Falcon in the Glass

by Susan Fletcher

  “Gone,” Letta replied.

  He scowled at her, feeling dismissed.

  He breathed that into the glass too, along with the fear.

  Soon some of the older children began to help. The tallest boy, with eyes that drooped at the corners. The twin girls. The sleek-haired boy with the crow. They hunted down stray feathers and pellets and droppings; they chopped wood; they swept shards of glass from the floor.

  This eased Renzo’s fear a little, but it never ended. Fear sent him vivid waking dreams of shattered cups and bowls, of the padrone’s angry face, of pulling Pia through the marketplace, begging for scraps.

  Renzo breathed . . . breathed it all into the glass.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Late one night, as he hastened through a dark alley on his way to the glassworks, Renzo heard a noise.

  He stopped. Held up his lantern. Peered deep into the narrow cave of the alley.

  Light shivered across the pavement at his feet and bloomed on the walls beside him. But beyond, darkness clotted thick.

  He heard the plash and ripple of waves against the sides of the canal nearby. The creak of straining boat lines. The soft, hollow thunk of one boat drifting into another. A scuttling sounded somewhere up ahead — a rat, no doubt — and the soft wing beat of a bat or a night bird. He breathed in the smells of tar, of fish, of salt, of smoke.

  Nothing uncommon. No cause for alarm.

  He set off again, a little faster.

  Renzo never relished his midnight walk to work. As he hunched against the chill, his lantern throwing long shadows before him, he couldn’t stop fear from conjuring phantasms of lurking robbers and assassins. Now his heart began to beat faster; he longed to see the glassworks door before him and know he would soon be safe.

  In a moment, though, he heard the sound again. No doubt this time — a footfall.

  He took off running — but a voice hailed him, a voice he knew: “Renzo!”

  He stopped. Turned round, ready to flee at any moment. Above, a corner of moon peeked through tattered clouds, but the alley was dark. He held up his lantern. Light seeped across the stone walls, into niches and corners — across a heap of rocky debris where one of the walls had begun to crumble, over a pile of fish bones, up to a window grille. And then down again, just below the window, not ten paces away:

  The shape of a man.

  The face of a ghost.

  He was thinner than he used to be, and a matted beard hid half his face. But Renzo had no doubt who stood before him now, breathing puffs of frozen steam.

  His uncle Vittorio.

  Who was supposed to be dead.

  “You!” Renzo whispered. He felt tears prickling his eyes, surprising him. He blinked them back; he wouldn’t let Vittorio see.

  Vittorio advanced, seeming to drink in the sight of him. “How is Gabriella?” he asked. “How is Pia?”

  “Not well. Because of you!”

  “I never thought . . . They’ve never been so harsh before. Never killed family.”

  “You killed him, as surely as if you’d snapped his neck yourself!”

  Vittorio flinched but didn’t look away. “I had ideas for the glass, things I wanted to try. He wouldn’t let me. Everything had to be his way.”

  “He was padrone. Of course it had to be his way.”

  “He was my brother.” Vittorio pursed his lips together, shaking his head. “And there was this . . . rage,” he said. “By the time it loosed its grip, I was halfway across the Mediterranean and it was too late. I wanted to go home, but I knew they’d be coming for me.”

  Renzo felt the fire in him cool and shrink and darken. No, surely Vittorio hadn’t intended what had happened. He had acted first and thought later, as was his wont. “But what are you doing here now? You’re endangering the rest of us! Can’t you see that?”

  “I thought I could hide from them — and I did! But I was all alone, Renzo. When you’re a stranger, when you can’t even speak the language . . . When you don’t dare to ply your craft . . . I kept my ears tuned for news from home, and I heard about Antonio. I can’t understand it, Renzo.”

  “They found that letter you sent him,” Renzo said. “Where you asked him for help. It was with him when we found him. It was affixed to the wall with a knife.”

  Renzo saw it now — the tipped-over benches, the shattered glass, the spattered blood on the tiles. And Papà, lying on the floor as if sleeping.

  Vittorio turned away. “Maria santissima.”

  “Go. Tonight. Stay away from us.”

  “But I want to be useful. To Gabriella and Pia and you. There’s no place for my mind to rest; every thought is like a knife to the flesh — too painful to abide. If I could but help, I could find peace.”

  Peace? He wanted peace? “What about us? What about the danger you put us in? You want peace?”

  Papà used to rail at Vittorio for his carelessness, and Mama had defended Vittorio. Said that there were worse sins. Said that Vittorio’s heart was good.

  But after Vittorio had left them — left the republic — she too had seen the evils of carelessness. Of doing what one liked, not heeding one’s duty to one’s family. Papà — though he’d raged at Vittorio, though he’d said things that in the end could not be unsaid — had loved his brother all the while. But Mama had closed her heart against Vittorio forever.

  Even if Renzo could have forgiven Vittorio, Mama would not. But now . . . He would put the family in danger because he wanted peace?

  “Renzo, please — ”

  “You’ve come,” Renzo said. “You’ve seen what you have done. Isn’t that enough? Now go. You’re dead to us. We never want to see you again.”

  14.

  Small, Wet Boy

  The glass was balky that night. Renzo couldn’t concentrate, haunted by his encounter with Vittorio.

  One vessel after another went clattering into the broken-glass pail, until Letta held out a hand and offered to wield the blowpipe herself. “Or maybe Federigo should try,” she said, indicating one of the larger boys. “Or Sofia.” She nodded at the leg-clinging girl.

  It was a jest, Renzo knew. But he did not laugh.

  His uneasiness infected the whole of the glassworks. The children, calm and drowsy at first, began to quarrel. Taddeo’s pains grew worse, his complaints louder and more plaintive. Even the birds began to flutter and twitch and pluck at their own feathers.

  Still, it looked to be no worse than the waste of several hours, though a waste that Renzo could ill afford. Until the marsh boy — who had recovered from all but the last remnant of his cough — broke out of the circle of children and turned the night into a calamity. Renzo heard a thump, a cry, an ominous rattle. He whirled round to see a crate teetering dangerously. He dropped the blowpipe and ran, but too late.

  The crate tumbled to his feet with a thumping crash. The wooden lid flew off, and shattered glass spewed all across the floor.

  Disaster!

  Bits of blue glass glinted in the firelight. He could make out fragments of the goblets’ molded bases, tiny ribbed ovals that had adorned the stems, and jagged pieces of what had once been lovely, rounded bowls.

  These were the lidded goblets the padrone had made the day before. Exquisite things, far beyond the ability of anyone else in the glassworks.

  How many had been in that crate?

  Renzo counted the knobs for the lids — the only parts that hadn’t shattered. Only three, grazie a Dio.

  But still . . . How could he explain this?

  What would the padrone do?

  A little cough. He looked up to see the marsh boy gazing down at the splintered glass. Renzo took him by the shoulders, shook him. “Don’t you ever — ” he said. “Don’t ever, ever touch anything here again! Do you hear me? Don’t — ”

  The boy broke free and ran sobbing to Letta, who clasped him in her arms and glared at Renzo. They were all watching him now. Wide-eyed. Afraid.

  Renzo bowed his head, cradled it in his hands
. In a single night he had cut his uncle off from his family and had begun frightening little children. When had he become this person?

  He picked up a broom and began to sweep the glass, feeling their eyes following his every move. One of the boys stepped out of the circle and offered to help, but, “No,” Renzo snapped. “Stay there. I’ll do it myself.”

  “Oh, you’re in for it now,” Taddeo told him. “The padrone . . .” He shook his head. “He’ll be mightily displeased.”

  There was an understatement. What could Renzo tell him? It wasn’t my fault. It was one of the homeless children I’ve been secretly sheltering in the glassworks.

  No. He would have to say that he had broken the goblets.

  He wielded the broom with hard, angry strokes, but his belly felt queasy, leaden. Would the padrone banish him from the glassworks at night? Would he dismiss him on the spot?

  When at last Renzo took up the blowpipe again, his hands were nearly useless. He told himself to concentrate, that all might not yet be lost. The padrone had forgiven an honest mistake before.

  But never such exquisite goblets!

  And so, when a little while later it was discovered that the marsh boy and his bird had disappeared, Renzo set down the blowpipe, slumped onto a bench, and gave up all pretense of work.

  “Federigo! Georgio!” Letta called, turning to the oldest two boys. “Find Paolo. Search the marsh first, then the town.”

  Renzo rose from the bench. Letta rounded on him. “It’s ’cause of you Paolo left. If you hadn’t shouted at him . . .”

  “Yes,” Taddeo put in, shaking a finger at Renzo. “It’s all your fault.”

  “But he broke the padrone’s goblets!”

  “All you care about’s your precious glass,” Letta said. “For us, you wouldn’t give the skin of an onion. We’re just hands and feet t’ you, aren’t we then, Renzo? Something to hold the glass, something to move it here t’ there. ”

  Taddeo nodded. “Just here to there.”

  “He was just getting well,” Letta said. “And now, a night out in the rain . . .” She turned away from him suddenly, wiped something from her cheek.

  Was she crying? He’d never seen her cry. He didn’t know she could.

  He felt a strange, quick pain inside his chest. “Listen,” he said.

  She made a shooing gesture behind her back. “Just . . . go back t’ your stupid glass.”

  Renzo watched her, wanting to say something but not knowing what. Waiting for her to turn round. He’d forgotten how small she was — willow-slim. He might have said “fragile,” if he didn’t know better. Her hair, a mass of tangled curls, hung halfway down her back; raveling threads trailed down from her sleeves and the hem of her gown.

  He heard the door creak open as Federigo and Georgio slipped out. He heard rain pelting the stones of the walkway and splashing into the canal. He felt the weight of the other children’s eyes on him; he heard the echo of Letta’s words.

  We’re just hands and feet t’ you, something to hold the glass, something to move it here t’ there.

  Was that what she thought of him?

  And why did he suddenly care?

  Uncomfortable, he realized that, except for Letta’s, he hadn’t known any of the children’s names before tonight. He’d never asked where they had come from, or how they were related to one another. He hadn’t wanted to know.

  He set his blowpipe on the rack, shrugged into his cloak, and made for the door.

  The marsh boy — Paolo — hadn’t meant harm. He was just being a boy. Taddeo was right: This was Renzo’s fault. Not for scolding the boy, for letting them in the glassworks at all.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  It was a cold rain, the kind that gathers itself into fat, heavy droplets that strike your head and shoulders like a hail of tiny stones.

  Federigo and Georgio had vanished into a narrow alley, leaving Renzo alone. He walked along the edge of the canal, uncertain where to begin searching.

  If not the marsh, where might the boy have gone?

  Traces of daylight leaked over the horizon to the east; the streets were not so black and fearsome as before. But darkness still inhabited doorways and niches and corners, any one of which might secretly harbor a small, wet little boy.

  A hollow thump from the canal. A boat, tethered there. Covered with a canvas tarp. Hmm.

  Renzo knelt, unlaced a corner of the tarp. He peered inside.

  Oars. A heap of netting.

  Nothing more.

  He replaced the tarp and stood, surveying the boats. They lined the canal for as far as he could see. Many more, he knew, lay beyond. Still more on the other canals.

  Impossible. He couldn’t look under every tarp of every boat in Murano!

  He let his gaze slide beyond the boats, to the rain-dimpled waters of the canal. Dark. Opaque.

  The boy might have tried to hide in a boat, but . . . The image came to Renzo, unbidden: the slip of a foot. A small child falling, swallowed up with a splash. Dark water closing over a cap of dark hair, until the body fetched up later, bloated and white.

  “Paolo!” Renzo cried. His voice, panicky and sharp, echoed in his ears until the rattle of rain drowned it out.

  He wiped water from his eyes, feeling foolish. The boy wasn’t likely to come to his call. Not after the way he’d chastised him. He’d have to start searching, that was all.

  But where?

  He moved along the canal, looking for a tarp that wasn’t wholly fastened, peering into dim alleys as he passed. The rain was relentless. His cloak no longer repelled water but hoarded it, weighed on him as if it were woven of lead. The chill seeped into him, lodged deep in his bones. His feet, benumbed by cold, felt like hard wooden blocks inside his boots.

  Once, he thought he saw the boy, but it was only two old beggars huddled in a doorway. Another time he heard a splash on the pavement behind him, but when he looked back, nothing. He wondered if Vittorio was stalking him. Or some other ghost.

  After a while, when he looked up, something caught his eye — a square tower, so tall, it split the sky. The campanile by Santi Maria e Donato.

  A church. If you were a small, wet boy, you might well take refuge in a church.

  Renzo sloshed through the puddles in the campo. He pushed open the heavy oaken door and stepped inside. The sound of the rain dimmed at once. It was darker here. Renzo waited to let his eyes adjust, waited until he could make out the dim colonnades to either side, the ancient mosaic floor, the rows of benches before him.

  He trod forward, feet squishing loudly in his boots. He scanned the benches.

  It was the bird that he saw first — a fluttering motion, a small, gray-brown blur atop long, spindly legs. And beside the bird, a boy-size lump.

  Renzo edged along the bench, toward the boy. The bird hopped a short distance away. The boy was sleeping, Renzo saw. His wet hair clung to his scalp. His skinny wrists and arms stuck out too far from his sleeves; his skinny legs and ankles stuck out too far from his trousers. One of his foot wrappings had come loose and dangled toward the floor in tatters. A puddle of water had formed beneath him.

  The boy coughed, then buried his head deeper within his arms.

  Renzo hesitated. The boy might fear him, might bolt. He leaned over the boy so he could stop him if he tried to flee. Renzo cleared his throat.

  Nothing.

  He shook the boy gently.

  Nothing.

  “Paolo,” Renzo said.

  The boy sat bolt upright, startling the bird. With a harsh kyip-kyip-kyip it flew into the air and circled above. Renzo braced himself to prevent the boy’s escape — but the boy lunged for him instead. Clasped onto him, sobbing. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean t’ break them. Sorry, sorry, sorry!” He had an odd lisp; his s’s sounded like th. He seemed to have lost his two front teeth.

  Renzo eased himself onto the bench. He let the boy climb onto his lap, cling to him. He put his arms about the thin little body to warm it. The bird
fluttered down and alit on the boy’s shoulder. It pecked at the hair on his head.

  He was so light, this boy, just bones and air. Renzo felt the ragged breathing, next to his own. “Don’t fret . . . Paolo,” he said. “There’s little enough harm done. I’ll put all to rights.”

  There are some lies, Renzo thought, for which you might be forgiven. Surely God would forgive him for this one.

  15.

  Assassin

  He swept into the dungeon like a large, dark bird, the shape of Guido’s nightmares: sharp beak, gnarled talons, black cloak flapping behind.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  Five women, Guido knew, were currently housed in the dungeon. Five “shes.” He did not need to ask which one, nor did he dare. He pointed down the dim corridor and told how to find the bird woman in her cell.

  The man did not thank him nor acknowledge him in any way. He glided swiftly down the corridor, pausing only to pluck a lighted torch from its cresset before he rounded a bend and vanished in a haze of smoke and scattered sparks.

  Guido let out his breath. So that’s how it was to be.

  Usually they came at night. They would glide past him, black-caped and granite-eyed. He would never see the body, but by morning the prisoner would have vanished. Sometimes there were signs of a scuffle — a tipped-over waste pail, a broken bench. Sometimes blood spattered the floor. But most of the time, no. Most of the time no trace remained to show that the prisoner had ever existed.

  Now he heard Claudio’s footfalls, heavy and slow, approaching from the eastern wing. “Was that . . .”

  Guido nodded. Even alone they did not like to say it, did not let the word pass, hissing, between their lips:

  Assassin.

  “Who?” Claudio asked.

  “The bird woman.”

  “Good,” Claudio said. “She was trouble. If they caught that bird of hers with a message, the blame would have fallen on us.”

  This was true. Who knew where the bird went or what it did on its nightly forays? Though the woman couldn’t send messages — she had nothing to write with — she could likely receive them. And sometimes Guido had seen another bird in there with her as well. A little falcon.