All the lost places, p.28
All the Lost Places, page 28
Massimo stared hard.
“Take care,” he said, his tone smoldering. “‘Meant to be’ . . . Those are the sort of words that have seen men labeled usurper. Traitor. Pretender to the throne. And worse.”
These were the mutterings of someone shadowed by paranoia, whether with good reason or not.
“I only mean to do good,” Sebastien said, dipping his oar and pulling it, gulls crying above as if to affirm this statement.
The dark countenance shifted lightning fast to a friendly tone as he leaned forward in his seat. “You hail from the isles. Do you know the man Pietro?”
“Yes,” Sebastien said.
“The glassblower, I mean to say.”
“Yes,” he said again. He declined to say how well he knew him. Why, he could not say, except that a sense of distinct protection arose in him, telling him to stand between Massimo and Pietro.
“And you will be going to the isles today, no? This being Friday.”
At his affirmation, Massimo instructed him to visit the glassblower, to pay him well—at which he equipped Sebastien with lira aplenty—and to ferry the commissioned chandelier back to the palazzo with great expediency and care.
Sebastien knew Massimo made it a point to know everything about everyone but felt not a little unnerved at his awareness of Sebastien’s connection to Pietro. Who else, among his family, had the man been gathering information about—and to what purposes?
———
It was a strange sensation, rowing across the turquoise expanse with a pocket full of money, rather than rowing across the turquoise expanse in order to earn enough coin to stay alive another day. What would it be like, Sebastien wondered, to live always in such a way? Being a giver of coin?
He did not like to entertain the notion too much. There was little good that could come of it. So, he took himself to Murano, just as Massimo had said. Procured the chandelier, helped Pietro package it, wrapping each branch and leaf of the piece in muslin, then cushioning it inside its crate with dried moss.
“Watertight.” Pietro patted the metal box with pride and detailed how his sons had been the ones to invent a rubber-lined metal vessel for the keeping of their glasswares in transit to their many waterborne destinations.
Sebastien gave due marvel to the innovation, ensuring he had sealed it correctly. But when he turned to go, a silhouetted line of figures stood at the door of the storehouse. There was no question of who they were. If their distinct figures had not given it away—from Giuseppe’s jovial portly form to Valentina’s wiry strength—their chattering removed all doubt.
“What is this?” Sebastien asked, stomach flopping like a fish. Not wishing the question to sound off-putting, he rephrased it. “Qual buon vento ti porta?” Better to inquire what good fortune had summoned them.
“We are here to help” came Elena’s voice as she stepped forward, her elegant silhouette becoming full human form as light spilled upon her. There was a secret delight on her expression. His stomach fish-flopped again. All of them, together? In life, he encountered this group in many different combinations: various pairs of them here, and on the rare occasion, three of them all in the same place at once. But never—but for their monthly meetings in the city, which they assured him he need not attend—never all of them, together.
“Help with . . . the crate? I don’t wish to trouble anyone,” he said.
Elena laid a hand on his arm, her touch soft and kind. “We are here to help you, caro.”
“It’s very kind of you,” he said, confusion burrowing outward and chiseling his brows downward. “But as I said . . .” He lifted the box, keenly aware of the fragility within.
Elena smiled. “How I adore you, Sebastien. A genius about so many things, and about others . . .” She shrugged, indicating he was something of a lost cause.
He set the crate down. Clearly he wouldn’t be permitted to leave until they’d accomplished their end.
“Giuseppe says you’re going to a masquerade.” Elena stepped back, folding her arms in front of her and looking him over like one of her garden vegetables when discerning its level of ripeness.
“Well . . . I . . .” Burning. Sebastien’s face was hotter than Pietro’s fires.
“And what will you wear?”
“I thought—that is—well, I only have my normal clothes, besides the boatman’s uniform. So, I thought to go in them, with a simple mask.”
“The bauta. Yes, very good. But as for your everyday clothes . . .” Elena tsked, shaking her head.
Valentina rushed forward, her spry form springing into action like a tiny whirlwind. “It will never do, Sebastiano, never do.” She picked up one of his arms and began to measure it.
“But I shouldn’t stand out,” he said. “If I wear working clothes, I won’t draw attention, and it would be so much better—”
“Sebastien, my darling.” Elena lifted the lid of a box he hadn’t noticed before, revealing the form of a bauta, black and simple, enough to just cover his face. Pietro, Dante, and Giuseppe seemed to have accomplished a most convenient disappearance and not bothered to take Sebastien with them to whatever safety they had found. Traitors.
Elena continued, “You are looking at it backward. You wish to blend in, so you don the clothing of a . . . a sea urchin! A rock!” She picked up his sleeve with two fingers, as if it were indeed a foul thing of the depths and dropped it. “This is what you would wear to blend in to your world. Our world. It isn’t your fault, of course. You’ve never known the essence of carnivale. How to explain to one who has never seen?”
A shuffling at the window sounded. It was Dante shuffling back inside, hands in his trouser pockets, like one refusing to be complicit in a crime. He heaved a deep breath. “Simple,” he said. “First, envision every adult, with all the concern for right-doing that an infant would have. Then, give them a mask, so that any shred of remaining decency attached to an ancestral sense of propriety is now entirely vanished. And finally, douse the city in temptation, revelry, and a swath of spies intent on reporting misdeeds, even if the doers of those deeds are masked.”
Sebastien gulped, looking at the mask in his hand warily.
“Dante!” Elena scolded. She pointed at the chair, indicating it might behoove the man to allow the chair to bear his fiery wrath a while. With a spark in his eye directed at Elena, he strode to the window, hooking the chair aside with his foot and standing to face the canal outside.
“Such a cynic. Pay him no mind,” Elena said, though fondness warmed her words. She squared Sebastien’s shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze as she assessed his ensemble with the eye of an artist. “Even Dante knows there is enchantment afoot at carnivale.” She winked at the statuesque man, and the gesture seemed to melt away some of the marble from his façade as he shrugged one shoulder in reluctant agreement.
“Carnivale is . . . well, yes, it had come to be many of the things Dante said. But!” She strode across the room to Dante’s window and stood beside him with a hand upon the heavy red curtain. “It is also”—she gave a mighty tug, bringing the curtain clattering from its rod, and holding it up victoriously as dust mites spun in a twist of golden light—“magic. Isn’t that so, Dante?”
He studied her, and the faintest flicker of a smile pulled at one corner of his mouth—the closest she would get to a resounding yes from the stoic Dante Cavallini. She squeezed the man’s shoulder much in the same manner she had Sebastien’s, and this time, he did smile—fleetingly. Then he seemed to recall there were others in the room, cleared his throat, and returned his gaze to the age-clouding glass.
There was indeed magic at work in this room, Sebastien thought. But her name was not carnivale. It was Elena.
And now the magic was near swirling from her as she summoned the others back inside, whispering something to Giuseppe, then Pietro, neither of whom spoke, but both of whom left the room again at a clipping pace. Pietro with his dog trailing behind with a happy-wagging thump against every possible surface, and Giuseppe with much more spring in his step than he ever displayed when “on his land legs,” as he liked to say.
“Where are they . . . ?” Sebastien said in foreboding curiosity.
“They will return before the masquerade,” Elena said. “For now? Follow me.” She pulled her worn measuring tape from her apron pocket. “We have work to do.”
———
“Work to do,” as it turned out, included Elena taking measurements, shaking her head, and muttering wonderings about when in the world her boy turned into a man—to which Sebastien only laughed. Then, she shooed him out the door, off to do a chore.
Acquiescing, he pulled logs from the barge and took ax to them with far more vengeance than was needed, hoping the pounding inside his chest might leave some of itself behind in the act. He had thought he was coming here to procure a chandelier, deliver greetings, and leave.
The energy buzzing about Elena, and the mysterious disappearance of Giusseppe and Pietro, bespoke a different tale. A tale that waited, in the form of those very faces, when he returned with an armload of wood.
“Silence!” Giuseppe proclaimed in his booming voice, and a chipped plate rattled from its place upon the wall. His voice would have been formidable, absent of the warmth he exuded, gentle giant that he was. “The Serenissimo Principe has entered these walls.”
Sebastien began stacking the wood, eyeing the gathering with narrowed gaze. “I know nothing of entering walls. And am decidedly not a ‘most serene prince.’”
“Ah!” Giuseppe waved away his literal qualms. “You know what I mean, Sua Serenita.”
His Serenity? “What are you about? Am I to dress as a slumbering man? The American Rip Van Winkle, perhaps?”
“He doesn’t know the Doge’s names,” Pietro muttered out the side of his mouth.
“And why should he?” Elena asked, infusing warmth into her voice. “There are as many titles as there were doges! But if we must pick one, I would call him—Protosebastos. Like the ancient doges. It nearly has his name in it!”
“What does all of this mean?” Sebastien laughed as he placed the last piece of wood beside the fire, clasped his hands in front of him, and faced the gathering.
“Show him, Papa!” This, from Pietro’s twin grandsons, clamoring and pointing at the long parcel the glassblower held with care.
“Very well, very well,” the older man said. “But do take care with it.”
Sebastien received the parcel, unfolding layers of muslin from around it, over and over, until a gleam emerged.
From the folds, he pulled what appeared to be a scepter made entirely of glass, twisted with color.
Sebastien held it in awe, this fused piece that joined two elements into one. It was the very technique he had always wished to master and always managed to shatter: incalmo. The conviction that the treasure would surely slip from his hands and shatter into a thousand pieces overtook him.
“A world within a world,” Pietro said proudly.
“Like Venice,” Sebastien recalled.
“Like you.” Pietro leaned in and began to point out the unique markings of the work, as he always did in the workshop. “See how the glass interlaces here and crosses the rivulet there and how the gold sparks just so in the light—”
“The time, Pietro!” Giuseppe interrupted.
“Yes, yes, of course.” And then quieter, leaning in, to just Sebastien. “Later,” he said, tapping the scepter gently. “I will tell you later.”
Elena approached, carrying a carefully folded garment of some sort. Deep crimson, familiar and yet foreign. Valentina walked alongside, stitching something.
Elena whispered something to Valentina.
“But the hem, it isn’t fit yet for—”
“It is perfect, Valentina. Your work shines, as it always does.” Elena reached a hand around to pat Valentina’s as she pulled a thread and resigned herself to knotting it.
“It is not perfect enough,” she said. “Not for our Sebastien.”
By now, Sebastien’s eyes were round with apprehension. He hardly dared ask, eyeing that garment with suspicion. “What . . . is it?” he mustered, at last.
“Your cloak, of course.”
Dante muttered something from his place at the window where he leaned, hands in pockets and amusement sparking.
“Do you speak to the window,” he said dryly. “It appears a little . . . cold without its winter layers.”
He tipped his head behind him and the bareness of the wall shouted accusatorily in its cold silence. Sebastien’s mouth opened to utter a wary realization.
“A curtain . . . ?”
“A cloak,” Valentina exclaimed, and Elena flung the garment, clinging by corners to let it flutter with dramatic effect as they pinned it around his shoulders. A cloud of dust flew up, setting everyone to coughing.
“It is—” cough—“perfect—” cough-cough—“No?” said Valentina, beaming through the dissipating cloud.
Elena held the ends out, clapping the garment to clean it with unfazed efficiency. “Indeed,” she said, her smile radiant.
Through the settling veil of dust, Giuseppe thrust a hat. Gold and red, quite worn. “Dante’s great-great-grandfather caught it at the marriage to the sea when the wind plucked it off the Doge’s head. And now? It is yours!” He inclined his head, as if to impart a great secret. “Every family in Venice likes to tell how many doges they have given. We like to tell of how many doge’s hats have chosen us!”
Sebastien smiled. “How many?”
“One!” Giuseppe looked incredulous. “How many did you think? And now, it is yours.” Giuseppe clapped him on the back. “Tonight, you are a king!”
“Mamma mia, Giuseppe, a doge is not a king. A doge is not a king!” Valentina pinched her fingers in the air for emphasis.
Giuseppe grinned and nodded at Valentina, swinging an arm around Sebastien and walking him to the boat. “You will be the first doge in the history of the great republic to row his own gondola. A doge who rows his own boat is a king in my book. Boats are freedom! Go with God, Sebastien. It will be a night to remember.”
32
The Book of Waters
The Unmasking
For the first time in decades, the people of Venice stepped out into the night in a flurry of costumes. Napoleon had taken carnivale, but with whispers of injustice on the rise, this occasion proclaimed loudly: We Shall Celebrate Despite You.
Oars stirred rios flowing from every direction to one single point, like arteries to a heart. Arriving at the beating center of the night: Ca’Fedele. Inside, they gathered inside the piano nobile. . . .
———
The house awoke from a long slumber that night, floors and steps groaning and creaking in welcome as people swarmed. Costumes rustled in a symphony of silken whispers, their hush buoying music as a quartet played strains of the city’s own beloved Vivaldi. Laughter spilled from conversations. Wafting in waltzes invisible to them all, there above their heads, between the people and the cherubs and saints painted above.
These were foreign sounds, here in this city where many had sworn themselves to lives of defiant somberness in protest of their current Austrian occupation. But here, for one night, a sliver of the days of old carnivale resurrected.
The room flowed with anticipation. For what, nobody knew. But in the gilded and embossed invitations, the lush extravagance oozing from every detail, this homage to a tradition in the form of rebellion—all could sense it.
Massimo Fedele was up to something.
This sense of anticipation flexed its reach until Sebastien was certain the air must be pushing right out of the windows, slipping onto the balcony and tumbling over the waters below.
He wished he could follow. He was a spectacle, he now saw. For not only were there at least three other Doges in red costume—but their costumes dripped in gold trimmings and lavish wealth.
His . . . had been a curtain.
He turned to go, wincing at his own foolhardy notion that he might see Mariana. Now that he was here, he realized he had no place here.
Nowhere among the revelers was a firebird, the costume that had been designed for Mariana. As boatman, it had been his task to ferry masks and fabrics to and from Ca’Fedele, deliver them to Francesca and await her verdicts, and return those which “would never do, not for our firebird, not for a momentous night such as this.”
But after all of that, there was no sign of the firebird. No glimpse of anyone who might be a masked Mariana. And without her . . . why was he here?
And yet . . . for her, he would wait. Always.
Caught between everything else pulling him away, telling him to leave, and the determination to stay as long as it took, whatever the cost, he froze. For there, entering the room, was a sight that took his breath.
He did not know the correct words for fabrics and things that shined. But the woman before him was adorned in flowing blues of every hue, from the turquoise of the lagoon in the morning to its deep-hued royal blue beneath clouds. Greys here and there, and sky blue, too, all of them falling in waves around her that seemed woven of liquid and air, their twists mimicking currents and their pools upon the floor.
Her mask scrolled in silvery-blue upturned peaks and curls, glinting beneath Pietro’s chandelier. Her hair, worn long in curls, fell over her shoulders in silvery-golden waves, simple and pure.
Deep blue eyes took in the room with trepidation. And despite her ethereal beauty, despite the way she held herself in quiet poise and unassuming grace, it was something else that assured him of her identity. Two things, in truth.
First, the way she, upon assessing the slow-churning currents of the room and people before her, did not lift her chin in haughty expectation of a reception. Quite the opposite. She quietly took herself to the outskirts of the room, to a small alcove that on a normal day was occupied by a stately chess table left to gather dust in its shadows.
And second, the way she seemed to sense him. She turned slowly, searching for the source of whatever was drawing her awareness, and found him. Locked eyes with him.
