The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [2]
The pause seemed interminable - splash, splash - then a voice as dry as dust replied.
`Yes. You have the word of The Ten.'
Corradino breathed relief and waited for the final act.
As the knife entered his back he felt the pain a moment after the recognition had already made him smile. The subtlety, the clarity with which the blade insinuated itself between his ribs could only mean one thing. He started to laugh. Here was the poetry, the irony he had searched for on the dock. What an idiot, romanticizing himself, supposing himself a hero in the drama and pathos of his final sacrifice. All the time it was they who had planned the final act with such a sense of theatre, of what was fitting, an amusing Carnevale exit. A Venetian exit. They had used a glass dagger - Murano glass.
Most likely one of my own making.
He laughed harder with the last of his breath. He felt the assassin's final twist of the blade to snap handle from haft, felt his skin close behind the blade to leave no more than an innocent graze at the point of entry. Corradino pitched forward into the water and just before he broke the surface he met his own eyes in his reflection for the first and last time in his life. He saw a fool laughing at his own death. As he submerged in the freezing depths, the water closed behind his body to leave no more than an innocent graze at the point of entry.
CHAPTER 2
Belmont
Nora Manin woke at 4am exactly. She was not surprised, but blinked sleepily as the digital numbers of her bedside clock blinked back. She had woken at this time every night since Stephen left.
Sometimes she read, sometimes she made a drink and watched TV, numbing her mind with the inane programming for insomniacs. But tonight was different - tonight she knew there was no point even trying to get back to sleep. Because tomorrow - today - she was leaving for Venice and a new life, as the old one was over.
The digital clock and the bed were all that remained in the room that didn't wait in a box or a bag. Nora's life had been neatly packed and was destined for storage or ... or what? She rose with a groan and padded to the bathroom. Clicked on the fluorescent strip that blinked into life over the basin mirror. She splashed her face and then studied it in the glass, looking for resolve in her reflection, finding only fear. Nora pressed both hands to the place on her front between her ribs and stomach where her sadness seemed to reside. Stephen would no doubt have some medical term for it - something long and Latin. `It wearies me,' she said aloud to her reflection.
It did. She was tired of being sad. Tired of being bright and breezy to those friends that knew Stephen's defection had left her shattered. Tired of the mundane workload of dividing what they had bought together. She remembered the excitement with which they had found and bought this house, in the first days of marriage, when Stephen had got his post at the Royal Free Hospital. She thought that Hampstead seemed impossibly grand for a teacher of glass and ceramics. `Not when they marry surgeons,' her mother had dryly said. The house even had a name - Belmont. Nora was not accustomed to houses so grand that they deserved their own names. This one sat, appropriately, on the beautiful hill that led to Hampstead village. A model of pleasing Georgian architecture, square, white and symmetrical. They had loved the place instantly, made an offer and had, for a time, been happy. Nora supposed she should be glad. At least the money from Belmont had provided her with security. Security - she smiled wryly at the word.
I have never felt less secure. I am vulnerable now. It is cold outside of a marriage.
For the thousandth time she began to take an inventory of her reflection, looking for clues as to why Stephen had left. `Item - two eyes, wide and indifferent green. Item - hair; blonde, long, straw-coloured. Item - skin; olive. Item - two lips; chapped with the perpetual