JAMES RUNCIE
THE COLOUR OF
HEAVEN

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HARPER

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003

James Runcie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007235278

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007494996

Version: 2016-10-25

DEDICATION

for Marilyn

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

No Jewel is Worth His Lady

Venice

Murano

Siena

Constantinople

Persia

Sar-I-Sang

Tun-Huang

Venice

Siena

Sar-I-Sang

Historical Note

Envoie

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

MAP

NO JEWEL IS WORTH HIS LADY

Sapphire, nor diamond, nor emerald,

Nor other precious stones past reckoning,

Topaz, nor pearl, nor ruby like a king,

Nor that most virtuous jewel, jasper call’d,

Nor amethyst, nor onyx, nor basalt,

Each counted for a very marvellous thing,

Is half so excellently gladdening

As is my lady’s head uncoronall’d.

All beauty by her beauty is made dim;

Like to the stars she is for loftiness;

And with her voice she taketh away grief.

She is fairer than a bud, or than a leaf.

Christ have her well in keeping, of His grace,

And make her holy and beloved, like Him!

Jacopo da Lentino, 1250

Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

VENICE

No one noticed the child.

He had been left in a small boat which now sailed out towards the lagoon, following nothing but the slap and tide of each narrow canal.

It was Ascension Day in the year twelve hundred and ninety-five, and the people of Venice were parading through the streets, hoisting crimson pennants and bright-yellow banners in celebration. Tailors dressed in white tunics with crimson stars, weavers in silver cloth tippets, and cotton spinners in cloaks of fustian mingled with blacksmiths, carpenters, butchers, and bakers, singing and shouting their way towards the Piazza San Marco.

The square was filled with showmen, swindlers, soothsayers, and charlatans; jesters, jugglers, prophets, and priests. Alchemists cried out that scrapings of amber gave protection from the plague, and that an emerald pressed against naked flesh could preserve a woman from apoplexy. A dentist with silver teeth sold a special compound which he vowed would improve the value of all metal; a barber displayed a gum to make bald men hirsute; and a naked Englishman sold pine seeds which were said to guarantee invisibility as surely as the talisman of Gyges.

But no one had noticed the baby.

Teresa could have ignored him, another abandoned child due for an early death at the Foundlings’ Hospital; but once she had seen him the shock of love took hold.

She watched the boat spin gently against the side of a little rio, caught in a momentary eddy, as if waiting only for her arrival. Perhaps this was a gift from God at last, alleviation for all that she had suffered.

She looked around, for mother or father, doctor or stranger, but amidst the movement of the crowd they were the only people to be still, the abandoned baby and the woman who could never have children: Teresa, wife of Marco the glass-maker, barren. No other adjective was necessary. Her pale-blue eyes, thin frame, and slender beauty meant nothing. When people wanted to describe her, they spoke but the one word: barren.

She knelt down beside the waters and gathered in the child.

‘Calme, calme, mio bambino.’

The baby’s mouth began to pucker, longing for milk.

Teresa knew that she should go into the church and ask the priest what to do but at that moment the doors swung open and a vast procession emerged, singing Psalms and praising God. She let the pageant go by, watching a group of children carrying silver bowls filled with rose petals, whispering and squabbling as they passed.

Teresa tried to convince herself that she did not need the child. She should leave him, as his mother had left him, and as hundreds of other mothers would do on this very day throughout the city. Children were a drain, and a curse, the punishment for sexual excess. They cried. They were always hungry. They grew up to take your money and denounce you. That was what Marco had always told her: her husband, who could, in fact, be as barren as she. They had never known.

She could hear his voice telling her to put the baby back, leaving it either for charity, another mother, or death. What was one child more or one child less in the world when we are born only to live, suffer, and die?

She sat down on the steps of the church.

The child was so pale and so fair.

Out in the lagoon, trumpeters, troubadours, and drummers sailed past the Doges’ Palace singing of beauty and lost love, saluting both the rising and the setting of the sun, mothers and daughters, mistresses and maids, the besotted and the beloved.

Some of the boats were preparing tableaux of the Christian mysteries: the shipwrights and carpenters were to re-enact Noah’s flood; the vintners would create the illusion of Christ turning the water into wine, whereas Marco’s single-sailed sandolo had been transformed into a moveable theatre in which his fellow glass-makers would perform ‘The harrowing of hell’.

His friends were dressed as heavy-drinking devils with horns made from old fish baskets, and their blowpipes had become instruments of diabolic torture. Marco was to play the devil himself. He stood on the prow, his smoky frame dominating the boat, and bellowed a list of the torments awaiting all sinners. Rival guilds watched in wonder as Marco blew flames, drank, shouted, and sang of terror and disaster. The nearer other boats sailed, the more dramatic his gestures became until he could resist temptation no longer and began to describe the precise location of the mouth of hell.

He turned round, bent over, and mooned at all who might look at him, shouting:

‘Guarda! Guarda!

La bocca d’inferno è nel mio culo!’

Encouraged by his companions, he then provided a triumphant auditory accompaniment to the gesture.

‘Ecco un fracasso del diavolo!’

The longer the day lasted, and the more red wine they drank, the funnier such antics seemed, until the time came for the youngest glass-maker to harrow hell. Young Pietro emerged from beneath the sail (which now became the flag of Resurrection) carrying a vast glass crucifix and shouted:

‘We have blown this crucifix as surely as Christ will blast away the gates of Death.’

He then struck his fellow workers with the cross, and they dived into the waters of the lagoon, an improbable reminder of the power of baptism and redemption.

‘This sky is our heaven, these waters our home. Let no one deny the promises we have been vouchsafed!’ Pietro shouted.

The Doge’s gilded barge, the Bucintoro, sailed past the spluttering glass-makers in preparation for the ceremonial marriage of Venice to the sea. The boat moved out towards the Lido, canopied in red, shining with golden river gods, zephyrs, putti, and mermaids, the Lion of St Mark fluttering above.

The Doge rose to the prow of his ship and took the ceremonial glass ring from his finger.

Then he proclaimed, ‘O Sea, we wed thee in sign of our everlasting dominion,’ and threw the ring out into the Adriatic.

The Bucintoro turned back, its oars gleaming in the light. Marco and his men, now safely back on board their boat, raised a fiasco of wine, as if toasting their leader, and prepared to sail back to Murano, content with their day’s display.

As they did so, Teresa opened her blouse and pinched at her breast. The child squirmed in her arms. She would have to take the baby to her sister, for, whereas Teresa could not even begin to conceive, Francesca could not stop having children. The milk poured out of her so much that she worked as a wet nurse to sustain her family.

Teresa began to walk up towards the Misericordia. She watched the crowd stream over the bridges, returning home to eat and drink before the curfew, ready to share their thoughts about the day, to joke perhaps, to laugh, even to make love.

Boats headed out into the lagoon.

At first her sister thought she was carrying the baby on a mission from another mother. ‘Where is it from?’

‘I do not know.’

‘What have you done?’

‘I have a child at last.’

‘How?’

Teresa tried to remain defiant. ‘I found it. By the Church of the Apostles.’

Francesca could not believe such folly. ‘If I had known you were desperate you could have raised one of mine.’

‘I didn’t want one of yours. I wanted one of my own.’

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You didn’t check? Here. Let me look.’

Teresa handed her sister the child.

‘It’s a boy. He needs feeding.’ Francesca opened her blouse and took the baby to her breast. He drank noisily, hungrily. Teresa watched the child suck and felt the first stirrings of jealousy.

‘I always knew you would do something stupid.’

‘It’s not stupid. Look at him.’

‘You’ll have to pay me,’ Francesca demanded.

The two sisters looked at the child, feeding greedily, possessed by need. Teresa was surprised for the first time by the noise: the spluttering and the gasping, the desire and the power of a baby at the breast sucking for life itself. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked.

‘Of course it does. But you get used to it. He’s feeding well. Then he’ll be sick.’

‘Sick?’

‘You’ve been spared all this: the milk and pain of motherhood, the jealous husband, the cries in the night. Disease. Illness. Death. What do you want a child for?’

‘Joy,’ said Teresa. ‘I want him for joy.’

Marco had drunk several flasks of wine by the time he rowed alongside the Fondamenta Santa Caterina to collect his wife. At times he could not believe that he was married to this woman. He wondered whether he should have wed her sister, a woman with plenty of flesh on her, proper breasts, firm hips, and a body in which a man could lose himself. But did he want all those babies and all that milk? He held his flask of wine aloft in greeting.

Teresa shivered nervously, and gave him a small wave. That is my husband, she thought, as if the events of the day had made them strangers both to the city and to each other. They had never looked as if they belonged together: Teresa thin, anxious, and bird-like; her husband broad, swarthy, and muscular, like Vulcan or some dark river god.

‘Did you watch?’ he asked.

Teresa had forgotten that she might have to lie. ‘There were so many people. And you were far away.’

‘I told you that you should have come with us.’

‘There was not room. It was for men. You know that.’

‘It would not have mattered.’

‘Did you see the Doge?’ asked Teresa.

‘I did. And he saw us. It was a triumph.’

As her husband recounted the story of the day, Teresa realised that she could not take in what he was saying. She could think only of the child. Perhaps she should tell him now, she thought, in this stillness, out in the lagoon. She should confess, or even shout out, that the baby was the only thing that mattered to her, more important than either his love or her own death.

She wondered what it would be like to tell him. She almost wanted to laugh with the joy of it all, sharing this new happiness with the man she loved. But she knew that Marco would be fearful, his mood would change, and that it would ruin the day. He would talk about money. He would ask her to take the child back. And he would not give the real reason for his fear: the fact that a son might change their marriage, that they would no longer be alone.

He put out a line and began to fish.

As the boat rocked on the water, Teresa remembered holding the child in her arms. Although she ached for him, she knew that she must hide the fact, as if the revelation of such a secret would only destroy its beauty.

At last there was movement on the line and Marco flicked up a sturgeon, its back gleaming against the dying light, twitching in midair before being cast down onto the floor of the boat.

‘E basta,’ Marco cried, still happy.

A wind started up, blowing across the lagoon. Teresa watched her husband pull in the line and begin to row harder for the island.

‘Did you gather the wood this morning?’ he asked.

Teresa knew the question mattered, but could not remember why. ‘Alder,’ she replied.

‘Enough for tonight and tomorrow?’

‘Plenty,’ Teresa answered.

‘Then I am happy.’

They tied up the sandolo, and Marco took his wife’s hand. Together they walked along the Fondamenta dei Vetrai, past the furnaces of each family of glass-makers, lined in rivalry and solidarity, until they reached their home, glowing against the impending night, the secret unspoken between them.

Teresa visited her sister every week. Francesca taught her to hold the baby, calm him when he cried, rock and console him. But Teresa didn’t need encouragement. As she held the boy she realised that not only was the child beginning to belong to her, but that she belonged to the child. She had given herself away.

‘You look as if you’ve never seen a baby before,’ her sister remarked.

‘I haven’t. Not like this.’

Teresa inspected every finger and toe. She felt the weight of her new son’s head, cupping it in her palm. His eyes stared away into the distance as if he had come from some other world and knew its secrets. How could she live with such a love? How could she ever do enough for him? What if he was too hot, too cold, too hungry, or too thirsty? How could she guard against fever? What if he fell sick? What if he died?

Soon Teresa could not bear to be apart from the boy. Only she loved him sufficiently to protect him from the perils of the earth. Only she knew what it was to truly love and care for him. The anxiety grew so strong that she began to panic every time she had to leave.

‘You love him too much,’ Francesca warned, but Teresa insisted, ‘One can never love too much.’

Her sister could not agree. ‘You can. Believe me.’

Teresa could sense her disapproval.

‘You had freedom. Why lose it?’ Francesca continued.

‘Because I need to love.’

‘And the child?’

‘The child would have died.’

‘The hospital would have taken him.’

‘You know that’s a lie. And if they had … You know what happens. They never live.’

Francesca dismissed her sister. ‘It’s only a child.’

‘What?’

‘Some live, some die.’

‘How can you be so heartless?’

‘Because I know what it is to love too much.’

‘Then you live in sadness.’

‘At least I do not live in dread,’ Francesca said quietly. ‘When will you tell Marco?’

‘When I bring the boy home.’

‘You will not warn him?’

‘No. I want there to be no argument.’

Marco lived a life of certainties: work, faith, and marriage. Most of the complexities of existence could be explained either by reason or by fate, and so, when he saw Teresa carrying the child, he was convinced that she was holding a new niece or nephew.

‘Francesca?’ he asked. ‘She can’t stop.’

‘The child has come from Francesca but she is not the mother.’

‘Who is?’ He smiled. ‘Have you stolen him?’

‘Nobody knows.’

‘Then what are you doing?’

‘I want to keep him,’ Teresa said suddenly.

‘He’s not ours to keep.’ Surely she was joking.

‘I found him,’ she continued quietly. ‘Six months ago. On Ascension Day.’

‘And what have you done?’

‘Francesca has weaned him for me.’

‘Then Francesca can keep him.’

‘No.’

It was the first time she had ever denied him.

Marco stepped back. ‘You’ve always intended to keep him – without talking to me, without asking my permission?’

‘I meant to tell you, but I knew that you would be angry.’

Why could he not understand? Did he not remember how she had been mad with the lack of a child? ‘I have to keep him. He is a son. For both of us.’

‘Not mine.’

‘Please,’ she appealed, and then immediately regretted the fact that she sounded so keen to appease.

‘Give him to the priest. Or to another mother. Take him back to your sister.’ This was what he had dreaded all these years: another man’s child.

‘I can’t,’ Teresa answered simply.

‘If you won’t give him away then I will,’ Marco replied, as if ending the argument.

‘No,’ she said.

‘He can’t stay,’ Marco reiterated.

‘Look at him.’

‘I can’t,’ said Marco firmly. ‘I won’t.’

‘Please,’ Teresa begged. ‘Look.’

Marco raised his eyes and studied the child. How could he be a father to someone so unlike himself? He tried to reason. ‘Can’t you see the disgrace?’

Teresa looked down at the child, and then directly into her husband’s eyes. ‘People will forgive us.’

‘They won’t,’ Marco asserted. ‘They’ll think you a whore.’

‘They know that I was never pregnant. They have seen me. Why else am I called barren?’

‘Then they’ll think it mine, that I have been with another.’

‘I don’t care.’ Teresa was suddenly fierce again, determined. ‘If you loved me then you would love the child.’

‘You know that I love you. But how can I love a child that is not mine? Do not ask me to do this. Have I not done enough for you? Cared for you? Loved you?’

‘But can’t you see?’

‘Please …’ Marco reasoned.

‘No. I ask you. I beg you,’ his wife replied. ‘I will do everything. You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t even have to look at him if you don’t want to. Just let me be with him.’

‘Rather than with me.’

‘It is not a choice between you and the child.’

‘It seems that it is.’

‘No,’ said Teresa once more. She realised, for the first time, that she liked the sound of the word: its percussive defiance. ‘He can work for you. We will need an apprentice.’

‘Don’t think of such things.’

The child began to wake and cry.

‘You see?’ said Marco.

‘I will care for him. You need do nothing. I will keep him away from you. Nothing about him need concern you.’

Teresa took the boy to the back of the house and fed him the bread softened in milk that she had prepared. She would hide him in the house for the night, stay with him, and protect him against her husband.

She laid the baby on a small upturned wooden bench that she had lined and covered in blankets. He would be safe with her. She would remain with him all night. Perhaps she would never sleep soundly again. Her life was guarding this child: against her husband and against the world.

‘Paolo,’ she said quietly. ‘I will call you Paolo.’

When Teresa woke she knew that something was wrong.

Her son had disappeared.

This was the punishment for all the elation he had given her. She could hear the men downstairs, laughing as they began their day’s work. She must ask them, force them even, to tell her what had happened.

‘Where’s Marco?’ she asked the stizzador, as he stoked the furnace.

The man shrugged.

‘Have you seen the child?’ she asked the apprentice.

‘The bastard?’

‘Not the bastard. The child.’

She felt the fury rise inside her. This was how they spoke. Already the apprentice had learned.

‘The foundling.’ It was as if he was correcting her.

‘My child,’ she shouted.

For a moment there was silence. The two men turned away.

Teresa walked outside and looked down the street. It started to rain, sudden and hard, momentarily confusing her. She tried to think how far Marco’s anger could stretch and the panic made her wild. She ran through the streets, asking all who would listen. She asked the boat builders, vintners, bakers, and butchers; the masons, shoemakers, coopers, and carpenters; the smiths, the fishermen, the barber, and the surgeon if they had seen either her husband or her child. She asked children and grandmothers, the lame and the sick, but it was as if the whole island was locked in a conspiracy to prevent her discovering the truth. Eliana the soothsayer who had never found a husband, Felicia the lace-maker from Burano who had married badly, Franco the blacksmith, Sandro the cooper, Domenico the farrier, Francesco the merchant, Gianni the vintner, Filippo the usurer, even Simona, whom half the island pitied and the other half envied because she too was barren, could not help Teresa in her search.

The rain caught in her hair and splashed up her bare legs. There was nowhere else to go, no one she could ask. Then she thought to check their boat. How could she have been so slow? Was this not the first thing she should have done?

Her sandals were waterlogged and she stopped to take them off, running barefoot through the slippery streets. Perhaps Paolo would be resting in the boat, waiting for her as he had when she had first found him.

She was struck by the shock of memory.

Her pace began to slow, as if she dared not face the inevitability of absence. How could Marco have done this?

She stopped, breathed in, and let the rain fall.

She closed her eyes, praying the boat would be there, and that her husband would be with the child.

But the sandolo was gone.

Perhaps she had not prayed hard enough.

Teresa knew that she should go to the church of San Donato and pray without ceasing. She would let God know how much she loved her son.

It was raining so hard that she could hardly see. Her body twitched as she ran, as if shaking off the rain and ridding herself of anxiety were one and the same.

She entered the church, took from the stoop of holy water, genuflected, and ran to the front of the nave.

She slid down onto her knees, and lay prostrate before the altar.

‘Mary, Mother of God, Mother of all Mothers, aid me in my distress.

‘Mary, Mother of God, Mother of all Mothers, who knows what it is to love a son, aid me in my distress.

‘Mary, Mother of God, Mother of all Mothers, who knows what it is to lose a son, aid me in my distress.’

She stretched out her arms in submission.

Teresa would not move until Paolo was returned to her. She would lie through every service, each day and every night until Marco, God, and the island had mercy upon her.

For the first hour, no one took any notice. Acts of devotion were common, and the priest almost applauded her piety. But as the day wore on, and services continued, people began to whisper that it was strange she had not moved. One woman noticed that a glass bead from Teresa’s rosary had shattered on the floor. Another wondered if she might be dead.

By the afternoon, an elderly lady remarked that she had never seen such piety; another observed that the prostrate woman must have many sins to forgive. At last someone suggested that they should go and tell her husband.

The priest was summoned, and he agreed to fetch Marco himself. It was a husband’s job to look after a lunatic wife, not a priest’s.

By the time he returned, a crowd of people had congregated under the mosaic of San Donato.

Teresa’s head rested in a circle of porphyry that made it look, to the disapproving, as if it had already spilled its blood. To the faithful it could have been a halo.

Then Marco arrived, pushing through the crowd.

He stopped, halfway up the nave.

‘Rise, woman.’

Teresa did not move.

‘I said, rise.’

Marco looked to the priest, who gestured that he move forward, encouraging him to join her on the floor. Marco was suspicious.

The priest gestured again.

Reluctantly Marco walked forward, stopped, and then crouched down beside his wife, his knees cracking in the echoing church.

Teresa shut her eyes more tightly.

Marco lay down beside her. The cool of the floor began to chill his bones.

‘The child is safe,’ he said at last.

Still Teresa said nothing.

‘Safe,’ Marco repeated.

What was he supposed to do?

‘He is with the friars, on the Island of the Two Vines. They will look after him.’

Teresa sensed the people were there, watching, but she knew that she had to stay here, completely prostrate, until her husband consented to her every demand. If she capitulated now she would never see Paolo again.

‘Only I can look after him …’

Marco lay on the floor without knowing what he should do. He listened to his wife breathing as he did when he could not sleep; and, in the cold drama of that moment, he realised that perhaps he had never loved Teresa so much as he did now. She was prepared to humiliate herself or even die to fight for that child. He started to sit up and tried to take her hand, but it lay outstretched, palm down against the marble. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Give me my son.’

Marco tried to pull Teresa up from the floor, but still she would not move. About to let go, convinced that his wife would do nothing until he brought the child into the church and placed him back in her arms, he replied with two words: ‘Our son.’

Teresa’s grip tightened. Her left arm bent at the elbow, as if she was beginning to raise her body. She moved slowly, testing her ability to do so, checking that this was no dream. She rose from the ground and put her arms around her husband.

‘Let me go there. Let me bring Paolo home.’

‘Forgive me,’ cried Marco.

Teresa held him to her. ‘I will never ask anything of you again.’

The people under the mosaic began to move away. Marco and Teresa were embracing, clothing each other against all the doubts and fears of their future.

The next day Teresa rowed across the lagoon to collect her son. She could see the Island of the Two Vines from Murano, the bell tower jutting out amidst the cypress trees, and kept it in her sights throughout the journey, fearing it might disappear if ever she looked away.

She tied up the boat and walked across the marshes. Gradually the ground became firmer. A group of finches started up from the grass as she walked, and the air was loud with the sound of swifts, swallows, and cicadas. Ahead lay a grove of olives.

Teresa stopped.

Underneath the trees lay six open coffins, each one containing a friar.

Perhaps the island was diseased, and the midges and flies of the wasteland had carried an infection in the air. Had Marco lied and sent her here to die? Was the island deserted? And where was Paolo?

Suddenly, one of the dead friars sat up in his coffin and sang.

‘Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.’

Teresa screamed.

A second dead monk sat up.

‘Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and clouds, calms and all weather by which thou upholdest life in all creatures.’

Teresa found herself in the middle of a mighty Resurrection, as if Judgment Day had arrived without warning. Each of the monks sat up in turn, arms outstretched, gazing high into the heavens.

‘Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble, and precious, and clean.’

‘Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and strong.’

‘Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth divers fruits and flowers of many colours, and grass.’

‘Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks unto him, and serve him with great humility.’

The first monk stepped out of his tomb and walked towards her, looking down at the ground as he did so.

‘Pax et bonum, peace and all good things, sister …’

‘My child …’ Teresa stuttered.

‘Our daily orisons …’ the nearest monk explained, also abandoning his tomb.

‘I am Brother Matteo and that is Brother Filippo.’ He gestured to the first monk.

The remainder now rose from their coffins but none would look her in the eye. Teresa thought they might be blind.

‘Also Brother Giuseppe, Brother Giovanni, Brother Jacopo, and Brother Gentile.’

‘I am Teresa, wife of Marco Fiolaro.’

‘Then you are blessed,’ said Matteo, looking at a patch of ground beneath her feet.

Further silence followed, and the monks stood smiling at the ground as if nothing else need happen.

At last Brother Matteo offered an explanation. ‘We rest to prepare ourselves for the eternal slumber, as our brother Francis did before us.’

‘My child – my husband brought the child …’ Teresa stammered.

‘He is yours?’

‘I know that he came yesterday and that he needs me. He needs me to feed him.’

‘We have provided for him. The milk from Sister Goat, the honey from Brother Bee.’

‘Where is he?’ Teresa asked, desperately trying to encourage them to move, but the monks stood smiling and waiting. Perhaps this was their attempt at eternal life, Teresa reflected. There was no hurry to do anything.

‘I think the child is in the library,’ Matteo affirmed, and the monks all began to speak at once, as if performing a distracted commentary.

‘With Brother Cristoforo.’

‘He is old.’

‘He has rested much in the afternoon.’

‘Time enough in the next world,’ added Giovanni.

‘And yet he is prepared for greater glory.’

‘Sister Death, the Gate of Life.’

Teresa wondered if they were all about to lie down again, as if this encounter had been enough for one day. Perhaps they were waiting for her to do something, or there was some rite of which she was unaware.

‘Would you like to see Brother Cristoforo?’ Matteo asked.

‘He has my son?’

‘We have entrusted him to Cristoforo.’

‘Can I see him? Can I take my baby home?’

‘Rest here a while. Stay with us and pray.’

Teresa’s determination gave her strength to resist. ‘I must see Paolo.’

‘Then follow me.’

They walked up through the olive grove and into the cloisters. Brother Matteo pointed to a step ahead as if warning Teresa not to trip.

‘Be mindful …’

Teresa looked down.

‘Brother Ant.’ A small colony was making its way across the step and the monks waited to let it pass.

At last they reached the door of the library. Matteo pushed it open, and Teresa could see an elderly monk reading, holding a piece of quartz shaped like the lesser segment of a sphere midway between his eyes and a manuscript. At his feet sat a small wooden makeshift cradle. The monk looked up.

‘My child …?’ she asked.

‘You are the mother,’ the monk asserted. There was no sense of a question; it was a matter of fact.

‘I am, Father.’

‘Brother,’ the monk corrected her.

He knelt down and picked up the baby. ‘So short a stay, so happy a child.’

He handed Paolo to Teresa. ‘God grant that you take care, sister.’

Teresa held him, and the surge of love returned. ‘Paolo,’ she said quietly.

Teresa looked up to see all the fellow monks standing in the doorway, their eyes averted. She turned back to Brother Cristoforo.

‘Are they blind?’ she asked.

The old monk laughed. ‘No, not blind. They see very well. But their eyes are fixed on the earth and on the heavens.’

‘Why won’t they look at me?’

‘Our brother Francis scarce knew the features of any woman. He was fearful of his body, Brother Ass. I am too old for temptation, but my brothers’ – he smiled – ‘do not want to rekindle the spark of vanquished flesh.’

‘They are afraid of me …’

‘Not of you, but of temptation.’

‘I am just a mother.’ Teresa almost laughed. ‘I am too old for that. I am nearly thirty.’

‘We have learned to be careful,’ said the monk severely. ‘A man never knows when the lure of flesh might prove unconquerable.’

‘I do not think I pose such a danger.’

The monk waved her away. ‘Lady, do not test us. Let us serve the Lord and save our souls.’

‘I can go?’

‘Take your child, and give thanks.’ Then he made the sign of peace and gave her the blessing of St Francis. ‘Let him walk in the way of the Lord.’

MURANO

It was a childhood of swamp and fire.

Almost as soon as he could walk, Paolo was apprenticed to the family glassworks, gathering seaweed and samphire on the shores of the island. He collected pebbles for silica in the marshes as his mother cut branches of elm, alder, and willow for fuel.

The furnace burned night and day from November to July. Marco worked bare-chested, blowing and twisting the glass from his bench. Paolo marvelled at the way in which the thick vitreous paste could purify in the flames to become lucid and brilliant. He let his fingers run through the infinitely varied sharpness of the sand, testing its coarseness and consistency. He examined each constituent part, amazed by the softness of the soda, the alchemical quality of red lead, the threat of arsenic. He loved the way in which the glass mixture, the frit, melted and cracked in the heat, becoming as glutinous and foaming as the waters of the lagoon, surging towards him in the furnace, the hottest sea he had ever seen.

As he grew older Paolo would arrange glass by colour, and visit the mosaicists at work in the churches on the island. He helped them break down stone into tesserae, white from Istria, red from Verona, and watched as they laid the pieces as closely together as possible, pushing them into the wet mortar, brushing off the excess, cleaning the colours with the white of an egg. He took orders to his father as the men asked for a pound of deep red, a bag of emerald, a box of purple. He knew the names by heart: dark blues and deep blacks, purples and violets; the greens of olive, emerald, and oglino; yellow, amber, and his favourite orange vermilion, becco di merlo, as bright as the beak of a blackbird. He learned to distinguish between tones, laying out different varieties of colour, assessing the difference between those which complement and those which contrast. He put disparate shapes and tones together, seeing how close blue was to black, or how yellow and blue could not only combine to make green but also intensify into red. He placed sections on top of each other, and watched the mosaic makers lay thin strips of colour over glass to create the brilliance of enamel. One day his mother gave him a small blue crystal and he carried it everywhere, holding it up to the light, watching the way in which different angles of view created different streaks of colour. He closed his eyes and tried to remember each hue and tone.

In the foundry by the fondamenta, Marco provided tesserae in every colour: azzurro, beretino, lactesino, rosso and turchese, so that there were blue days and green days, white days and black days. He would experiment with imitation jewellery, vases, bottles, and even beads. He took long tubes of glass and ran a fine wire through their centre, working them over the fire, before cutting them into tiny sections so that they emerged as rounded as pearls. When they had cooled he gave them to his wife and son to thread, and together the family created rosaries, bracelets, and necklaces in imitation quartz and pearl.

Paolo would play with Teresa’s ring, a sapphire, placing it on each finger, or rolling it along the ground before holding it up against the light. It was the most precious object she owned, given by her mother just before her death, and she watched Paolo as he played. Perhaps, one day, his wife would wear it.

When Paolo was nine years old, Marco let him blow his first piece of glass. The rod felt heavy in his hand and his father was forced to steady him, but Paolo blew so hard that the glass fell straight off the end, glooping down in a bulbous mass onto the floor.

He then learned how to hold the shaping tongs. He was shocked by the delicacy required; how the incandescent mixture at the end of the pipe could change with the slightest of touches. It was important to be patient, to shape, and reshape, add colour, blow, re-melt, and take time. He was amazed when the glass ballooned out like a foreign object, each globule different in colour, form, and texture, and how quickly he had to work if he wanted to control the molten substance before him.

At times, in the heat and haze of the foundry, Paolo found it hard to concentrate on the end of the blowpipe, or even see it clearly. It was too difficult, and his eyes began to smart.

Marco laughed, placing the rod back in the furnace each time Paolo made a mistake, re-melting again and again until his son learned each skill required.

‘Anyone would think you were blind,’ he teased.

Paolo apologised, embarrassed by his inability to learn quickly. His father always made it look so effortless.

But Teresa had noticed that her son was almost afraid of the glass. Perhaps it was the heat of the flames, the heaviness of the blowpipe, or the fear of disappointing his father. She tried to ask why he was so hesitant in front of the furnace, glass, and rod.

‘I am not fast,’ Paolo would reply, and Teresa would comfort him, telling him that he was young, that he would learn, and that he need not be afraid of his father.

She took him to church each morning and prayed for his soul every evening, convinced of the daily need to prepare for the Last Judgment. She taught Paolo that everything that took place on earth was part of God’s plan. He must understand the pattern that lay behind his life, and learn of the divine purpose that would lead to salvation from death.

At Mass each day, she looked up in terror as the priest explained the torments of hell in comparison to the bliss of everlasting life; the great chasm of despair that lay between those who would be tortured for evermore and those blessed with eternal felicity. The cleric compared the stench of hell with the sweet perfume of paradise, the screech of the damned with the songs of the saved, and warned of the infernal peril awaiting the unrepentant and the doomed.

Teresa was rapt in religious fervour, holding Paolo tightly against her, while Marco sighed each time the priest made a comparison between the furnaces on the island and the eternal fires of hell, as if no one had thought to make such a connection before. If he could withstand the daily heat of his furnace then the fiery pit of his future held little terror.

Marco had never quite shared the faith of his wife. He was prepared to sit quietly by her side and admit that he was not perfect. He was even willing to make his confession in return for the promise of paradise. But he could not believe the miraculous ‘proofs’ of faith that the priests had told Teresa. He had never been able to accept that St Olga had lived to the age of nine hundred and sixty-nine; that St Hilarion had survived on fifteen figs a day; or that St Andrew Anagni had once resurrected all the roast birds he had been given for dinner.

Yet when Teresa looked at the church in which she worshipped, built to provide a glimpse of heaven on earth, every story and detail had meaning. She would tell Paolo to compare each stone in a mosaic to a human life and to concentrate upon it. He should know that although a fragment might mean nothing when looked at on its own, it was an essential part of the complete picture, the sum of human life, and only made sense when seen with all the others. Such is the way, she believed, that God looks down upon his creation.

Paolo looked at the mosaic and wondered which his stone might be: whether it lay high or low, in shadow or in darkness. At times, in the early morning, when the sun shone through the windows and caught the gold in its glare, he found that he was forced to squint away from the light, so brightly did it shine. And then, in the darkness of the evening, when they went to pray once more, he would have difficulty making out the shape of the stones in the distance, or discerning the pattern they made.

He would rub his eyes in order to see better, and Teresa would ask him what was wrong. Paolo told her it was nothing. He did not want to alarm his mother or anger his father, and so he would return to the church of San Donato on his own and look at each mosaic closely. When Teresa asked him again what he saw he would no longer guess but remember.

Over the next three years his sight continued to decline.

One evening he was returning from collecting alder wood out near the marshes with his mother. Teresa had lost all sense of time and found it strange that the clock on the campanile stated that it was only five in the afternoon. She wondered aloud if it was accurate.

Paolo asked what she meant.

‘Look at the clock.’

‘Where?’

‘On the campanile.’

‘I can see the campanile, but I cannot see the clock.’

Teresa stopped.

‘What do you mean? You must be able to see it.’

‘I cannot.’

‘Then what can you see?’

‘I don’t know. I can see you. The canal. The houses.’

‘Can you see the people in the boat? The women washing?’

‘Not clearly,’ Paolo replied.

‘Did you notice that swift swoop away from you?’

‘I heard it. I know its call, but in the skies all the birds are as one.’

‘You cannot tell a swallow from a hawk?’

‘I do not know.’

‘How long have your eyes been like this?’

Teresa was suddenly afraid. She knew that Marco would not tolerate a son who could not see as clearly as he did. At the first sign of any weakness he would cast him out to fend for himself, forever dependent on alms, gifts, and the kindness of strangers.

‘Can you describe the end of the fondamenta – the man outside our foundry?’ she asked, beginning to panic.

‘I can, but it is hard. Is that a man or a woman?’

‘You cannot tell? The man has a beard.’

‘I cannot see it.’

‘Then what can you see?’

‘Nearby?’

‘No, far off.’

‘There is a wall, a shrine, and a cross.’

‘Can you see the flowers?’

Paolo paused. Were they roses, or lilies?

‘Can you?’ his mother insisted.

‘No.’

‘You cannot tell?’

Paolo could not. But he could see that Teresa was afraid. He knew that her eyes had narrowed and that she was angry: and he recognised that, from now on, he would have to be careful of his replies.

‘How can we live if you cannot work the glass?’ Teresa asked.

‘I do not know,’ Paolo replied. For the first time he was scared of his own mother.

‘We must find eye crystal to make you see,’ Teresa announced. ‘Come now. Let’s go. In the boat.’

‘Now? Without father?’

‘He must not know. I will get a man to take us over the water to the merceria. There are men there who sell lenses that will help you. I only hope we have the money.’

She pulled at his arm and they made their way to the harbour. There they were rowed over to the mainland. Disembarking on the fondamenta, they walked through the narrow lanes of the Castello, where an elderly hunched man was selling glasses from a tray laid out in the corner of a haberdasher’s shop.

Teresa picked at the spectacles so frantically that Paolo thought that she would break them.

‘Here, try these.’ She handed him a pair of twin lenses, joined at the bridge, but without arms.

‘Why are you here?’ said the pedlar.

‘You do not want us to buy your wares?’ Teresa replied abruptly.

‘Yes. But the boy is too young for such things …’

‘He cannot see.’

‘But these are for old men, scholars, those who read …’

Teresa handed Paolo a magnifying glass.

‘Is this better?’

‘No, it makes things more blurred in the distance.’

Paolo tried lens after lens, spectacle after spectacle, holding them up by the arms, amazed by the way in which vision in the right eye and then the left swam before him. The goods in the shop became strangely enlarged, almost threatening. Strips of metal, ribbons, bows, buckles, lengths of hemp and twine, mirrors and their reflections, all combined, glass on glass, reflected and refracted, lurching up to meet him.

Paolo’s head hurt with the confusion. The lenses fought against each other, and he struggled to find focus.

He felt as if he lived inside a cloud.

Each time he picked up a new lens he could sense his mother’s desperate expectation.

‘Hold it at a distance,’ Teresa ordered.

Paolo stretched out his arm and the building across the street suddenly appeared sharp and clear, the windows glinting in the light against pale-pink stone.

‘Now it makes things upside-down,’ said Paolo. ‘I can see clearly but I would need to hold the lens at arm’s length and walk on my hands.’

‘It is meant for close work only,’ said the pedlar.

‘Can you not make such a lens against my eyes, without the world turned round?’

‘What is it that you cannot see?’

‘The distance.’

‘But you can see close?’

‘Clearly. If I look at my finger, I can see the whorls of my skin more distinctly than I can through any glass. Yet nothing else is as true. Everything fades.’

‘Alas,’ said the pedlar. ‘These spectacles are for old men, for scholars, to aid in reading. I have nothing for sight such as yours. The glass cannot be made for such a purpose.’

‘Then what can we do?’ Teresa asked.

‘You could visit Luciano the apothecary. He may have a remedy; but he is not always reliable …’

‘We must go to him now,’ said Teresa, pulling Paolo away, ‘before your father realises, before anyone knows that you cannot see …’

‘I can see.’

‘Not well enough. Marco will be able to tell. We must prevent him knowing of this.’ She called to the pedlar. ‘Goodbye.’

They crossed three streets and made their way to the jewellers’ quarter. Paolo found the busy alleys more frightening than the objects in the shop. He seemed to be permanently in the way of another person, someone with more pressing business. Crowds pushed past. Horses reared up in front of him. The streets stank of excrement. He longed to be home.

Luciano the apothecary worked in a shop crammed with hanging herbs, pottery jars of powders, liquids, and unguents. He sat behind a curtain of bright flame and bubbling amber liquid. A great mortar with a heavy pestle hung from the ceiling, and majolica jars lined the room, holding saffron, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, cassia, and galinga. Every object in the shop appeared to be black, silver, white, or gold; as if this spectrum of colour held a symbolic secret that only the apothecary could fathom. As soon as they entered his laboratory Luciano began to talk of a new alchemical invention which was nothing less than a recipe for everlasting life. It involved mixing the scales of a fish with powdered gold and the eyelid of a snake, and he was convinced of its efficacy.

Teresa interrupted. ‘My son cannot see.’

The apothecary put down his tools. ‘He is blind?’

‘No, but he cannot tell distance.’

‘That is common enough.’

‘It may be so, but then he cannot work at my husband’s craft.’

Luciano turned to the child. His eyes were sunk deep in his head, as if he himself had trouble with sight. Now he came close, looking hard at Paolo.

‘How old are you?’

‘I am twelve.’

‘Is the light too bright for you?’

‘Not here, no.’

‘Where? When?’

‘In the heat of the day. The brightness …’

‘Is it too strong?’

‘Sometimes it hurts my eyes.’

‘I understand. Come. Stand in the doorway.’ The apothecary put his arm around Paolo’s shoulder.

‘Look out into the street now. What do you see?’

‘I see shape, not detail. Colour, not form.’

‘You live, perhaps, in a clouded world?’

‘Sometimes I cannot see the clouds. People tell me they are there, or that a storm is coming, but I am unable to perceive such things. Such forms are like sheets of white across the sky, darkening slowly and then becoming black. I see them move but they are as mists.’

The apothecary told Paolo that sight was a dance of two rays, perpetually changing, between perception and object. The eye was filled with seeing and the object was luminous with colour. Paolo’s problem was that his eyes lacked sufficient power.

‘Do you eat many onions?’ Luciano asked suddenly.

‘No,’ replied Paolo.

‘Of course you eat onions,’ said Teresa.

‘Yes, but I don’t like them.’

‘Falconers find their sight improves if they forgo onions. Have you tried balms and ointments?’

Paolo knew nothing of such things. He was silent. Teresa attempted to explain.

‘He has sought no cure. The lack of sight is new to him.’

The apothecary sighed, leaned forward, and held up a candle.

‘Come here, my child. Look into this light.’

It was held so close and became so bright that Paolo flinched. Luciano came as near as possible, and looked hard into each eye. His breath smelled of tomatoes.

‘Let me think,’ he said.

‘Surely we need a balm,’ said Teresa, ‘a potion, a tincture, or an ointment? Something we can put on his eyes to make them well.’

Luciano confessed that there were such treatments but he had still to be convinced of their efficacy. He had heard how celandine, fennel, endive, betany, and rue could all help restore eyesight; as well as pimpernel, ewe’s milk, red snails, hog’s grease, and the powdered head of a bat. Some recommended the application of leeches to the eyelids, and he had learned that a doctor in Padua had recently suggested that those with weaknesses of the optic spirit might gain comfort from hanging the eyes of a cow round their neck. He had studied recipes that involved the venom of toads, the slaver of a mad dog, wolfsbane, aconite tubers, and the burned skin of a tarantula.

After some thought he suggested that he try a balm he had made from mixing eyebright with white wine, distilled until it was ready to drink. Two handfuls of herbs were mixed with hog’s grease and beaten with a pestle and mortar. This thick ointment had been left in the sun for three days, boiled, strained, and pressed three times before it was ready to coat the eyes.

Teresa smeared the balm gently over Paolo’s eyelids, but it only closed his world still further.

‘You must apply it thickly,’ advised the apothecary.

Paolo reached out and took a scoop of the lard-like salve. It was dense and greasy, and it made his eyes feel heavy with sleep.

‘Now rest,’ he heard the man say. ‘Rest for two hours.’

Paolo lay down in the darkness. Was this what it might be like to be blind? What would it mean to live in such blackness for ever, never seeing his mother again, reliant on memory alone? He wanted to reach out, cling to her, and then let her wash the darkness away.

‘Keep still,’ Luciano commanded.

Teresa had begun to pray.

When the time had passed, the apothecary wiped off the paste and asked Paolo what he saw.

‘Strange shapes, which I cannot trust. Not lines; only close objects have an outline. Everything else is blurred.’

‘Has your sight improved?’ Teresa asked.

Paolo desperately wanted to please his mother but found that he could not. He shook his head.

‘But what of colour? You see colour clearly?’ Luciano asked.

‘Close, yes. I know colour.’

‘You find it restful?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘And you know what it can do?’

‘What do you mean?’

The apothecary spoke as if he was conveying the secret of life itself. ‘Sometimes, when colour appears on the body, it must be met with colour; we must concentrate upon it, wear it, dream it, look at it, and eat it.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Teresa.

The apothecary sighed. ‘Trouble from the colour red, for example, must be met with red. We must think red thoughts, wear red clothes, and eat red food. It can help to heal burns and blood vessel diseases, bleeding gums and irregular menstruation: all things red. The colour brown is good for hoarseness, deafness, epilepsy, and anal itching; whereas the colour white can aid men with hiccups, belching, and impotence. Think on these things. Fight colour with colour.’

‘And does every colour have a purpose?’

‘Of course. Purple is good for stuttering, muscle degeneration, and the loss of balance. Yellow can help with nausea, obesity, and gas in the stomach …’

‘But what do you recommend for my son?’

‘I suggest the calming properties of the colour blue.’

‘What kind of blue?’ asked Paolo.

‘All kinds. Azure, hyacinth, peacock, and cornflower. Begin with the water outside, the canals – look into them for four hours each day and your eyes will be rested.’ He turned to Teresa. ‘Show him a sapphire. Perhaps two. Use your husband’s blue glass.’

‘And this will cure his sight?’ she asked.

‘It will help him. But if, for some unlikely reason, this does not work then we will try the colour yellow’ – the apothecary paused – ‘although you may not find that so agreeable.’

‘Why?’ asked Teresa.

‘The treatment consists of warmed urine, fresh butter, and capon fat. But perhaps that is better than the bile used by Tobias, or the disembowelled frogs so favoured by the Assyrians.’

His mother looked worried. ‘You think that you can do this, Paolo?’

‘I can try.’

She paid eleven soldi for the advice and took Paolo home as the dusk fell.

The next day Teresa asked her son to concentrate on the canal outside the foundry. ‘Start here and I will try to find some blue glass.’

She kissed him briefly on the forehead and turned away down the street.

Paolo stared into the water. It was dark and cerulescent, flecked by bright white when the light hit it, flashing brilliantly, too intensely for Paolo’s eyes in the middle of the day. He sought out sunless areas, under the bridges where the shadow would darken into blue-black. He tried to follow the path of the tide, changing the angles at which he looked, seeking the calmest areas of blue, and the softest light on his eyes.

He wondered at colour: how each one seemed to bleed into another, to combine and then to repel in the changing light, so that after a few days of looking at the water he could no longer describe the way in which it shaded off into aquamarine the further he gazed out to sea.

Then he looked at the seaweed clinging to the stakes and piles, at the vegetation already growing on the marble steps, the weeds springing up on the bridge by the church, and the new green shutters on the houses. He looked up through pine trees towards the sky, but the light was too bright and hurt his eyes, the pine cones appearing like black spots on the surface of his cornea, floating across his vision.

Teresa gave him two pieces of deep-blue glass cut into squares, like large tesserae. He felt the sharpness of their edges, rough in his hand.

‘I found them in the workshop. Your father thought I was mad.’

Paolo kept his left eye closed and raised one of the squares to his right eye, so that the bright water softened under the deep-blue glass. Soon he felt strangely calm, stilled by the sights he saw. He looked from sunlight to shade, endlessly intrigued by the way in which the intensity of the light affected the colour of the object he studied.

He began to walk around the island with blue glass held up against his eye. Most of the time this gave him comfort, but when he looked at bright light reflecting off the lagoon, it was as if the glass in front of his eye had shattered. He marvelled at the endless refraction. At times there was such a serene wash of light that there appeared to be no colour at all. At other moments, with the light behind him, or in the shadows of buildings, he could see his own face clearly reflected in the blue glass, though distorted into a strange oval. Paolo began to dream in blue, imagining he lived in an underwater world where he could discern even less than he could on land.

Yet although he could admit to his mother that the world had become calmer, there was no greater clarity, and his distant vision had become worse.

Teresa sat with him by the side of the canal. ‘Come. Kneel down.’ She scooped water in her hands and began to wash his eyes. Then she dried them with her dress. ‘What am I to do with you?’ she asked.

Paolo opened his eyes and felt the world swim around him.

‘I can see well enough,’ he said quietly. ‘I can learn to guess.’

‘You cannot survive by guessing,’ Teresa replied.

She could cover her son’s faults in the home, but not by the furnace.

The accident made everything clear.

It was late afternoon and the room was filled with smoke, haze, and heat. The blowpipes were re-heating in the furnace in preparation for drawing glass. Paolo was checking that the ends were red-hot.

‘Bring one over,’ his father had called.

For a moment Paolo was unsure. He knew the layout of the foundry. He had memorised the precise position of each tool and the daily habits of the people who worked there. But in the heat of this particular afternoon he was strangely lost.

‘Come on,’ Marco shouted.

Paolo turned, blowpipe in hand, and the heated end swung into Marco’s bare arm, burning into the flesh. For an instant there was silence, horror: then his father screamed in pain.

‘What have you done? Did you not see my arm was there?’

The stizzador rushed to fetch water. Paolo dropped the rod and rushed out into the street. His mother, drawn by the cries, ran down from above.

‘My God.’

Paolo stayed away for three hours, while his mother bandaged the wound and Marco raged. ‘That boy will never be any good. He’s slow, he dreams. He couldn’t even see where I was.’

‘Rest,’ said Teresa. ‘Don’t think about that now.’

‘He cannot see. That is the truth. You have been protecting him. You thought I hadn’t noticed.’

‘I prayed you would not.’

Teresa soaked a fresh piece of cloth in water and applied it to his arm. ‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing, of course. No one else will take him.’

‘He is young,’ she said. ‘He tries hard. And he is frightened of you.’

‘That makes no difference to his affliction. Fear does not make men blind.’

Teresa knew that this was not the time to argue. ‘Let him do what he is good at. There are things he can do.’

‘What?’

‘He loves colour. He concentrates on it. He understands it. Let him prepare and sort the glass. I will help him.’

‘You work hard enough for him as it is. How can you do more?’

‘Don’t be angry with him.’

‘We can’t have accidents by the furnace. You know that.’

Teresa eased the bandage on his arm, and stroked Marco’s hair. ‘You have been brave.’ She smiled.

‘The wound will heal, won’t it?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘It will. Let me bring you some wine.’

Work ceased for the day, and they sat together outside the foundry in the evening light. Teresa never understood how Marco’s temper could rise and fall so quickly. ‘Can we not love Paolo for what he is?’ she asked.

‘I try, but I can never forget the boy is not my son. You can love him but I do not know how. He’s quiet. He hardly speaks. He doesn’t even look like me. He’s so hard to love.’

‘Then love him for me, for my sake.’

‘I do. That is what I do. Can you not see that this is what I am doing? This is how I live. Only for you. The boy is …’

Then Marco stopped. Teresa turned round.

Paolo had returned and was listening.

‘How long have you been there?’ Marco asked.

Paolo looked at his mother. ‘What did he mean – “I can never forget the boy is not my son”?’

Teresa remembered the first word Paolo had ever spoken. Gone. Even then she thought that he had been speaking of his natural mother; her absence. He had sensed her fears. And she had vowed then that she would never tell him. Why should he ever know?

‘It does not mean I do not love you,’ she said simply.

‘Teresa …’ said Marco.

She walked over and tried to comfort Paolo. ‘You have been as a son.’

‘But you did not give me life. I have another mother.’

His eyes had become accusatory.

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Lost. Unknown.’

‘How can this be?’

Marco stood up. ‘Teresa rescued you.’

Paolo ignored him, concentrating all his attention on his mother. ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

Teresa looked at him. ‘I was frightened.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of this.’

Paolo didn’t know whether to feel fury, betrayal, loss, or sympathy for Teresa’s fear. He no longer understood who he was, or his place in the world. What was he, if not their son?

At last Marco spoke.

‘No one could love you as your mother has loved you.’

‘She is not my mother.’

‘She has been as a mother. And you have lived because of her.’

‘Perhaps I should have died.’

‘No,’ said Marco fiercely. ‘Don’t speak like that. You should learn from her.’

‘Learn what?’

‘Gratitude.’

‘Don’t argue,’ said Teresa. ‘Please. I have done all that I can. I have not lived for myself, but only through you. I wanted to do this. I wanted to love.’

‘And I will never know my true mother?’

‘No.’

‘Did she die in childbirth?’

‘We do not know.’

Marco took Paulo to look into the heat of the furnace. ‘Teresa has been the truest mother you could ever have wanted. Her love is fierce, as strong as this flame. Do not ever doubt her.’

Paolo tried to think who his real mother might have been, and what he had inherited from her: perhaps the weakness in the eyes, the way he walked, or the manner in which he held his head when he listened.

What must she have been like? Was she ill or poor? Was he conceived out of love or out of desperation, lust, or violence? How was he born? And who was his father?

Why could he never know?

And how could they have carried such a secret for so long?

As their work continued in the foundry Marco tried hard to tolerate Paolo’s mistakes as if he were one of the slower apprentices. He made allowances for his poor sight, letting him work closely with the glass, keeping him clear of the blowpipes and the flames. Paolo mixed vegetable soda ash, silica sand, and ground quartz pebbles; he prepared glass pastes and gold-leaf tesserae; he added colour by stirring up solutions of manganese, iron, and copper filings to produce deep violets, pale yellow, rich green, and dark amber; and he checked the opacity and the lustre of each piece they produced.

He raised the samples close against his eyes, and then held them at varying distances, watching the way in which they changed in the light, surprised by translucence, amazed by clarity. He passed into a reverie of fascination whatever he held, whether it was a piece of glass, a tessera, a goblet, or a bowl. Each object only had meaning for him when it was closely observed.

On the feast of the Assumption, in the year thirteen hundred and eleven, Paolo was asked to show Simone, a painter from Siena, all the glass and tesserae they possessed, for he wanted to use them as imitation jewels, studding the golden haloes of the saints, in his next altarpiece.

Although the painter was only twenty-six years old it was clear that he was already a successful man. He seemed almost careless of life and possessed all the confidence gained by a good apprenticeship, inherited wealth, and appreciated talent. His expensive clothes were worn nonchalantly, as if he was unaware of their worth, and the blue-and-white cap on his head looked like a half-unravelled turban which could fall off at any moment.

Paolo carried the glass outside, bringing blue sapphires, gold-red rubies, green emeralds into the bright daylight.

‘These are good,’ said Simone. He examined each piece carefully but then appeared distracted, as if Paolo was standing too close to him, blocking his light. ‘You look very pale,’ he observed. ‘Do your parents never let you outside?’

‘In the summer the sun is so bright that it hurts my eyes,’ said Paolo, ‘and so I try to find shadow. I have always been fair.’

‘Extraordinary. You are as pale as a town egg. Perhaps I should paint you. I am always using the people I meet in my work. You cannot imagine how many Venetian merchants I’ve expelled from the Temple.’

Paolo was curious and suddenly amused. ‘Who would I be?’

The painter examined him once more, looking at the way the light fell on his face. ‘You are rather beautiful. Such strange blue eyes. You could be an angel. Or the magician Elymas struck blind by Paul. If you grew your hair, you could even be a girl. St Lucy, perhaps, the saint who plucked out her eyes because her lover would not cease from praising her beauty.’ He picked out a yellow stone. ‘Do you know that she was drowned in a vat of boiling urine? Not very pleasant.’

They walked back into the foundry and Paolo took Simone to the storeroom. Here he displayed each piece of glass in different lights, showing the painter how it changed from sunlight to shadow. Then he asked on which wall the painting would be situated: whether north or south, east or west, and if there would be windows close by.

He held glass up against the window and in the doorway, asking Simone at which time of day the light would fall on his painting and for how long? Did it move from right to left or from left to right? Had he seen the mosaics in the church of San Donato?

Paolo was so serious in his questioning that for the first time that afternoon Simone was silenced and thoughtful.

‘I always follow the dominant light,’ he replied at last.

Paolo asked what colours the painter would be using, and how much gold leaf he could extract from a florin. If the Virgin’s cloak was to be blue then which particular blue might it be: cobalt, azurite, or indigo? Perhaps a glass amethyst might work as a clasp, but would he like it to be cut in any special way, faceted or made round?

The painter smiled. ‘How do you know such things?’ he asked.

Marco had entered the storeroom and was listening. ‘His eyes are not as others’.’

Simone turned to Marco. ‘He has extraordinary ability. He speaks of light and colour as if they were his greatest friends.’

‘They are all he knows.’

‘Are you happy here?’ The painter turned to Paolo.

‘Of course he is happy,’ Marco interrupted. ‘Why might he not be?’

‘I was only thinking.’

‘What?’ asked Paolo.

‘If you would like to come and work for me.’

‘Where?’

‘In Siena, of course.’ Simone turned to Marco. ‘Let me take him for a year. I will train him. He can cut and set the glass in my work.’

‘And you would pay him?’

‘Enough to live, of course,’ said Simone. ‘I am not a tyrant. I have work both in my own town and in Assisi. The life of St Martin. Windows and walls. It will be an adventure.’

Paolo could not quite believe what Simone had said.

‘Well?’ asked the painter. ‘You know stone and you know glass. If you really want to understand colour then you must also make paint. Grind it from the stone, gather it from the earth; coax it, blend it, mix it. The darkest indigo. The deepest alizarin. Infinite blue. There is nothing more exciting than letting colour reveal itself.’

It was the first time Paolo had been offered control of his destiny. ‘Can I choose?’ he asked Marco.

His father nodded.

‘Decide,’ the painter continued. ‘I will teach you. Together we will create a new earth and a new heaven.’

It would mean leaving all that he had known: the end of childhood.

‘I will come,’ said Paolo.

‘What will your mother say?’ asked Simone.

‘I think we should keep it from her,’ Marco answered. ‘She will not agree.’

Paolo tried to imagine the farewell. ‘If I have to say goodbye to her then I will never leave.’

‘So it is agreed. Not a word to your mother. Let us set out tomorrow,’ announced Simone. ‘Your life as an apprentice begins.’

As Marco had predicted, Teresa was furious. ‘What have you done, agreeing to such a thing?’ she railed.

‘It is the boy’s choice, not mine. I did not even suggest it.’

‘I don’t believe you. Paolo would not leave me in such a way.’

‘He has found employment, adventure. He may make us rich yet.’

‘If we live to see the day.’

‘It is only a year.’

‘Every day will seem a year. I will not know where he is or what he is doing, if he is happy or sad, hungry or thirsty, healthy or well. I will not know if he sleeps or no; nor will I be able to comfort him when he is anxious. You have to be a mother to know what it is when a son leaves.’

‘And you have to be a father to know when a boy is no longer a child. He is sixteen years old. He should be employed, married, away from us both.’

‘He is employed.’

‘Only because you do half his work.’

‘That is not true.’

‘You know that it is.’

Teresa left the house and walked along the fondamenta, past the church of Santo Stefano, and over the bridge towards the church of San Donato. She only stopped when she came to the edge of the island and looked out to sea, towards the Island of the Two Vines. There was a haze over the water. Everything seemed distant, blurred. This must be what it has always been like for Paolo, she thought.

She remembered finding him in the little rio on Ascension Day, the rescue from the monks and his work in the foundry; his strange blue eyes, and the way he looked at her as if he could never quite believe what he was seeing. It was a look of both trust and bewilderment. Only she knew it, as if such a look was meant only for her.

Who would look after him now?

As she walked by the shoreline and thought of her son, Teresa became convinced that her passionate concern was Paolo’s only protection.

She began to imagine every possible illness or accident that might befall him, because if she did so then perhaps such disasters might never happen.

Her head filled with all the ways in which her son might die.

SIENA

It was August. Simone planned to journey south through Padua, Ferrara, and Bologna, over the foothills of the Apennines and then cross the River Arno to the east of Florence. They rode in the back of a cart through winding paths amidst sloping vineyards, collecting water from the wells of the small hill towns which studded their route. After eight days Paolo could just make out the silhouette of the city of Siena high in the distance, a huddle of ochre and deep brown, its buildings folding into each other, framed by crenellations of cypress and pine.

Simone’s workshop lay in the Contrada Aquila. It was situated in a spacious courtyard that opened beside a crowded narrow street. Here the apprentices were trained how to prepare the wood for devotional panels and altarpieces: washing, smoothing, and rubbing down each piece of poplar before applying the foundation of gesso. The more experienced amongst them worked on ornamentation: pressing tin and gold leaf, beginning to gild, burnish, pounce, punch, and stamp. Others employed on frescoes outside the workshop had already learned how to mark up a wall, to wet it down, plaster, true up, and smooth off.

Simone told Paolo that he must know every part of the process of painting: preparing charcoal for drawing, making brushes, paper, and pens, and collecting eggs with which to bind pigment and make the paint tempera mixture. He had to sift lime and sand, prepare plaster, smooth panels, and then, at last, when he fully understood the process, he would be allowed to work with colour.

‘What are you painting?’ asked Paolo.

‘Everything,’ replied Simone. ‘Alpha and Omega. The beginning and the end.’

‘You are painting heaven?’

‘And hell. Out of this humble earth. Can you believe it?’ The artist spoke like a showman addressing an audience. ‘I select each ingredient, like a wife at the market. I cook with paint.’ He crumbled a piece of ochre between his thumb and forefinger. ‘As a chef coaxes flavour so I encourage colour: with egg and tempera, red madder, and saffron. These are my ingredients and my spices.’ He flicked the paint away. ‘There is only one difference.’

‘And what is that?’

‘The meal I create is everlasting.’

Simone was happiest when he had an audience, and Paolo began to wonder if his apprentices were employed not only to undertake the menial tasks which their master had outgrown, but also to provide constant attention, ever ready to laugh at his wit. Keeping Simone amused was almost half of the work because he could be plunged into depression at any moment, such was the fragility of his confidence and, Paolo noticed, his fondness for wine. The man could move from exhilaration to despair in an instant, which made all those who worked for him both nervous and watchful.

At times Simone would throw down his brush, leaving the workshop to drink with his friends, returning too inebriated to continue. He would then compensate for such wildness by working without stopping for thirty-six hours. Talented, unpredictable, and easily distracted, he sometimes gave his pupils astonishing bursts of responsibility.

‘Lippo, do the hands – Mino, finish this halo – Ugolino, decorate the cloak of the Virgin.’

‘How?’

‘Make it up!’

Paolo began by preparing charcoal for drawing: taking strands of willow and cutting them into matchsticks, smoothing and sharpening them like spindles, tying them in bunches, and then placing them in an earthenware pot which he took each night to the baker’s, letting the strands roast until morning.

After four months he learned how to work with colour, grinding pigment from stone on slabs of porphyry or serpentine. In order to make azure, he would boil up hot alkaline mixtures of honey and lye in a series of bowls and then add the pigment, keeping a close eye as the colour gradually settled. Once he had drawn off the liquid, he would be left with paint ready to bind with egg yolk and apply to either panel or fresco.

Just as he had learned to define each shade of stone and glass, so Paolo now began to see how paint could lighten or darken, enrich, or become dull in a moment.

‘Our task is nothing less than to show the glory of God’s creation. Painting is an act of faith, Paolo. We tell stories, inspire devotion. This is the land of miracles’ – Simone smiled – ‘even if they sometimes become repetitive.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Saints can be tedious, do you not think? There are only so many ways in which a painter can depict devotion. Hell is so much more diverting.’ As they blended pigment with egg yolks, Simone began to tell Paolo of his ambition to paint a Last Judgment: the dead emerging from the cracks and fissures of the earth, skeletal, ghostly, waiting either to be clothed in flesh or tormented in hell, haunted by a pale blue light. As he warmed to his theme the story became filled with dreadful detail. There would be blazing rivers and bottomless pits of volcanic despair containing the stained souls of the damned, blackened by sin and lit with flames. Usurers would have to swallow hot coins, and sodomites would be skewered like pigs. Slanderers with their mouths stretched and cut open would be seen with their teeth ground to a pulp and then re-grown only to be pulverised once more. The painting should be a vision of eternal misery, and above it all would be Satan with three bastard heads, bat’s wings, and Judas hanging, half-eaten, from his mouth.

‘So you can see that painting heaven is somewhat dull after all that,’ Simone concluded. ‘We need drama, not everlasting felicity. But this, of course, is our challenge. To make paradise exciting. A place beyond belief.’

Although he was a craftsman by day Simone was something of a dandy by night, wearing a different tunic for each evening’s passeggiata, but cut in the same style, and always in velvet: maroon on a Monday, azure on a Tuesday, vermilion on a Wednesday, burnt gold on a Thursday, lamp black on a Friday, crimson on a Saturday, and white on a Sunday. He rubbed his gums with mint, shaved, washed, and then scented himself with rosewater. Before he left the workshop he checked his appearance in a silvered mirror, and adjusted his curling hair accordingly. Life was a performance and he was its leading actor, presenting and perfuming himself before the world.

The true test of his showmanship came when the Commune of the City announced a competition to paint a fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin, a Maestà, for the Palazzo Pubblico. All the painters of the city were invited to compete: Segna di Buonaventura, Memmo di Filippuccio, Dietisalvi, and Simone. This was the first great secular commission, and it would rival Duccio’s golden Maestà in the cathedral, filling the east wall of the town hall.

Simone was determined to win and set to work immediately, laying out sketches of saints and angels, martyrs, apostles, and church fathers. He began to experiment with azurite and malachite, and brought in great swathes of fabric on which he could base his design for the Virgin’s mantle. Two assistants were asked to find new ways of gilding metal, so that the haloes of the saints would glow under candlelight as evening fell.

‘This is not only painting,’ he cried; ‘we must be the envy of all other trades: the goldsmiths, the weavers, and the dressmakers. We must paint what cannot be achieved on earth. That is our secret. We will depict the impossible.’

Paolo was asked to make charcoal for the preparatory drawings – the Virgin as Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, holding the Christ child, with the four patron saints of the city kneeling below: Ansanus, Savinus, Crescentius, and Victor.

‘Hold still,’ cried Simone. ‘You make a perfect saint. Keep working.’

As Paolo bound each twig of willow, Simone began to draw him. The pale face and blond hair curling under the ears. The thin nose. Long fingers. And Paolo’s strangely quiet blue eyes, endlessly puzzled, curious, surprised.

‘Which saint am I?’

‘Ansanus, the young Roman nobleman who first baptised the Sienese. Try to look more spiritual.’

‘I don’t feel very spiritual.’

‘Then look serene.’

‘Can’t I just be myself?’

‘No, no, that is not the point at all. Have you not listened to anything I have said? We must turn men into angels and make the heavens sing. Colour and joy. We are painting infinity,’ Simone cried.

Over three hundred councillors assembled to discuss the commission. Each painter had been asked to present his ideas in the council chamber where the Signori of the Nine, and the Consiglio della Campana gathered around their drawings. One painter suggested a celebratory painting of the recent acquisition of Talamone and a glorious gallery of all lands recently conquered. Another put forward his plan for an enormous panel of the Battle of Montaperti and the conquest of Montalcino; while a third proposed a representation of the day Buonaguida Lucari had laid the keys of the city on the altar of the cathedral and donated all that they had to the mercy of the Virgin Mary, their protectress against the iniquitous and evil Florentines.

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