The Glassmaker's Daughter

Chapter 3-1

THREE

Sophia stood at the tip of the eight-oared barge sailing at full tilt across the two kilometers of lagoon lying between Murano and the central cluster of the Venetian Islands. The wind blew against her face, lapping at the long folds of her best silk gown. At the rail beside her stood her two younger sisters, as eager and excited as she to reach the main island’s shore, to immerse themselves in the grandeur of Festa della Sensa. Somewhere on board the crowded transport, her mother, father, and grandmother mingled and gossiped with friends and relations, exuberance tempered by lifetime experience of the yearly celebration. The low flat islets of Venice appeared on the horizon as spiny church spires and round domes of cathedrals rose up like mountain ranges on the sea level earth. “Which kings and queens will be here do you think, Sophi? Which princes?” Oriana asked, lips close to her sister’s ear, thwarting the greedy breeze from snatching her words away.

Sophia grinned at Oriana; the seventeen-year-old’s exhilaration dispelled her often older womanliness. Rarely did Sophia feel like Oriana’s older sister. For a girl who had just attained marriageable age, Oriana’s dreams and fantasies of finding a noble husband never ended, never strayed. Sophia thought her charming, thought both her sister charming.

Oriana’s face held her own features, the same light blue eyes, the same chestnut hair. But on Oriana, Sophia thought them more delicate, a refined beauty rather than her own rustic plainness. Fourteen-year-old Lia still resembled that young a girl, but one with just a hint of promise at the woman she would become; she possessed not only her mother’s golden russet eyes but the natural golden copper hair so coveted by the women of Venice.

Sophia leaned close to their sparkling, captivated faces, squinting against the sun’s rays glinting off the ocean’s waves. In the incessant, potent rhythm of the barge’s oars, she heard the rhythm of her aroused heartbeat.

“One never knows which great personage will make an appearance at the Wedding of the Sea. They come from every corner of the world…France, England, Germany, sì, but China and India too.”

Her sisters squealed and giggled, clasping hands, and bouncing up and down. Sophia laughed with them; she loved them so much, to delight them was to delight herself.

The boat passed San Michele, and their laughter waned, they crossed themselves. This tiny square patch of land lay between the glassmaking center and the Rialtine group of islands, those forming the central cluster of Venice. San Michele might be its name, Venetians knew it as Cemetery Island.

Sophia made this short journey often; just as often she pondered what wonders of God created such an unparalleled anomaly as was her homeland. Much of the saltwater in the five hundred square kilometers of the Laguna Veneta was but waist-deep. Like the strands of a spider’s web, deep channels crisscrossed the water, allowing the heavy traffic through the waterways. Halfway between the mainland and the long, thin sandbanks known as the Lido, little islets of sand and marram grass had formed in the shoals as rivers and streams, like the Po and the Adige that ran down the Alps, discharged their silt. Over hundreds of years, each grain gathered, forming the world’s most uniquely beautiful, populated landmass.

Sitting snugly between Europe and Asia, Venice had held the purse strings of the world for centuries, reaping the benefits of her prime location by controlling its trade. At one time, not so long ago, it was more populated and productive than all of France, though equivalent to a quarter of its size. As new trade routes had opened, Venice’s power began to wane; its splendor and bounty and obsession with the best of everything the world had to offer continued to reign supreme. Its glitter had not yet begun to tarnish.

The passengers’ rumblings rose to raucousness as the boat pulled into the dock at the Fondamenta Nuove, depositing them at the largest landing stage in the north. The journey from here to the Bacino di San Marco, the basin at the eastern end of the Grand Canal, would be quicker and easier via canal and calle than to continue the journey upon the barge which would have to round the island’s jutting eastern tip.

The girls rushed from the vessel with unladylike haste, lingering with jittery impatience at the water’s edge for their family. Their formal summer gowns flapped like the wings of harried birds in the constant breeze wafting off the sea. Sophia in simple crème while her sisters popped in peony and aquamarine; her modest, almost severe hairstyle looked even plainer in contrast to their braided, pinned, and beribboned coifs. All three faces shone bright like glass beads beneath their small, lacy white veils obscuring their maiden faces.

The sisters pointed and gaped at the breathtaking beauty of the city, decorated in its finery for the ceremony and all the visitors it brought. The pale pink and flax stone buildings blossomed with flower boxes, a riot of color on balconies and rooftop altanes. The storied buildings seemed made of row upon row of lace, each row unique in itself. The graceful multi-shaped windows, spiny-topped roofs, gothic arches, and marbled columns shone twice in their reflections off the shimmering, undulating surface of the canal water at their feet. Blooming garlands festooned doors; servant in fine livery stood poised to greet any guests.

A pulsing, never-ending mass of people swirled and jostled the sisters; westerners in familiar attire, easterners in exotic saris and turbans…a painter’s palette of colors. Oriana spied her elders among the thinning throng trailing off the barge.

“Papa, Mamma, Nonna,” she called, waving her hand high above her head, gestures ever more expansive as Sophia shushed her.

“Sì. Hurry, hurry.” Lia picked up where Oriana left off, laughing as Sophia punished her with a scathing sidelong glance.

The elder Fiolarios waved back, making their way to the shore in their own good time; no matter how fast they moved it would not be fast enough for their excited children.

At the end of the ramp, Zeno gathered his family, putting on the silk cap that would protect the tender skin of his thinly-haired pate.

“We shall take a gondola today, sì? All the way to the piazza.” His pale eyes sparkled below bouncing brows.

“Zeno!” His wife’s shocked gasp rose above the trill of her daughters. Viviana Boccalini Folario’s elegant, dark features—still distinctive and beautiful as when she’d been a girl—blanched. She took three quick steps toward her husband. Even in her trepidation, her curvaceous figure moved with grace, hips swayed with seduction so particular to the women of the Adriatico.

“Is such expense necessary? All the way to the ceremony, even along the Canale Grande? Should we spend that much soldi, that many ducats?” She tortured her husband with a dark gaze, one particular from a wife to an errant husband. It held little of its power this day.

“Now, cara,” Zeno purred, slipping his wife’s hand over his thin, chiseled arms and that of his mother over the other. “Our profits have been larger than ever this year and today is one of the most profound for our people. If not today, when, eh?”

“Sì, Viviana,” Marcella piped in. “It would be so nice for these old legs to rest while they can today.”

Viviana c****d her head at her mother-in-law, a brow quirking upward. As strong and hearty as Viviana herself, there was nothing elderly about this sixty-eight-year-old woman. Shorter and rounder than in years past, gray hair and the lighter skin she had given her son, Marcella still possessed a vigorous constitution. She found great pleasure conspiring with Zeno. With a shrug and a nod, Viviana capitulated. “Very well, off we go. Let’s eat at every trattoria and shop all day while we are at it.”

“Sounds perfect, mi amore,” Zeno countered his wife’s sarcasm with sincerity. Viviana’s jaw fell; Zeno’s face cracked with a sheepish grin. “Come, come, mia famiglia, this way.”

Zeno led the procession of women along the fondamenta, chest puffed up grandly…a rooster leading his hens. He nodded to all the men staring at his bevy of beauties with a skewed, cocky grin. They arrived at the small canal of the Rio dei Gesuiti and mingled into the gondola waiting line.

Venice’s winding waterways teemed with the long, narrow asymmetrical boats; close to ten thousands of them floated on the city’s greenish liquid arteries. Those privately owned, so many belonging to the rich and noble, distinctive with bright colors and opulent cloth felzi. All black ones in the thousands floated for hire. The Fiolarios did not have long to wait.

“Buongiorno, signore. Where may I take you and your beautiful family?” the dark-haired gondolier asked as he helped each Fiolario onto his craft with a firm, large hand. Oriana and Lia giggled at his touch, their young, hungry scrutiny devouring his sculpted muscles so perfectly displayed under his Egyptian blue, skin-tight jerkin and crimson hose.

“All the way to the piazza, if you please,” Zeno called out with spirit and smiled playfully at his wife. He wielded his natural charm and merriment, enticing Viviana to catch the festive mood as successfully as he had when first seducing her and winning her heart, enticing her away from her family to live the sequestered life with him on Murano. She was as enchanted now as then. With a small huff of surrender, Viviana relinquished and laughed along with her husband and Marcella as they took their seats on the cushioned bench closest to the gondolier.

“All the way? Madonna mia, how wonderful,” their gondolier cried, bowing low over an offered leg. “I am Pietro and you will have the most wonderful ride of your life.”

The beguiled Fiolarios applauded as Pietro set the oar into the forcola, the elaborately curved wooden oarlock, and began to drive the craft along.

“A-oel,” he cried with a singsong cadence, announcing their departure and alerting the oarsmen on the nearby gondolas of their launch.

The girls sat in front of their elders on their own pillowed row of seats, staring in wide-eyed wonder at the mass of people floating by on the canals and walking along the adjacent fondamenti. With a closed-eyed sigh, Sophia inhaled the aromas of cooking food, blooming flowers, and the ever-present dung-like earthy odor of the canals. How different the city seemed today than most, when she ambled along these passageways with one companion or another, conducting business on behalf of the glassworks and her aging father, who had no son to send in his stead. Her sisters turned and twisted in their seats, thrilled by the metropolitan sights so infrequently glimpsed, straining to see all its attractions, including their handsome boatman. They sighed with girlish exhalations as Pietro began to sing, his sweet tenor serenading them, the dulcet tones joining in the chorus with those of the other gondoliers.

As they turned off the smaller waterway and onto the Canalazzo, the modest and charming homes lining the jetty became large and magnificent palazzi. On their balconies and through their stained glass windows, Sophia spied the sumptuously attired nobles in various stages of party preparations.

Passing beneath the Ponte de Rialto, they circled back inland on smaller canals, their muscular gondolier crouching deep beneath the low footbridges that crossed the thin waterways. Like bright and garish blossoms, the courtesans festooned almost every bridge and many of the balconies throughout the city, their powdered breasts bulging from their scant bodices, their young skin hardened and lined by layers of rouge and paint. Upon the quaysides, they streamed through the crowds, the tarnished jewels of the Republic’s obsession with pleasure.

“You must hurry now,” Pietro urged as he brought his passengers to the dockside and helped them from his vehicle, accepting his fee from Zeno with a quick bow. “High Mass will begin soon.”

“Grazie,” Zeno and Viviana called together, corralling their family, and stepping briskly away from the water’s edge.

“Arrivederci, Pietro.” Oriana and Lia waved daintily over their shoulders.

“Ciao, bellezze.” Pietro smiled at them with a devil-may-care smirk, and Sophia grinned behind a hand as her sisters giggled with glee.