The figure took his hesitation for defiance. Had he but known it, Giacomo would have told him anything, everything, if only he could.
`Do you know why no man ever escapes from here?'
Giacomo knew very well. He desperately tried to say yes, for he did not want to hear it again, not here.
`Because if a guard ever lets a prisoner escape, that guard must finish the prisoner's sentence'
At last Giacomo could croak. `I know.'
The faceless figure inclined its cowled head. `Then you see, I am your only hope!
Hope. Hope from the Devil.
'We went to Sant'Ariano. To your friend's grave. Do you know what we found?'
Silence.
`We found loose earth and torn sackcloth. Your friend has gone'
The clouds parted for Giacomo, as realization dawned. Non omnis moriar. Corradino did not altogether die. He felt like singing. His secret hope since he had read the Latin words had come to pass. His son was alive. The note which he had kept was an assurance, an instruction that he should not grieve. Praise God. Giacomo felt warm for the first time in months. But the voice went on:
`That night a ship was chartered from Mestre to Marseilles. Two men boarded from a fishing bark which was found with earth in the bottom.Your friend Corrado Manin has gone to France. He is the one we seek.'
A fast as joy and relief came, they left again. Giacomo felt the bile rise as he knew what had been done to him, to Murano, to the art of glass and mirror-making to which he had devoted his life. His dry eyes sprang fresh tears in the dark, but they were not the cold tears of grief but the hot tears of anger. I shall not altogether die. No, but you have killed me, and our trade too. Corradino, my son, how could you? You have given our secrets away. Non omnis moriar.
The words were echoed in the hideous voice. `Non omnis moriar.'
Giacomo's blood froze. They had been to his house. Of course they had. They had the note.
`I see these words have some significance. We found his letter to you.'
Giacomo cursed himself. Sentiment had made him keep the note - the last thing that Corradino wrote, or so he thought. This note, which meant his own death, was a keepsake from a man who had betrayed him. If Giacomo had known what was planned, he would have killed Corradino himself. The irony was exquisite.
`You helped him.' Again, a statement.
`No!'
`You knew what he planned. He wrote you the note.'
`No, I swear it. 'A scream at the last.
`You will die here.'
They left him then. The light, the phantom and the guard outside. As the footsteps receded, Giacomo began to scream. The pain in his chest and throat were nothing. The betrayal hurt the most.
Wordless, nameless hours later. His hours were filled with Corradino, laughing at him, taking his expertise and charity, and yes, love, for years and now making the best glass of his life for the French.The palaces in Giacomo's head were made of walls of crystal. The chairs, tables and food were glass. Corradino sat at the table which groaned with glass food. He ate his fill of the glass delicacies till the blood ran from his mouth, laughing all the time with a glass King. He must be stopped.
Giacomo felt death approach him. And Death came. Again with a guard and a candle.
The door was opened and the phantom entered. `Well? Are you ready?'
Giacomo's voice was weak, but just audible.
`If I tell you, will you give me materials to write to my son Roberto?
It was like bargaining with the Devil and it took the last of Giacomo's courage. The terrible shade inclined its cowled head. `I will send you a scribe if you tell me what I need. And I will send you all comforts for your last hours. Now, hurry. Your life is ebbing away.'
`My son ... he is in Vicenza. He bears the del Piero name. I wish him ... I want him to know, and his sons to know, that Corradino finished me, and that he, not I, was the traitor.'
`It shall be accomplished. Now, what do you have to tell me?'
`Corradino, he ... has a daughter.'
CHAPTER 34
The Mask Falls
The Salon de The in Petit Trianon reminded Corradino very much of the Cantina Do Mori and as he entered the cafe for his assignation he missed Venice like a blow to the belly. As he sought the privacy of the backroom as instructed in Duparcmieur's note he passed the patrons who had borrowed the latest eastern fashions for their dress - the Byzantine look was the latest in style, and the gaudy velvets made these genteel Parisians resemble Venetians. The enclosed and exclusive rear area of the cafe was highly decorated with frescoes and mirrors.
The French, it seems, steal all of their ideas from Venice. Even me they stole.
As he sat and waited he began to wonder anew why Duparcmieur had chosen to meet here, in a mirror image of their first interview. Duparcmieur had been in the habit of coming to Corradino's house, or talking to him in the Palace itself. It was no secret to his colleagues that Duparcmieur was his protector, and that through him, Corradino had a loftier patron; the King himself.
Perhaps there were some delicate negotiations to conduct which demanded a convivial atmosphere. After all it was close on a year since Corradino had come to France, and they were nearing the appointed time for Leonora to come to him. Corradino set his jaw. He would not budge in the matter of Leonora. Every day he thought of her and how it would be when they were together at last - holding her sweet face in his hands, playing in the palace gardens as he worked, or touching their fingers together in their special way - this time without the grille of the Pieta in between. Unconsciously, Corradino spread out his hand in a star of longing - he could almost feel her little pads pressed to his hard, printless fingertips.
I hope she has not forgotten. I cannot wait.
He felt a back settle against his - the bones of a spine behind the nap of fine velvet.
Duparcmieur.
`Why here?' asked Corradino.
`Why not?'
The voice was not French. Not Duparcmieur. But the perfect, aristocratic patois of the Veneto. As he had done a year before at the Cantina Do Mori, Corradino glanced into the mirror at his side. His guts shrivelled within him.
`I apologize for this unconventional meeting,' said Ambassador Baldasar Guilini smoothly. `However, as we have met before, I thought such convivial surroundings would not offend you. Do you recall our meeting?'
Corradino swallowed. His thoughts flapped like moths in a bottle. He must not give himself away.
`At the Palace, Excellency?'
`Yes, then. But before, a long time before. At the Arsenale. You came with your father - he was ratifying a trading treaty with the Dardanelles. Saffron, was it? Or Salt? Forgive me, I forget the particulars of the case. But I remember your father - a noble fellow, Corrado Manin.You resemble him physically, which is your good fortune' The Ambassador shifted. `Your ill fortune, of course, is that you resemble him also in your propensity for treachery to the Republic.'
Corradino's frozen heart plummeted. He knew that it was over.
I am unmasked. I am dead. Should I run?
Corradino cast swift glances left and right at the laughing patrons. Any one of them could be assassins, agents of The Ten. It was no good.
As if echoing his resignation, the Ambassador continued. `It's too late for you, of course. But if you make certain amends, you may be able to save your daughter.'
Fear clutched Corradino's throat with a strangling grip.
How could they know? Dear God, please, not Leonora.
`What do you mean?' he choked, in a last desperate parry. `What daughter?'
`Signor Martin, please. The one in the Pieta of course. Leonora. The issue of your little amour with her mother Angelina dei Vescovi. We knew of the affair, of course. But not of the child. I expect old Prince Nunzio was ashamed of the matter, as well he might be. No, we are obliged to your mentor Giacomo del Piero for that information. It's too late for him as well, of course' Baldasar Guilini sniffed fastidiously, as if he smelled ro
tten carrion.
Corradino felt his blood turn to water. Giacomo dead! And turned traitor on him, in a reflection of his own sin! He glimpsed down the pit of horrors that must have forced Giacomo to such a pass, and fought to restrain his terror. He must save Leonora, at any cost. `What must I do?' It was a whisper.
`There is but one thing you can do to secure her safety. If you do this, she will be unharmed and may live out her days in peace in the Pieta or in marriage!
`What? Dear God, what, anything.'
`We are aware, of course, that you have passed on somewhat of your specialist knowledge to an apprentice. He, of course, will be taken care of.'
Jesu, not Jacques too. He was young; at least Giacomo had been old. A sorry pair of men, at either end of life's journey, who shared a name, a way with the glass, and a friendship for me - the man who has murdered them both.
`What must I do?' Now, almost a scream. Corradino looked savagely in the mirror, tired of the charade.
The Ambassador steepled his hands before his face and blinked his hooded eyes. `You must go back.'
CHAPTER 35
Pity
Alessandro had no clear plan. He walked down the Riva degli Schiavoni in a daze, through the colourful crowds. He did not know if he was angry or sad or sorry or all these things. He didn't know whether to go back to Leonora or just see her back at her flat later. He didn't know whether to go back at all.
He needed peace to soothe his aching head. As he stumbled along in the direction of the Arsenale a dark door welcomed him. He fell through it.
Dark, peace and cool respite from the sun. A church. He was alone at last save for a single sacristan lighting candles for mass in the Lady chapel. A smell of incense that recalled the childhood masses at which he served as an altar boy. Alessandro had not been one for church since. But as he sank into the cool wooden pew he realized he had been to this church before. For over his head, looming from the dark, was an exquisite chandelier. A veritable cathedral of spider-spun silk, which he remembered from times past.
The Pieta.
Alessandro smiled at the irony. He had come here to escape Corradino, and yet his work was all around. And yet, Alessandro too had history here - for it was here that he had first seen Leonora. In that moment he knew he would go back, knew he couldn't be without her. She was stubborn and wrongheaded, but he loved her. Baby or no baby, he would go back.
A baby. Corradino had had a child too. Another Leonora. With a jolt, Alessandro recalled what his Leonora had said: `But she didn't die ... she lived happily ever after.' The fairytale phrase revolved in his head, to be joined by another.
Once upon a time Corradino's daughter had lived here.
All at once, like a revelation, Alessandro saw how it had been. He saw in his mind the literal, pictorial definition of the Pieta, seen a thousand times repeated as a favoured motif of the Renaissance artists. The embodiment of pity; the Virgin Mary cradling the dead, crucified Jesus. But what Alessandro saw now in his mind's eye was the inversion of this trope. He and his unborn baby, and Corradino holding his daughter in his arms. His baby. Alessandro rose like one who had witnessed a miracle. Corradino could not leave his child behind for ever any more than Alessandro could. Leonora was right - he must have saved her. He would cross oceans, weather storms, fight dragons for the flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. Corradino may have been an artist and a genius but he was still a man, and they shared this common bond. Just men after all. Alessandro moved through the pews on respectful feet and approached the sacristan who was lighting the flames, and as he asked what he had to ask he felt the first flicker of humanity, the first warmth of fellowship, for Corradino Manin.
CHAPTER 36
Mercury
Jacques waited for Corradino in the secret furnace room at Versailles. He was not concerned by his master's lateness, although it was, 'tis true, the first time he had been there before Corradino. Jacques knew his master had the most exalted of protectors - perhaps some business with the King kept him?
As he waited he raddled the coals, and polished some of the tools, idly twitching things into their proper places, anxious to begin the work of the day. At the last he crossed to the silvering vat, which he half filled with water from a pail. Then he reached for the flask of liquid mercury and poured the compound gingerly onto the surface where it spread like oil. Jacques was careful not to pour too quickly, for then the element could break into globules which spoiled the perfect sheet of silver. As he set the flask back down on the bench a perfectly round drop of the liquid jumped onto his index finger. From habit borne of spills when cooking his meagre supper he almost carried the finger to his mouth, then he remembered Corradino's warning that the mere taste of mercury could mean death. He wiped the digit carefully on his jerkin till all traces were gone. Then he was drawn, inexorably, back to the tank as the liquid settled and stilled into a mirrored sheet. He was so busy watching his undulating reflection that he did not turn to heed the key in the lock. He knew, in any case, that it was his master that entered as none but the two of them had the key.
Jacques was still watching his own image so closely that he did not see the gloved hand which caught the back of his neck and pushed his face into the silver poison.
CHAPTER 37
The Labours of Spring
It was not the first time that the Ospedale Civili Riuniti di Venezia had admitted a woman in labour who was wearing Carnevale costume. This was Venice, after all. How could it be otherwise? And yet a significant crowd formed and even the most hardened obstetricians were moved by the sight of La Primavera herself twisting in the agony of her burden. The sprigged dress was soaked with birthing waters and clung to her legs.
In the delivery room decisions were made quickly. It had taken a long while for the Signorina to get here, as she was unaccompanied, and despite the fact that this was her first baby the birth was well advanced. It was already too late for an epidural, and moreover, the baby was breech. The nuns attempted to offer comfort and relief, but, despite the pain of her labour, Leonora was sensible of the fact that she was alone, here in the very hospital where she herself was born, and the baby was coming. Every couple of minutes a toothsome steel trap closed on her belly and back, and she cried out for Alessandro. She was haunted by Professore Padovani's story of another Leonora's mother.
Angelina dei Vescovi, who died in childbirth ... died in childbirth.
She felt the same pains as that long-dead beauty. The pain made them sisters over the span of centuries. At last she lost consciousness, albeit briefly, and the nuns thanked Jesus for the brief respite in what would surely be a long night. The obstetrician, a man of many years of experience whose ideas weren't working, noticed that even in her unconscious state La Primavera clutched at her throat, as if searching for a trinket that wasn't there.
CHAPTER 38
The Watcher in the Shadows
As Corradino Manin looked on the lights of San Marco for the last time, Venice from the lagoon seemed to him a golden constellation in the dark blue velvet dusk. How many of those windowpanes, that adorned his city like costly gems, had he made with his own hands? Now they were stars lit to guide him at the end of the journey of his life. Guide him home at last.
As the boat drew into San Zaccaria he thought not - for once - of how he would interpret the vista in glass with a pulegoso of leaf gold and hot lapis, but instead that he would never see this beloved sight again. He stood in the prow of the boat, a brine-flecked figurehead, and looked left to Santa Maria della Salute, straining to see the whitedomed bulk looming in its newness from the dark. The foundations of the great church had been laid in 1631, the year of Corradino's birth, to thank the Virgin for delivering the city from the Plague. His childhood and adulthood had kept pace with the growing edifice. Now it was complete, in 1681, the year of his death. He had never seen its full splendour in daylight, and now never would. He heard a traghetto man mournfully calling for passenger trade as he traversed the Canal Grande.
His black boat recalled a funeral gondola. Corradino shivered.
He considered whether he should remove his white bauta mask as soon as his feet touched the shore; a poetic moment - a grand gesture on his return to the Serenissima.
No, there is one more thing I must do before they find me.
He closed his black cloak over his shoulders against the darkling mists and made his way across the Piazzetta under cover of his tricorn and bauta. The traditional tabarro costume, black from head to foot save the white mask, should make him anonymous enough to buy the time he needed. The bauta itself, a spectral slab of a mask shaped like a gravedigger's shovel, had the short nose and long chin which would eerily alter his voice if he should speak. Little wonder, he thought, that the mask borrowed its name from the `haubau', the `bad beast' which parents invoked to terrify their errant children.
From habit borne of superstition Corradino moved swiftly through the two columns of San Marco and the SanTeodoro that rose, white and symmetrical, into the dark. The Saint and the chimera that topped their pediments were lost in the blackness. It was bad luck to linger there, as criminals were executed between the pillars - hung from above or buried alive below. Corradino made the sign of the cross, caught himself, and smiled. What more bad luck could befall him? And yet his step still quickened.
There is one misfortune that could yet undo me: to be prevented from completing my final task.
As he entered the Piazza San Marco he noted that all that was familiar and beloved had taken on an evil and threatening cast. In the bright moon the shadow of the Campanile was a dark knife slashing across the square. Roosting pigeons flew like malevolent phantoms in his face. Regiments of dark arches had the square surrounded - who lurked in their shadows? The great doors of the Basilica were open; Corradino saw the gleam of candles from the golden belly of the church. He was briefly cheered - an island of brightness in this threatening landscape.
The Glassblower of Murano Page 21