The Secret of the Glass (43 page)

Sophia squeezed her eyes closed, wringing away the tears of relief flooding her eyes and blurring her vision, just to see Teodoro brought her a modicum of relief.

“That will be all, Orsino.” Teodoro put an assuring hand on the man’s shoulder.

The servant gave a clipped bow, retreating into the next room.

“What is it, Sophia? What’s wrong?” Teodoro demanded, looking past her onto the
fondamenta
. “Have you come here alone, at this time of—”

“He’s dead, Teo,” Sophia sobbed, grasping for his hand as the drowning searched for a lifeline. “My father is dead.”

His jaw fell, no longer curious but shocked.

“
Mia cara
, I am so sorry, so very sorry.” Teodoro raised her hand to his lips, drawing her into his soothing embrace, his hands rubbing circles upon her back.

The motion held, his body stiffened.

“
Dio Santo,
we must get you out of here, now.”

Sophia nodded, her forehead rubbing against his hard chest.

“Doge Donato…the Doge…he is expecting the pieces…from my father…but it was me, I made them for Galileo…he’s waiting…they’re waiting…when they don’t—”

He took her by her upper arms and gently pried her off him.

“Does anyone know of his passing, Sophia, other than the family? Have you told anyone else?”

“No one, except Santino and Rozalia, our servants, but they are like family. I’ve told them all to do nothing, say nothing, until I return.”

“My smart girl,” he breathed in relief, drawing her back into his powerful embrace.

For a second of time he held her there, rocking her gently, accepting as much succor as he would offer. Sophia closed her eyes, wallowing in this void where nothing existed save his arms.

“Orsino?”

His voice broke her peace, as she knew it must be broken. Looking up, she found his gaze waiting for hers. There it remained as the stoic man returned to the hallway.

“I’m sorry to disturb you more this night, but I need you to rouse one of the squires. Have them dress, and escort Signorina Fiolario home. We will await him on the
fondamenta.
”

“As you say, sir.” Orsino bowed, turning into the corridor and up the stairs to the right.

Teodoro led her back out into the night, quietly closing the large door behind them. They stood together beneath the stars glowing bright in the unending twilight, the gentle lapping of the canal in their ears, two bodies as close as humanly possible.

“I need you to make ready, Sophia, you and your family. They must take only what they can carry, what the others can carry for your mother and grandmother. Neither will be able to bear much more than the weight their loss already imposes.”

Sophia nodded, overwhelmed with both grief and relief. She would save them, with Teodoro’s help, her sins would not be visited upon her family. But in the escape would come their separation, one like a ragged tear of fabric, never to be repaired.

“You must wait, telling no one. I promise it will not be long, I swear it to you.” He took her face in his hands, captured in the basket of his fingers. “You believe me, don’t you? You trust me?”

Sophia raised her hands, grasping the arms that held her so tenderly.

“With my heart and my life.”

Teodoro nodded, squeezing his eyes closed, plunging his lips upon hers, pressing against her as if he could fuse them together. He pulled back, a single tear falling from his eyes, tracing itself down over his high cheekbone.

“Then we must say goodbye.”

Sophia shook her head, denying it, yet her protests lay silent upon her tongue.

“There is no other way, Sophia. If you were to stay now, if your life would be forfeited by laws that I would see upheld, I would surrender my own, perishing in the flames of hell. I would rather break those laws, suffer any consequences for them, and have you live beyond my reach and that of the
Serenissima
.”

Her hands touched his face, his hair.

Teodoro’s parted lips found hers, the tenderness in their caress almost unbearable.

“Signore?”

They jumped at the small insistence of the young voice, to the boy who stood behind them, the squire come to escort Sophia home.

With dolorous deliberateness, Sophia backed out of Teodoro’s arms, one hesitant step at a time. His eyes held hers as if in defiance of their parting, his warmth lingered upon her skin. She took that first step up the
fondamenta,
and away from him.

“Arrivederci,”
she whispered.

Thirty-five

T
he
maggiordomo
ushered him into the unlit room, the man’s lone candle casting the only illumination for Teodoro to follow. He stood at the threshold of the unfamiliar chamber as the liveried servant used a taper, sparking flame to wick, lighting a random assortment of the candles set generously about, some in elaborate branches and sconces, others in short and stubby plain pewter holders.

As flickering golden radiance steeped into the cubby, Teodoro stepped in. The piles of books stood in the corners like sentinels standing guard over the small, incongruously simple wooden desk, the plainly carved piece out of place in this elaborate home. Beautiful pieces of art vied for space and attention upon plain walls; the colors and filaments of the rectangular carpet were worn down to dull stubs.

The young servant offered Teodoro a clipped obeisance.

“Have a seat, signore. The master will be with you shortly.”

Teodoro nodded his thanks, taking a seat in one of the leather chairs facing the desk, its maroon surface smooth and shiny, as well-worn as the room in which it sat. He crossed one long leg over the other; it bobbed up and down on its jittery base, his foot tapping anxiously against the polished wooden floor.

Her face rose up in his mind with each quick beat of his heart, Sophia’s anguish and fear tore away at him one pulse at a time. If he could heal her with his life, he would; if saving hers was all he could do, then he would do it gladly, unmindful of any danger it may bring to his own liberty.

“Gradenigo.”

The man entered the room without a sound and Teodoro flinched at the unforeseen intrusion.

His host laughed, patting Teodoro’s shoulder as he trudged past him on the way to the seat behind the desk. He sat with a harrumph, enfolding a worn burgundy-colored wrap about his nightshirt-clad form.

“Your appearance at my door in the middle of the night and your tense demeanor tell me this is no social call.”

Teodoro exhaled, rubbing his stubble-shaded chin, and nodded.

“I fear your perception is keen indeed,” Teodoro rushed on, feeling no need to bother with banalities. “Zeno Fiolario is dead.”

The man’s eyes widened, as his brows rose capriciously upon his brow.

“The world has lost a good man, a true artist.”

“Most assuredly,” Teodoro agreed. “I am here to make sure the family suffers no more. You have promised that you would help.”

Teodoro leaned forward in his chair, elbows to his knees, his eyes pinning the other man with their trenchant stare.

“Now that the moment is upon us, do you plan to uphold that promise?”

The man across from him leaned back in his chair, his short fingers thrumming out a cadence upon the hard, shiny surface of the desk.

“There are many things men may say about me, accuse me of, but being bereft of all probity is not one of them.” He stilled the agitated motion of his digits. “I gave you my word and I will honor it.”

Teodoro’s elbows slipped from their precarious position on his knees, his head dropped, his chin falling to his chest. His emotions loosened upon him, like the water through a new canal’s first release, all appropriate decorum ignored.

“Gradenigo?” The voice was measured with equal parts surprise and concern.

Teodoro raised his face, unabashed at the angst it would reveal.

The man’s eyes narrowed in confusion; he leaned across the desk to stare at Teodoro.

“I’m sorry, Gradenigo. I didn’t realize you were that familiar with the man, that your grief—”

“I knew him not at all,” Teodoro admitted with a cast-off shrug.

“Then why? What vexes you so grievously?”

Teodoro jumped up as if prod, circled his chair, once, twice, with restless pacing, the other man’s curious stare as his companion, then threw himself back upon the seat.

“I…I love her.” Teodoro’s confession stood stark and real in the space between them; a naked truth all the more startling for its bareness.

He almost laughed; that he should make this admission, to this man of all men, was dark and biting in its mocking comedy, as ironic as the situation itself. He rubbed at his forehead with the pad of his hand, sending the front fringe of his hair skyward.

“With your promise I will see her safely away. It is all I could wish for and the worst that could happen.”

Teodoro’s host pushed away from his desk and rose gingerly from his chair, turning to stand at the tall, narrow window at his back. Through the unshuttered and opened lead-rimmed glass, the men stared out into the starlit sky and the waning moon glowing near the horizon. The chirp of the crickets rose up from the garden below, their frenzied song regaling high summer.

“I have always thought that to give one’s heart is to lose a piece of oneself, irretrievably. I can see from your face that my supposition is true.” He swiveled back to Teodoro. “I have always guarded mine, hoarded it, like a diminishing treasure. There have been many times in my life when I’ve regretted it. Seeing you…like this…I do not.”

“Perhaps you are the wiser.” Teodoro shook his head. “In the back of my mind there was always the thought, the hope, that another answer would present itself. That the situation would change of its own accord, my poorness would magically disappear, as would her betrothed, and we would live the life we were meant to share.”

Teodoro looked sheepishly at the man from beneath his brow and his hand.

“Preposterous, I know.”

“Not preposterous, human.”

Teodoro dropped his hands into his lap and sat back in his chair.

“It makes no matter now,” he said. “Our fortunes are cast as they are. Her life, their lives are worth the cost.”

Leaning over the desk, the man picked up a thin sheaf of paper and quill and scribbled on it, the scratching vying with the cricket song. The last letter formed, he waved it in the air, drying the ink, then folded it in quarters and slid it across the desk to Teodoro.

Pushing against his knees, Teodoro rose and stepped forward, staring down at the paper as if it were the work of the devil.

“The sooner they can get there the better. There are but a few hours until dawn.”

Teodoro wiped his face with the back of one hand and picked up the paper. The other he reached out to the noble behind the desk.

The man stared at the gracious offering, as if not trusting it. Raising his eyes to meet Teodoro’s, he raised his own and grasped it.

Thirty-six

S
ophia spied his approach from behind the emerald green curtain of the front room. She hovered in insipid shadows; the remnants of candlelight from the back room and the reflection of the moonlight off the canal provided the sole illumination in the chamber. The chamber’s finely crafted furniture appeared like boulders in the gloom, lumpy and formless. In the distance, she heard the murmured prayers of her family, their pleas to God punctuated by their sobs and sniffles. She ran to the door before the squire rapped upon its surface, before his tapping disturbed the peace of their neighbors.

The sleepy youth flinched as the portal burst open, his fisted hand raised, stumbling as his momentum continued forward with no surface to connect with.

“You have a message for me? For Sophia Fiolario?” Sophia’s whisper reached out of the unfathomable opening like the hiss of a snake from the dense grass.

Taken unawares, the confused boy scratched at his tousled, short-cropped blond hair. Looking down at the vermilion-wax-sealed missive in his hands, he squinted in the dim light of the lone torch above the door.

“
Sì,
Sophia Fiolar—”

Sophia snatched the folded gauzy paper from his hand, thrusting a shining
soldo
into it with a murmured “
grazie
,” slamming the door closed on the bewildered messenger before he uttered another syllable.

The crinkling of the paper sounded like the crackling of a raging fire in the quiet of the house, and her skirts rustled like kindling. Sophia rushed through the room and into the kitchen. In the light of the fire, she read the message, her eyes flashing across the hastily scrawled letters, her lips silently forming the words as she read them.

When she found his name scribbled across the bottom, Sophia closed her eyes, laying the page against the swift rise and fall of her bosom, offering a prayer of thanks.

Folding the thin sheaf, Sophia curled the small square in one moist palm, pressing the balled fist against her upper lip. She closed her eyes, inhaled a deep draught of mollifying air, and rushed from the room.

Her grandmother had joined the circle of women kneeling close together in the small
salotto
, Rozalia with them. Sophia surmised that Santino sat with her father, unwilling, or perhaps unable, to leave the man he had served for most of his life. She stepped into the circle, accepting the hand raised and offered by her mother, but didn’t kneel. Her stalwart, unwavering posture ended their reverent mutterings, each grief-ravaged face looked up. There had been no questions when she had returned home but her mother’s silent regard made it clear the time of reckoning was coming. The expectancy was about to become much worse.

Sophia’s glance flitted around the small loop of women.

“I need each one of you to pack a bag,” Sophia told them with inappropriate calm. “Not so large that when full, you cannot carry it. Bring only what you cannot bear to part with, what you cannot live without.”