Sophia heard little save the pounding of her pulse in her ears, her ragged breath as she panted in fear. Her shoulders slumped in relief as she found her mother sitting at the tiny corner desk by the window. She squatted down and snatched the crumbs of bread off the floor.
“Mamma, why didn’t you tell me you were in here?”
“I thought you saw me, piccola,” her mother replied kindly, though not without the hint of an amused smile tickling her lips.
Viviana pushed back a tress of her chestnut hair, shot through with strands of gray, flowing in loose waves down each side of her face, released from its usual lofty pile on the top of her head.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
Sophia’s sudden knowledge of her mother’s presence did little to distinguish Viviana’s form in the gloom. The unearthly obscurity of night still hovered around her mother’s body, small and bent behind the wooden surface, tucked away in the angular niche of the dimly lit room. One small candle sat upon the desk, and its flickering pale yellow light did little to illuminate Viviana. Sophia felt a sudden stab of fear, of sadness for this woman; she saw her mother’s aloneness with great clarity.
Drifting from the large, stone fireplace in the center of the room, the meager warmth of the banked-down fire inched toward her. In the core of the house, this fire was the nucleus of its life, its eternal flame never extinguished, its glowing embers ever ready to be coaxed back to life to cook a hearty meal or light the kindling splinters and candles. She stood beside her mother, seeing the fatigue and despair in her hunched and curled shoulders, and the sooty smudges under her bloodshot eyes. Her mocha skin appeared pale and ashen, as if too much milk had been added to her caffè.
“Have you been here all night, Mamma?”
Sophia placed a hand on her mother’s concave back, feeling the knot of muscle through the thin cotton nightgown beneath.
Viviana shook her head.
“Just a few hours.”
“What about sleep?” Sophia asked, grabbing a chair from the opposite corner and placing it across from her mother. She sat, and a scant few inches of scarred wood stood between them.
Viviana pointed the tip of her quill at the pile of papers on the corner of the desk.
“I have too much to do.”
As a child, Sophia had often watched her mother writing her letters, day after day, fulfilling her duties as the female head of the house.
“Let me do some,” Sophia offered, searching under the pile of parchment for another quill. “Better yet, let me do them all. You are doing too much already. You must get some sleep.”
Viviana shook her head, gently slapping her daughter’s hand away from the chaos she’d created.
“There are many, too many. I fear I have been quite remiss.”
Sophia stilled her mother’s dismissing hand with her own.
“You have other priorities right now, Mamma.”
There was no denying the course of her father’s health. Zeno suffered more bad days than good, needing constant care as he was unable to care for himself. Her mother rarely left his side.
Viviana stilled, quieted by her daughter’s words and touch. She gave a shallow nod, eyes staring out the window and beyond.
“Why don’t you go get some sleep? I will get dressed and finish these for you,” Sophia urged.
Viviana stared back at her daughter.
“Sì, I will let you take care of this for me. It won’t be long now until you will have to do this for your own household.”
Sophia’s hands stilled, and her regard rose from the papers she tidied, finding her mother’s eyes.
“But I can’t sleep now,” Viviana continued, rushing past the subject of Sophia’s impending marriage. “I need to check in on your father, it’s been hours.”
She stood slowly, arching her back while supporting it with both hands at her waist, stretching the muscles tight with fatigue.
“Will you come with me?”
Her lips quivered in a failing smile, the need of her daughter’s company clear in each tremor.
Sophia dropped the papers and jumped up.
“Of course,” she whispered.
As they crossed the room together, Viviana swerved away from the door, toward a grainy wood cupboard. She opened a small box on the bottom shelf, extracting a sweet-smelling curl of baked, sugared dough. With a mischievous smile, she offered the treat to her daughter.
Sophia stopped, mouth agape. Her mother did have a secret stash of treats. She and her sisters had always known it, had searched for it for years, but to no avail. She snatched the roll from her mother’s hand with feigned indignation, tore off a piece, and popped it into her mouth, her smile spreading across her chopping teeth.
Viviana chuckled, leading the way out of the room and up the stairs. Sophia followed behind, finishing off her makeshift breakfast with a few quick bites. With sticky fingers, she took her mother’s hand in her own, like the small child she’d once been, following the lead of the woman she trusted, without reservation, to lead her along the crowded paths. Viviana faltered at the touch, looking down at her daughter. Her eyes moistened, she squeezed the hand, the lifeline offered, and continued up the steep, narrow steps.
Like hushed ghosts haunting the house, the women glided silently along the narrow passageway to the master’s bedchamber. Viviana opened the door and Sophia snuck a quick look over her mother’s shoulder.
Zeno lay on his back; in his peaceful slumber, there were no clues to the ravaging taking place within his mind and body. Viviana approached the bed, squinting in the dark to get a clear look at her husband. She heaved a heavy sigh, one almost of relief, and touched the back of her hand to Zeno’s forehead. She straightened his bedclothes, pulled the thin white sheet covering his thin body closer up to his shoulders, and sat on the cushioned rocking chair by the bedside.
Sophia watched her mother’s ritual, her sadness at her father’s approaching death changing to that of concern for her mother’s survival. He would move on to another, better place. Viviana must continue without him. She maneuvered to her mother’s side, sitting on the floor in the crook of space created by chair and bed. In the silence she heard her father’s weak breathing and behind it, the muted sounds of morning through the window behind her mother.
“I’m sorry,” Viviana said, her whisper loud in the abyss of stillness parents and child created.
Sophia looked up at her mother with a raised, quizzical brow. Viviana’s stare remained on Zeno’s still form, though her gaze seemed fixed upon something else beyond.
“I’m sorry for how your life is unfolding, for what waits in store for you.” Her eyes seemed almost black in the pale light. “I know it’s not what you want.”
Sophia swallowed back the lump that formed in her throat, and she felt the tears threatening to bubble over. Her sadness was indiscriminate; it existed for her parents and herself. She leaned forward and rested her head against the cool sheets of her father’s bed. She felt her mother’s hand come to rest upon her back.
“There are many forms of solitude, Sophia. We must all learn to live with our own.”
The bed linens rustled as Sophia nodded against them.
“I am losing my husband. I will be a widow.”
Sophia’s head snapped up. It was the first time she’d heard her mother speak so emphatically of Zeno’s passing. Viviana’s features, captured between the curtains of her lush wavy hair, appeared less determined than usual, her eyes glistened with her tears, yet she held her chin high, unbowed by her fate.
“Yet I am still fairly young, still healthy. There may be many, many years when I walk alone.” The ghost of a smile appeared on her lips, and her low-pitched voice warbled with emotional conviction. “There can be much happiness in our own company. We are all capable of finding the joy within and, in that discovery, we find our true selves.”
In the faint light of candle glow, her mother stroked her father’s still hand with tendernes
s, smiling down at him as if he looked back.
“What do you think is harder, Mamma,” Sophia whispered, rising up on her knees, and touching her father’s arm, “learning to live without ever knowing true love or living with the absence of a love once known?”
Viviana mused upon Sophia’s words, her head leaning to one side in thought, a wide, fond smile forming upon her lips as she stared at her husband.
“I will have my many, wonderful memories to sustain me.”
It was a bitter verdict, but true. Sophia accepted it with a silent nod.
“You have vision, Sophia, you can imagine anything you want for your life.”
Sophia almost laughed; it was as if her mother saw into her mind, saw the images of changing their fate that played within it over and over.
Her mother’s hand squeezed her shoulder. “Just believe it.”
Twenty-three
“Are you coming, Teo?” Alfredo nudged his friend in the shoulder as he brushed past him, heading for the opened, double-door exit of the Grand Council Chamber.
Teodoro neither turned in his direction nor gave any answer.
“Teo?” Alfredo tossed back his head, flicking a wave of fair hair out of his eyes, his green-eyed gaze jumping impatiently from his friend, to the door, and back again.
It had been another long, tedious council session, one filled with arguments and acrimony. Like the horde of men milling hurriedly from the chamber, their heads hung low in exhaustion as they scuffled along the highly polished, spotted marble floor, Alfredo longed to be gone from the tense atmosphere hanging thick and heavy in the room. The slanted rays of evening sunlight pulsated as the dark-robed bodies crossed the beams in their urgency to be away.
“Teodoro!” Alfredo barked, balling his fists and thrusting them upon his hips in impatient indignation.
Teo blinked, startled out of his reverie, for the first time taking note of his waiting friend. With a quick glance in Alfredo’s direction, Teodoro followed the retreating figure of Doge Donato, fingering the tightly rolled scrolls stored in the large inner pocket of his voluminous black robe.
“No. Mi scusi, Alfredo.” Teodoro raised a hand in supplication. “Wait for me no more. I must speak with the Doge.”
“As you say,” Alfredo replied. “I’ll see—”
But Teodoro had already spun away, heading purposefully toward Donato and his inner Council as they exited through the smaller rear door of the chamber, a rogue cluster moving apart from the larger mass.
“Your Honor?” Teodoro called out, rushing toward the Doge, politely yet brusquely shunting aside any man who stood between him and the ruler. “Please a moment of your time, sua signore.”
Donato stopped, swiveling round at a council member’s stilling hand upon his shoulder, following the man’s beckoning nod in the youngster’s direction.
“What is it, Gradenigo?” Donato asked over his shoulder, still inching toward the door.
“I must speak with you.” Teodoro bowed, his long legs conveying him swiftly to Donato’s side.
Donato shook his cornu-covered head. “Not now, I’m afraid, I’ve much—”
“It’s urgent, Your Honor.”
Donato stared at the somber face before him. He gave a curt nod and a tic toward the door
“Walk with me.”
Matching the leader stride for stride as they steamed down the narrow corridor, their red and black robes streaming out behind them like the churning waters of a fleeting ship’s wake, Teodoro reached into his robe’s pouch, extracting three small scrolls of parchment, and offered them to Donato with a thrusting hand.
“What are these?” Donato took the scrolls without opening them.
“Letters, Il Serenissimo,” Teodoro explained, falling behind Donato as the Doge entered the room at the very end of the long hallway.
He followed as Donato marched through room after room, the small Sala degli Scarletti, the larger Sala degli Scudo, until he arrived at the corner room, the Sala degli Stucchi, that which the Doge used for his private study. Many an attendant had tried to pilfer the Doge’s attention along the way, jumping from their seats, calling out in urgency like drowning men spying salvation between tall waves of the sea, but Donato stilled each one with a raised hand and a severe stare.
Throwing the scrolls upon a cluttered desk, doffing his cap and adding it to the pile, Donato stopped before it, and unbuttoned his robe, from the bottom up.
“What do these letters say that is so very urgent, ser Gradenigo?”
“They are letters of protest, Your Honor, from families who have all lost a son.” Teodoro hovered at the door of the imposing room, its gothic arching, intricate stuccowork, and rich trappings a daunting symbol of the Doge’s power and depth. “Three Murano families.”
Donato’s hands stilled upon his garment, his gaze rising up from his bowed head to pierce Teodoro through the top of his eyes.
Teodoro stared back, refusing the tug of fear and intimidation that wrenched at him, urging him to cower away.
With a heavy sigh, Donato returned to his task, unfastening the last and top button of his heavy maroon cloak and removing the rich fabric from his broad shoulders. Beneath he wore a thin white linen shirt, a simple black collarless waistcoat, breeches, and hose.
“You’d best come in, Gradenigo,” he said, accepting the inevitable with palpable reluctance.
The Doge tossed his robe on a corner chair as he rounded to the back of his desk. He gestured to one of the two leather seats facing him with a large, stiff hand.
“Sit.”
Teodoro stepped forward, a dutiful soldier following the order of his commanding officer without thought. He swallowed hard, but the clump of nerves remained firmly lodged in his throat. He sat on the edge of the chair, the knees of his long legs rising up at an awkward angle before him.
“Were these letters sent to you?” Donato asked.
He stood resolute behind his desk, not sitting, though his guest had.
“No, Your Honor.” Teodoro wiped his sweaty palms on his robe-covered thighs. “They were passed along to me by other members of the Consiglio.”
Donato’s lips pursed. “Why am I not surprised to hear that?”
The Doge knew precisely which men had given the letters to Gradenigo and had sent him on to do their dirty work. Loredan and Cicogna opposed Donato on so many issues, not the least of which were the problems with the Vatican, yet they applied for his support on a matter they themselves held dear. He thought them cowards, or perhaps, in the twisted way of government, just good politicians.
“I have always felt strongly about our treatment of the glassmakers.” Teodoro offered the argument as if he had heard the Doge’s thoughts and felt compelled to defend himself and the men he represented. “You know ’tis true.”
Donato bobbed his head, almost imperceptibly, as if hesitant to acknowledge the legitimacy of Teodoro’s contention. He lowered himself into his high-backed leather chair and picked up one of the three rolls of sepia-toned parchment, rubbing the still unfurled papyrus with both hands, as if he could feel the words written upon them, the skin of his palms grating against the bumpy surface.
“What do they say?”
Teodoro heaved and expelled a heavy breath.
“They are a protest, Your Honor, of the most impassioned sort, railing against the deaths of their sons at the hands of their own government, by an order from their ruler.”
The slap of the Doge’s palm upon the desk was like the clang of a broken cymbal—its peal echoed through the room, bouncing against the farthest corners of the lofty ceiling above.
“I gave no such order.” Donato’s mouth curled into a snarl, his eyes narrowed with venom as he leaned over the desk toward Teodoro.
Teodoro sprung up, slamming his balled fists upon the edge of the desk. His long torso bent over the wooden surface between them, his face moving to within inches of his angry ruler’s.
“The glassmakers have been threate
ned with this very action. Of course the order came from you!”
“It most certainly did not!” Donato roared.
Teodoro flinched back, clamping his mouth shut, and swallowing hard.
“Perhaps it did not,” he retracted hastily, “but if not from you, then unquestionably from within these walls.”
Vexation bound them like the threads of a tightly woven garment; they stared at each other in silent, heated battle. Donato exhaled through quivering nostrils and sat back in his chair.
“I have made inquiries into the matter myself,” he said, his voice once more lowered to a deep rumble. “I have learned nothing as yet, and can neither deny nor confirm what you say, therefore can take no action.”
“Something must be done.” Teodoro remained standing, removing his fists from the desk, and lowering his uncoiling hands to his sides.
Donato thumped an elbow on the arm of his chair, flopped his face into his hand and rubbed hard at his chin, his fingertips scratching at the late-day stubble.
“I’m fighting so much already. My council is polarized by the problems with the Vatican. They are a monster, look what they’ve done to Sarpi. “
Teodoro scowled. “We know for a certainty it was Rome?”
Donato dropped his hands into his lap as if they were too heavy to hold up any longer.
“Not irrefutably, but the evidence is mounting. They are animals—you know this, Gradenigo.”
Teodoro nodded somberly. “Sì, I know. But I also know it is a sin, a travesty to treat our own people the way the Holy See treats us. How can their needs not take precedence? How can we so coldly turn our back on them?”
Teodoro’s long, thin hands curled into fists, as the flesh covering the knuckles stretched tight and paled. The Doge stood and strode around to the front of the desk with a few quick, long strides. He laid his hands upon the young man’s tense, raised shoulders. He squeezed gently, calming, until they lowered and relaxed.
“Your passion and commitment are commendable. You are a great credit to the Council.” Donato smiled at the scowling, youthful countenance, the grin flickering on his thin-lipped mouth prideful, one of a father for an accomplished, beloved son. “Who knows, someday you may make an inspirational doge. But this fight you must surrender, at least for now.”
The Secret of the Glass Page 23