Sisters of Glass Read online

  Also by Stephanie Hemphill

  Your Own, Sylvia

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Stephanie Hemphill

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Anna and Elena Balbusso

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89701-6

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For my little sister, Kate

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Second Daughter

  My Father, Angelo Barovier

  The Glass Vessel

  Talent

  How to Begin?

  Why I Love Glass

  Restricted

  Giovanna

  Not My Mother’s Daughter

  The Brush-Off

  Secret Sketchings

  Paolo and the Courtesan

  Learning to Be a Lady

  My Insolence Starves My Family

  Trial by Fire: First Suitor

  Giovanna’s Songs

  Our Family Needs Help

  Trouble

  Second Suitor

  The Arrival of Luca

  Tides of Import

  My Escape

  A Brief Respite

  Caught in the Rain

  Flooding

  Out of Harm’s Way

  Called to Duty

  The Art of Glassblowing

  Family Service

  At Supper

  Sunlight

  Alone at Last

  By Any Means?

  Luca, Artist in Residence

  Quiet Madness

  Full of Feathers, Short of Hair

  Found Glass

  Lady Lessons

  I Am Here

  Failing

  My Sister, My Captain

  Dowry

  The Question I Am Not Supposed to Ask

  Signore Bembo

  Floral Delivery

  Day and Night

  Replenishment

  A Second Sister

  Andrea’s Surprise

  Divided

  A New Subject

  Creation

  Appreciation

  Two Suitable Suitors?

  The Sketchbook

  Mi Dispiace (I’m Sorry)

  No Choice

  I Spy

  You Can Have That Bumbling Bembo

  Nowhere to Go

  Indiscreet

  Mother’s Plan

  Conflict

  A Change in the Weather

  Sorella (Sister)

  Mi Rifiuto (I Refuse)

  Betrothal Goblet

  Vulnerable

  Lifting the Fog

  My Protector

  How to Explain

  A Layer of Enamel

  Enameler

  My Own Plan

  Dishonor

  Swap

  A Nobleman’s Clever Solution

  God’s Will

  What to Do About My Father’s Will

  Sisters of Glass

  Glossary

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In 1487, the real Maria Barovier, daughter of Angelo Barovier, received permission from the Doge to build a little furnace on Murano for the firing of enamels. She was one of the few women glassmakers of the time and the first known to be granted permission to build her own furnace. This small historical detail inspired me to write this book.

  SECOND DAUGHTER

  I feel Giovanna’s fire

  as Mother prepares me for suitors,

  polishes me

  while Giovanna polishes glass.

  Though I am the younger daughter

  and rightfully should not marry

  into Venetian nobility,

  my father declared

  the day I was born,

  the week he invented cristallo,

  that I was his

  baby of good fortune,

  and good fortune would be mine.

  I would marry a senator.

  Yet like tides washed into shore

  by winds one never sees,

  we all prayed

  he would change his mind.

  We were thus raised

  to follow tradition.

  Giovanna shoots me

  only a sideways glance

  as I lace into my new green dress.

  I want to scream,

  “I will trade positions,”

  that I desire to polish glass

  and stoke the fires

  and see the creation of crystal,

  like I was permitted to do

  when I was a little girl.

  But I promised Father

  on his deathbed that I would

  honor his first and greatest wish for me.

  I just did not know I would

  lose my sister even before

  I lose my Murano.

  MY FATHER, ANGELO BAROVIER

  The Barovier family furnace

  has molded glass on Murano

  for nearly two hundred years, since 1291,

  when the Venetian government

  required that all furnaces move

  to my island home.

  The Council of Ten claimed

  that it was to prevent fires.

  But containing all glassmakers

  on Murano also allowed Venice to regulate

  her most profitable industry

  and to prevent leakage of trade secrets

  beyond Venetian shores.

  My father spent his entire life

  on Murano, never once sailing

  into the ocean, not even to Venice.

  Father said, “Ships are for cargo,

  what need have I of them?”

  Besides, he sailed

  the vast ocean of his mind,

  so indeed, he traveled everywhere.

  Father studied to be the scholar

  of his family and was to attend

  the University of Padua.

  My uncle Giova says

  he never saw one so eager

  to see the world, that my father

  packed his bags for university

  two weeks in advance.

  But fire overtook

  one of the two Barovier fornicas

  like a thunderstorm.

  My father lost his father,

  his mother, three of his brothers,

  and his only sister

  to the torrent of flames.

  Father unfolded his clothes.

  He and his one remaining brother, Giova,

  found work at neighboring furnaces

  until they saved enough ducats

  to purchase materials for their own.

  I always wondered why

  my father did not fear

  the furnace and the flame,

  the hot molten cullet.

  He said,
“Dearest Maria,

  does a general fear a battle

  after he loses men on the field?

  No. He studies what went wrong,

  resolves it, and fights better the next time.

  Otherwise, the loss of his soldiers was in vain.”

  Not one day

  did my father miss work,

  even holy days

  he created his batches

  sundown to dawn.

  Angelo Barovier carried

  the deaths in his family

  on his shoulders

  like a mule never relieved

  of his load.

  I am named Maria

  after his sister, who died.

  My father died

  when I was ten.

  Mother wore clothes of mourning

  for five years,

  until she determined

  it was time

  to begin grooming me

  to be bartered away

  from my home.

  THE GLASS VESSEL

  In some prominent glassmakers’ homes

  girls do not work with glass at all,

  but my father raised us

  to be a family of industry,

  all of his children schooled

  to understand the art

  and business of the Baroviers.

  Like first mates to the captain,

  we all learned

  to prepare ingredients,

  to stoke the thousand-degree furnace

  with beech and alder wood,

  to make his frit,

  to polish glass,

  and even to blow it.

  Giovanna and I

  have never been permitted

  to blow a punty,

  but we understand

  how it works.

  A well-run vessel,

  we naturally settled

  into our rightful crew positions.

  Father steered and guided the ship.

  He remained inventor.

  I became his assistant,

  lagged after him like a dog,

  bobbled carefully

  the ingredients for his batch.

  My brother Paolo

  has blown glass for the Doge,

  a master gaffer

  my father never saw rivaled.

  My eldest brother, Marino,

  like my uncle Giova,

  dove into business affairs

  as though he had been handling

  the wicked waves of supply and demand

  for a thousand years.

  Giovanna and Mother,

  both experts at beautification,

  polish glass so that our wares

  sparkle finer than crown jewels,

  so we deliver the premier glass on Murano.

  Always servants, hired hands,

  workers from other guilds

  swabbed decks of the Barovier ship,

  for the workload was too great

  to bear just us six.

  For seven years our two furnaces

  alone produced cristallo,

  the secret recipe for colorless glass

  hidden in the bow of our ship.

  But Paolo and Marino

  believe that because

  Father was stubborn

  as a wheel stuck in mud,

  our secret escaped.

  Father refused to outsource work,

  he rather brought laborers into

  the Barovier fornicas,

  and one must have spied

  when Father and I prepared a batch.

  Within two weeks

  all the major furnaces on Murano

  produced cristallo.

  We no longer

  sat first in church.

  Paolo unsheathed his sword

  to slay everyone

  who worked in our kiln.

  Father disarmed him.

  “You cannot kill

  all the innocent

  to avenge the guilty one.”

  But after his recipe dispersed,

  my father lost

  the jaunt to his step

  and seemed always

  to press a hand over his heart.

  A year later

  we buried my father at sea.

  Clutching a clear cristallo cross,

  he departed Murano

  for the first time,

  never to return.

  TALENT

  A graceless gosling,

  I stumble through most things.

  Like a baby just learning to walk,

  I try to step forward

  on my own but usually

  fall down bottom-heavy.

  Giovanna excels without even trying,

  as though she emerged

  from the womb a golden child—

  fair, gentle, kindhearted, feminine,

  and she sings sweeter, and with better tone,

  than the finest instrument.

  Her voice could praise the Doge,

  her singing make God weep.

  As she polishes glass

  or if gloom fogs the day,

  Vanna will step to the window

  and sing to lift those who labor

  with melody and cheer.

  People cease working

  and listen. Some deliberately

  route past our palazzo

  to hear her music.

  My voice sounds old

  and witchy as crackling flames.

  One day Vanna sang

  little rippling scales

  out the window, and the light

  on her hair and cheeks

  made her look like a saint.

  I grabbed paper and quill

  from my father’s old work desk

  and drew Giovanna in her radiance,

  sketched how she made us all feel

  when we heard her voice.

  She cried when I showed her the drawing.

  I started to tear apart the page.

  “I’m sorry, Vanna.

  I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “Stop! Give me that.”

  She ran downstairs to find

  Marino and Paolo and Mother.

  I ran after her, but of course she

  could surpass me

  without losing a breath.

  I tumbled down the stairs

  as the tears slipped down my cheeks.

  Everyone walled around me.

  “I am sorry. I meant it to be nice.”

  My tears turned to sobs.

  Mother stroked my head.

  “Look at me, Maria. I wish

  your father could have seen this.”

  She hugged me closer

  than she had in a year.

  “But then, he always said

  you were more of an artist

  than a cristallo chef.”

  The next day Marino

  presented me

  my first sketchbook.

  HOW TO BEGIN?

  A large sheet of white,

  pen and brown ink in hand—

  my mind deserted me.

  I shivered in summer sunlight.

  Mother relieved me

  of my morning chores

  so that I could practice sketching,

  and my hand cramped up.

  Giovanna skipped back

  into our room to grab

  her second pair of work gloves.

  I stared at her, hoping

  she would sense my distress

  and offer a light amidst my fog,

  a beacon to save my ship

  the rocky shore.

  She scurried to leave

  without an eye in my direction.

  I squawked, “Giovanna, come here.”

  “What, Maria? Mother expects me,”

  she said as she swirled swanlike

  over to where I perched on my bed.

  “You have not drawn anything

  this whole morning?”
>
  “It is not for lack of will.

  I can’t think what to draw.

  I am a failure.

  I must not be an artist after all.”

  A few tears splattered my paper.

  “No, no.” Vanna squeezed my hand.

  “You are thinking too much.

  Just draw what you see,

  what is around you,

  and how it makes you feel,

  just like you drew me.”

  She brushed her finger

  over my lips and cheeks

  in the shape of a smile.

  “And be joyful as you do it.

  Father always said,

  ‘A sad gaffer produces gloomy glass,

  whereas a happy one creates crystal.’ ”

  “I think you are the artist, Vanna.”

  “No, I am many things, but not that.”

  And my sister streamed off,

  a wake of notes in her trail.

  I shut my eyes.

  When I opened them

  the room tripled in size.

  I drew my sister’s bed, her vanity.

  I inked her painting a smile across my face.

  Before the afternoon I completed

  eight sketches, each one more improved

  than the last. I showed Vanna my work.

  “Bella,” she said.

  I crammed my first sketchbook with joy.

  Not all drawings of happy subjects,

  but all penned in gratitude

  and excitement—

  my brothers at work,

  the cathedral, a fisherman

  I gleaned through the window,

  our maid Carlotta rolling out dough,

  the conciatore preparing our frit,

  Mother at her dressing table,

  Giovanna’s brush and comb

  from her perspective,

  Paolo blowing his glass art;

  I recorded it all.

  WHY I LOVE GLASS

  Giovanna loves glass

  like she loves singing,

  because like a melody

  she enhances its beauty

  with her touch.

  Marino loves glass

  because his investment

  brings prosperity and growth.

  As with a gardener,