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smiled as he took in my efforts to restrain the tiny pile of fur and grime who threatened to best me as readily as she had the dogs. “What have you there?”
    “I’m not sure.” I could only hope that he ascribed my heightened color to the efforts needed to contain the cat and not for self-consciousness at seeing him. “She looks like a kitten but she doesn’t seem to know that she’s one.”
    Rocco laughed and looked at me warmly. He had never shown the slightest resentment toward me for rejecting him as a husband. To the contrary, he had been all that was kind and good. There were times when I suspected that he was only waiting for me to come to my senses and agree to wed him. A woman better than myself would have done the decent thing and disabused him of any such notion.
    Mercifully, Nando squeezed between us. He held the door to the shop open. The dogs continued to circle, tails wagging even as they bared their teeth.
    “Hurry before they get her,” the child said.

4
    I stepped into the shop with Rocco close behind me. The single ground-floor room set beneath a low loft was typical of those found in the homes of craftsmen and traders save that it was tidier than most, being occupied only by Rocco and his son instead of the more usual sprawling families. The floor was stone covered with woven rush mats, one of the few outward indications of the glassmaker’s growing affluence, belied by the deliberately plain exterior. A fireplace with a pair of swing hooks for holding iron pots provided warmth in winter but was swept clean of ashes and left empty at this time of year. What cooking Rocco did went on outside, where he also did most of his work. There was also a table surrounded by stools, shelves that held samples of the glassmaker’s art, and a ladder that gave access to a sleeping loft. Less obvious but known to me all the same was the false wall near the back door. Opened, it revealed the more specialized work that Rocco did for particular customers, myself among them, including the glass stills, retorts, sublimatories, and other devices required for the practice of alchemy.
    While it is true that Venice still claimed the finest glassmakers as her own, the craft had long since spread beyond that watery city where Rocco himself had been born. Rome boasted a firm of glassmakers to the pope, the d’Agnelli, whose wares were sought as far away as Ingleterre and, it was even said, eastward to Constantinople. Of late, they had fallen on sad times, having suffered the death of their only son, but they remained a force within the city. The family head, Enrico d’Agnelli, continued to dominate the glassmakers’ guild. Yet sensibly he left room for newer men to make their mark.
    Rocco had occupied the shop for all the half-dozen years I had known him. In that time, he had achieved a quiet following among both connoisseurs of glass and the growing community of alchemists. Had he chosen to do so, he certainly could have afforded more spacious accommodations. But he was by nature a modest man who also had a sensible appreciation for the protection of anonymity. The simple shop nestled among seemingly more prosperous competitors suited him well.
    He secured the door behind us, shutting out the noise of the street. At once, I was aware of the relative coolness and quiet of his home, of the pleasant scent of fresh rushes and herbs drying in the rafters above, and as always, of the longing in me for what could not be.
    In my preoccupation, I must have held the kitten too tightly for she hissed and stuck out a tiny paw, as though to rake me.
    Nando grinned. “She’s not afraid of anything, is she? Like Minerva, always ready to do battle.”
    “Minerva, indeed,” Rocco said with a smile. He looked at me as he added, “The goddess who never surrenders. An apt name, wouldn’t you say, Francesca?”
    I turned away, all too aware that there had been times when I would gladly have surrendered to the glassmaker who spun