Falcon in the Glass (12 page)

More often than before, his gaze strayed to the children and their birds. He drank in the sight of Paolo drowsing peacefully, still coughing a little but not much the worse for his night in the rain. He watched the sparrow and the finch flitting back and forth from one twin girl to the other — Marina, he reminded himself, and Ottavia. He listened to a conversation between Federigo and his marsh hawk, where they
queck-eck-ecked
back and forth at each other, seeming to share a joke. He saw the crow pushing its head against Georgio, begging to be stroked with a finger. He smiled at the magpie, who surveyed the world from its perch
atop the littlest boy's head, like a preposterous black-and-white hat.

This bond they shared, the children and their birds . . . it began to seem a bit miraculous. Renzo almost longed for a bird himself.

Once, as Sofia hitched a ride on Federigo's leg, Renzo recalled a pair of tiny, fur-lined boots he'd seen in the alms sack. Pia's boots — she had outgrown them. They might be a little large for Sofia, but she would grow too.

How easy it would have been to take those boots out of the sack and bring them here. And the moth-eaten leggings he had put into the sack, and maybe an old shirt or pair of breeches from Mama's rag basket.

Why hadn't he thought of that before?

Letta he watched as well. The way she pursed her lips in concentration as she affixed the bowl of a drinking cup to the
pontello
. The way she glanced over her shoulder at the children, her eyebrows pulled together in worry. The way she spoke to them — sternly at times, and yet never far from leaping into battle on their behalf.

Tentatively he began to ask her questions. Where had they come from? What had happened to their parents? How had they all come to have birds?

She told him little. They were not a family, or at least not
family
as Renzo understood it. True, each one had those striking green eyes. But not all were related by blood and, with some who were, it was a distant kinship, as with members of a tribe. A few of their parents had died in a plague; she
wouldn't tell him what had become of the others. In any case, the children had come to Venice with Letta's grandmother.

What had happened to
her
, Letta wouldn't say. Nor would she tell him much about their bond with the birds. “It's who we are,” she said. “Since time before memory. Nobody knows why, for true. It's just” — she shrugged — “who we are.”

“But Sofia doesn't have one.”

“She's too young. When the time's right, she'll know.”

They had no one, no one at all. Letta wouldn't tell where they spent their days, but Renzo thought it must be in the streets and in the marsh. Who would look after them after he failed the test? Once, Renzo had found them shivering outside, crouched beneath the locked shutters — and Taddeo fast asleep and drooling on the
padrone
's bench.

No, they couldn't stay forever. But maybe until the nights were not so cold.

Now he turned to watch Letta take a small gather from the furnace. She swiped a hand across her face, and the copper light of the furnace flickered across the high, broad planes of her cheekbones and the bowed curve of her lips. He'd never noticed them before. Distracted by her strange eyes and disheveled hair, he'd never seen that she was . . . quite pleasant to behold.

She looked up suddenly, caught him staring.

He quickly turned away.

As he was about to consign his next failure to the broken-glass pail, Letta set a hand on his arm. “Wait,” she said. “See
that.” She pointed to the malformed globe at the end of the blowpipe.

Renzo frowned, examined it. “It looks sort of like a bird,” he said.

“Like a falcon. Like my kestrel.”

He eyed the kestrel, perched on Letta's shoulder, then turned back to the glass.

Yes. He could see the resemblance — a blunt, squarish head set securely on an upright oval body. The hint of a wing and a tail.

“Could you make wings for it?” Letta asked.

Renzo considered. “I think so. If you'll bring me some molten glass and set it just here . . .”

It seemed an idle game, the wings. Renzo worked the glass and Letta watched, advising him on the shape of a falcon's wings, how they tapered at the base and at the tips, how they crooked and arched and tilted. Many falcons and twice as many wings later, Renzo cracked off the end of the blowpipe a glass creature the size of his hand. They studied it a moment together.

Renzo could hardly breathe.

It was quick and light and joyful — poised as if it had just sailed out of the sky to alight on a branch.

A little miracle of a bird.

“Should I — ” Letta began.

“Yes! Take it to the annealing oven! Before it shatters!”

Renzo had seen birds wrought in stone and clay. He'd seen painted birds and birds made of tiles. He'd seen birds
wrought of glass as well, but they'd been lumpish, earthbound, lifeless things.

Nothing like
this
.

He shivered, as a new idea struck him.

What if . . .

He stood, filled with a surge of restless energy, and began to pace before the fire.

What if, come time for the test, he created something so new, so striking, so astonishing, that he could vault right past the usual trials of skill? What if the
padrone
couldn't bear to give up someone who could do
this
, and would give him more time to learn the other skills?

If the
padrone
had hoped that Renzo could bring him some of his father's secrets . . . Well, Renzo wouldn't have to say where this bird came from, but the
padrone
could think what he liked.

It wouldn't do to show him a finished bird beforehand. He would have to create it alone, before the
padrone
's very eyes. And the
padrone
would have no patience with mistakes; it would have to be perfect on the first try.

To learn this in three nights?

Impossible.

And yet it was just a single thing to master. With a bit of luck . . .

He felt something stirring deep inside. Something lifting, like a feather wafting upward in a draft, in a slanting shaft of light:

Hope.

T
he next night, on his way to the glassworks, Renzo again heard footsteps behind him. His breath caught; he whirled round and beheld a cloaked figure standing in the gloom.

Vittorio.

“You!” Renzo said. “I told you: Stay away.”

Vittorio set a finger to his lips. “Hush, Renzo. Hear me out. Please.”

Renzo hesitated. His heart still went molten with rage when he thought about Vittorio's carelessness, about what he had done. And yet sometimes, when the memory of their last meeting blinked suddenly into Renzo's mind, a burst of astonished gladness swept through him, and swarms of unwelcome tears stung his eyes.

Vittorio. Alive!

But he was still careless, still putting all of their lives in danger, even now.

“I need to speak to you,” Vittorio said. “You're in danger.”

“Yes — because of you!”

“There's something else. But we can't talk here.”

Motioning for Renzo to follow, he slipped into an alley and vanished around a corner.

Renzo followed, looking round lest anyone should see them, and begrudging every moment spent away from the glass. But Vittorio seemed so certain.
Danger.
And despite everything, Renzo didn't think Vittorio had ever intended him ill.

Vittorio motioned him to a small boat tethered to the edge of a canal. “Where — ” Renzo began.

“Shh. Get in.”

Vittorio rowed them quickly through the narrow canal, merging into a wider one in a district of great
palazzi
. Many were deserted for the winter. Soon Vittorio made for one of them, a tall, narrow confection three stories high, with tiers of high-arched windows one atop another, like a frosted layer cake. The lower windows had been shuttered. The windows in the upper stories, crosshatched with iron bars, stood lifeless and dark.

Vittorio guided the little boat to the water door, a large, padlocked gate of iron filigree. They edged up beside it.

“Hold the boat steady,” Vittorio said.

Renzo took hold of the gate. “Do you know these people?” he asked.

Vittorio didn't answer but drew two slender iron implements from his purse. He fiddled with the padlock; with a soft
snick
it snapped open.

Renzo stared at Vittorio. When had he learned to pick locks? And why?

Was he a thief?

Uneasy, Renzo looked about. No other boats nearby.

“
Presto, presto!
Open it!” Vittorio said.

Renzo pushed on the iron bars. The boat slipped into the dim, cavernous space beneath the living quarters; Renzo closed the gate behind.

It smelled of seaweed and mildew and damp. They moored the boat to a stone pier, then Renzo followed Vittorio to a wooden bench near the foot of the stairs that led to the house.

“Well?” Renzo said. “What danger?”

“The bird children.”

The bird children.
Vittorio knew about them? But how?

Moonlight trickled in through the iron door and glimmered across the water, swirling like wrinkled silk. Shadows rippled in waves across Vittorio's face.

“I listen,” he said. “I watch. I know, for example, that eight children climb through a window into the glassworks late each night and climb out again just before sunrise. I know that each child but the smallest has a bird. I know that the children used to go in after you arrived, but of late they've been coming earlier. I know all of this but can only guess at why.”

“How are they more dangerous than you? The assassins are searching for you!”

“And the Ten are searching for
them
. Listen. The Ten arrested the matriarch of the bird children's tribe, and Venice is churning with rumors of witchcraft. Last week the doge's
daughter saw two magpies on her balustrade before she miscarried. A flock of pigeons knocked down a pediment, which struck a gondolier on the head and killed him. And an assassin was seen entering the bird woman's cell . . . but failed to kill her.”

“That's not witchcraft. It's just coincidence.”

Vittorio shrugged. “Are you sure?”

Renzo nodded, uneasy. True, the children had that uncanny bond with their birds. At first he'd told himself that it was just training, but he'd known for quite some time that it was more than that. Something deeply sweet and wondrous, but not entirely natural. And those eyes . . . He was accustomed to them now. He'd forgotten how strange they'd seemed at first.

“It doesn't matter one way or the other,” Vittorio said. “It matters what people think. It matters what the Ten will do. And here you are, sheltering a whole flock of them. If I've seen them, it won't be long before someone else does too.”

“How
would
they, unless they were lurking about every night, stalking me? We're careful. We pick up every feather, every dropping.”

“Why do you do it? Why take such a risk?”

Renzo's fingers reached to touch the smooth surface of Papà's pin on his cloak. The boat bumped against the dock with a hollow
clunk
. Moonlight rippled across the walls, the stairs. He felt unbalanced, as if the world had shifted and he now lived in some dim, watery realm, a realm apart from ordinary people, a realm populated by witches and ghosts.

“They're helping me,” he said. “With the glass. There's a test — ”

“I've heard about that. If I could help you, I would, but — ”

“No! You stay away.” Besides, it was too late.

“But if the
padrone
finds out about you and the children — ”

“He won't,” Renzo said, with more confidence than he felt.

“He might.”

“He won't.”

“What of the carpenter?” Vittorio asked. “Your mother's friend. Surely he could procure you an apprenticeship.”

“In
wood
?” Renzo heard the shrillness in his voice. His failure hung in the air between them. He couldn't support his family. His only hope was to go groveling before another man for help — a man outside the family, a man he hardly knew.

“It's a respectable trade — ”

“But it's wood! It's dark and heavy and lightless. There's no fire to it, no glow. Woodworkers don't dance. They hunch over, pound at things, hack at them.”

In the cold, gray, undulating light, Renzo could see that Vittorio understood. He knew the pull of the glass. He had left the republic for the sake of the glass, so he could work with it however he liked, unfettered by Papà's strictures.

Suddenly Renzo ached to tell Vittorio everything. About the broken goblets, about Letta, about the falcon in the glass.

But no.

Vittorio shifted on the bench. “Listen, Renzo. I have to leave the island.”

The sharp pang of loneliness surprised Renzo. “Where will you go?”

“That I will not tell. Although . . .” He gazed at him long and hard. “I won't go far, for now. But I'll be near Antonio's grave every Monday at midnight.”

Renzo shook his head. “I won't — ”

Vittorio interrupted. “I won't expect you, but I'll be there.” He opened his mouth as if to say something else, then swallowed, seeming to think better of it. “You may well need me, after all. I suspect you're all in greater danger than you know.”

T
hat night, with just three days remaining before the test, Renzo embarked on the last frenzy of work — gambling, not even trying to master the skills the
padrone
had mapped out for him, but bending all his efforts toward one end only: to craft a falcon in the glass.