The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [19]
`... ino.' A claw-like hand extended to the table by the bed. On it sat a flask of wine and a goblet, dusty with the syrup of an ancient draught slick in the bottom. God only knew how long it had been since the man had been tended by another human soul.
Corradino crossed himself and poured the wine. A dead wasp fell into the glass, but it did not seem to matter. The Prince eased himself onto his shoulder with palpable agony, and drank, the wine dribbling like blood from his roofless mouth. Corradino knew he did not have long - he asked the only question he had. `Angelina?'
`... ead.'
Corradino turned to go. He had expected as much. He would send a priest for Nunzio, but he could do no more.
`In ... hildbirth.'
The hideous whisper halted him. Corradino turned.
`There's a child?'
`In ... ieta.... ell o-ne ... onour of family.... o-one:
Very well. He could grant this last thing. He nodded, in an unspoken agreement to keep the secret.
`And her name?'
.. eonora. ... anin.'
The supreme irony.
She has my name.
Corradino watched Nunzio die, the moment after the wretch had unburdened his heart. He shed no tears for the Prince and was no more than momentarily saddened about Angelina - he had done his mourning for her in his two years on Murano. And he had not loved her. Corradino had never been in love. But he went to see the two-year-old Leonora Manin at Santa Maria della Pieta and fell in love for the first time in his life.
On the dock of San Zaccaria, at the entrance to the Piazzetta di San Marco, there stand two tall white pillars. They hold aloft the statue of Saint Theodosius of Constantinople, and the chimera of the winged lion, adopted and bastardized by the city as the Lion of St Mark. The Lion's paw rests on a book, the pages of which read `Pax Marce in Tibia' `Peace be with you Mark' - the fabled greeting of the Angels as they dubbed Mark the Saint of Venice. Three pillars were looted from distant Tyre to stand here, but the third toppled into the sea while being unloaded, and still lies at the bottom of the lagoon. At the instant that Corradino first laid eyes on his daughter, the Camelopard - thin and weary from its three year progress around the great courts of Milan, Genoa and Turin - was being loaded onto a ship bound for home. A mass of ropes encircling its long neck, it was but two short steps from the vessel that would carry it back to the African potentate who had lent it to the north. But the planks that ramped to the ship were glassy with rain; the creature reluctant to walk into the heaving sea. Like the pillar centuries before, the Camelopard pitched forward into the lagoon as its handlers leapt clear. Its enormous height meant that the noble head could be seen above the water, liquid brown eyes rolling, black tongue lashing, as it swallowed salt water. A gathering crowd pulled at the slippery ropes, but the creature's gawky limbs were too ungainly for rescue and, within an hour, the Camelopard died. It sank to the bottom of the lagoon, in silent peace, and in a last motion of grace the long neck and heavy head sank to rest over the lost pillar of Tyre.
CHAPTER 6
The Mirror
Nora looked at her reflection and knew she had made a horrible mistake. She should never have come. There was none of the resolve in her eyes that had been there earlier.
I see the portrait of a blinking idiot.
It was her second day in Venice and she was on a trip to Murano, organized by her hotel. Thousands of tourists every year were shuttled over to Murano by the boatload, cameras in hand. Ostensibly they had come to have a trip around the glass factories and marvel at the glassblowers' skill. In actuality, such trips were little more than a shopping expedition