Tuesday Teaser

Here's another excerpt from Giacinta's new Chapter 1. I've had a terrible struggle trying to picture medieval Italian architecture for this story. It's all so different from the castles I'm used to describing in England and France. It's taken a very long time for the architectural design that was apparently common to nearly all Venetian houses to begin to click in my brain, but little by little I think I'm getting the idea. 

(Speaking of pictures, I actually drew a very rough one imagining what the the portego--1st floor--of Giacinta's house might have looked like.  I thought about sharing it with you, but it's soooo rough I haven't had the courage. Maybe I can neaten it up at some point and share it with you here. We'll see.)

I don't think I've described the portego very well in my story so far, but hopefully it'll get better in revisions. Just do your best to imagine the portego for now in this little excerpt.

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Torchlight beckoned her from the T-shaped end of the long hall of the portego. It was left burning all night to allow the illusion that the household of Saverio de Luzio never slept. They did, of course, behind the doors to the chambers that framed both sides of the portego, but her father’s fabrication stood a symbol of her ancestors’ industry that had raised them from simple salt farmers to one of the wealthiest merchant families of Venice. Giacinta passed her father’s chamber and Amadio’s and the others to go gaze through the bank of tall, arching windows that overlooked the canal. Even from the height of this second floor, the torchlight cast small yellow pools against the dark rippling water.

Where would you take me if I let you carry me to the mysteries that lie beyond our city where my father goes, those tantalizing points on the maps that Amadio is such a laggard to learn?

She sighed, turned away, and walked back to Amadio’s chamber, two doors down from her own.