The Secret of the Glass (41 page)

“I will see you again, know it,” Teodoro said, his voice insistent, each word clipped with determination.

Sophia bit upon her bottom lip, afraid to speak, fearing her words would promise more than her life could fulfill. She stepped away from him, the space between growing larger, their fingers straining to sustain the touch until the last.

“I will see you forever, here,” she touched her temple, then her heart, “and here.”

Their hands parted, separated. With one last look upon his face, Sophia continued down the
fondamenta
toward her house.

At the corner of the
calle
, she hesitated and looked back. As she knew he would be, Teodoro stood in the very spot she’d left him, hard shadows falling in the curves of his face. His eyes protected her, held her to the very last. She smiled, feeling her lips tremble upon her face. He smiled back in answer, one hand rising to settle upon his chest. She turned the corner.

The phantom rose up out of the garden, its spectral substance flapping as it rushed toward her. Its bottom edge hovering a few inches off the ground; its twisting tentacles grasping out voraciously. The scream rose up in her throat, Teodoro’s name formed upon her lips. The crash of blood drubbed in her ears as she staggered back. It drew closer before she could call for help.

Sophia craned her neck, and strained her eyes to see better in the muted light. The apparition moaned, wailing in pain and confusion. The surge of fear and adrenaline raced through her like charging horses. She knew that voice.

“Papà!” she called out as she began to run, her frightened voice echoing in the stillness of the night.

Zeno staggered along the alleyway, arms akimbo. Eyes wide and wild as he lurched from side to side. His thin, white nightshirt billowed out behind him. His emaciated form looked like a skeleton’s beneath the thin fabric.

Sophia flung her arms out to him, almost tripping on her skirts. Her hands and arms found him. Barely recognizable, his madness distorted his features. He teetered forward, out of control. His weight fell against her, and she staggered beneath it. In their embrace, they stumbled to the ground.

“The fire is too cool. Did you see him, Viviana? Stop! Put the oranges in the basket. You must stop!” Zeno babbled, incoherent. His words sloughed from the side of his mouth like saliva dripping from the lips of a hot, thirsty dog.

Sophia held him, clutching him, the fever of his body burning into her flesh. She held him tighter, as if to force the illness from him with the force of her arms.

“Oh, Papà,” Sophia sobbed, rocking him. “Dearest Papà.”

Zeno’s wild eyes found her face, his forehead rutted in confusion. He took a breath, and collapsed.

Thirty-two

W
ithout his bizarre protective mask, the physician appeared distinguished, almost handsome, tired yet sympathetic as he stood in the threshold of the dimly lit
salotto
.

“I’m afraid the end is near, a few days perhaps, no more than a week.”

Lia’s sobs filled the quiet of the small sitting room. Silent tears ran down Oriana’s face as she embraced her younger sister, her features wretched, frozen in pain as she stared up at signore Fucini.

He held out a small green bottle filled with purple liquid to Viviana.

“This will keep him as comfortable and quiet as possible until then.”

Her mother accepted the tapered receptacle with a trembling hand. Sophia stood behind Viviana’s chair, her hands upon her mamma’s shoulders, clenching tightly. She was grateful Nonna was with Zeno, having no wish for her grandmother to hear of her son’s demise spoken of with such assurance.

“
Grazie
, signore.” Sophia stepped out from behind the chair and her mother’s unmoving form. Still clad in her elegant gown and jewels, she stood out like a flower in the grass compared to these other women dressed in simple nightclothes and covers.

Viviana sat with the bottle perched in the cradle of her hands, staring at it as if she couldn’t recall what it was, let alone its purpose.

Sophia accompanied the physician to the front door, remembering to pay him generously, and returned to the small back room and the inconsolable women within it. All three remained exactly where she’d left them, as if time had stood still within this chasm of calamity.

“To bed,” Sophia said, directing her instructions to all three.

No one in the household had slept since Sophia had awakened them in the middle of the night, since she had cried for help and sent Lia to fetch the physician. No one had questioned why she was out alone at that hour and she doubted if any one ever would.

Oriana stood, pulling Lia with her.

“Come with me, dearest,” she coaxed, leading the younger girl away from the room. “Come rest with me.”

Lia followed without a word, sniffling, her shoulders hitching with her abating sobs. Oriana wrapped the small shawl closer around her sister’s nightgown-clad shoulders. Her pale eyes found Sophia’s, so alike in color and shape, stricken with the same startled cast of impending grief. Sophia tried to smile, to thank Oriana for caring for Lia, but it was a futile, sad attempt. Oriana dipped her head sideways.

“Give that to me, Mamma.” Sophia took the small bottle from her mother’s hands, grasping Viviana by the upper arm, and lifting her to her slippered feet. “Take some rest in my room. I will send Nonna to bed and will sit with Papà myself.”

As they crossed through the kitchen she stopped, grabbing an indigo bottle of yellow liquid. She poured her mother a portion of Moscato and added a drop of the physician’s brew into the small cup; she saw nothing wrong with easing her mother’s pain with the concoction. How much more enduring was the pain of the living than it was for those who passed on to a better life?

With everyone to their beds, the house settled into an uneasy stillness, shrouded in suffused dawn light creeping in through the chinks of the still-shuttered windows, thin streams of light reaching into the house like invading fingers. Changed into her simple muslin work gown, Sophia stood in the threshold of her father’s room, almost afraid to enter, afraid to disturb his tenuous hold on life.

Gathering her courage, she stepped into the somber chamber. Her nostrils flared at the bitter, sharp scent of urine and withering flesh. Her mother did her best to keep him clean, but Viviana grew tired as the days grew long. From the foot of the bed, Sophia studied the emaciated body that had once been her father—how small it seemed beneath the folds of the linens. His facial skin hung against his skull, falling hard against the deep hollows of bone. His slack jaw hung slightly open, frozen into a horrible grimace. Sophia offered a prayer up to God that her father could not see his own helplessness; he would hate it so.

She stepped around the carved post to the side of the bed, drawing closer to her father.

Zeno’s eyes fluttered; Sophia glimpsed the azure through the slit of his lids. It was a barely perceptible moment, but in it, Sophia thought she saw a flash of recognition, as if he saw her and knew her. His head jerked off the bed covers; his hand groped out into the air. It was a small, pathetic gesture, but in it, Sophia thought he struggled to sit up and speak to her, to reach out to her. How she longed to believe it was true. His legs bent and straightened, his dry skin rustling against the bedclothes.

She grabbed his hand, stilling it upon the bed once more. How thin and fragile it felt, how weak and pale within her own tawny skin and strong grip.

“I’m here, Papà, I’m right here.” Without releasing her hold upon him, she pulled the small bedside chair closer and sat upon it, whispering and cooing all the while. “How can I ever thank you, Papà? For all you have done, for all you have given me.”

With her other hand, she brushed back the wiry strands of gray hair from his forehead. His agitation dwindled at her touch, his lips twitched, perhaps in a smile. She spoke with her hushed whisper, the sound of her voice, the tenderness of her words, offered as a panacea to his troubled body. After a time, he relaxed. His breathing deepened and lengthened; he slept peacefully once more.

Sophia leaned forward, pressing her lips against his feverish brow.

“Goodbye, Papà.”

Out in the bright courtyard she felt as if she were in a foreign land; the sun could not, should not be shining while her father lay in his bed dying. The world must have changed with all that had happened in such a short time. It was no longer the same, for her it couldn’t be. In one small day, Sophia had known breathtaking joy and profound pleasure, and yet in that same speck of time, a scar had been etched permanently upon her heart. She was a different woman. She craved the oasis in the middle of the madness, yearned for the one place where everything made sense, where she could—at least to some small degree—control the events erupting around her.

Before she could reach it, the door to the factory creaked opened. The clanking of tools found her, as did the heat of the flames and with them Ernesto and another, younger man, attired in tabard and puffed trunks of scarlet and gold, the Doge’s colors. Sophia tripped and faltered on her fear.

“Worry not, signore, it will be taken care of, I assure you,” Ernesto said with a dutiful bend.

The stranger bowed to Ernesto and, spying Sophia’s approach, made her an obeisance, before heading out of the
terrazzo
.

“Who was that, Ernesto? What did he want?” Sophia tasted the panic rise up like bitter bile in her throat.

“Ah, Sophia, I am so glad you’ve come.” Ernesto pumped his clasped hands heavenward as if in prayer at the sight of her. “He is an emissary of the Doge. Can you imagine, here, at La Spada?”

Sophia shook her head at his incredulity; there was no time for such frivolity.

“What did he want, Ernesto?” she asked, grabbing him by the biceps and immobilizing his gesticulating arms.

“Such an honor, Sophia, you will not believe it. The Doge himself has ordered twenty additional pieces such as those Zeno made for professore Galileo. Zeno is invited to deliver them himself, to the palace no less.” The galvanized man broke free of her embrace, arms flying heavenward with his spirit.

“To the palace?” Sophia repeated his words like a foreigner who could not grasp their meaning. Her father would have been so thrilled.

“
Sì, sì.
He will receive a commendation, an award, for his part in Galileo’s astonishing creation. Can you believe it, Sophia?”

“No. No, I cannot.” Her voice came back to her as if from a great distance. She could not breach the wall of irony that rose around her. To credit Zeno with such recognition, his name forever united with the name of Galileo, would have been a life’s achievement. God was cruel in his jest. She could only hope her father would find a greater reward waiting for him at his next destination.

A hand gently squeezed her upper arm, the pressure pulling her to the bench against the factory’s outer wall. She looked down at Ernesto’s pinching fingers.

“How is your father, Sophia?” he asked, his voice deep and tremulous, his bright-eyed astonishment replaced with a furrowed brow of concern.

“He is…he is fine,” Sophia stuttered, swallowed, and set her chin an inch higher. “He’s feeling much less discomfort.”

Her simmering panic forced her mendacity. She needed time to think, to figure out the best way of handling the situation. If her father did not produce the pieces for the Doge, immediate inquiries would begin, inquiries that had the authority to affect change faster than her impending marriage to Pasquale.

“Are you sure?” Ernesto pressed.

The man’s guarded, insistent inquiry fed the fuel of Sophia’s fear. All the glassworkers knew her father was ill, but how much they knew, she couldn’t be sure. Did they know she had created the pieces for Galileo…that her father
couldn’t
have made them? She’d known many of them since she was a small child and yet she felt an unprecedented uncertainty regarding their loyalty.

“I promise you, Ernesto, the pieces will be made. The Doge and the professore will be quite pleased.”

He stared at her with gray, steely wisdom. She felt her leg begin to beat out a rhythm of anxiety but stifled the erratic motion with a pinch upon her own thigh, leaning back into the shade of the building as if to hide from Ernesto’s glaring scrutiny.

“I have given my word, Sophia, my word and my promise that those pieces will be made and delivered on time.”

“And I will make sure your word is kept.”

Ernesto studied her for a moment more. “
Sì.
I will return to work. You will tell your father?”

Sophia nodded. She would tell him.

Ernesto retreated into the confines of the factory and Sophia made for the house, no longer hoping for the peace of the
fabbrica
to allay her troubled mind. There she would find more worry; with every glance and every word, she would wonder who knew of her secrets and who would keep them. There would be plenty of hours spent within the glassworks tonight, and over the next few nights, plenty of time to find her ease.

The sweat saturated her skin in a few short hours. She had cast her simple work gown aside as soon as signore Cellini left the glassworks, dismissed for the night by her insistence. Like a tiny ant upon the large earth, she toiled away in the immense factory clad only in her chemise, finding room for her thoughts to spread and grow in the enormity. Only the shifting grains of sand in the curved glass marked the passing of the night. Her attention, her being was so focused in these moments, time became irrelevant and insignificant.

With each piece of glass born on the end of her rod, Sophia remembered all those that came before it, all the magnificent creations made with her hands, with her father by her side. To never know the feelings this creating gave her would be like losing the very air she breathed. Hot tears spilled upon her cheeks as she thought of her father’s absence from her life.