The Secret of the Glass (42 page)

Time after time, she sent her tool into the flames’ waiting embrace. Piece after piece took their place in the annealer. Sophia’s intent remained fixed upon the flames, staring deep within them, to the life denied her with Teodoro and to the world she found in his eyes.

He crept into her mind at every unguarded moment, slipping in unnoticed yet sweeping out all other thoughts in his wake; not her family, her precarious future, nor the work she loved so much could stand fast against the onslaught. Like the unscrupulous assassin in the instant the soldier blinks his eye, he penetrated her defenses. Yet it was the salacious pleasure of these stealthy thoughts that enveloped her like a fever. His eyes as he looked at and into her, his lips as they brushed hers, his long, lithe fingers as they feathered over her tingling skin.

Sophia pressed a trembling hand against her tumbling stomach, threw her head back, eyes fluttering to a close, and allowed the engulfing memory and anticipation to capture her, to suck the air from her lungs. Desire swept over her, her body responding to its call. She leaned back against the table behind her.

Denying its allure, Sophia spun round and grabbed the table’s hard, cold surface with a groan, fingers above, thumb below its lip, head lowering between her stiff arms. She squeezed, grunting, wrenched at it until the short clipped nails pressed against the backs of her fingers, now white and bloodless from the pressure. Tears of joy and frustration mingled in her eyes.

Had she been better off when her heart had remained her own, when she didn’t yearn so painfully? The pleasure she had found in Teodoro’s arms had been unearthly, unimaginable, and she could think of nothing else but it and having it again; yet the craving ate away at her. The line is so fine between the pleasure of the wanting and the pain of not having.

The throes of desire throbbed through her with every thrum of blood through her veins. To taste such deliciousness, know such fulfillment was one of life’s gifts; to know it would not always be hers was one of her life’s most gnawing of ironies.

Sophia released her grip, shoving away from the workbench, and paced in agitated circles around it, not knowing what to do with herself. Crumbling folds of her shift in her clenching fists, aching to shed her skin yet relishing in it and the memories of his touch upon it.

Was the contrast between what was and what could be too vast to be borne? Teodoro’s beauty only enhanced Pasquale’s ugliness, his kindness was the antidote to Pasquale’s poisonous cruelty. For her own sanity, she would banish him from her mind. Some way, some how, she must forget him, yet how could she when she still heard him calling her name…Sophia, Sophia…

“Sophia!”

The gut-wrenching scream burst into the
fabbrica
. Sophia spun toward it.

Lia stood at the door, at the top of the steps, her features ravaged and drawn, her youthful plump cheeks glistening with tears. She grabbed the railing as she wailed.

“He’s dead, Sophia. Papà is dead.”

Thirty-three

“H
e’s dead, Sophia. Papà is dead.”

The words ricocheted like rocks thrown upon the walls.

Sophia’s knees buckled beneath her. She crumbled to the ground, as if held suspended in midair, until she felt the hard stone beneath her. Time altered, her vision shifted, the earth became a foreign place. Sophia lived in a world without her father. It was too heinous to be borne.

Her mother…her mother’s face…it rose up before her, deformed by grief. Sophia jolted up, grabbed her discarded gown, flinging it over her head, and ran for the door. She heard Lia stumbling behind her in the night, unable to walk as the sobbing overwhelmed her, casting its sound out into the deserted
terrazzo
. Sophia grabbed her sister by the hand, and pulled her along, cooing gibberish at her as they rushed through the courtyard, up the back stairs, and into the house.

Like the lonesome call of the mournful seagulls, wrenching sobs echoed down from above. Sophia released Lia’s hand, taking the stairs two at a time, flying through the narrow corridor to her parents’ room.

They huddled around her father’s bed, around his body. Marcella sat upon the stool, her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with each sob. Oriana stood by the bedside, hugging herself, staring down at her parents.

Viviana sat upon the bed, her torso flung across her husband’s still form, her body wracked with her tears.

“Oh, Mamma,” Sophia murmured, rushing in and yanking her mother into her embrace. Pulling her off the bed and over to the window, Sophia wrapped Viviana in loving, strong arms, rocking with her back and forth. Over Viviana’s shoulder, Sophia found her father, frozen in the same position in which she had left him, and yet he had changed. No longer did his skin quiver as each wave of pain washed over him. His mouth was closed, and his lips appeared curved upward in a hint of a smile; where there was once anguish, peace and serenity dwelled. A tender smile tickled her lips, certain his release from the earthly body that had caused him such pain was joyful. She prayed, picturing his ascension into God’s welcome, loving hands.

“What will we do without him?” Viviana whispered into her shoulders.

Sophia’s moist eyes flung out to the star-filled night and their reflections upon the water at their door, longing to tell her mother just how disturbing her question was.

Hearing their mother’s anguish, her sisters’ weeping rose to a fever pitch, their grief uniting and building upon itself. She must get them out of here, away from the harsh reminder of their father’s passing, to find some semblance of composure and give her the quiet to think of what to do. Gone were the last vestiges of time she thought she had left. She had to act now, but her own grief, her own fear overwhelmed her. She felt an irrational anger, not that her father was dead—her rage over that had been simmering for days—but that she was not allowed to mourn in peace, not allowed the time for grief that the heart needed to heal. Her anger lashed out to those who caused her abhorrent condition.

Oriana wiped at her face with the back of a hand. “We must call the
impresario
. They should come—”

“No!” Sophia snatched her sister’s words from the air, quickly berating herself for the confusion and fear she caused. “Not yet. We must n…not call them yet,” Sophia plundered her mind for a valid reason not to call the undertakers. With a soothing hand that quivered upon Oriana’s shoulder, she assuaged her sister as she refuted her suggestion. “Let us mourn him privately, let us gather ourselves, before we let others know. Father knew many, was loved by many, it will be riotous once the news is out.”

Viviana nodded vacuously. “
Sì,
you are right, Sophia. Let us pray for his soul in private for a time.”

“But he must be cared for,” Oriana insisted, stomping one foot, unwilling and unready to leave her father’s side.

“He will be,” Viviana said. “We will call Santino and Rozalia. They will—”

“No!” Marcella’s sharp protest surprised them this time. “I will do it myself.”

The small matron uncurled her back, throwing off her grief, and rushed to the cornflower and crème ceramic ewer and pitcher perched upon the small mahogany table in the corner. Grabbing a pristine white cloth from the pedestal below, her hands quivered as she poured the water and dipped the cloth in the sloshing liquid.

Sophia crossed the room to her grandmother, reaching out to halt her manic movements.

“Come, Nonna, this is a duty too heavy for you to bear.”

Marcella slapped Sophia’s hands away.

“I washed his body when he came into this world, I will cleanse it as it leaves.”

Her lips trembled upon her flinching jaw as she blinked back her tears. Her fortitude could not be denied—she had silenced her granddaughter with her strength. What was there to say in the face of such steely resolve? Sophia knew what she could, what she must do.

As Marcella brought the cloth and water to her son’s bedside, Sophia inveigled the other women from the room.

“Rozalia! Santino!” Sophia called up the narrow flight of stairs that led to the small rooms above as she herded her sisters and her mother down to the large chambers below.

“Signorina?” The gentle voice of Santino answered quickly from the floor overhead, a warble of fear in the deep dulcet tones. There was but one reason she would disturb them in these unearthly hours.

“Please come, signore,” Sophia called over her shoulder, bringing up the rear of the morose procession moving down through the somnolent house. “My father is…has passed.”

“Dio Santo.”

Sophia heard the reverent prayer and the shuffling feet.

She followed her mother and sisters to the
salotto
. Like mindless creatures, they sat upon the small settee, her mother in her favorite chair. Sophia trampled circles upon the colorful woven tapestry covering the floor, looking up the instant the devoted couple rushed into the room, stifling their condolences with her pronouncements.

“Rozalia, would you go upstairs and help Nonna? She is caring for my father.”

The plump woman pumped her head in silent acquiescence, the heavy flesh under her chin wobbling, and she rushed from the room.

“Would you give my mother and sisters some wine, Santino, then stay with them?”

“Of course, signorina, of course.”

Before he could set to his task, Sophia spun for the doorway.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can Mamma.”

“Sophia!”

“Signorina!”

Santino and her mother’s protests joined together in a harsh harmony.

“Where are you going, Sophia?” Viviana implored. “Where must you go now? You must be here, with your family.”

“It is for the sake of the family that I must go. I cannot…” Sophia stopped, and rushed back to her mother, kneeling at Viviana’s feet and taking her cold hands. “Please, Mamma, I beseech your understanding. Ask me no more questions.”

Viviana stared at her daughter.

“Go,” she whispered.

Sophia jumped up and brushed a kiss against her mother’s pale cheek. As she hurried from the room, she heard her sisters’ cries of protest rumbling like the wake of a barge behind her.

“You cannot let her go, Mamma.” Oriana sounded angry.

“It’s the middle of the night, Mamma, will she be safe?” Lia sounded so young and frightened.

Sophia shut the door behind her and the sounds ceased.

Thirty-four

H
er breath came harsh and ragged. Her fingers tingled as the blood swooshed through them. The cool night air evaporated any moisture on her body and she plucked the rough, muslin gown away from her skin.

Sophia ran through the tenebrous
calli
of Murano, turning right out of the courtyard, onto the Calle Miotti, and away from the larger
fondamenta,
possessing no more than a vague certainty of where she should go. As her steps pounded the hard ground, her mind beat out a cadence, as if to repeat the words over and over would make them so.

He must be there
.
I will find him. He will help me
.

She had been to the villas before, been to the rich parish where most of the wealthy noblemen kept their summer homes. She remembered the yellow brick of the Navagero family holiday home, the open and rounded porticos, and the colorful garden behind it. She would find her way to it and pray he would be there.

She ran across the wide stone expanse of the Bressagio, but even this reveler’s square was empty in these wee hours of the morning. The clack of her thin leather heels upon rock echoed in the emptiness, as if someone ran a step behind her, but it was just her own fear and anxiety that dogged her step. The fog and mist shrouded her, distorting the glow of
anacone
torches, clinging to the light, and forming a halo of effervescence around them.

As the narrowest
calli
disappeared, Sophia stormed through gardens and courtyards, unmindful of her trespasses, fearful of the ubiquitous darkness and of what hid in the cavernous
sotto portico.
She surged onto a large
fondamenta
, turned left, and ran up the length of it, the wide canal to her right. She neared the bend where the Canal Grande began. A few doors down on her left, the building that lived in her memory stood, its hooded windows revealing nothing about it. Only a few moments in time would tell whether her recollections were correct.

Standing on the stone stoop, Sophia used the flat of her balled hand to pound on the gold painted door, the harsh banging echoing along the ribbon of water at her back. Sophia stepped back, her vision straining into the ground floor’s windows, searching for the light of a candle, the movement of a body, any sign of life.

The door swooshed open, and a middle-aged man dressed incongruously in nightshirt and doublet glared at her with narrowed eyes and bared teeth, holding up a gimcrack oil lamp to illuminate the features of the intrusive, disturbing person. Sophia squinted in the glare of the light.

“I am most sorry, signorina, but the family is not avail—”

“Please, signore, is this the home of the Navagero family?” Sophia beseeched him.

“
Sì,
signorina, but—”

Sophia sucked in her breath with a relieved gasp, trying to insinuate herself into the home, past the stalwart guardianship of this devoted servant.

“I beg you, kind sir, I’m looking for Teodoro Gradenigo. I know he was staying here not so very long ago. I must find him. I—”

“Sophia?”

The incredulous whisper reached around the indignant servant, crawling down the long, narrow corridor behind him.

Teodoro hastened toward her, his long legs gobbling up the space between them. He appeared much as she had left him, clad in breeches and shirt. He stared at her with haunted eyes, sunken and rimmed by discolored circles above stubble-covered cheeks, yet somehow his disheveled appearance made him that much more dashing; an edge now tempered his vulnerable sweetness. She saw her own torture reflected in his torment.