The Mirror Thief (64 page)

Soda ash, Serena says. From the Levant. The guild buys it through a syndicate with the soapmakers and the majolica makers, who also use it. I’m told it’s made from the ash of a plant that drinks saltwater like the freshest rain, that can uproot itself and move about on the wind to spread its seed, although whether this is true I cannot say.

It’s true enough: Crivano remembers seeing wagons laden with the dry round shrubs along the Syrian coast, and more blowing free along the roadsides. In Tripoli he saw laborers burning it, packing it for shipment to the West—al-qaly, it was called. What of the crushed quartz? he asks. Where does that come from?

The riverbeds of the Ticino and the Adige. The magnesia is from Piedmont. There are other sources, of course, but these—

Alexandro’s angry voice cuts through the shop: he’s just returned from leading Crivano’s gondoliers to the storeroom, and now stops to berate the man who rakes the contents of the smaller furnace. The workman had become inattentive, probably watching Serena with Crivano; now he blanches, refocuses his attention.

Serena grins. We calcine the batch in the small furnace for five hours, he says. It must be raked all the time, so it will heat uniformly, and fuse into frit without melting. If it melts it becomes worthless. It can even destroy the furnace. Every man you see here, dottore, has the capacity to ruin us all at any moment. This is why you often find glassmakers with black eyes, bloody knuckles, absent teeth.

I fear I have become a spectacle in this room.

Serena’s damaged right hand makes a dismissive gesture, but his expression is not so cavalier. Don’t worry yourself, dottore, he says. All the same, perhaps you’ll indulge me in a respite from the heat. Let us retire to my counting room, where I’ll show you what your friend has purchased.

He leads Crivano to a side door bearing an impressive German lock, which opens with a heavy key. The room beyond is small, neat, lit from beside the desk by a window of modest size; Crivano is seated and leaning toward it for a breath of fresh air before he realizes that it’s glazed. Uniform and colorless, the panes appear in the fog of his breath, then vanish again as he moves away.

On the floor behind the desk Serena casts open more bolts, these on a massive strongbox that looks as if the entire building must have been fashioned around it. After a moment he rises, lifts the lid, and reaches inside.

When he turns, the sun blazes out of his broad chest. Crivano lifts his hands to shield his eyes, then lowers them when the brightness fades, only to meet his own wincing face suspended between Serena’s rag-bundled fingers.

Serena sets the mirror on the table. Crivano leans to inspect it, blocking the sight of himself with an open palm. Verzelin’s glass is even larger
and clearer than he remembered it, and Serena’s artfully affixed frame hides little of its surface. The frame is crafted from three braided strands of chalcedony glass, perfectly symmetrical, with seven wire threads wound around them. The glass strands, cream-white and identical on their surfaces, flare like opals when caught by the sunlight, disclosing veiled interior colors: fiery red, near-black indigo, the variegated blue-green of a peacock’s tail. The frame must be shaped around a hidden armature of some kind, because it also supports a series of medallions, each about the size of a gold sequin, that float along its outer edge. Crivano notes the designs struck on them—a naked archer, two fighting dogs, a man mounted on a lion, a woman being beaten—and he knows without counting that there are thirty-six. Serena is right to want this out of his shop.

Will this satisfy your friend’s expectations, dottore?

Yes, Crivano says. I’m certain that it will.

Turning again, Serena closes the strongbox lid and begins assembling items on it: twine, thick paper, raw cotton, slats of wood, dry gray-green leaves. I am not a pious man, dottore, he says. As you have probably gathered. But now that this is done, I’m going to make a very sincere confession, and I’m going to give Saint Donatus a few of your friend’s coins. With this item under my roof I have slept not well at all.

I hope for my sake, maestro, that you will keep your confession brief, vague, and tightly focused on the topic at hand.

Serena turns with a wink and a grin. And not mention my impending travels, you mean? he says. No, dottore, I’ll confess those sins after I’ve committed them. I’m sure Amsterdam contains priests of some variety.

Crivano’s expression must betray fear; Serena laughs as he whisks the mirror away and turns back to the strongbox. It’s safe to speak in this room, dottore. No one will hear us over the workshop’s racket. Now, tell me of your plans.

Crivano frowns at Serena’s broad back. Well, he says, you might consider spending what coins you don’t give to Saint Donatus on jewels for your esteemed wife. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds. Anything lighter than gold. Something that will travel.

She and my sons are guaranteed passage?

Of course.

When?

In three days, you and your family are to travel into the city and lodge for the night at a locanda called Cerberus. You’ll find it on the Fondamenta de Cannaregio. I will come for you, and together we’ll make a night-crossing to a trabacolo anchored in the lagoon. The trabacolo will take us to Trieste.

Trieste? Why Trieste?

We’re going overland. To Spalato. We’ll board a Dutch ship there.

I’m not sure I understand, dottore. As long as we’re going overland, why not go to Trent? Why not go the right direction?

For the first time, Crivano detects a trace of anxiety in Serena’s voice, and tension in his posture. Murano is a comfortable cage for him; he’s probably never set foot on the mainland, may only have crossed the lagoon to the city a few dozen times in his life. He is not Obizzo. He has a great deal to lose.

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.

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 the 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.