Free The Secret of the Glass by Donna Russo Morin Page A

loggias and arcades giving these Venetian palaces their particular distinction. The San Silvestro stood alongside the Captain General’s palace, their equal heights and long balconies creating an appearance of one long veneer. The merchant palazzi all bore different exteriors, though many possessed a large set of central windows flanked by twin towers, creating a stage to show the wares offered by the owner. The Palazzo Grimani rose up beside them, so large it dwarfed its neighbors, the most ostentatious dwelling on the canal bedecked with its High Renaissance, marble façade.
    This was the world waiting to gather Sophia into its clutching arms; a life of grandness and elegance, pretension and envy, an affected life that her family’s money would pay for.
    As their gondola entered the next deep bend in the Canalazzo, the driver pointed the ferro, the iron-beaked prow, toward the outside shoreline, toward a palazzo that dominated the curve in the canal. The Ca’ da Fuligna was four stories tall, each level gaining in opulence as it rose from the water toward the heavens. Simple Gothic arches festooned the canal level, while the four-leaf clovers and medallion-topped arches of the upper floor gave the building a slightly Moorish aspect. As in so many of the buildings in Venice, the pietra d’Istria —the waterproof, white stone—formed the foundation of the building. Upon its stalwart support sat the ochre bricks, high above the water’s erosive grasp.
    As the gondolier trussed the craft to one of the painted, private family stazi , her parents stood, heads tipping up to scrutinize the palace from bottom to top. Sophia remained in her seat, staring at the decaying stone of the first floor and the mold creeping up its crumbling side.
    “Sophia?”
    Her mother’s prodding broke her reverie. Sophia stood, smoothed her soft silk skirt with trembling hands, and followed her parents off the boat and onto the quayside.
    A blue-liveried servant bowed low as he opened the door, one pristine, glove-encased hand pointing toward the marble staircase opposite the arched wooden door.
    “This way, per favore .”
    He did not ask their names, as there was no need; their arrival had long been expected.
    At the top of the gently curving stairs, the attendant led them through the empty foyer of the piano nobile and into a room to the right of the cavernous hallway. At the threshold, he bowed once more.
    “Signore and signora Fiolario and their daughter, Sophia,” he announced.
    Viviana entered first, shoulders back, chin held high, grabbing her long flowing emerald green skirts to make a curtsy to the room’s inhabitants.
    “Signora and ser da Fuligna, what a pleasure to meet you at long last.”
    Sophia heard her mother’s voice, it sounded strong but trilled, sure but fast.
    “And you must be, ser Pasquale da Fuligna, sì?”
    Viviana addressed both father and son with their appropriate titles as they were both nobiluomini di Venezia, noblemen of Venice. Her mother paid her greetings to her future son-in-law but still Sophia could not peer in the door, let alone walk through it.
    Zeno followed his wife in silence, his greetings no more than polite mumbles.
    “Sophia?” Her mother’s voice called out into the corridor, reaching for her as a net reaches for a trapped animal.
    She could delay it no longer, she must enter, to not would be unseemly.
    Sophia stepped over the threshold and the afternoon sun pouring in from the side windows blinded her; she squinted against the light, but still she couldn’t see clearly nor discern the shadowed faces of the da Fulignas who sat with their backs to the glass. Dust motes danced in the light flooding in from the tall panes rising up to the cathedral ceilings, their fuzziness blurring the scene before her. Lines became indistinguishable, colors blended.
    Her retinas adjusted and her blindness receded like the early morning fog retreating from the shore. Her legs felt weighted, as though