Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (26 page)

The familiar joy of creation filled her. She was thinking only of painting as she returned downstairs, carrying the pigment pots on a tray. She bundled herself in an extra tunic and put on her fingerless gloves, then went outside, where she’d set up her easel by the rio. The sky was overcast but the clouds were high, and the bright, shadowless light was perfect for working.

She was kneeling on the fondamenta, scooping dollops of paint onto her palette, when she heard the street door open. She got to her feet just as Bernardo came striding through the storeroom.

She saw the change in him at once. The darkness of two weeks ago was gone. He blazed with energy and purpose.

“I have news,” he said.

“News?” All week Giulia had hoped for his return. But for most of the morning, her eyes color-saturated and her mind filled with the singing of the paints, she hadn’t thought of him at all. His presence now seemed unreal, as if she’d called him out of her imagination.

“Yes!” The word burst from him, exultant. “I’ve broken my betrothal. I’m free.”

“Bernardo! But . . . how? What changed?”

“I was angry, Girolamo.” He began to pace, unable to keep still. “About what you said. But I couldn’t get it out of my head, and when my anger began to pass I saw that you were right. Last week I spoke to my mother. I explained everything. She’d guessed I was reluctant for this marriage, but she never realized how much I dreaded it. I never told her, you see. It was just as you said—I was so determined to do what I believed she wanted for me, what I believed she needed from me, that I never thought that she might wish for me only what I wished for myself.”

“So she agreed to call it off?”

“Yes. The family will be angry, but no contract was signed and no announcement was made, so my betrothed will not be shamed, nor will my mother and I be liable for broken promises. I’ll stay through the summer to make sure that all here is in order, and to hire a reliable man to oversee our properties. Then, in August—” His face shone with joy. “Girolamo, I am going to Padua!”

“To the university?”

“Yes! My mother has given me her blessing—and she didn’t hesitate, Girolamo; she gave it gladly. I cannot believe I waited so long or feared so much.”

“I’m glad for you, Bernardo,” Giulia said. And she was, though it was a strange, regretful kind of gladness.

“She will miss me, of course, and I her. But Padua isn’t far. I can come back when I’m needed. And I won’t stay forever. Venice is my home—one day I will return for good, and marry and have children and fulfill all the things she wishes for me. But not yet. Not yet!”

He came toward her, alight with jubilation, as if the sun had come out to shine on him alone. Giulia, dazzled, could not look away.

“How tangled in our lives we are,” he said. “All of us, wrapped up so tight we can’t see clearly. Sometimes it requires a stranger to perceive the knot. To understand where to cut. This is all because of you, Girolamo, and what you said to me that I did not wish to hear. Thank you.”

He placed his hands on Giulia’s arms, gripping them strongly, then pulled her into an embrace. She was sure, when she thought about it later, that he meant it to be the kind of embrace men exchanged: rough, quick, accompanied by backslapping and shoulder pummeling. But the change in him, or the singing of the colors, or the certainty of farewell—she would never afterward be sure—had temporarily breached the guard that caused her to flinch or stiffen at any contact between them. Without thinking, she softened against his chest, leaning into him. She thought, for just an instant—for just the flickering space of a breath—that he responded, pulling her more tightly against him.

But then her hands touched him.

He jerked back, shoving her away with enough force to make her stagger. Their eyes met. She saw the confusion in his face. Horror at her mistake rolled over her like icy water.
He’s guessed.
She had pressed herself against him, and he had guessed.

But then disgust clamped like a Carnival mask across his features. And she realized, with a different kind of horror, that he’d guessed something else entirely.

Without a word, he left her. She heard his hurried footsteps, the slam of the street door—exactly as she had two weeks ago, except that this time there was no doubt in her mind that he was gone for good.

CHAPTER 19

PASSION BLUE

Well. That’s it, then.

A strange calm had settled over Giulia. It was actually better this way, she thought: a quick, sudden severing, a door closed and locked.
Now I can forget about him. I can give myself to work and learning without distraction. I should be relieved.

Should be.

She looked at the easel, where the Muse awaited her brush. At her feet, the color songs wove unceasing harmonies. All at once their voices were not enough. She wanted—she needed—to hear the voice she had been waiting for, the voice she longed for: the icy, silvery, secret voice of Passion blue.

She returned to the storeroom. From their hiding place, she took the beaker that held the first two lapis extractions,
fully dry now at the bottom of the glass, and the four other ingredients she had prepared.

Upstairs in the workshop, she measured out the brilliant blue powder, placing half on a grinding slab, returning the other half to the beaker. The little heap on the slab seemed tiny; she wasn’t sure it would be enough even to finish the Muse’s gown. But if she made a mistake today, she wanted to have some pigment in reserve.

She set out the bowls that held the additional materials, then closed her eyes for a moment, visualizing Humilità’s recipe, reviewing the proportions to make sure she’d calculated the amounts correctly.

Carefully she began adding ingredients to the slab, arranging them in smaller heaps around the blue: an eighth part lead white, to bind with the oil she would add last. A pinch of powdered gold leaf, to add subtle warmth to the blue. An eighth part pearlescent powdered alabaster, to absorb the light. And to give the light back, to lend Passion blue its extraordinary luster: a sixth part water-clear Murano glass, from a roundel crushed flour-fine in the mortar, scintillating like star stuff even in the gray light of the day.

Ordinary ingredients, unremarkable on their own. But if she’d followed the recipe as carefully as she believed she had, joining them together would produce an alchemical transformation, creating something greater than the melding of individual parts.

With the muller, she gently swirled the powders together. She added a measure of walnut oil, and took up the muller once more.

The song began to rise the instant she started to grind—faint at first, a shimmering bell-like music drifting up through the silence of the workshop—just as she had heard it more
than a year ago, standing at Humilità’s side in the windswept courtyard at Santa Marta. She rolled the muller around the slab, spreading the color over the marble, scraping it back to the center, starting again. All blues chimed—azurite like a silver cymbal, smalt brittle and off-key, natural ultramarine pure and resonant—but not like this. Nothing on earth was like this. With each repetition the song intensified, drawing closer, growing clearer, as if she were opening the substance of the world and summoning something incomparably beautiful from underneath.

How could I ever have thought such a thing was sinful? How could I ever have imagined that hearing this music was anything but a gift from God?

Humilità’s recipe cautioned against overgrinding. Giulia had feared she would not know when to stop. But the instinct for
rightness
that was part of her strange sixth sense was as sure now as ever. Between one breath and the next the song achieved its peak. She rolled the muller a final time and set it aside.

She scraped the paint into a pot, gathering every speck. The song was unmuffled by the clay that held it; unconsciously, as she descended to the storeroom, she matched her footsteps to its cadences.

She added the blue to her palette. Its voice rose above the voices of the colors already arrayed there but did not obscure them, like a principal singer surrounded by a choir. Stepping to the easel, she dipped her brush. For a moment she held back, letting the tension build. Then, with a rush of release that felt like flying, she set brush to panel.

Working quickly, she laid the color over the area of the Muse’s gown, which she had previously prepared according to Humilità’s instructions—for that was also part of Passion blue,
that it must be supported by a dark ground rather than the more conventional light one. Then she began to incorporate darks and pales to model the folds of the fabric, referring often to her master drawing, which she’d laid out on the pavement at her feet. These shadings deepened or brightened the timbre of the song but did not alter its glorious, crystal essence.

This is what matters. Not passing infatuations. Not false names or disguises. Not cruel, stupid stars. This. This is what I was born to do.

She promised herself she would not forget again.

Only when the last smear of blue had been used, and the muscles of her painting arm were quivering with exhaustion, did she step away from the easel to inspect what she had done.

The Muse’s gown was complete. Against the monochrome of the underpainting, it shone brighter than a peacock’s plumage, singing sapphire harmonies.

Did I make that?
Giulia felt as if she were waking from a dream. Wonder swept her, tinged with sadness, because Humilità, who had given her this—all of it, not just the priceless color, but painting itself—was not here to see it.

“That’s a lovely blue.”

Giulia jumped, startled. Ferraldi was standing in the doorway. How long had he been there?

“Thank you, Maestro,” she said, then added, “They’re my own materials. I didn’t borrow them.”

Ferraldi stepped closer. “This is your competition painting?”

“Yes.”

“Hm. You’ll want to rework some of the modeling. The folds there look a little stiff.” He pointed. “Do you see?”

Giulia’s exalted mood was slipping away. She saw that he was right. “Yes, Maestro, I do.”

“Try blending the shadow a little more, there and there.” He pointed, indicating, then leaned toward the singing blue. Giulia tensed, though of course he could not guess its secret just by looking. “That really is an extraordinary blue. Natural ultramarine, yes?”

“Yes, Maestro.”

“It’s unusually pure. You must tell me where you obtained it.”

“I made it, Maestro.”

“You? On your own? Not from raw lapis lazuli, surely?”

“Yes, Maestro. I’ve been working on it for the past two weeks.”

“Hm. Impressive.” He stepped away. “Well, when I need more ultramarine, be very sure I will call on you to prepare it.”

“Yes, Maestro.” She would make blue for him if he wanted, but not Passion blue. She thought of Domenica, and Matteo, and all the others who had coveted the transcendent color. She hoped Ferraldi was not like them.

After he departed, she stood for a while before her work, trying to recapture the euphoria of creation. But it had left her, and doubt was seeping into the space where it had been, heavy and unwelcome. She could see her mistakes now, not just the flaw Ferraldi had pointed out but others: errors of execution, born of inexperience.

She could address them, or try to. But the blue, the shining, singing blue . . . that could not be changed. And though it was brilliant, though it was beautiful, was it
Passion
blue? She had followed the recipe to the letter. She’d been sure she recognized its unearthly voice, its sapphire luster; but it had been months since she had heard or seen Passion blue—not since before Humilità had taken to her bed. Could she be certain
that the bell-like tones that filled her senses now were exactly the same?

It’s only the lateness of the day,
she thought.
And that I am so tired. It does no good to question anyway. What’s done is done.

For the first time in several hours, she thought of Bernardo—Bernardo, who would never come back.

She scraped her palette and cleaned her brushes and returned them and the painting to their hiding place. She climbed wearily to the workshop to clean up there as well. At last, too exhausted to be hungry, she lay down on her bed and fell into dreamless sleep.