Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

I haven’t spoken with the senator of late. I’m to call on him tomorrow. I’ll pass along your good wishes.

I am grateful for your doing so. You prescribed him cowslip, I suppose?

Cowslip wine, Crivano says. Given his age and his temperament, I thought it best. What’s that you’re reading, Tristão?

Tristão averts his eyes, flashes a sheepish grin. His teeth are lead-white, improbably straight. Oh, this? he says, caressing the octavo. This is the Nolan.

The Nolan?

Tristão opens his mouth, looks up, and closes it again, pushing the book across the tabletop instead.

One of Anzolo’s Friulian serving-girls has emerged from the kitchen, bearing sweet white wine from Sopron. Before Crivano’s cup is full, a second girl arrives with food: tiny artichokes, rice porridge, Lombardy quail stuffed with mincemeat. The girls giggle and blush whenever they meet Tristão’s gaze, then hasten away. Oh! Tristão says, fanning steam toward his face with dove-wing hands. Oh oh oh!

Crivano smiles. Tristão is a caricature of masculine beauty: ample curly hair, dark eyes with feathery lashes, smooth skin the color of old brandy. A skilled physician much favored by the city’s patricians, he’d long since have married into the nobility were it not for his peculiar circumstances. He’s a converso , Contarini explained. From Portugal. Like all Portuguese, he’s assumed at best to be a hypocrite Jew, at worst an atheist and a spy for the Sultan. I will introduce you to him, of course — no doubt you share many interests — but I must urge you to be cautious in your dealings with him. He is an ingenious man, and kind, but not always prudent .

They say a brief prayer and cross themselves. As Tristão pulls apart his bird, Crivano opens the book to the title page. de triplici minimo et mensura , it reads. Flipping ahead reveals a long philosophical poem — an imitation of Lucretius, inventive if lacking in grace — and then a page of geometric figures: circles and stars ornamented by flowers and leaves and honeycombs, obvious magical sigils. Crivano shuts the book hurriedly, slides it back to Tristão. So, he says. The Nolan.

A Dominican friar, Tristão says between bites, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. Long since expelled by his order. For intemperance, and for promulgating heterodox notions.

Such as?

Anti-Aristotelian notions. Heliocentricity. The wisdom of the antique Egyptians. The existence of infinite worlds. It is perhaps best not to speak of these matters here.

Tristão puts a bit of quail in his mouth, moves his jaw, puts his fingers to his lips and withdraws a pair of clean bones. The Nolan, he says, has been for many years peregrine in the courts of Christendom. Prague with Rudolf II, England with Elizabeth, Paris with unlucky Henri III. Searching for a philosopher-king. A monarch receptive to his instruction.

Where is he now?

He is here. He is a guest in the house of Lord Iovanus Mocenigus, where he has undertaken to teach Lord Mocenigus the art of memory, as practiced by the learned orators of the ancient world. That is why I am reading his book.

So this Nolan is a rhetorician as well?

Oh no, Tristão says, arranging bones on his plate. Not a rhetorician. He follows Thomas Aquinas in prescribing the art as a tool for reminiscence and devotion. But he goes much further, I think, than Aquinas would countenance.

Crivano furrows his brow, sips his wine. Mocenigo, he says. Zuanne Mocenigo? He’s with the Doge’s faction, isn’t he?

As I understand it, Lord Mocenigus does tend to favor Spain and the pope in matters of state.

But if the Nolan is, as you say, involved in the pursuit of secret knowledge, isn’t he unwise to have commerce with such a man?

Tristão shrugs. I would think so, he says. But perhaps what you or I regard as unwise the Nolan understands as fundamental to his project. Perhaps the Nolan believes that the new pope will be receptive to his teachings. And perhaps this is not impossible. After all, Picus Mirandulanus himself enjoyed the patronage of a pope.

Pico had the patronage of Alexander VI, Crivano says. Hardly a representative case. Is that what the Nolan advocates? A return to the age of the Borgias?

You can ask him yourself, if you like. Tomorrow evening he is to address the assembly of the Uranian Academy, and, as always, my patrons the Lords Morosini are to play host to the proceedings. They have asked me to extend to you an invitation on their behalf. These Uranici are powerful men, Vettor. Your presence among them would be greatly valued. I believe they hold the future of the Republic in their hands.

Crivano takes a spoonful of rice porridge — rich with beef broth and mushrooms — and chews it slowly, trying to imagine what Narkis would have him do. Recalling Ravenna, five months ago, the last time they spoke freely in person. The best way to conceal a conspiracy, Tarjuman effendi, is to cloak it in a lesser conspiracy . They met in a quiet tavern down the street from the old Arian cathedral. Narkis looked strong and self-satisfied, anything but diminished in his turban and simple caftan. Place yourself in danger. Give the authorities something to discover. You become like the gecko who drops his tail .

This, he gathers, is why Narkis directed him to seek out Tristão in the first place: to find a lesser conspiracy in which to cloak himself. And true enough, Tristão has been conveniently swift to enlist Crivano as his respectable envoy to the Murano glassworkers. His peculiar commission — suspect enough to interest the Inquisition, but far milder than the unambiguous treason of Crivano’s actual undertaking — has been a perfect blind, supplying a tailored pretext for furtive encounters with Verzelin and Serena. So perfect, in fact, that Crivano doubts Fortune delivered it without earthly assistance. He still has no sense of how much Tristão knows of his real purpose here.

I am greatly honored to accept your hosts’ invitation, Crivano says.

One of the Friulian girls arrives with a dish of candied lemonpeel and clears away their tableware; Tristão stops her with a light touch, leans close, and praises the meal in a heartfelt whisper. The girl’s lips purse, her eyelids flutter, and Crivano notices the plate in her white-knuckled hand: in it, the reassembled skeleton of Tristão’s devoured quail, a split artichoke scale substituted for its absent skull.

Oh, Vettor, Tristão says as they rise to leave — as if he’s just now remembered this, as if it were not the very purpose of their meeting today — how went your visit to Murano?

It was fruitful, Crivano says. I met with the glassmaker, who is prepared to begin work on the frame.

And what of the mirror itself?

Crivano keeps his eyes low — his walkingstick, his jar — betraying nothing. I saw the mirrormaker briefly, he says. The mirror is finished. The glassmaker has it now.

How does it look?

The question carries an undertone of anxiety, audible though unvoiced, like the drone-strings of a robab. Crivano smiles evenly. It’s perfect, he says.

He slips Serena’s sealed message to Tristão as they pass through the White Eagle’s foyer onto the darkening street. Perfect? Tristão says, tucking it into his own doublet. You are quite certain of this?

The glassmaker said it might be too perfect.

I do not think I understand you, Vettor. What does this mean, too perfect?

He says clear glass is susceptible to moisture. It might not last long.

Tristão’s face clouds. Its expression is nearer to confusion than distress, as if it meets impediments so rarely that it’s slow to recognize them. Then it breaks into its customary radiant grin. Ah, my friend, Tristão says. This is no great concern. After all, what lasts long in this world?