Crivano mumbles a quick courtesy to the maiden, pushes to his feet, and hurries from the courtyard, seizing the chance to escape and collect himself. His pulse hammers in his temples and his gut, muffled and out of phase, like laborers sinking a pile through thick clay. He is simply ill, he thinks: stricken by some mundane lagoon miasma. It’s coincidence, nothing to do with the girl. But even as he thinks these things he imagines himself as an under-rehearsed player, declaiming them to an unseen audience in the dark theater of his own mind. Already some secret part of him must know.
With nothing in his belly to slow its progress the wine is rampant in his blood, making his footfalls heavy and loose as he steps indoors. The great hall has been cleared of its clutter; the stacked screens and folded curtains are assembled and hung, occluding the windows that open to the courtyard. The only visible daylight rises through the loggia at the opposite end: a liquid shimmer on the frescoed ceiling, the oscillating echo of the Grand Canal’s surface, just out of sight below. Somewhere nearby—he can’t say where—he hears a soft clang of metal brushing metal, and the muted laughter of a child.
Crivano blinks, unsteady in the abrupt darkness. A servant with a lamp appears at his side to convey him to an adjacent room. Here too the windows are blocked by curtains, and before the curtains stands an upright polyptych of blank canvases. By the wan yellow light of candelabra Crivano finds four rows of campaign chairs facing the canvas screen; a wide aisle runs down their center, and he follows it to a seat near the front. As he lowers himself into his chair, he notes a small lectern standing to one side of the easels, and a long wooden trunk on the floor beneath them, one end hidden by the curtains. He’s puzzling over this as the other guests file in, and suddenly the seat to his right is occupied. He knows without looking that it’s the girl.
Contarini reappears, sweeping majestically into a chair, and now della Porta stands at the lectern. Senator Contarini, he says, most eminent ladies and gentlemen, my esteemed friends, I thank you for your indulgence in permitting me the opportunity to demonstrate this afternoon some principles of scientia that have been of enduring interest to me. I should say before we begin that the images you are about to witness may be shocking to some of you, and that any women present, or persons of delicate constitution or infirm mentality, may wish to absent themselves. I can assure you, however, that everything you see here today is produced by only the most virtuous application of natural magic, and brought about by my own reverential understanding of the hidden processes of the Divine Soul of the World. At this time I will offer no further explanation beyond referring interested parties to the expanded edition of my book Magiae Naturalis, widely available from your fair city’s superior booksellers. The text from which I read is a verse narrative of my own composition. Extinguish the lights, please.
Della Porta begins to orate a self-important prologue concerning the past glories of the Republic, and Crivano’s attention is snuffed out with the candles, wandering to the girl, to Contarini, to the other guests, to the gilt splendor of the room, to the odd trunk on the floor, back to the girl again, until a sudden thump issues from the cloaked windows and a weird panorama materializes across the canvas screen.
Gasps rise from the nearby seats, along with a few muttered curses; the girl seems to tense, to draw somewhat closer. It is as if the wall before them has dissolved to reveal a shadowy landscape: a glade ringed by misshapen trees under a sunless sky. The image is so clear and so dynamic in its color and detail as to make the best efforts of the most adroit trompe-l’oeil painters seem like the scribbles of feebleminded children. And now the leaves of the phantom trees are indeed moving, rustled by a slight breeze. The audience’s gasps are renewed.
After the initial shock, Crivano thinks of a chapter in della Porta’s book—and also a similar, greatly superior discussion of the same topic in the writings of Ibn al-Haitham—and he grins, pleased with himself. It’s a camera obscura, he whispers. That box on the floor. It is merely the courtyard beyond the wall that we see.
For a long time the girl does not reply. Thereafter spake wise Dandolo, della Porta drones, his fervor undiminished by his years.
But we’re facing the courtyard, the girl whispers. And the image is not upsidedown, as it should be.
Shhhh, Contarini hisses over his shoulder.
The girl is correct: this is no camera obscura, or at least not simply that. Crivano reviews his knowledge of optics and finds it wanting. A second lens? he wonders. A convex mirror?