Duparcmieur was surprisingly cheerful in the carriage. `Good. You've met the King, and he seems pleased with you. I thought that went terribly well.'
Corradino was amazed and silent.
`Do you not think he is indeed the most glorious of monarchs?'
`My experience of monarchs is limited to that one audience, Duparcmieur, but I'll admit he had an ... interesting ... manner.
In truth your King is a disgusting child, but to speak my thought would show little diplomacy, and may even be dangerous.
`You find him charming? I do. He seemed in a very good mood today.'
I hope that I am never witness to his bad mood.
Duparcmieur leaned forward in a businesslike fashion. `Now, we'll take you to your lodgings in Trianon - quite well appointed, I think you'll find. We have provided work clothes for you there. When you are properly attired for work I'll take you to the site of the palace at Versailles. I think you will be impressed by the building work - it looks marvellous already. Although, you have seen many marvels today, to be sure.'
Corradino grimly agreed. He had seen a King who was not a King. Thinking of the monarch's double nature he voiced a concern which had grown in his chestspoon over the last hours. `Duparcrieur. How can I know that I can trust you and your - the King? How do I know that you will bring Leonora to me as you promised, and that you will not kill me when I have told my secrets?'
Duparcmieur met his troubled eyes with a candid gaze. Either the eyes of a man telling the truth or the eyes of a practised liar.
`My dear fellow, you have my word. I don't know how you run things in Venice, but in France a man's word is his bond.'
`Oh in Venice too. Even The Ten keep their word once given, for good or ill.'
`Then you understand me. I propose that you teach our foreman your ways with the mirror for one month, to show good faith. Then we bring Leonora to you. Then you remain for the next eleven months to oversee the work in the palace. At the end of the year you are free, to live with your daughter, and you can work with the glass or not, just as you choose.'
It sounds too wonderful to be true.
`Your foreman of the glassworks, what kind of man is he?'
`His name is Guillaume Seve. He is very experienced, a man of mature years, a good craftsman.'
Corradino shook his head. `No good. I need a young man, someone with natural aptitude, a willingness to learn, but who has not already learned all the wrong methods. Someone who will learn from me, a servente, not someone older than me.
`Very well.' Duparcmieur thought for a moment. `Then that would probably be Jacques Chauvire, just an apprentice, but talented. He is but one and twenty.'
Corradino nodded. `Perfect. It will take time, and dedication. Such things cannot be taught in a short span.'
Duparcmieur sat back. `All will be well,' he said airily.
`You'll have everything you need - time, materials, men. The palace will be magnificent, you'll see'
The palace already was. Sitting in new work clothes, the leather of his apron and wrist bands smelling sweetly, Corradino sat with his back to the half built palace facing the gardens. His back rested on newly-hewn masonry warmed by the setting sun, he watched the gardeners shaping the gorgeous green lawns for as far as the eye could see, while waterworkers diverted natural sources into the huge ornamental lakes which began to fill before his eyes - great mirrors themselves. Despite the distant chink of the mason's hammer and the banging of carpentry Corradino felt at peace for the first time since he arrived in France. A shadow cut his sun and he looked up - a gangly youth with tousled hair and dark eyes held a hand to him.
`I'm Jacques Chauvire.'
Corradino took the hand and pulled himself to his feet. The boy, expecting a handshake, smiled at the unexpectedness of the action. Corradino's eyes were level with his. The boy had good eyes, dark and true. He had no need to search for their meaning like he did with Duparcmieur. Nor was it lost on him that the name Jacques was the French version of Giacomo, the family he had left behind.
`Let's get to work, Jacques,' said Corradino. He threw a friendly arm around the boy's shoulders, turned his back on the vista and they walked together to the foundry.
The boy will do.
CHAPTER 26
Purgatorio
When I entered the fornace at Versailles I was at home at last.
As Jacques opened the secret chamber to which only he and his new master had the key, Corradino saw that all that he had asked for had been given to him. There were the water vats, the silvering tanks. There was the furnace, with the coals stoked and ready, and a glowing red gather of cristallo glass at its heart. There were his pontelli, his blowpipes, his paddles. There were his scagno saddles and borselle pliers. There were his pigments; lapis blue, scarab red and leaf gold among them. There were his bottles and flasks of nitrates and sulfates and mercuries. Here then, at home, he could work once again.
His printless fingers itched to touch the rods and pigments, to make something again after his long month at sea and on road. The presence of Jacques at his shoulder felt incongruous, so used was he to working alone. But today was the day he must at last share his methods, and he felt a sick reluctance in his chestspoon. Not because he thought the boy's skills would ever exceed his, but because he alone had made mirrors in this way for ten years now, and he felt he was giving away a precious possession; a part of himself, a skill which had defined him for so long.
A skill which has saved my life, for 'twas for this that The Ten spared me. Once this has gone from my grasp what do I have to protect me from the King?
Would Louis decide, once Corradino had told his secret, that he would be better out of the way? And yet what choice did he have? He was in Purgatory, waiting for Leonora to be brought to him, and the sharing of his methods had been part of the bargain which would bring her to these shores. He was in Limbo. A wholly unwanted memory of Dante's couplets chimed in his head. He recalled that, in Il Purgatorio, his namesake had been killed by a French King. Corradino, the doomed Prince of Sicily, was executed by Charles of Anjou following an unsuccessful coup. That Corradino's father, King Manfred, had been murdered too.
But as he turned and met Jacques' warm brown eyes - eager and shining, reflecting Corradino's own love of his trade - he felt comforted and set aside such gloomy thoughts. He had no son to pass his skills to, and perhaps never would, so this was his chance to share in his knowledge and enjoy teaching if he might.
There is Leonora of course, but no woman has ever been a glassblower, nor ever will.
All he hoped for his daughter was that she would be happy, marry well, and enjoy the family life that had been wrested from him.
`So,' he said to Jacques, with a firmness that belied his doubts, `we begin'
He took up the largest blowpipe, and reached into the fire for the molten cristallo. As he felt the heat blast his face he thought again of the words of Dante, but this time his favourite couplet: `Even so rained down the everlasting heat, And, as steel kindles tinder, kindled the sands.' Corradino was kindling the sands now, coaxing crystalline beauty from a quintessence of dust. He took such a large amount of gather on the end of his pipe that he had to constantly turn the rod as he blew the parison.
Jacques looked confused, and tentatively questioned his master. `Maitre, I thought we were to make a mirror, not to blow glass?'
Corradino slid his eyes sideways as he blew. There was merriment there.
When the parison was blown Corradino spun the bubble on the end of the pipe and transferred it to his pontello. He then took the parison to the water tank and let it rest there, floating like a buoy. As it cooled he took a sharp blade and cut swiftly down the length of the bubble so the sides of the cylinder relaxed flat onto the surface of the water tank, and the amber glass cooled on the surface to a flat clear pane.
`So ...' breathed Jacques into a reverent silence,'. . . that is how it is done.'
Corradino squatted and squinted wi
th a practised eye down the surface of the tank. He nodded. `Yes. That is how. 'Twas but an accident when I discovered it, but it is the only way to make a pane of such a size, with the same thickness throughout.!
'And the water?'
`Water, when stilled, is completely flat, wherever it lies on the earth. It is the original mirror - nature's mirror. Even if its tank or vessel is tilted, it will always find its true level. I just hope that the French waters of your pestilent river will make as fine a glass as the sweet acqua of Venice's lagoon. Now, we must dress the new-born.' He lifted the cooled pane tenderly and laid it on the surface of the neighbouring vat, which housed a molten silver compound so bright it resembled a mirror itself. `This is mercury and silver sulfate,' said Corradino, `but only on the surface. Here too there is water underneath.!
'Why, Maitre?'
`Because these silvering compounds are very costly. Even for your King it would be too lavish to fill a whole tank with them. But there is sufficient on the surface to cover the glass with the correct thin skin to produce a reflection. You must always take care that you cover the entire surface of the tank, lest there are empty patches which will leave the glass clear. And take care of the mercury - it is an evil compound, and one that enters the skin of a man with ease. Many of our trade have died from its arts - I know of one such very close to me.' He smiled at his black jest as he recalled how he had imitated a mercury poisoning - blackening his own tongue with charcoal and letting the spittle run from his mouth on his `deathbed'. But when he recalled how the sight of him must have greeted Giacomo he ceased to smile.
He turned back to Jacques. `Just take care to let as little of the mixture touch you as you can. Here;' he demonstrated, using two small wads of leather to lift out the huge silvered pane. `The silvering dries very quickly - see? It has almost parched in the heat of the furnace:
Jacques looked on in awe as the compounds dried, and as they did, his blurred image resolved into a pin-sharp, bright perfection.
`Now, you see that the edges are rough, where I cut the parison? We score down the edges using the same knife and a metal rule,' Corradino suited the action to the words. `It's only necessary to break the very surface of the silvering, because, as you see, the glass will snap off cleanly along the line you have made. Here there are many metal rules provided for us, for as you know, the crowning panes of our mirrors in the palazzo are to be curved, and for those you will need one of these: Corradino held up a flexible length of metal, which he curved into shape. As Jacques nodded he turned back to the mirrored pane where it lay on the cutting saddle. `At the last, we take a chamois leather,' he did so, `dip it in alum, and polish the surface to both protect and brighten the pane. See?'
Jacques had thought the mirror could not be any brighter, but now the glass seemed to sing. His wonder and admiration showed in his face, and Corradino could see that his apprentice was full of questions. `Maitre, how are mirrors made by others?'
`There have always been mirrors. The Arab infidels used to polish their shields in order to see their images. But in other nations they attempt to roll out the glass thinly from one piece, as if making a pie. The results are passable but it is impossible to make a very large pane this way - the glass cools and hardens, and is lumpy and uneven. But with breath you can make a parison as large as your winds will allow, and when you treat the glass as a cylinder its dimensions open out to more than double the shape you have made. 'Tis simple mathematicks.' He shrugged to deflect the admiration he saw in Jacques' eyes. But he saw something else too - he saw the boy's hands twitch towards the fire just as his own had done.
I know I have babbled aplenty - that I speak more words when talking of my work than at any other time. Those that know me may think me as dumb as an oyster. Let them but speak to me of the glass, they will hear what a prattling parrot I am become. Enough.
He uttered the words he thought he would never say. `Now you try.'
CHAPTER 27
A Champion
Signor Aldo Savini, curator of rare books at the Libreria Sansoviniana in San Marco, was slightly surprised when asked by a blonde beauty to help her lift down the guild records of the glass and mirror makers of the seventeenth century. But she must be a registered reader. He checked her newly laminated card - she was clearly a Venetian from her name. He shrugged, and handed her a pair of thin cotton gloves from a dispenser. `You must wear these, Signorina. These volumes are very old and fragile. Also you must use the bookstand provided, to minimize damage to the spine, and only turn the pages by the laminated marker. Don't touch the paper itself.'
La Signorina nodded seriously throughout his instruction. Her eyes were green but had silver shards in the centre, the colour of the olive leaves on the farm where Aldo Savini grew up.The librarian suddenly felt his heart quicken and pushed his glasses up his nose, as he always did when flustered. Aldo Savini was not yet forty, and beneath his sweater-vest and tie beat a romantic heart. As he helped the Signorina lift down the ancient volumes for the relevant date, her gold hair brushed his arm and he could smell her coconut shampoo mingled with the old leather and vellum of the books. As she smiled and thanked him, Aldo Savini thought he would kill dragons for Signorina Manin.
Aldo Savini saw `la Principessa' as he had secretly dubbed her, many times over the next few months. Always she had some peculiar request, which stimulated him as a librarian almost as much as her appearance stimulated him as a man. Guild records, inventories, wills, records of birth and death, letters, bills of works, he had found all these for her. Her questions, posed in perfect Veneziano, intrigued him too. They always revolved around the same man, Corrado Manin. Even Aldo Savini, in his cloistered life, had heard of the man. La Principessa hounded him with questions as she had soon found out that Aldo had trained in Paleography at the University of Bologna, and could read the cramped ancient writing where her reading failed her. Do these documents mention Corrado Manin? This mirror that the Contessa Dandolo left to the Frari church, was it a Manin? This bill of works for the Palazzo Bruni, does it mention the Manin candlebra? What year was the palazzo built? This ship's register, does the entry say Manin, or Marin? These records of death that cite poisoning, does this symbol mean mercury, or some other compound? Aldo Savini became fascinated by the quest, as he was fascinated by her. Apparently she had some help from Ca' Foscari, as she used to shuttle back and forth from the library to the university for advice, and arrive back with a crop of new leads. He divined soon that her helper was Ermanno Padovani, an eminent scholar who had many volumes in this very library. Some Sundays the Principessa did not come at all, and Aldo knew that she continued her search elsewhere, the Professore having given her, it seemed, fairly comprehensive access to the deepest and most precious sequestered archives of the city.
In his romantic mind,Aldo Savini became a knight championing the cause of the blonde Principessa. He saw himself facing the black knight, Ermanno Padovani, in the lists of bibliographical knowledge. He was determined to provide her with some sort of breakthrough, before the Professore, so he would be her hero.
Over the coming months of deepest winter, Aldo Savini's chivalric fantasy took a fresh turn. Because it soon became clear that the Principessa was pregnant. He saw her belly swell, her angel face take on a rounded, cherubic aspect. Once he saw her, lost in a ship's register, with her hair swept to one side of her swan's neck, writing in a notebook that was balanced on her belly. His heart nearly failed. He, Aldo Savini, would protect her from her foul seducer, whomever he might be. He would help her finish her quest. He must think hard for that breakthrough. And then one day, the breakthrough came.
For many weeks now, Aldo had realized that certain French elements were creeping into the search. Questions about shipping, about the Palace of Versailles, about glass trade to Paris, about the court of Louis XIV the Sun King. Then it struck him - if the Principessa was interested in any of the courts of Europe in the seventeenth century, there was one ubiquitous character who would always be ab
le to help her, a personage who hailed from this very city.
The Venetian Ambassador.
La Principessa had been very excited when he showed her the document. After reading it three times, she dragged the volume of letters over to his desk with a speed that made him fear for her condition, which was now very advanced. She badgered him about making a copy, till at last he took the letter in question to the private inner sanctum where the specialized scanners and printers lay dormant. Squat and expensive, these machines could copy even the most delicate parchment with the use of infra-red laser technology. Not for these documents the exposure to the harsh bands of light of the office photocopier, thought Aldo Savini tenderly. He took the pages back to the Principessa, who waited at his desk. She grasped the pages to her belly, face-up as if she did not want the child to read the contents from within her. She looked agitated, but not particularly happy. Still, ever good mannered, she gave him one of her peerless smiles.
`Thank you, Signor Savini,' she said.
He pushed his glasses up his nose, gathering courage, but she had already turned before he had uttered the name `Aldo.'
She had not heard him - she was walking away through the bookstacks, her mind already elsewhere. And in the grand chivalric tradition to which Aldo Savini was so attached, he never saw her again.
CHAPTER 28
The Ambassador
When Jules Hardouin-Mansart, chief architect of the Palace ofVersailles, showed Corradino the plans for what he called the `Salon des Glaces' even Corradino had a moment of thinking that it could not be done. There were to be twenty-one huge mirrors, each with twenty-one panes. Each pane was to be exquisite, flat, true and with a crystalclear reflection. There was to be no bevel at the edge, so that the glass would appear as one piece, with no interruptions to the reflected image. Moreover, each glass was to reflect exactly the window opposite it, so exterior light and interior light were partnered, to create, as HardouinMansart said, the lightest room in the world. There was also to be fantastic series of frescoes on the ceiling, depicting the King's life and the glories of France. These were to be painted by Royal Painter Charles Le Brun and his apprentices.
The Glassblower of Murano Page 18