5 - Her Deadly Mischief (11 page)

Cesare stiffened his shoulders and pushed his chin up into a frown. “I’m the only master here, and today I’m blowing aventurine. There’s a lot can go wrong with aventurine. It requires my hand.”

“Then we had best get to it. Remove that apron, if you please. Tito, do you want Signor Pino to move a certain way or strike a pose?”

I shrugged as the glassmaker untied his apron and jerked it off with a snap. I required nothing special from Cesare Pino. From the moment I had observed him in the doorway, I began measuring his face for the killer’s chalk-white mask. A
bauta
fits snugly over forehead, nose, and cheeks, leaving the mouth free for conversing and drinking. In such a disguise the mutilated face of Cesare Pino would look like everyone else’s.

Messer Grande questioned me with a cocked eyebrow.

I rubbed my jaw, thinking intently. There was one other thing I’d noticed. Cesare had moved across the floor with a slight limp. Had the accident that burned his face also injured his leg? It didn’t matter how he’d come by his walk. It was enough that his gait reprised the clumsy, lurching steps of Zulietta’s killer.

Still I hesitated. Cesare Pino was an arrogant, self-righteous man. He was also prone to ire and obviously hated Jews. I would have loved for Messer Grande to clap him in irons on that score alone. But I had to tell the truth as far as memory would allow, and I didn’t sense that Cesare’s wounded eye possessed the blistering power that had carried all the way across the theater as I locked gazes with the murderer.

“Well, what do you think?” Messer Grande’s voice took on an impatient tone.

“I suppose…” I started slowly. “Yes…it’s possible…”

The constables by the door jumped to attention. One reached into his jacket where he would keep his truncheon. The glass orkers traded questioning looks, then shuffled closer to their master. Reluctantly, I thought. Cesare Pino flung up an arm to ward them off.

“I didn’t kill that woman.” Cesare’s expression was loathing itself. With his puckered skin bathed in the kiln’s orange glow, he could have been a demon coughed up from Satan’s own mouth.

“I was going to add that you don’t seem quite right,” I quickly replied, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. “It’s only that you’re of the same size and carriage as the man in the cloak and
bauta
.”

“Well, I never made it from the corridor into the box, and I never wear a mask. Anyone can tell you that.” He spread his fingers and flicked them upwards from his chin. “As ugly as it is, this face of mine is honest. God given, you might say, and fairly earned. I see no reason to hide it.”

Messer Grande had waved his constables back.

“You’re not going to arrest me?” Cesare asked.

“Not today,” Messer Grande replied cheerfully.

The glassmakers also shuffled back. Returning to their implements, they sneaked glances at their master as they sharpened pincers and fiddled with paddles that looked like stout versions of those used in a baker’s oven. The sudden tension was abating.

Cesare continued, “What about my son? As rash and disobedient as Alessio has been of late, I don’t think he killed the woman either. The fool doesn’t have it in him—he can’t bear to kill anything—even the goose for our Sunday meal.” The glass master shook his head. “Alessio needs to get back here. I won’t be able to salvage the marriage contract, but the boy can devote himself to the kiln. You may be sure I’ll be giving up that box at the opera house where he idles his time away with Jews and who knows what other trash.”

Messer Grande replied mildly, “Your son would hardly be the first man, or the last, to make a fool of himself over a woman. That is not a crime, of course, but obstructing an official inquiry is. I’ll be holding him until he decides to answer my questions.”

Cesare grunted, gestured impatiently, and threw a glance toward his bench and blowpipe. “So—our business is concluded?”

Messer Grande nodded as he gathered the folds of his long red sleeve that had been trailing on the sandy floor. “For now, but I would like very much to see your wares. Do you have a showroom?”

“In the building next door,” Cesare replied in a flat tone.

“Perhaps one of your workers could show us?”

The glass master jerked his chin at a small fellow who separated himself from the group near the workbench. Cesare didn’t give us another glance. His focus had shifted, and I recognized his expression. It was the same that Maestro Torani exhibited when he was composing a melody in his head. Or Gussie when he was at his easel.

A pang of jealousy coursed through me. I admired artistic creation, whether it resulted in notes that lived for only a moment or a beautiful painting that could last forever. Someday, when life became more settled, I meant to try my hand at writing my own music.

***

As his men took their ease in the courtyard, Messer Grande and I followed the glassmaker into a larger building. Empty of workmen or clerks, the spacious, high-ceilinged room was piled with crates and barrels labeled for shipment. Along the front wall, boards on trestles were laid with examples of the Pino tableware. The range of colors was dazzling, even in the low light. Goblets, compotes, bottles, trays, even baskets woven of thin glass strands glimmered as if Cesare and his men were wizards capable of entrapping nature’s bright hues in wonderfully wrought crystal prisons.

I hovered over the array, tricorne tucked carefully under my arm, especially admiring a set of decanters and glasses the color of the cerulean sky on the clearest summer day imaginable. No, I was wrong. The pieces actually resembled the blue of the lagoon reflecting the sky on such a day. What subtle workmanship!

Then there were graceful oil and vinegar cruets made of the aventurine that Cesare must be blowing even now. Paper-thin, reddish-brown glass shot with flakes of shiny copper and overlaid with findings of beaten gold. They were exquisite things, fit for a Doge’s table, not mine. But I could still look. I was amazed that a man with Cesare’s belligerent disposition could create such fragile beauty. It was Messer Grande’s low voice that tore me away from the treasures. Smarter than I, the chief constable was taking advantage of this few moments of privacy to question Cesare’s workman. I drew near.

The glassmaker was short in stature, with angular cheekbones that looked as if they were about to burst through his sooty skin. Two tufts of graying hair made horns on each side of his balding head, and he gazed at Messer Grande with bulbous blue eyes. He was my senior by at least a decade, but he quailed before the Doge’s representative like an untried youth. Even though Messer Grande was using his kindest, most reasonable tone, the workman’s voice quavered, and if he hadn’t been wringing his hands, I’m certain they would have trembled. His name was Zenobio.

“How long have you worked for Cesare Pino?” Messer Grande was asking.

“Almost twenty years, Excellency.”

“It takes many years to master the craft, yes?”

“Yes, Excellency.”

“Twenty years is quite a span, Zenobio. Surely, you’ll soon become a master of the glass yourself.”

Zenobio answered with a small shake of his head. He seemed to be making an effort to keep his lips clamped shut.

“No?” Messer Grande questioned. “I don’t understand.
Garzone
,
servente
, then master. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”

Zenobio blinked once, twice. He cast a desperate look round. Checking for any stray clerks? Then a torrent of whispered words escaped his lips. “No one will ever be master at this factory unless his name is Pino. I was only advanced to
servente
last year, even though I do the best work of any man here. Signor Cesare was going to name Signor Alessio master of the glass on his marriage celebration. Now even that will be put off.”

Something in the longing way Zenobio explained that last bit gave me an idea. “Are the men expecting things to change once Alessio becomes a glass master?”

“In the shadow of his father, Signor Alessio can change nothing. Beyond Signor Cesare’s reach—” A sudden smile enlightened Zenobio’s face but was quickly doused. The man dipped his chin and raised it to display his previous anxious expression. “Will Signor Alessio be coming back to us soon?”

Messer Grande frowned. “That depends on a number of things. Signor Alessio is involved in a very serious matter.”

The glassmaker shook his head, wildly this time. “Signor Alessio didn’t kill that woman. It’s impossible, everything would be ruined.”

“Why impossible, Zenobio?” Messer Grande fired off. “If you know something of your young master’s dealings, you must say.”

He lifted trembling hands to pull at his tufts of hair. “No, Excellency, no. I know nothing of my master’s business. I work the kiln and take care of my family, that’s it.”

During the ensuing strained silence, I contemplated Zenobio’s statement:
everything would be ruined
. I’d heard someone else use that phrase. But who? For a moment, I felt as if a curtain had parted to reveal a glimpse of a secret play, but Messer Grande asked another question and the curtain closed again.

“Tell me about your family.” Messer Grande’s tone was calm and soothing.

Zenobio gulped and replied, “I have a wife and five children.”

“How have you kept them fed on the wages of a
garzone
?”

“Everyone must work. My boy fetches water all day, though he’s going on twelve and should be learning to fuel the kiln by his age. He’s not even a true
garzone
, just a boy to be ordered to turn his hand to any small chore that needs doing. My wife and daughters work next door where they make cheap glass beads. They thread the beads for shipping. All day—bead after bead, five hundred per strand, strand after strand. My wife’s eyes are going. When she can’t work the beads…” He finished with an aggrieved shrug.

“You could threaten to leave,” Messer Grande said. “Tell Signor Cesare you’ll find work with a rival if you’re not promoted.”

Zenobio didn’t bother to respond, merely sent the chief constable a withering look.

“I know how it is,” I put in. “Murano is like the theater where I practice my craft. Everyone has his place, and a man knows he’d best stick to it whether he sings, plays the violin, or lights the tapers in the chandelier. If a man makes trouble, word gets around fast. Then he is ruined where all the opera houses in Venice are concerned.”

Zenobio nodded sagely.

Messer Grande regarded me intently. “But, Tito, every Italian town has its own opera house, and impresarios are always looking to fill a tour company. It’s different with glass—” He turned back to Zenobio. His voice hardened to a cruel, grating baritone. “You can’t leave Murano, can you? At least legally. Though we all know foreign agents tempt workers who harbor the secrets of the glass. What do they offer, Zenobio, those men from Bologna or Paris or Bohemia? Immediate promotion to master? Your own kiln? A fine house for your family?”

A watery look came into the workman’s round eyes. Their dark centers expanded until he resembled a skinny owl horned with tufts of hair instead of feathers. He stammered, “Please…Excellency…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I thought Zenobio might take off at a run, but still Messer Grande kept digging. He gestured to the display tables. “Did you make any of these things?”

Zenobio raised a shaky finger to point toward a squat, black cylinder sitting on end, somewhat removed and very much at odds with the light, graceful tableware. I went to fetch it and found a tube covered in black leather with an eyepiece at one end. The opposite end was surrounded by a separate barrel that bristled with brass pegs that could rotate the outside cylinder around the inner. It reminded me of the glasses some of the audience employed to view the stage at the opera house, only larger. Yet when I raised it to my eye, all was dark.

“You must look toward the light,” Zenobio instructed.

I swung around toward the open door filled with the brightness of the mid-afternoon sun. Oh, what a difference! The blackness exploded into a flower colored with liquid light: purple, deep blue, cherry red, golden yellow, all melding one into another. At a twist of the brass pegs, my flower broke apart and a new pattern emerged. With every notch, the intense colors and complex shapes took on new forms, each more beautiful than the last.

Thoroughly enchanted, I lowered the instrument and turned to Zenobio. “What is this thing?”

“I call it a petal-scope,” the man answered shyly. “It’s not much of anything—just a metal tube with broken glass in a chamber at one end. And some lenses to make the glass look like the petals of a flower opening and closing.”

“But it’s absolutely wonderful. How did you come up with it?” Observing the little glassmaker with new admiration, I placed the petal-scope in Messer Grande’s outstretched hand.

“At the end of the workday, we’re allowed to experiment with broken remnants and leftover materials.” Zenobio shrugged, but his broadening smile spoke his pride in his creation. “I was tinkering around with an old spyglass, and the petal-scope happened almost by accident. It’s not useful—it really doesn’t do anything except provide amusement.”

Messer Grande had been holding the scope to the light, apparently as entranced as I’d been. Now he laughed as he threw an arm around my shoulders. “Useful isn’t everything. My friend here is hardly useful, but I assure you the opera house pays a goodly sum for his services.”

He continued as I shook his arm off, “Have you made more of these, Zenobio?”

The glassmaker nodded. “A few.”

“Then I would like to purchase this one.”

A few coins changed hands, and soon Messer Grande and I were headed back through the gravel courtyard, down the path to the jetty. I found it impossible to keep my mouth shut. “Not useful?” I asked. “After all that was done to make a singer of me?”

“Well, you know what I mean.” He had the grace to appear apologetic. “The opera is a grand spectacle, delicious entertainment. I love it—but singing for your supper is hardly in the league of building a boat, or forging a ship’s anchor, or even blowing goblets for a rich man’s table.”