The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [79]
Duparcmieur sat back. `All will be well,' he said airily.
`You'll have everything you need - time, materials, men. The palace will be magnificent, you'll see'
The palace already was. Sitting in new work clothes, the leather of his apron and wrist bands smelling sweetly, Corradino sat with his back to the half built palace facing the gardens. His back rested on newly-hewn masonry warmed by the setting sun, he watched the gardeners shaping the gorgeous green lawns for as far as the eye could see, while waterworkers diverted natural sources into the huge ornamental lakes which began to fill before his eyes - great mirrors themselves. Despite the distant chink of the mason's hammer and the banging of carpentry Corradino felt at peace for the first time since he arrived in France. A shadow cut his sun and he looked up - a gangly youth with tousled hair and dark eyes held a hand to him.
`I'm Jacques Chauvire.'
Corradino took the hand and pulled himself to his feet. The boy, expecting a handshake, smiled at the unexpectedness of the action. Corradino's eyes were level with his. The boy had good eyes, dark and true. He had no need to search for their meaning like he did with Duparcmieur. Nor was it lost on him that the name Jacques was the French version of Giacomo, the family he had left behind.
`Let's get to work, Jacques,' said Corradino. He threw a friendly arm around the boy's shoulders, turned his back on the vista and they walked together to the foundry.
The boy will do.
CHAPTER 26
Purgatorio
When I entered the fornace at Versailles I was at home at last.
As Jacques opened the secret chamber to which only he and his new master had the key, Corradino saw that all that he had asked for had been given to him. There were the water vats, the silvering tanks. There was the furnace, with the coals stoked and ready, and a glowing red gather of cristallo glass at its heart. There were his pontelli, his blowpipes, his paddles. There were his scagno saddles and borselle pliers. There were his pigments; lapis blue, scarab red and leaf gold among them. There were his bottles and flasks of nitrates and sulfates and mercuries. Here then, at home, he could work once again.
His printless fingers itched to touch the rods and pigments, to make something again after his long month at sea and on road. The presence of Jacques at his shoulder felt incongruous, so used was he to working alone. But today was the day he must at last share his methods, and he felt a sick reluctance in his chestspoon. Not because he thought the boy's skills would ever exceed his, but because he alone had made mirrors in this way for ten years now, and he felt he was giving away a precious possession; a part of himself, a skill which had defined him for so long.
A skill which has saved my life, for 'twas for this that The Ten spared me. Once this has gone from my grasp what do I have to protect me from the King?
Would Louis decide, once Corradino had told his secret, that he would be better out of the way? And yet what choice did he have? He was in Purgatory, waiting for Leonora to be brought to him, and the sharing of his methods had been part of the bargain which would bring her to these shores. He was in Limbo. A wholly unwanted memory of Dante's couplets chimed in his head. He recalled that, in Il Purgatorio, his namesake had been killed by a French King. Corradino, the doomed Prince of Sicily, was executed by Charles of Anjou following an unsuccessful coup. That Corradino's father, King Manfred, had been murdered too.
But as he turned and met Jacques' warm brown eyes - eager and shining, reflecting Corradino's own love of his trade - he felt comforted and set aside such gloomy thoughts. He had no son to pass his skills to, and perhaps never would, so this was his chance to share in his knowledge and enjoy teaching if he might.
There is Leonora of course, but no woman has ever been a glassblower, nor ever will.
All he hoped for his daughter was that she would be happy, marry well, and enjoy the family