Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

If they intercept us, Crivano says with a sigh, we will kill them, just as we killed them last night. If they find us on the road, we’ll take another road. On the Terrafirma we can hide ourselves. On the sea we cannot.

Obizzo frowns. He takes up his file again. This is a new song for you, dottore, he says. I hope you’ve learned all the verses.

They sit wordless for a while, the file buzzing across the bolt’s corners. A pale ghost sweeps through the kitchen: the serving-girl affixing her backspread yellow veil. When it’s pinned, she opens a door and rushes down the steps without a glance. The food she’s prepared sits covered on the counter.

Curfew, Obizzo says. In the Ghetto by sundown, or she’ll have trouble. She’s bold to be working in a Christian house at all, isn’t she? If that’s what this is.

Crivano pushes back from the table, sags in his chair. It shifts and groans, but it holds together. Not unlike Crivano himself. Where’s Tristão? he says.

With a flick of the bolt, the mirrormaker indicates a corridor to his right. In his workshop, he says. I think it’s a workshop. That heavy door at the end of the hall.

Crivano nods. Then he puts his palms on the chair-seat and forces himself up. His legs are stronger, but still unsteady. His hands no longer return automatically to the shapes of the walkingstick and the rapier-grip; he can almost straighten his fingers.

The door in the hallway is broad enough to permit the passage of a large handcart. A chaos of sharp smells seeps from behind it, most of them mysterious, some familiar from Bologna and the secret processes Crivano studied there: the sour tang of dissolution and separation, the acrid torment of materials sublimed and calcined, the unsettling sweetness of reductions and coagulates. He lifts his fist — the tendons in his forearm still disordered by the pistolshot — and raps the hard black wood. After a moment, he knocks again. Then he tries the latch.

The door opens easily, sucked forth by a gust of wind, to reveal an airy room. Windows line two walls, giving a view of the apse of Saint Jerome, the lagoon beyond, the snowcapped ridges of the distant Dolomites, the red sun over the edge of the world. The space before is crowded with apparatus: jars and bottles of colored and crystalline glass, tongs and long spoons, mortars and pestles, complex networks of alembics and cucurbits and retorts, a delicate many-bulbed pelican, low shelves crowded with books and herbs and phials of colored powders, clay crucibles and leather bellows like those in Serena’s factory. In the middle of the room, between a long reverberatory furnace and an iron brazier burning with a smokeless fire, is a cylindrical clay athanor of the traditional type. Behind it, propped on a wooden easel, is the glass-framed talisman that Serena crafted from Verzelin’s mirror. The dark room that the mirror shows moves whenever Crivano moves; after a few steps, his own white hands appear in the glass. Anxious, he looks away.

Tristão is nowhere to be seen. Crivano stops, calls to him. Tristão? he says.

From the corner opposite the windows, behind an inlaid-wood screen of which Crivano had taken no notice, a soft commotion arises, followed by Tristão’s voice. Ah! it says. Forgive me my neglectful inattention, Vettor. Even now I emerge to greet you. And let me add that I am greatly relieved to be once more in your waking presence. I have been most concerned. Tell me, how do you feel?

Crivano is slow to answer, disinclined to converse with one he cannot see. I feel bad, he says. I’m slow and sore. Too old for fighting.

You battled admirably last night, the screen says. So Perina’s report informs me.

Perina, Crivano says. How is she? She took a hard blow from a sbirro’s cudgel.

Bruised. Not badly. She will soon recover. I am tending to her.

Crivano grunts, nods, looks at the screen. It’s open at the bottom; he can see Tristão’s slippered feet. Tristão, he says, what are you doing?

Tristão doesn’t answer. After a moment, he steps into view. He’s attired casually in a belted tunic and hose; he looks well-rested, alert. In his outstretched hands he carries a large brass chamberpot, and as he crosses the room, Crivano catches the odor of feces. Oh, Crivano says. I see.

Perina and I bandaged your injuries, Tristão says. She has, I believe, a genuine gift for the treatment of wounds. If you have been able to review our work, I hope you have found it to be adequate.

I have, Crivano says. And I have. For that I thank you. I suppose I should thank you, too, for engineering my rescue last night. Before I do so, I should like to determine if it was you who put me in danger in the first place.

Tristão stops at a high wooden counter, sets the chamberpot down. He stands with his back turned, his eyes on the distant mountains. A difficult question, he says at last. I do not believe that I placed you in danger. Partly Narkis bin Silen did this. Partly you did it yourself. Also, as always, we must blame Fortune. It is true that I might have helped you more, and sooner. I might have informed better, or explained more. But in so doing I greatly would have endangered myself and my own project. Therefore, I did not. It burdens my heart to confess this, but it is indeed so.

Against the windows, his slender black form is edged by fire. He does not move except to speak. A pair of flies has come upon the chamberpot; they float above it in tight spirals, fighting the changeable breeze.

Tristão, Crivano says, what in God’s name has transpired?

Tristão turns. His face appears and disappears in the scarlet sunset. The events of the past week, he says, are perhaps best likened to an obscure codex with a broken spine, the contents of which have been scattered everywhere. All interested parties possess a few pages, but only the book’s author knows the whole. Indeed, even the author himself may have forgotten.

Who is the author?

I do not know.

Crivano frowns, crosses his arms. Pain shoots down the length of his right ulna, and he uncrosses them again. Very well, he says. Tell me this. What is your interest? How did you come by your pages?

At first Tristão doesn’t answer. He lifts a touchwood from the counter behind him, ignites it in the brazier, and puts it to the wicks of several candles around the room. The high ceiling begins to catch their light. In both Ghettos, he says, I am acquainted with many learned men. Among the so-called German Jews of the New Ghetto, and also in the Old Ghetto, where my own people live. Through these men I have come to correspond with scholars in many cities, Constantinople perhaps foremost among them. Generally our correspondence consists of discussion about our mutual pursuit of secret knowledge, but sometimes we share news, or ask of each other simple favors. This is how I came by my pages.

Someone in Constantinople told you about me. Someone told you that I’m a spy for the haseki sultan.

I have learned that you believed yourself to be so, yes.

And you knew of the plot with the mirrormakers.

I knew what you knew of it, Tristão says. I also knew that Narkis bin Silen had made other arrangements for their removal. Please understand that this, to me, was only trivia. It remained so until I became aware that your enterprise was ruined. At that time I perceived a means of helping you, and of helping myself also. Only then did I interfere.

You arranged my meeting with Narkis at Ciotti’s shop. You knew it to be watched by sbirri. You wanted us to be seen by them. To be seen together.

What you have spoken, Tristão says, is indeed so.

Why?

Tristão lights the last of the candles, throws the slender brand into the brazier. Then he gathers handfuls of firewood chips from a bin and drops them in, as well. They flare and blacken on the white-hot coals, and for a moment the round brazier seems to recapitulate the setting sun.