The Secret of the Glass (3 page)

The men often looked to Zeno for his counsel. Though he had not been the steward of the
Arti
for almost ten years, some considered him the best there had ever been and many sought his wisdom like the child seeks approval from the parent. Like the others before him, Zeno stood, twisting his thin body to face the assemblage.

The morning sun’s first rays found the stained glass of the long, arched altar window and a burst of colorful streaks illuminated Zeno’s angular features with hues of shimmering moss and indigo. He appeared like a colorful specter, prismatic yet surreal.

“We are like precious works of art, cloistered in locked museums, trotted out for show when visiting royalty appears, but kept behind bars otherwise.”

“Sì, sì,”
incensed cries of agreement rang out. Heads waggled with accord, hands flew up in the air as if to beseech God to hear their entreaties.

Time after time, the
Serenissima
flaunted the talent and wealth of Venice in the faces of sojourning royalty, using the artisans of Murano for audacious displays. Not so very long ago King Henry III of France had been the most exalted guest of the Republic.

Many prestigious members of the
Arte dei Vetrai
had been ceremonial attendants, including a younger Zeno just achieving the apex of his artistry, participating in exhibitions for the delight of the visiting monarch.

At the sound of her father’s voice, Sophia had stood on tiptoes to see in the high windows. She waited now in rapt attention, as did they all as calm descended once more, for Zeno’s next sagacious dictum.

Zeno stared at the expectant faces. His lips floundered, but no words formed. His head tilted to the side and his gaze grew vacant. He looked down at the empty space on the pew beneath him, and without further statement, sat down.

Sophia released her straining toes and flexed calf muscles and leaned her back against the warm russet bricks of the church. Her young features scrunched unbecomingly; she didn’t understand why her father had not said more. He had appeared as if about to speak but the words or their sentiments had been lost on the journey from brain to lips.

Within the church, the same confusion cloaked the congregation; men shared silent, questioning glances, their faces changing in the shifting shadows as the rising sun began to stream in through the windows.

Cittadini took advantage of the appeasement. Stepping out from the podium, he crossed the altar, and stood in line with the first of the many rows of blond oak pews, at the intersection of forward and sideward paths.

“Tell me, de Varisco.” The steward addressed a middle-aged man sitting close to the front, Manfredo de Varisco, owner of the San Giancinto glassworks. “You are not a nobleman, yet you live in a virtual
palazzo
. You own your own gondola.
Sì?
”

De Varisco nodded his head, dirty blond curls bouncing, with an almost shameful shrug.

“And you, Brunuro, you are always wearing your bejeweled sword and dagger.”

Cittadini strode down the aisle, approaching a handsome man, black-haired and ruddy, sitting a third of the way down. Baldessera Brunuro, with his brother Zuan, ran both the Tre Corone and the Due Serafini.

“Would you enjoy such privileges, such luxuries, if you weren’t glassworkers?”

No one spoke, though many shook their heads, for the answer was most assuredly no; other Venetian members of the industrial class did not—could not—relish such refinements as did the glassmakers.

Jerking to his right, the robust and rotund Cittadini raised an accusing finger, pointing to another middle-aged man, one with finely sculpted features, the owner of Tre Croci d’Oro.

“You above all, signore Serena, your daughter is to marry a noble. Your grandchildren will be nobles. For the love of God, your male heirs may sit on the Grand Council, may one day become Doge,
Il Serenissimo,
the ruler of all Venice!”

Cittadini punctuated his impassioned plea, throwing his hands up and wide with dramatic finality.

Serena’s brown eyes held Cittadini’s, beacons shining from out of puffy, wrinkle-rimmed sockets. He struggled to stand, his long white beard quivering from his chin onto his chest with each strain of exertion. For a few more seconds he held the steward’s rapt attention in the preternatural quiet of the packed church. The women outside became captives, their noses pressed to the sills, their fussing and fluttering ceasing once and for all.

“None of us wants to give these things up, these glories that make our lives so rich, so abundant.” Serena spoke of their splendors, yet the sadness in his face, his furrowed brow, his frowning mouth, told another tale. “But at what price? It is naught more than extortion. We should be, we must be, able to live as we please, go where we please. We have earned the right.”

Cittadini didn’t answer. He studied the familiar face of his friend. He turned, impotent, to the righteous faces all around and curled his broad shoulders up to his ears. “Then…what do we do?”

Within this house of God, amidst the aura of his benevolence, no one had an answer.

Three

S
ophia stood at the very tip of the eight-oared barge sailing at full tilt across the two kilometers of lagoon lying between Murano and the major cluster of the Venetian islands. The wind blew against her face, lapping at the long silky folds of her best gown. At the rail beside her stood her two younger sisters, as eager and as excited as she to reach the main island’s shore and immerse themselves in the grandeur that was the
Festa della Sensa
. Her mother, father, and grandmother were somewhere on the crowded transport, mingling and gossiping with friends and relations, their anticipation pale in comparison to that of their progeny, tempered by a lifetime of attendance at the yearly celebration.

The low flat islets of Venice appeared on the horizon, as the spiny church spires and rounded domes of cathedrals rose up like mountain ranges upon the sea level earth.

“Which kings and queens will be here do you think, Sophi? Which princes?” Oriana asked in her sister’s ear, thwarting the greedy breeze from snatching her words away.

Sophia smiled fondly at her sister; unveiled by her exhilaration, Oriana acted like the seventeen-year-old she was, dispelling the times when her womanliness made Sophia feel like the younger sister. For a girl who had just attained marriageable age, the dreams and fantasies of finding a noble husband were uppermost in Oriana’s mind. Sophia thought her sister, both her sisters, charming.

On Oriana’s face lay her own features, the same light blue eyes and rich chestnut hair, but Sophia thought them more delicate, a refined beauty to her own rustic pleasantness. At fourteen, Lia still resembled a young girl, with just a hint of promise at the woman she would become, with golden russet eyes like her mother’s and the natural golden copper hair so coveted by the women of Venice.

Sophia leaned close to the sparkling and rapt faces, squinting against the dazzling rays of the sun glinting off the ocean’s rolling surface. In the unremitting, potent cadence of the barge’s oars, she heard the diligent rhythm of her own aroused heartbeat.

“One never knows what great royal personages will make an appearance at the Wedding of the Sea. It is such a great and wondrous ceremony. They come from every corner of the world. Not just from France, England, and Germany, but from China and India, too.”

The young girls squealed and giggled, clasping hands and bouncing up and down. Sophia laughed. She loved these sisters so much; to delight them was to delight herself.

Sophia crossed herself as the boat passed San Michele, the tiny square patch of land—the cemetery island—that lay between the glassmaking center and the Rialtine group of islands, those forming the central cluster of Venice. Sophia made this passage so often, yet, just as often, she pondered what wonders of God created such an unrivaled anomaly as was her homeland. Much of the salt water in the five hundred square kilometers of the Laguna Veneta was but waist-deep. Like the strands of a spider’s web, deeper channels crisscrossed throughout, allowing for the heavy traffic of its waterways. Halfway between the mainland and the long thin sandbanks known as the Lido, the little islets of sand and marram grass had formed in the shoals, as rivers and streams, like the Po and the Adige that ran down the Alps, discharged their silt. Over hundreds of years, each grain gathered, forming the world’s most uniquely beautiful, populated landmass.

Sitting snugly between Europe and Asia, Venice had held the purse strings of the world for hundreds of years, reaping the benefits of her prime location by controlling its trade. At one time, not so long ago, it was more populated and productive than all of France, though equivalent to but a quarter of its size. With the opening of the new trade routes, its power had begun to wane but its splendor and bounty and obsession with the best of everything the world had to offer was as powerful as ever. Its glitter had not yet begun to tarnish.

The steady rumbling of the passengers rose to a rousing bombilation as the boat pulled into the dock at the Fondamenta Nuove and deposited them at the largest landing stage in the north. The journey from here to the Bacino di San Marco, the basin at the eastern end of the Grand Canal, would be quicker and easier via canal and
calle
than to continue the journey via barge around the island’s jutting eastern tip.

The girls rushed from the vessel with unladylike haste, lingering with jittery impatience at the water’s edge for the rest of their family. Their formal summer gowns of linen and silk flapped like the wings of harried birds in the constant breeze that wafted off the pungent sea. Sophia’s simple crème gown served as a blank canvas for the peony and aquamarine of her sisters’ garb, her modest, almost severe hairstyle offered as if in contrast to their braided, pinned and beribboned coifs. Their faces shone bright as colorful glass beads beneath the small, lacy white veils obscuring their maiden faces.

The sisters pointed and gaped at the beauty around them. The city looked breathtaking, bedecked in its best finery for the ceremony and all the visitors it brought to their shores. The pale pink and flax stone buildings blossomed with boxes of flowers, a riot of color, on their balconies and rooftop
altanes
. The four-and five-story buildings seemed to be made of row upon row of lace, each row unique in itself. The graceful, multifariously shaped windows, spiny-topped roofs, Venetian gothic arches, and marble columns crowned with Byzantine clover designs were forever reflected in the shimmering, undulating surface of the canal water at their feet. Bright garlands festooned the doors and servants in their finest livery stood poised to greet any guests.

A pulsing, never-ending mass of people swirled and jostled the sisters; westerners in familiar attire, easterners in exotic saris and turbans created a painter’s palette of colors and a quilt of materials.

Oriana spied her elders among the thinning throng trailing off the barge.

“Papà, Mamma, Nonna,” she called, waving her hand high above her head, her gestures broadening as Sophia shushed at her, attempting, as her high-boned cheeks reddened, to spurn any undue attention her sister’s more gregarious nature might attract.

“
Sì.
Hurry, hurry.” Lia picked up where Oriana left off, laughing as Sophia punished her with a scathing sidelong glance.

The Fiolarios waved back with relaxed nonchalance, making their way to the shore in their own good time; no matter how fast they moved it would not be fast enough for these excited youngsters. At the end of the boat ramp, Zeno gathered his family into a tight group, putting on the silk cap that would protect the tender skin of his thinly-haired pate.

“We shall take a gondola today,
sì?
All the way to the piazza.” His pale eyes sparkled below bouncing brows.

“Zeno!” His wife’s shocked gasp rose above the exultant trill of her daughters.

Viviana Boccalini Fiolario’s elegant and dark features, distinctive and still as beautiful as when she had been a girl, blanched. She took three quick steps toward her husband. Even in her trepidation, her curvaceous full figure moved with grace, her hips swayed with the seduction so particular to females of the
Adriatico
.

“Is such an expense necessary? All the way to the ceremony, even along the Canale Grande? Should we spend that many
soldi,
that many
ducats?”
She tortured her husband with a dark gaze, one particular from a wife to an errant husband, but it held little of its power this day.

“Now,
cara
.” Zeno used his most ingratiating tone as he slipped his wife’s hand over one of his thin, chiseled arms and that of his mother over the other. “Our profits have been larger than ever this year and today is one of the most important days for our people. If not today, when, eh?”

“
Sì,
Viviana,” Marcella piped in. “It would be so nice for these old legs to rest while they can today.
Per favore?
”

Viviana cocked her head indignantly at her mother-in-law. As strong and as hearty as Viviana herself, there was nothing elderly about this sixty-eight-year-old woman, especially by Venetian standards. Shorter and rounder perhaps, with gray hair and the light coloring of her son, Marcella was still a woman of vigorous constitution, one who found great pleasure in conspiring with Zeno.

There was no hope for it; Viviana nodded her head in capitulation. “Very well, off we go. Let’s eat at every
trattoria
and shop all day while we’re at it.”

“Sounds perfect,
mi amore,”
Zeno responded straight-faced to his wife’s sarcasm, a sheepish grin cracking the false veneer as his wife’s jaw dropped. “Come, come,
mia famiglia,
this way.”

Zeno led the procession of women along the
fondamenta
, chest puffed up grandly like a rooster leading his hens, nodding to all the men staring at his bevy of beauties with a grin set askew by arrogance. They arrived at the small canal of the Rio dei Gesuiti, and mingled into the line of people waiting to catch a gondola.