Prose
Below is an extract from the short story Colour.
Colour
He is late. Late to step upon the path, late to slip between the trees and come to me. And I have been waiting, crouched under moonlight for him to return.
Here in Chartres I am a long way from home, from the island off Venice that gave me birth, purpose and nurtured me in my craft. The smell of salt and seaweed whipped up by the wind in the waves is a peculiar distance memory.
Three years. For three years I have moved from place to place, going where I am needed. But the last one has been lived here under the trees that are bark scarred by the perpetual nibbling of the muntjaks. Here where the earth, damaged by the nocturnal digging of shrews and foxes, is waiting for rain. I have lived in this forest, in the shadows and the thickets that in summer obscure the path that leads up to the Cathedral. It has been my home and his.
He should have left the workshop by now. He should be walking down the rough track towards me as I wait in the dusk that holds smoke from the furnaces in the branches of the trees above me.
I am a glassmaker. I play with colour. I add oxides into the molten stew of sand and wood and create the most perfect burning blue, purple and burgundy from the mix of cobalt and manganese. Colour is my life. But our work is tainted by pain and long hours, for it is strenuous and we leave early and do not return until dark. The Cathedral reaches up its once burnt carcass to be resurrected and rebuilt and we are part of that. We are part of the revival with stone, wood and glass. Each of us has a role in its transmutation from detailed drawing to something of substance. We have pledged to complete a Cathedral so magnificent that no secular rival could ever question the omnipotence of the bishop.
He has been working at the north portal, measuring and preparing and watching the light fade and the colours of the stained glass lose their vibrancy and radiance. He works on the frames and lintels under the direction of Abbot Suger, while I work in glass on one lancet that will be finished before the winter solstice. And it is then that all of this will be over. We will disperse. Take down the fabric tents, kick over the straw beds, dismantle the furnaces and leave the forest to the bandits and wolves. He will continue on, he has informed me, to Bourges with the Abbot, who although aging and a little infirmed, still has planned projects and has requested that he continue in his service. Myself? I have been dismissed.
'It is not that your work is unsatisfactory.' The Abbot refrained from looking me straight in the eye. 'In fact quite the opposite, your diligence and the quality of your glasswork is impeccable.' He managed a thin smile before continuing. 'It is just a pronouncement placed upon me to implement … and,' he hesitated and placed one podgy hand across his chest as if his heart would assist him with his predicament. In order to help him out of the tight spot he had walked into, and make him more at ease, I told him that I was expecting it. I had heard rumours that they intended not, for the time being, to use Italian workers. They would employ only the French. 'You must understand,' he said, 'it is out of my hands.' His rings glinted in the light from the candles. So that is it. I shall return to Murano and my family dejected but with a respectable testimonial claiming my expertise in the creation of stained glass. Maybe it is time to return to the scent of the sea and the clamour of the children in the harbour.
The sudden screech of an owl turns me inside out, for I think for a moment it is him, stabbed for the few coins he carries at his waist or snapped in an animal trap that breaks his ankle in its teeth. Nothing must touch him before I do. Then I worry anew. I worry for the Cathedral has moods, at times severe. Its monstrous space harbours shadows and a darkness that sends a quake through me. And I fear that the odour of burning lies deep in the stone ready to ignite again. I close my eyes and listen to the bats flit from the branches and savour the distant music of lute and voices from the camp. There is song every night and stories told and magic performed.
He is young. Has not yet grown to the age when memories pull at the heart. It has tortured me that he will forget. That he will not return and enter the chilled hall of the Cathedral, stare up at the windows where the sunlight is transformed and diffused in the same way that incense changes the texture of the air, and remember me.
I have tried to talk to him on the nature of parting. 'You fret too much,' he said, as I tore up the dawn-baked bread and sliced yesterday's cold pie, placing it in front of him as if he were a child.
'I am troubled by what life will be like without you.'
He shrugged his shoulders and let out a rush of air, almost a laugh. 'Your family will take up all your time. They are important, you have talked of them often.'
On one level I knew his words had substance but I could not control the fear that gripped me. 'Will we meet again?' I asked knowing no answer would be satisfactory.
'Why not. Just a small part of the world's seas will separate us.'
'I know,' I said, 'but do you understand the terrible temperament of loss?'
'Yes. I know loss.' He looked so alive at that moment; I could almost hear his blood hurrying through his veins. 'How about the time when my special belt was stolen? You remember, the one with the silver buckle. The one given to me by …' His voice trailed off. His pale eyes searched the rafters, swept over the crypt, but rested nowhere.
Last night dreams enmeshed me. Dreams of glass. I saw a sheet, sapphire in colour and moulded in the heat, curved around his body so that as it cooled it held him imprisoned, his face distorted through the ripples and knots. I woke alarmed, gasped and lay burning in the cold dawn. It was then, as I tossed obsessed by lack of sleep that I decided that he must die. There must be no one else to call out his name. No one else to love him as I did.
