  “See the pool of liquid inside? That’s the melted material just waiting for you to make it glass,” Sophia instructed. “Dip the tip into the pool and spin until you form a gathering on the end of your rod.”

  Damiana did as she was told, squinting into the hot fumes emanating out of the oven.

  “That’s it, keep turning, keep turning, bene. Now lift the rod out of the pool.”

  Damiana raised the end of the tool ungracefully.

  “Turn, turn!” Sophia urged.

  But Damiana’s unskilled hands spun the ferro too slowly, and the viscous lump oozed down the left side of the rod, a grotesque, malformed blob of nothing.

  “Oops,” she giggled
and Sophia laughed with her.

  “Let’s try it again, yes?” She dropped her friend’s ruined creation into a bucket filled with discarded scraps of glass. Hissing smoke rose from it like a hypnotized snake.

  Damiana nodded, laughing at her clumsy, inexpert attempt.

  This time Damiana knew what to expect, how quickly the gelatinous material would loose its shape if she spun the rod too slowly. Soon a gracefully shaped bulb formed at the end of the ferro.

  “You’ve got it now,” Sophia encouraged, explaining the process as Damiana continued to spin the staff within the oven. “When you pull it out you must step quickly to the scagno behind you, sit down, and place the rod on the supports. Grap the borcella, the tongs there,” Sophia pointed, “and pinch off the end by squeezing with your right hand as you keep spinning the ferro with your left.”

  Damiana stared at Sophia, face scrunching with dismay.

  “Capisce?”

  Damiana nodded, but the befuddled expression remained on her delicate features.

  “All right, go!”

  Damiana burst into action, following Sophia’s instructions to the letter. But her pressure upon the tongs was too weak, too uneven, and the perforation formed in an irregular shape, turning her once-perfect ball into a lopsided globule.

  Their laughter rang out boisterously through the factory, the trilling sound filling the cavernous room with its joyful noise.

  “Give it to me,” Sophia took the tools from her friend’s hand, dipping the pinchers once more into the water bucket and tapping the end of the rod expertly with the cool, wet tip. The misshapen piece dropped off cleanly into a waiting pan.

  “I will cool it for you anyway and bring it to you when it is done.” Sophia picked up the odd piece in her leather-gloved hand, heading toward the annealer and placing it within its depth. “It will be a souvenir of this night.”