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By Root 303 0

all was not exactly as before - there was a piece of vellum twisted in the strings. Vellum that Giacomo would know anywhere - it was the fine Florentine vellum of Corradino's notebook. Giacomo remembered now, as his heart beat fast in his throat, how he had pulled Corradino to sit down right next to the instrument the night before. With shaking fingers Giacomo slipped the note out from under the strings. Corradino was not one for penmanship, as he had been untimely ripped from Monsieur Loisy's tutelage at the age of ten, but these letters were clear enough. He had carefully spelt out, in the middle of the page, the Latin tag:

NON OMNIS MORIAR

Corradino was no great reader - in fact the only volume he knew well was the Dante from his father. But Giacomo was a learned man, and had no need to search through the volumes in his chamber for the meaning of the phrase. It all fitted - the bloom on Corradino's cheeks, the shine of his hair, the loving leavetaking of the night before.

NON OMNIS MORIAR I SHALL NOT ALTOGETHER DIE

Giacomo clasped the vellum to his heart before pressing it gently between the pages of his own copy of Dante. As he closed the book he smiled for the first time that day.

Corradino was still alive.

CHAPTER 19

The Fourth Estate

`Read this.'

The newspaper slapped down onto Adelino's desk in front of Leonora. She could smell the acrid printer's ink under her nose. Adelino turned his back and went to the window, struggling with some emotion she could not yet divine. Could it be anger? She supposed that the press had bungled the ads, or misspelled something. Warning bells only began to ring when she saw Vittoria Minotto's byline and photo on the folded page.

My interview? No, worse.

"Hapless vetraioAdelino dellaVigna has spectacularly backed the wrong horse for his splashy advertising campaign. In an effort to flog the glass of his ailing Vetreria Della Vigna on Murano, he recently introduced the Manin range, an exclusive line of antique and modern glass. The range was to be sold on the back of famous maestro Corrado Manin, known as Corradino, and his decorative ancestor Leonora Manin, who lately became the first maestra on the island. Our readers will remember, just days ago, the glossy ads in these and other publications featuring the two Manins, and our eyes have been assailed by the posters adorning the walls of our fair city. But little did we know then what this paper has been able to discover, with the help of one of the master glassblowers of the fornace, Roberto del Piero."

Leonora went cold.

Roberto.

Shaking, her sweating fingertips blurring the print, she read on.

"`The whole thing is a joke,' says Signor del Piero. `Corrado Manin was indeed a master glassblower, but he was a traitor to the Republic and his craft. He was solicited by French spies and went to Paris to sell our secrets to the French, who were then our greatest trade rivals. Corradino single-handedly smashed the Venetian glass monopoly. It would be laughable except for the fact that the affair holds a sinister history for my own family. My own ancestor Giacomo del Piero was Corradino's lifelong friend and mentor, and yet Corradino betrayed him and caused his death. He's a Murderer, not a Maestro"'

This catchy piece of alliteration had obviously drawn the editor's eye, as the words `Murderer not Maestro' formed the subheading of the paragraph. Leonora swallowed and read below.

"Signor del Piero's grievances are modern as well as ancient. `I approached the advertisers with my own story. Giacomo was Corradino's mentor - he taught him everything he knew Moreover, there have been del Pieros working at the fornace ever since his day. I offered them the opportunity to introduce a line of glass in my family name, and they threw it back in my face. Clearly they preferred this bimbo who's only been in Venice a few months.' Signor del Piero is dismissive of Signorina Manin's talents. `She can blow the glass a little, but really she's just an English girl with no talent and a yard of blonde hair.' Particularly hard, then, is