The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  Every inn, Crivano says, in every town we’d pass, on any road we’d choose, would contain informants for the Council of Ten. The Terrafirma is the Council’s web, as strong and invisible as that of Vulcan, and those roads are its strands. If we touch them, they will know. The sbirri would have us before sundown.

  We can’t sail to Ragusa? Find a Dutch ship there?

  Due to the uskoks, the only vessels safely able to sail the Dalmatian coast are galleys owned and armed by the Republic. Which, clearly, would not be safe for us.

  Crivano hears the scrape and the stretch of rough twine, and Serena turns to lay the finished parcel on the table before him. The knots that bind the heavy paper are scarcely less artful than the mirror they enclose. I’ve packed it in seaweed, Serena says, to prevent damage from moisture. As I mentioned, I suggest that your friend make a habit of this also. Any good apothecary will stock it. Brandy, dottore?

  Crivano nods. Serena withdraws a bluish wide-bellied carafe from a cabinet, along with two simple crystal cups of surpassing clarity and grace. He unstoppers the carafe and fills the glasses, then sits and raises his. To Trieste, then, I suppose, he says.

  Trieste, Crivano repeats. Their cups meet with a soft reverberant peal.

  Crivano nearly chokes on his first sip: he can taste the volatilized liquor in the air above the glass. From Trieste, he says, clearing his throat, we’ll proceed to Fiume, then to Karlstad, and then through the mountains to the coast of Dalmatia. We must be in Spalato before the Feast of Saint Anthony. Do you foresee any complications? Can your wife and boys travel such distances?

  Serena sips, nods, sips again. He doesn’t look at Crivano.

  Crivano studies the cup in his hand, rotating it slowly in the sun. Is there any way, he asks, that your boys can be kept clear of the furnaces until our flight commences?

  Probably. Why?

  We have days of hard travel ahead of us. Some of it on disused thoroughfares. In my experience—I’m speaking now as a physician—young men with fresh burns do not easily suffer prolonged exposure to the elements.

  In Serena’s eyes is a flicker of something like anguish. Yes, he says. I see your concern.

  He drains his cup and refills it, swilling the liquid inside. It coats the glass’s edges like oil. Mirrors, he says. We’ll be making mirrors, you say?

  You’ll make mirrors in the spring, Crivano says, and then whatever you like the rest of the year. Those are our terms.

  I don’t know how to silver mirrors. Or to flatten glass.

  Yes. We know that.

  Serena rolls the base of the carafe back and forth along the desktop. Drunkenness has begun to inhabit his eyes. So, he says, you must have someone else, as well.

  That’s correct. We do.

  Dottore, Serena says, were you ever able to locate Verzelin the other night?

  Crivano looks at Serena, but Serena still won’t meet his gaze: he watches the rolling carafe with a sly half-smile. Crivano takes a sip of brandy before he replies. His pulse thuds patiently in his throat. Oh yes, he says. I found him.

  I thought you might have, Serena says. No one on Murano has seen him since. When the men from the Motta mirrorworks came and asked me about him, I told them that you’d gone out looking for him.

  The brandy is inching back up Crivano’s throat.

  I’m sure they’d already heard as much from the old woman at the Salamander, Serena continues. I also took the liberty of telling them that I met you in the Campo San Stefano later that night, and that you told me you never found him. I had a hunch that I should tell them that. I hope you don’t mind, dottore.

  Crivano lets out a long sigh that becomes a nervous laugh, a giggle, at the end. He holds his cup out to Serena wordlessly, and the chime sounds again. They drink in silence for a while.

  Say, dottore, Serena says, what do you make of this?

  He passes Crivano the carafe. It’s well-made, if uninspired. The glass could be clearer, whiter. Still a better piece than anything he ever saw in the sultan’s palace. He shrugs approval, passes it back.

  I made it when I was twelve, Serena says. My first carafe. That’s a glassmaker’s daily bread, carafes. This one wasn’t good enough to qualify me as a journeyman. But I was still young then.

  Crivano nods, drains the last of his brandy. He examines his cup again in the light from the window. Tipping it. Holding it close to his face.

  Can you see it? Serena asks.

  He looks again. There, in the base: a tiny line of bubbles, smaller than an eyelash. The bubbles themselves visible only as a group. This blemish, you mean? Crivano says. This is why it’s not for sale?

  Of course. You think I’d sell a piece with such an obvious flaw? Still, the shape of these was pleasing to me. And I needed a pair of cups.

  Crivano sets the glass down. Serena fills it again. Crivano’s cheeks are warm, like he’s been near a very hot fire. Which, in fact, he has. You make very beautiful things, maestro, he says.

  Serena gives him a strange look as he stoppers the carafe, sets it aside. No, dottore, he says. I do not. I make this.

  His hand plucks something from the desktop and tosses it to Crivano; Crivano’s caught it almost before he realizes it’s been thrown. It’s the lump of raw glass Serena took from the cooling pan in the workshop: smooth, oblong, flatter on one side, a pointed lobe opposite, pitted here and there by delicate bubbles. It’s greenish and frosted, but it lets light through. Its shape recalls something; Crivano can’t say what.

  Other men in this shop make beautiful things, Serena says. One day, when they are older, perhaps my boys will do so as well. But me? I make this.

  He leans forward and takes the raw glass from Crivano’s hand, then sits back in his chair. The blob sits in his right palm like a wet frog, sheltered under the branches of his three scarred tipless fingers.

  I make it so it melts evenly, he says. So it can be worked. I make it strong and pliable. I make it clear, when clarity is called for. When mystery is desired, I make it play games with the light. I hope very much that others are able to make it beautiful, dottore. But that is their responsibility. It is not mine.

  52

  As the traghetto draws near San Cristofero della Pace, disturbing a group of avocets and black-winged stilts in the shallows, Crivano vomits most of Serena’s liquor over the gunwale and begins to feel better. He rinses his mouth from the gondolier’s flask, settles in the shade of the canopy, and rests his head on one of the posts, watching the birds along the bank, the fishermen’s nets drying in the afternoon sun. So heavy, his teeming skull. He imagines it filling like the bottom bulb of an hourglass, every grain a thought, a memory, a secret.

  The gondolier moors his craft. Crivano pays him and disembarks onto the fondamenta, clutching his parcel tight against his chest, so intent on keeping it safe that he leaves his walkingstick behind. The gondolier runs after him, catches him when he’s nearly to the Campo Santa Giustina; Crivano thanks him, pays him again.

  He has no intention of stopping in the church but somehow winds up there anyway, weaving from sunbeam to mote-dusted sunbeam across the broken floor of the nave, thinking of Lepanto. Captain Bua in his breastplate and helmet: Santa Giustina, we pray that on this, your feast day, you will intercede on our behalf, and secure for us the blessings of God as we fight to defend the chastity of our great Republic from savages. Clutching the Lark’s spray-slick hand as the fleets closed: the last good moment, before the drums and cymbals crashed over the waves to be answered by horns from the Christian galleys, before the line dispersed and the real horror began. The first man he killed: turbaned head blown off and scattered on the water as he jumped from the oven platform. Slipping on the blood-brown deck, ankles tangled in viscera. The Lark clubbing a dead janissary with someone’s severed forearm while keening cannonballs tore the air overhead. The thunderclap when the Christ over the World lit its powder magazine, shattering the Ottoman galleys around it, bits of wood and iron and flesh raining through t
he smoke. The gulf aflame with burning wrecks, drifting into clusters like petals on a pond, lodestones on quicksilver. Fumbling in the tear-blurred darkness for the Lark’s matriculation certificate as the Turks stormed the decks overhead.

  He needs to eat something. Outside, behind the cracked apse, he finds a small casino serving spit-roasted kid along with chewy bread and an unimpressive red wine. The only other customers are four hard-faced Arsenal workers with scavenged wood shavings bundled at their feet; they cease their dice-game when he walks in, unhurriedly hiding their cup and coins, glaring in silence. With so many ridotti springing up around the city, Crivano’s surprised to see them gaming in public; their flagrancy speaks to the decline of the campo. The stares don’t abate, so Crivano makes short work of his meal, rises, and—feeling restored by the food, emboldened by the wine—approaches them. Will you good fellows take a physician’s wager? he says.

  After permitting them to cheat him out of a small sum, Crivano orders wine for the table, and inquires about the state of the church. It’s shameful, they agree; no fit memorial for Lepanto’s honored dead. One of the four was in the battle himself, or says he was: at the oars of Vincenzo Quirini’s flagship, jabbing his pike through Turkish ribcages. He came home with his freedom, a few ducats’ worth of loot, a few stories no one wants to hear. Only fools boast of fighting for nothing, he says, so I never boast. The diplomats, they never intended to retake Cyprus. That’s clear enough now, isn’t it? They were making their deal with the sultan even as we sailed into battle. But I defended the lives of my bench-mates, I sent a lot of Turks to hell, I didn’t shame myself through cowardice. I’m satisfied. If anything else matters, I don’t see how.

  The sun is low by the time Crivano is on the street again. Beside the church’s steps he meets a young priest with a taper, drunker than he is, skulking inside to light the few remaining candles. The sallow skin of the man’s neck is inflamed by traces of the Spanish disease. For a moment Crivano wants to pursue this wretch, to thrash him with his stick, but he thinks better of it. His anger surprises him. Why should he be troubled that Lepanto is forgotten? Hasn’t he tried to forget it himself?

  He thinks of Perina: her urgent questions, her wide searching eyes. What convent is she in? Santa Caterina, isn’t it? Nearby, past Zanipolo, not far from the Crucifers’ church. What was it she said? It is precisely this chaos I seek knowledge of, for in such disarray resides the truth! Ah, youth’s sincere conviction when it speaks such words! Amusing, disquieting, embarrassing. Like watching children at play with their fathers’ swords. He wants to see her, to speak to her. And the fact that he’s about to commit an act of treason shouldn’t preclude him from keeping his promise to the senator, should it?

  A busy salizzada takes him to Campo San Zanipolo, where he steps between the peddlers’ carts by the mounted bronze of Colleoni to pause in front of the Scuola of Saint Mark and regain his bearings. The odd trompe-l’oeil façade with its pelicans and phoenixes and winged lions only serves to confuse him further, so he rejoins the crowd, moving west. At first he’s able to plot his route by the ancient squat belltower of the Crucifers and the slender onion-domed campanile of the Apostles’ church, but he’s soon among the high walls of hospitals and new palaces and has only the sun to locate him. He’s all but given up hope of finding his way when he crosses a broad canal to see the long latticed façade of the Zen palace, and Santa Caterina just beyond.

  A lamp burns by the convent’s outer door, though the sun has not yet set. Crivano tries the handle, finds it locked, and raps with the head of his stick. His parcel grows heavy; he sets it down, then picks it up again, swaying on the stone steps. After a moment he resumes his knocking.

  A bolt slams, and the door opens to reveal a sliver of nun: downturned mouth, wrinkled cheek, patient eye. I’m sorry, dottore, the nun says. Visitors are not permitted in the parlor after sundown. I hope you will come again tomorrow.

  Crivano’s words emerge somewhat slurred; he tries to polish his elocution. The sun, good sister, is anything but down, he says. Even now its fiery orb cleaves my eyes. I have come a great distance to see Signorina Perina Glissenti, who is an educant in your care. Admit me, please.

  The eye narrows, but the voice remains courteous. Again, it says, I’m very sorry, dottore, but that’s simply not possible. Even in daylit hours only the educants’ close relations may enter the parlor. And under no circumstances can inebriated persons be admitted. Good night, dottore.

  Crivano places his left hand in the door as she closes it. The wooden edge presses against his fingers: it’s quite smooth. As if he might be only the latest player in a scene repeated many times at this portal. Inebriated? he scoffs, pressing his nose to the crack. Sister, I am a physician; I will thank you to leave such diagnoses to me. Open now, and fetch the signorina. It is very important that I speak with her at once. It concerns an exceedingly vital matter of state security.

  The nun gives the door a careful shove to indicate her conviction, and Crivano winces. He can feel eyes from the campo on his back. We’d like to assist you, dottore, the muffled voice says. Simply return tomorrow with a relative, or a written directive from the Council. Good night.

  I am a relative, Crivano shouts. I am. I am the young lady’s brother.

  The pressure on his hand lessens a bit. As I understand it, the nun says, the signorina’s siblings are all deceased.

  Yes, Crivano says. That’s right. As you can very plainly see, I am dead. I have come back tonight from my sailor’s grave to visit my young sister, and would fain be admitted to your parlor at once.

  Again, I bid you good night, dottore.

  Now see here, good sister, Crivano says, moderating his tone. I have been asked to visit the signorina by her cousin, Senator Giacomo Contarini, whose name I’m sure is familiar to you. This was a special request put to me by the senator himself. I believe he gave authorization for my visit. Consult with your abbess if you must, and supply her with another name: I am called Vettor Crivano.

  After a lengthy silence, the door swings slowly inward.

  Without bothering to take his robe, the nun directs Crivano to a pair of high-backed caquetoires, lights an oil lamp on the candle-stand between them, and stalks away down a dim corridor, leaving him alone. Aside from scattered chairs and endtables the large room is bare. Over the cold hearth hangs a painting of Catherine of Alexandria in the antique style: gilt aureole shimmering in the lamplight, spiked wheel demolished by a touch. Crivano seats himself, resting Tristão’s wrapped mirror across his knees, resting his stick atop the mirror.

  He falls asleep immediately, then jolts awake again, uncertain of where he is. Overhead and across the city, bells toll once for sundown; vespers echo through the wall from the adjacent sanctuary. A commotion in the corridor: footfalls and whispers. Then Perina, with the nun at her heels. She sweeps forward with a long unladylike stride; the nun’s white hands flutter about her face, trying to fix her veil.

  When her eyes find his black shape in the lamplight, they burst with gleeful surprise; her mouth forms a word that her breath never catches. Now she’s made out his face. Her expression becomes confused, alarmed. Dottore Crivano? she says.

  His stick slides to the floor as he rises. He bows deeply, steadying himself on the backrest. Signorina, he says, it is I.

  This is an unanticipated pleasure, she says, and I am glad that you have come. But what urgent matter brings you here at such an odd hour?

  Pious lady, I must confess: I have dissembled. For this I beg your pardon. The exigency that impels me to your parlor can claim as its ambit naught save the animal confines of my own person. It is perhaps a priest’s sanctuary I should seek, but my feet led me here, in hope of opening my mouth to evacuate my brain. Fair Perina, I have come lately upon a man who fought at Lepanto, and the reminiscence thusly prompted made me long for your ready ear and kind attention. Will you sit with me?

  They sit. With great effort Crivano retrieves his stick from the floor.
Be brief, the nun says. Perina, I trust you know the rules that govern proper conduct in the parlor, and I trust you will keep the dottore cognizant of them.

  The nun crosses the room, lights a second lamp, sits, and takes up a drop-spindle and a basket of wool. Her unblinking eyes prick him through the shadows as she spins.

  After our last meeting, Perina says, I felt certain that thereafter you would seek to avoid me. I feared that my many questions had given offense. So I am very happy to see you now, dottore. Though I do wish I had known to expect you.

  He smiles, looks at her. Disgusted with himself for having been even a bit surprised when the senator told him who she is. So much Cyprus in her—though she’s never set foot there and never will. So many echoes that she herself cannot hear. Being near her carries an illicit thrill of invisibility, a thrill compounded by her appearance: dark wool frock and swiftly donned veil, accidental and ingenuous, unornamented for the eyes of men. This pleases him. He could tell her anything.

  The senator explained to me who you are, he says.

  She swallows. Shadows appear and disappear along her throat.

  I will speak to you of Lepanto, he says, though there will be little you do not already know. Your brother and I were on our way to Padua when news came to us of the fall of Nicosia. We elected to sign onto a galley as bowmen. We were young, younger than you are now, and no warriors, to be sure. The only galley that would take us was a Corfiot ship called the Gold and Black Eagle. The Eagle met the Holy League in Messina, and on the day of the battle we were in the right wing. The fighting was all in our favor at first, but when the Turkish flank came fully into view our maneuvers became confused. Our admirals doubted one another, our line broke, and we lost sight of the other Christian galleys. We prevailed in a few close exchanges—alas, your brother perished in one of these—but we soon found ourselves entirely surrounded. Our captain, a man called Pietro Bua, chose to surrender, and the retreating Turks towed us to the harbor of Lepanto and assembled us in the town square. They were very angry at their defeat, and greatly sorrowed by the loss of so many men. All Christians of noble birth were divided from the rest. To be ransomed, we thought. But the Turks beheaded these gentlemen, and they flayed Captain Bua alive. The survivors passed into slavery.