“Hey! You!”
Renzo didn’t look back. He grasped the edge of the window and jumped. With a grunt he hauled himself up. He squirmed through the opening, which dug into his belly and pressed against his back, and then tumbled headfirst into the narrow alley. His elbows hit with a crack, his hands skidded on broken glass, his body thumped down hard, and all his breath came whooshing out.
For a moment he lay there gasping. He heard the dungeon door rattle and looked up to see a guard’s head and shoulders suddenly fill the window from inside. The man began to shout at him. Renzo was afraid he would jump through too, but he couldn’t; he wouldn’t fit.
Someone was shaking him. Letta. “Get up, get up, get up! Where do we go now?”
Renzo sucked in a juddering breath. He wobbled to his feet, looking for the other guard, the one the birds had attacked. Beyond the shouting he could hear a clamoring of birds down the alley to his left, but neither they nor the outside guard were anywhere in sight. Renzo ran a few steps to his right, to where the alley ended at the little canal that ran flush with the east side of the palace. Vittorio was supposed to be waiting for him there. He was supposed to have dispatched the guard, but . . .
He hadn’t come.
Well, the ship would still be there, waiting, anchored somewhere in the basin of San Marco. At least he hoped it would. He scooped up Sofia and headed left, down the alley. They’d have to go the long way about, but they’d find the ship somehow.
But when he had gone only a few paces —
“Renzo!”
He whirled around. There, in a small boat in the canal, was a man wearing a mask. A mask with a long, thin nose and an absurdly jutting chin.
Papà’s mask.
Vittorio! Rowing straight across the water toward them.
Renzo went weak with relief. He had feared . . .
“This way,” Renzo said. He motioned the children toward the canal. In a moment the boat scraped against the wall. Renzo stepped inside, set down Sofia. He held the boat fast to the bollard as the rest of the children tumbled in, packing the boat full.
“Wait,” Letta said. She twisted back toward the alley. “Maybe she’ll come.”
Her nonna. Renzo didn’t know what to do, what to say. Vittorio pushed off; the boat moved away from the wall. Letta kept her gaze fastened on the alley. A soldier appeared at the edge of the canal. Two soldiers. Three. All shouting at once.
Letta pressed her lips together, hard. Her hands rose to cover her mouth.
The clamor dimmed behind them, muffled by the calming gurgle and swish of water. The palace glided serenely by. In a moment Vittorio’s little craft slipped under the bridge, around the corner, and into the basin of San Marco.
A sparrow alit on Marina’s shoulder. Vittorio paused in his rowing. He gestured for Renzo to cover the children beneath a rolled-up tarp stashed in the bow of the boat.
Renzo began to unfurl it; Letta wiped her eyes and nose and came to help. “Can you keep the birds away?” he asked.
She nodded, murmured to the children, tucking them all beneath the tarp. The sparrow darted off.
She turned back toward the palace as they wove among the other boats — small fishing boats and plain, black gondolas; pleasure boats alight with torches, tinkling with bells. The strains of a lute welled up as their boat passed a canopied gondola; masked revelers sang and laughed.
Renzo inspected his scraped and bloody hands and knees and elbows, suddenly realizing that they stung. He pulled the gown over his head, wadded it up, and stuffed it into the bottom of the boat. Good riddance! He looked about for soldiers but couldn’t see a single one. Surely they must be searching, and yet . . . He breathed in the fresh night air, feeling his body begin to unclench.
They had escaped. Escaped from the very dungeon of the Ten! Except for the old woman, Letta’s grandmother.
“Listen, Letta,” he said. “Maybe they’ll only banish her. Lent’s nearly upon us. Maybe they’ll lose their appetite for . . .”
For hanging.
She didn’t look at him. Didn’t reply.
And now, low in the sky, past an odd brightness to the north, Renzo made out the dark outlines of tall masts and rigging. “Is that the one?” he asked Vittorio.
Vittorio nodded.
“I’ve met with the captain of that ship,” he told Letta. “He’ll take you away with him. He’ll leave you in the care of friends of his; they’ll look after you for a while, maybe until it gets warmer . . .”
He trailed off, hearing in his voice the thinness of the thread he held out to her. He had thought that breaking the children out of the dungeon would be enough. But now . . .
She turned to regard him gravely, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Could she get past her grief to attend to this? Was she afraid? Was she worried about life in another place where they knew no one, another place where people would find them odd and maybe threatening? Was she silently reproaching Renzo for not having saved her grandmother along with the rest? Was she leery of the captain?
Was the captain trustworthy?
“It’s the best I could do,” he said.
“I’m grateful,” she said. “And those bars . . . they were a miracle, for true.” She picked up the edge of the tarp.
“Letta, listen . . .”
She gave him a long, impenetrable look, then disappeared under the tarp with the others.
Why wouldn’t she talk to him? The old, scolding Letta, he had known how to deal with. But this new Letta — the grateful Letta, the Letta who turned away and said nothing — perplexed him utterly.
A wind gust ruffled his hair; he shivered, suddenly uneasy. The danger was far from over for her and the children. As for himself . . .
He recalled that one of the guards had seen his face. But he would stay on Murano from now on; the man would never lay eyes on him again.
And Vittorio . . .
Renzo scooted past the children to the stern of the boat. “Did you run into trouble?” he asked softly.
Vittorio shrugged.
“What happened?”
Vittorio looked straight ahead. Kept rowing. Didn’t answer.
“Uncle?”
Something prickled at the back of Renzo’s neck. He peered up at Papà’s mask. There was the familiar chip at the right temple. There was the stain on the chin. He tried to see into the dark spaces beyond the eyeholes. The hood covered his uncle’s head and neck, but his hands . . .
Renzo gazed down at the hands on the oars. Large, scarred hands, with knotted fingers.
He knew his uncle’s hands. Small and smooth, with tapering, well-formed fingers.
Not these.
Fear poured through him, icy, sickening.
These hands, he had seen them somewhere.
A memory blinked into his mind: a raised hand in the starlight. A noose.
The assassin.
44.
The Lives of Strangers
Renzo started to rise.
“Don’t . . . move,” the assassin said. Renzo sat back down. Softly, so only Renzo could hear, the assassin murmured, “I have no business with these.” He turned the long nose of the mask toward the children. “I’ll take them to the ship, and then we’ll talk.”
“What of Mama? Pia? Do you have business with them?”
“No.”
“Vittorio?”
The assassin lifted his masked chin, pointed it to the north. The flickering brightness bloomed orange in the sky above Murano.
A fire.
Renzo didn’t know what had happened, nor how, but he knew.
Vittorio was dead.
And likely he would be dead soon too. He leaned toward the assassin, suddenly fearless. “And my father?” he demanded. “Was that you?”
“It was,” the assassin said, “an accident.”
“An accident?” Renzo rose to his feet. He didn’t care if the man had a noose. He didn’t care if he had a knife. “An accident?”
&n
bsp; “Renzo!” came a voice from behind him.
Renzo twisted back to see the ship looming there, the captain hailing him from on deck. “Where are they?” the captain shouted.
Renzo took a deep breath. He glanced at the assassin. “They’re here,” Renzo called.
“Well, pull alongside, and be quick about it!”
Renzo began to lift the tarp off the children. The assassin wouldn’t kill him now, not with the captain and crew looking on. In a moment sailors were securing the lines, helping the children onto the dock. Letta turned to him.
“Maybe . . . you should be coming with us.”
Her gaze flicked to the assassin, then back to Renzo.
How much had she heard?
But he couldn’t leave. He was a glassmaker. They would find him and kill him for certain if he left . . . and maybe Mama, too.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Family. You should understand that.”
She leaned in close to him. “What use are you to anyone if you’re dead?”
All at once it struck him that, no matter what happened, he would never lay eyes on her again. Something jarred loose at the center of him; he felt as if he were coming apart.
“Get moving!” the captain shouted. “Shake a leg!”
Abruptly Letta turned away. “I see you’ve made your choice,” she said. “Federigo, take Paolo. Georgio, take Ugo. Now go! All of you!” She scooped up Sofia and shooed the rest of them toward the gangplank, then followed without a backward glance.
She was hurt. That was what he’d failed to understand earlier. She’d wanted him to go with them.
The children trudged single file up the gangplank. One by one they turned back to look at him. Sofia waved, and then all of them were waving — all save for Letta.
He wanted to jump out of the boat, run up the plank, and join them. Join her.
But he couldn’t.
He watched as the ship shrank behind them, as the assassin rowed out into the basin. Heading east, toward the lagoon. He was still watching as the ship slipped away from the dock.
“With your uncle,” the assassin said.
Renzo turned to look at him.
“With your uncle it was quick, without pain.”
Renzo swallowed. Why was he telling him this?
“I think,” the assassin said, “he was expecting me.”
Well, maybe so, Renzo thought. There’d been something of the ghost about Vittorio ever since he’d returned.
“With your father . . . I intended to ask him about Vittorio. I was prepared to inflict pain, but that was all. But when he realized who I was, he came after me with a blowpipe. He was strong and he was quick. He surprised me, and I had no choice.”
An accident.
It was worse, somehow, that Papà’s death had been unintended. Unnecessary. A waste. Renzo looked back across the basin to where the lights of Venice shimmered in the water in streaks of liquid gold. He wondered if this was the last night he’d ever see them. Their loveliness struck him so hard, it made him ache.
“What happens now?” he asked. “Do you kill me?”
The mask was hard and blank. Unreadable.
“No. I’m done.”
Renzo drew in breath, taking back the lights, taking back his life.
“But,” the assassin added, “you have a choice to make.”
A choice?
“Listen very carefully. They will find a burned body in the ashes of the fire, the body of a boy your size. He’s long dead, but they won’t know that. They will find your silver cloak pin.”
His cloak pin? And a boy . . . long dead? “But — ”
“Listen! If you were to disappear at this moment, there would be no search, no repercussions. They would think you dead.”
What did he mean, disappear? “You mean, leave the republic?”
The assassin nodded.
“And Mama and Pia?”
“Safe. Because as far as anybody knew, you wouldn’t have absconded with secret knowledge. You’d be dead.”
“But I don’t want to . . .” Leave Murano, he’d been about to say. Though, a moment ago he’d been ready to leap off the boat to join Letta.
“Did any of the guards see you?” the assassin asked. “After you took off the mask?”
“One of them did.”
“They know now that the bars were made of glass. Do you think they won’t scour the ranks of glassworkers, looking for connections with the bird children? The Ten already know you’ve been suspected of harboring them in the glassworks. Not from me. But they know. And now there’s a guard who can identify you. You might well come through it, but there would always be questions. And if this night’s work were ever known . . .”
“But you said you were finished.”
“I am. But there are others like me, and always will be.”
Renzo couldn’t still his mind to think. It was a restless wind, sending one thought after another fluttering past him, until at last he latched on to the pin.
“My silver cloak pin. You . . . planted it. Why would you do that? Why would you help? Why should I trust you?”
The assassin set down his oars and moved to sit opposite Renzo. “If you knew my face, I’d have to trust you, too. Perhaps we might trust each other.” He reached up his crippled hands to his face and pulled off the mask.
It was an older face than Renzo had expected. A scar slashed across one cheek, looking dangerous and harsh, but the thin line of the mouth, to Renzo’s eyes, seemed to hold more pain than cruelty. The man’s eyes, rimmed with dark circles, seemed tired and sad. Not the face of a man who had triumphed in life but of one who had been beaten down.
The man reached into his purse. Pulled out five copper coins. Held them out in his twisted hand.
“She reminds me of my sister,” he said. “Though that was long ago.”
Renzo stilled. Did not breathe.
“I watched you. At first my aim was to find your uncle through you. But even when I did, after he came to your house . . . I couldn’t take him from there. Didn’t want to violate her house. Didn’t want to make her afraid.”
“Pia,” Renzo whispered.
“I was no one to her — just a beggar, a complete stranger. And still . . .”
He gazed at the coins, then funneled them back into his purse. “You might well come through it, but she will be safer if you go.”
Papà’s voice came swimming up through the long, bending stream of memory. There will never be a greater glassmaker than you; you have the eye and the hand and the heart for greatness; you will bring honor to the family; they will build on your legend for generations.
Gone now, Papà and his dreams. Ashes. And Vittorio, gone. And Mama and Pia . . . Not gone, but lost to him?
Signore Averlino would step in and take his place as the man of the family. Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Not for Mama. Not for Pia. Especially since Renzo might be a danger to them if he stayed — a danger to family.
But how could he bear to leave them?
And the glass itself, spinning at the end of the blowpipe, transforming into small miracles at his touch . . . What would his life be without it?
Suddenly Renzo remembered Vittorio’s confession. He slipped the parchment from beneath his shirt. “The carpenter. He had nothing to do with . . . the glass bars. My uncle wrote out a confession — ”
“So he told me.” The man took the paper. “I’ll give this to . . . the ones who hired me. And I’ll tell them I know it to be true.”
They sat for a moment in silence. A wind gust brushed at Renzo’s cheek; it ruffled the surface of the water. A wave rocked the boat with a soft, gurgling splash. He gazed at the reflected lights of the city, trembling and golden. How had he come to this place? he wondered. How had his heart become so entangled in the lives of strangers that he’d been willing to risk all he’d ever cared about? How had it happened? He could not say.
He tipped back
his head and searched the stars — familiar, clear, and bright. Did they shine just the same in other places? Could they still guide you when you were far from home?
Behind him he heard shouting. The ship strained toward them, the wind beginning to fill her sails. And another voice came to him: She never doubted. She always knew you’d come.
Something heavy rolled off his heart; he felt himself grow calm.
The man sighed, stood, took up the oars. “Have you decided?” he asked.
Renzo nodded. “Take me to the ship,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”
EPILOGUE
The ship appeared in the distance in the soft pink glow at the rim of the world. The little owl veered toward it, pumping hard beneath fading stars. Although he was light — for he bore no message — the flight had spanned a great length of land and sea, and weariness dragged at his wings. When at last the ship’s sails loomed above him, the owl swooped low across the deck, seeking the one he’d been sent to find.
He heard a rustling somewhere below — then a drowsy, chuckling coo. His heartbeat quickened; he spied an opening and dived down into a deeper darkness, where the air lay heavy and still.
She was sleeping among the others — the smallest of the companions. Feathers ruffled; the sounds of human breathing stirred the air. The owl lit down on the girl’s knee, called softly. Her eyes opened; she sat up; she gazed at him. Slowly she held out a hand.
It was a tiny hand, and smooth — unlike the hand he’d known so long and well. He hopped onto the back of it, stretching up in alertness, feathers shut tight. They gazed at each other, the owl and the girl, until a strange new kenning went shivering through him. Thinner and weaker than the kenning he’d known, yet oddly sweet and musical.
He blinked.
At the same time she blinked too.
The little owl fluffed his feathers. He settled down on her small, soft hand and knew that he was home once more.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 1291, after a series of destructive fires, an edict went out from the authorities in Venice banning all glassmaking furnaces from the city. From that point forward the island of Murano became the center of glassmaking in the Venetian lagoon. Murano glass came to be renowned for its beauty and originality and was much sought after across all of Europe.
Falcon in the Glass Page 20
