The Glassblower of Murano

by Marina Fiorato

  Le Brun himself was a constant presence at the site, relentlessly questioning Corradino about the direction of light, the angle of reflection, and the implications for his painting. Slowly, Le Brun's wondrous panels came to life - high above, gesso doves fluttered in the stratosphere, and bare-breasted beauties reclined on fat clouds while they watched the golden triumphal chariots of the King. Corradino recognized a kindred talent, but felt the weight of the task presented to him. His glass must reflect these glories.

  Even the designer of the great gardens, Andre Le Notre, visited the hall to inspect how his artistry would be reflected in the mirrored wall.

  Despite his reservations, however, Corradino found that all help was there at his disposal - conferences with carpenters and masons, the assistance of the latest measuring equipment, mathematicians from Paris. The fornace - purpose built in the kitchen gardens of the palace - was well equipped, and Jacques Chauvire worked hard and progressed well. As Corradino taught Jacques his secret method the boy blossomed, and together master and apprentice began to make larger and larger panes. Corradino gradually had to remelt less ofJacques' work, and by the end of Corradino's first month in Paris Jacques had made his first passable square mirror pane.

  At night Corradino went back to his well furnished house in the nearby village of Trianon. With six chambers, a maid and a small vegetable garden, it afforded greater luxury than he had known since leaving the Palazzo Martin. He began to relax - to feel, for the first time in years, that he was not being watched. Sometimes, in the dying sunlight when he stood at the end of his garden watching the enormous palace grow, with a goblet of fine French wine in his hand, thinking of Leonora, he was almost happy.

  This new sense of ease was destined to be short-lived.

  On the momentous day that the first silvered panes were set in place in the Hall of Mirrors, Corradino stood, arms akimbo, supervising the work as the last glass was set in place. Quite a gaggle had formed to watch the work, including Hardouin-Mansart and Le Notre. Privileged company indeed, and at length they were rewarded as the mirror was complete and the crowd stood back in awe. A hush descended as the men surveyed their handiwork - the mirror arched above them, high and clear, gilded struts crossing the panes like light caged with gold. As well as their own reflections, the assembly saw the half-completed gardens, and the half-filled lakes stretching out into the distance, as far as the eye could see, in an optical miracle of design. The thing was truly a marvel, and all assembled could see what wonders they could expect when the hall was complete. No one moved, unable to tear their eyes away. Talk, once hushed, died into silence. But not just through admiration, or respect for the craftsmanship they all witnessed. They were silent for the presence of royalty. The King had entered the room.

  Louis strode toward the mirror, and those gathered bowed to the floor instantly. Corradino bent low, his heart thudding.

  Will this capricious King approve of my work?

  Soon he had greater anxiety to reckon with - his lowered eyes raked the royal slippers, then moved to the pair of shoes next to them - Bauta slippers with red laces, sold only on the Rialto.

  Venetian shoes.

  Corradino's hair crisped on his scalp. He dared not raise his eyes, but as the crowd around him straightened up he contrived to shuffle to the back of the throng, as HardouinMansart and Le Notre moved forward to be presented. The King was speaking. Blood thrummed in Corradino's ears so loudly that he could not, at once, hear what was said.

  `So Ambassador, pas mal, hero? Perhaps even you will be forced to admit that my little chateau, when complete, will rival your crumbling palazzi?'

  The Ambassador bowed politely, but Corradino could see that his eyes were hooded, and their gaze cool and guarded. He thought he knew the man slightly, a member of the Venetian Guilini family, attache to the Arsenate years ago when Corradino's father was trading with the Baltic. A taciturn, but highly intelligent youth he had been then. He must have risen through the influence of his family to this exalted state, but looked as if his intellect merited the position. Dressed in the finest Venetian velvets and satins with hair and beard trimmed and oiled, the Ambassador looked not like a dandy but a self possessed, confident, and highly dangerous man.

  The King spotted Hardouin-Mansart and Le Notre at the front of the throng. He beckoned with a fat beringed hand and the pair bowed low as the King began desultory introductions. `This is Hardouin-Mansart, my palace architect. And that's Le Notre who's doing the gardens. It goes well?' He waved away their answers. `Yes, yes, but this mirror is better than both your efforts, no? I imagine you two are jealous? Going to get one of your masons to drop a brick on it, Jules?' The King laughed at his own sally as the court joined in. Then, as Corradino began to relax, Louis uttered a question which froze his blood. `Where's my Maitre des Glaces? Can't have you two taking all the bouquets .. ' His eyes raked the crowd, found Corradino's. Corradino's heart thumped so he thought he would expire. A smile flitted over the King's features like a summer cloud. `There's the fellow.'

  I am undone - my life is ended.

  But the fat hand beckoned Jacques Chauvire. Guillaume Seve, passed over for the job, gave Jacques an officious little shove, and the boy stumbled forward awkwardly, twisting his leather cap in his hand.

  Baldasar Guilini regarded Jacques balefully from under an arched eyebrow. He made a circuit of the boy on his Venetian heels, looking him up and down. Then he walked to the mirror, freeing his hand, finger by finger, from his chamois glove. He reached out his index finger and touched the cool, flat glass, leaving a smoky print. Corradino, despite himself, winced as if a seducer had laid a finger on his daughter.

  Baldasar turned back to Jacques.

  `Something wrong, Ambassador?' asked Louis, who seemed to be suppressing the mirth of a private jest.

  The Ambassador visibly recollected himself. `Forgive me, Majesty, I was thinking that this man - Chauvire, is it - is very young to create such mastery.'

  Jacques shifted his weight, as Louis replied, `Perhaps it is hard to accept that France has at last attained the quality of glasswork that the Venetians have enjoyed these past many years.

  Baldasar looked from the mirror to Jacques and back again. `How many panes in this mirror, Maitre?' he gave the title a gentle, ironic stress.

  Jacques, properly, looked to the King, who nodded that he may answer. `Twenty-one, Gracieux Monsieur.!

  `And how many years have you been on this earth?'

  `Twenty-one, Gracieux Monsieur.'

  'How fitting. There is a pleasing symmetry about that, don't you find? Indeed, it is a work of passing beauty for one of such tender years. It has clarity, lucidity; one might almost say a Venetian quality about it.' His eyes raked the crowd and Corradino shifted, dropping his eyes, obscured behind one of the burlier masons.

  `I congratulate you, Majesty.' The Ambassador bowed once again, but his eyes were thoughtful behind his diplomatic visage.

  `Well, well'The King waved away the compliment modestly as if he had crafted the mirror himself. He moved off down the hall, with Ambassador and coterie in tow. Then, briefly, the Royal head turned. Quick as a flash, Louis' eyes found Corradino. One eye closed for an instant. Then the King turned back and continued on, the whole incredible incident taking no more than an instant, and the court not even faltering in its progress. Corradino, as he allowed himself to breathe again, tried to comprehend what he had just seen.

  The King had winked at him.

  It is a game to him. A piece of amusement. The fact that my life is forfeit if I am discovered, that whole pantomime with Jacques, it is all a game; a piece of Royal folly to pass the hours.

  Sweating, glass-limbed, he put a hand to his thudding heart, as if to keep that organ from leaping from his chest. Guilini had not seen him, would not even know him if he had, as Corradino had been but eight years old when he met the adolescent Guilini at the Arsenale on business with his father. But was Louis capricious enough to reveal the true identity
of his Maitre des Glaces over brandy after the Ambassadorial dinner? No, reasoned Corradino, the King's national pride, already fully displayed, would dictate that the credit for the Hall of Mirrors would be attributed to French craftsmen, now and for all time in the future. Then, how long would an Ambassador stay? Not more than a week, two weeks? Best to lie low till he heard Guilini had gone. Shaken, Corradino returned to the fornace, waving away Jacques' agonized apologies that he had been given credit for Corradino's work. I must talk to Duparcmieur, thought Corradino. I must bring Leonora to me.

  But Corradino had forgotten one thing in his reasoning. The mirror itself had betrayed him. In the moment when Louis had looked back, Baldasar Guilini, quick as a cat, had seen the exchange in the mirrored panes. Corradino had been right, Guilini had not recognized him yet. But he knew him for an Italian, and it was but a short step from thence to know him for a Venetian.

  That night, after the Ambassadorial dinner in his honour, and the brandy over which Louis told him nothing, Baldasar Guilini returned to his quarters in the Palais Royal. He refused the attentions of the courtesan he had brought from Venice, and instead, sat down at his ornate gilded writing desk.

  Alone, with the heavy drapes closed, in the warm perfumed closeness of his elaborate chambers, he took up his quill and began to write a letter. At length he sanded the parchment, folded it twice, and heated a stick of red wax at his candle. He pressed the molten wax to the paper, where it lay like a gout of blood. He turned his signet ring and with the ease of long practice impressed the wax clearly with its design - the winged lion of San Marco. He turned the parchment and wrote the direction on the face for Louis' messenger, who waited outside his door.

  It was to His Excellency the Doge of Venice.

  CHAPTER 29

  Before Dawn

  Leonora walked all the way home from San Marco. The photocopy of the Ambassador's letter was in her bag, and she felt its presence burning through the canvas. It was early evening, and the streets were deserted. She knew why - it was the eve of Carnevale, and all the citizens ofVenice were getting ready - putting the finishing touches to their costumes, grabbing much needed sleep before the nights of revelry to come. Tomorrow the tourists would be back in full force and the city would wake from her winter sleep. The shuttered and cold city known only to her residents, would resume her bloom - the princess, once kissed, would slough off her hundred years sleep and blossom for her suitors once more.

  And yet the darkest hour comes just before dawn. Leonora's walk home was beset by dreaded shadows once more - not just the spirit of Roberto this time (had he left Venice? Or was he still here?) but also the malign presence of the Ambassador whose words she had just read. Words that condemned Corradino. These twin presences stalked her home.The night froze with the water underfoot and in the air, her breath smoked. She tried to hurry, but the burden of her baby sat hard upon her hips and her pelvis ached. Eight months of growth and icy pavings did not allow a speedy progress.The palaces and houses shunned her with their blank frontages. All was green and grey where once it had been gold and amber. She remembered something that Alessandro had said; that in Venice the moonlight was green because the light reflected from the canal. It was so tonight, but the greenish tint was ghostly, ghastly: it turned living flesh to the hue of the dead. The canal itself was a trough of cold green glass. The city had cooled and hardened.There is no sanctuary here, the houses said. You are no longer one of our own. Even the statue of Daniele Martin, turned by twilight to a greenish ghoul, accused her from his plinth. His copper embodiment proof of his own loyalty; he questioned hers. Her bright windows were a lighthouse beacon to guide her to safe mooring.

  Li0ited? Someone is there? Alessandro?

  Her heart beat hard and painfully as she fitted her key in the lock - but it was not he but his cousin. Marta was seated at the table, Il Gazzettino spread in front of her. She looked up and smiled as Leonora entered, pink-cheeked with cold and expectation.

  `Fa freddo, vero?'

  Leonora nodded, shedding gloves and scarves. `Freezing:

  Rent day. I had forgotten. Thank God I got the rest of my month's wages from Adelino. Christ knows what will happen next month though. I couldn't bear to lose this place too.

  As she crossed the kitchen to get the money from inside her Moroccan tagine dish (a hiding place which would be immediately obvious to even the most amateur burglar) she heard Marta tactfully fold the offending paper away. She paid over her month in advance and offered Marta a glass of wine. Her landlady seemed to hesitate.

  `I'm not sure ... I ... actually, yes, please.'

  Leonora opened a bottle of Valpolicella and ran the tap for herself. As the water rushed over her hand, running to bone-chilling coldness, she considered her friend from the corner of her eye. The cousin of the man she loved. They really shared nothing in the physiognomy of the face - there were no resemblances to catch at her heart. And yet today she divined something of him in Marta -The familiar hesitation, distance, discomfort. She filled her glass with water and brought the two drinks to the table.

  What is she hiding?

  Leonora sat and the silence persisted. Then, as if making up her mind, Marta spoke at last. `Is Alessandro coming here tonight?'

  Leonora looked up from her glass, surprise registering. Throughout her pregnancy, she had not seen as much of him as she would have liked, but they had had enough shared time to foster the notion that they were a couple. When they were together he was the model boyfriend and expectant father - talking to the growing bump, imagining the future child and helping her make the inevitable and exciting changes to the flat. But the notion of cohabitation had become a bone of contention - for some reason he studiously avoided the issue. The flat evolved slowly to accommodate the baby, but in all the plans he never mentioned making a space for himself. Major festivals were spent together, and Alessandro had suggested that he come tonight and that they go to the Carnevale together. So Leonora answered his cousin, `He's coming here after work.'

  Marta nodded. She hesitated, took a deep breath, and twitched the paper towards her again. `I didn't realize that he still saw Vittoria. I just saw them in the Do Mori on my way here.'

  Leonora registered her tone before she realized what Marta was saying. She had heard that studied nonchalance once before in her life. She realized when and where and was suddenly as cold as she had been outside.

  Jane. In Hampstead. The friend who told me about Stephen.

  In her cold horror she grasped at the name Marta had spoken. `Vittoria?'

  Marta sighed. `Vittoria Minotto. She and Sandro used to live together, then she got promoted away from Venice. But now she's back. But you know that of course.You ... met her.'

  Yes; she took away my livelihood. And now Sandro too?

  Marta looked bewildered. `You mean he didn't tell you?'

  'No.Yes. I mean - he told me about a journalist he had been seeing, but I never thought ... I never put the two together'

  Stupid, stupid.

  Marta frowned. `But surely, after the article?'

  Leonora shook her head. `He was away when it all happened. Doing his detective's course. I'm not sure how much he knows about it.' Her head was spinning. That woman, that sexy, vicious female, had been his? And with her he had consented to live, when she, the mother of his child, was to cope alone? Involuntarily she put a hand on her bump in what had become an accustomed gesture.

  Marta took it for distress. `Are you going to be alright?'

  Leonora forced a smile. She suddenly wanted Marta to go. She needed to think. She knew what it must have cost Marta to warn her - the Venetians were, like most Italians, extremely loyal to their families. Leonora chatted with forced cheerfulness for what seemed an eternity but must only have been moments. At last Marta got up for her coat. She turned as she reached the door.

  `It's nothing,' she said haltingly. `It's very civilized to be on good terms with your ex. Sandro never did like bad blood or ill will. He likes t
hings to be easy.'

  Easy.

  So now, at last, she knew the source of the distance. He had lived with Vittoria and been hurt. She had left him. And now she was back, what?

  Where do I fit in?

  She stayed for long moments at the table, nursing her glass of water, looking at the door through which Marta had left, through which Alessandro was shortly to come. She considered, as the shock drained away and anger replaced it, how she would confront him.

  No. That's not the way. Not again.

  With Stephen she had faced him out with what she knew, and he had left. This time she would learn the lessons of history. She had to assume Alessandro's innocence as the alternative was too horrible to contemplate - to be alone in a city which now felt alien to her, with a child and no job.

  No. I will wait, and hope, and give him the benefit of the doubt.

  She knew she was a coward. When he came in from the winter night she embraced him warmly. They ate dinner and talked animatedly of the child and the Carnevale to come. He seemed excited about something, hyper. Her heart chilled as she thought that Vittoria was the reason. In denial she took him to her bed and pleased him as much as she could. Only afterwards did she ask him one question, hating herself.

  `Marta was here tonight. You just missed her. I thought you were going to be here by seven. What happened?'

  His voice was thick with sleep. `I had to work late. That art theft at the Ca' D'Oro. It's dragging on for ever.'

  You've been caught in a lie. Proof.

  She turned uncomfortably, her bump ungainly, and shoved at the pillows. She did not want him to see the tears that ran into the linen. The child kicked her, reacting to her movement, and she cupped its form, crying for them both. She felt a touch to her back.