The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [72]
He thought suddenly of Giacomo, and felt sorry for what was to come. He felt like he was losing his father all over again, and experienced the crushing remorse that Giacomo was about to feel the pain of losing a son. He would visit him tonight, one last time.
Giacomo.
Could Corradino let him suffer, when he would still be alive, perhaps prospering in France with Leonora? Duparcmieur had warned him sternly to tell no one of the plan, or all would be discovered. But Giacomo? Surely it would be safe to tell him ... no ... to hint to him? Before he could change his mind, Corradino unstoppered the vial and drank back the draught. Fear almost made him vomit, but he swallowed back the bitter bile, for if he spat the poison all would be lost. His mouth tasted faintly of almonds, and he began to feel a strange sense of euphoria. Giddy, he reached for his quill and inkpot and sand, and scratched some words on a page of his book which he tore from its parent. As he sanded the words he fervently hoped they were true.Then he left the house for Giacomo's, tossing the bottle discreetly into the canal as he had been told, the poison already coursing through his veins.
If he reached down, his numb fingers crawling down his leg, a pale subterranean spider, he could feel the outline of the black dente inside his breeches. Wrapped beside it was the vellum book. His relief that his secrets had been buried with him was almost as great as finding that the knife had not been found. After three tries he pulled the blade from his stocking, ripping through the fabric. Slowly, so slowly, he fought the weight of the soil as he ponderously drew the knife up to his chest.
At least I have the means to end my life if I cannot free myself.
Once he was sure that his legs were awake, and that every toe could be moved in turn, Corradino began to cut the sacking over his trunk.
Night earth everywhere, dark and damp and heavy, in my eyes and in my mouth.
Corradino spat and coughed and heaved, his chest bursting as he dug ever upwards. Giulietta he thought, Giulietta. The name came incongruously to his mind in his panicked state, he repeated it in his head like an Ave Maria, then he said the Ave Maria, then he muddled the two in his head, the Blessed Virgin and the tragic heroine becoming one in his addled head, together with his mother Maria and piccola Leonora, whom all this was for. He dug and choked for what seemed hours, ever fearful that they had buried him too deep, that they had packed the earth down, that they never meant him to get out, that he was digging sideways and not upwards and would therefore dig forever until he drowned in soil. Then a coolness and a wetness on his fingertips. Blood? No - rain and a night breeze. He dug frantically, his lungs on fire, and gasped the night air in the most beautiful moment of his life. He staggered from his grave, weak, vomiting, and sat for a moment digging the earth out of his eyes. Rain pelted down and turned him to a man of mud. He thought he would never be afraid again.
But soon fear returned. He remembered the Frenchman's warning; `Keep yourself low, and invisible. They may still be looking out for you. Get to the north side of the island, look for the lights of San Marco in the distance and follow them. Then look for me.'
Once again Corradino pressed into the ground. He crawled over the cemetery, face to face with numberless corpses, separated only by a stratus of earth. His hands clawed divots of soil and strange plants that bloomed on the flesh of the dead. He thought he heard ghastly whispers, and his memory did not spare him the details of Dante's Inferno and the dreadful inmates, mutilated sinners, traitors like his uncle, traitors like himself. He seemed to crawl for ever, every moment expecting to grasp a rotten limb or to feel the crunch of bones below As his hands reached out to grasp the turf ahead of him, he felt a hundred spidery forms crawl over his arm. He stifled a scream and remembered that these were no insects of hell but the mazzenette,