Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (35 page)

“It is a creditable effort,” he said. “No doubt that owes much to your teacher”—he nodded at Ferraldi—“whose skill I know.”

“He has helped me, Maestro. But the work is my own.”

“And now you have it back.” Bellini smiled again. “Good fortune to you, my dear.”

He turned to go.

Giulia did not believe it at first.
That can’t be all. Surely he has more to say to me.
But he was moving away, toward Contarini and the painters, where another servant was folding up the fourteenth easel.

“Maestro.” Giulia stepped after him. “Maestro Bellini.”

He wheeled around, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

“Maestro, my painting is here, and there is an easel for it. May I not stand with the others and be judged?”

“With the others?” Behind Bellini the contestants stirred, some frowning or shaking their heads, others bending toward one another in whispered comment. “No, no. That is not possible.”

“Maestro, you judged it worthy to be shown when you believed Stefano painted it. Why not now?”

“My dear, you are a lovely young girl, and very brave to do as you have done, though some might judge your actions less kindly. It is clear you have some talent for the brush. But you are not a painter, nor will you ever be. You cannot stand among the masters gathered here.”

Giulia clutched the Muse. A huge and crushing disappointment was unfolding inside her, all the worse because she had allowed herself to believe it was not inevitable.

“Why not, Giovanni?” Ferraldi said. “The work is fine. I only counseled her—she conceived it entire, and the whole of it is by her hand, even that marvelous blue, which she made herself. She has a natural skill I have rarely seen equaled, certainly never in any of the male apprentices I have taught. Let her stand.”

“To what purpose, Gianfranco? Even if she is as gifted as you say, what can come of it? Your liberal views are all very well, but that is not the way of the world, and you know it.”

“Then perhaps the world should change.”

“Perhaps,” Bellini said. “But nothing we do tonight will make it so.”

Ferraldi might have said more. But Contarini, his patience clearly at an end, intervened.

“Maestro Bellini has spoken,” he said. “Maestro Ferraldi, accept my thanks for preventing the perpetration of a fraud. Honored guests, my apologies for these distractions that have taken us far from our true course tonight. Master painters—” He turned toward the contestants. “You have my gratitude for your patience, which will be tested no further. We will now begin the judging.” He extended an imperious hand toward Bellini. “Maestro.”

Bellini glanced once more at Ferraldi. Then he turned away. The crowd, sensing that the drama was at an end, began removing its attention, though some still watched in hope of more to come.

Giulia was trembling. Whatever had sustained her till now had gone out of her all at once, like sand from a shattered hourglass.

“Please,” she whispered. She didn’t want to fall to the floor or burst into tears before all these people. “I want to go.”

Ferraldi reached to take the Muse. Bernardo gripped her arm. She let him lead her down the stairs, the noise of the crowd falling away as they stepped out into the Venetian night.

CHAPTER 26

THE WORLD WILL CHANGE

Carnival was in its final hours. The city blazed with celebration. Behind candle-gilded windows, on streets and quays, in rooms rich beyond dreams of avarice and campi as mean as any in the world, the people of Venice drained the last dregs of the season of excess.

Above the Piazza San Marco, fireworks split the night, flowers of light unfurling in an instant and fading in a breath. Giulia tipped back her head to watch them as the gondola slipped through the black waters of the Grand Canal. In her mind, over and over, she heard Bellini’s voice:
You are not a painter, nor will you ever be.

I didn’t fail
, she told herself.
I exposed Stefano. I claimed my work.
She held the Muse in her lap; in between the fireworks’ echoing concussions, she could just hear the crystal bell-song
of her blue, whispering from the not-quite-dry paint that had betrayed Stefano’s treachery. Perhaps she hadn’t been allowed to stand with her painting, but at least no one else could claim it as his own.

What if I’d waited to speak until the judging was finished? Might the Muse have won?

But there was no purpose in such thoughts. And she knew now that the ultimate outcome would have been the same.

Celebration was still in full swing in the Campo San Lio. The noise of revelry came out to meet them as Bernardo guided the gondola up to the water steps. Beside Giulia, Ferraldi turned.

“You have courage,” he said.

His face was a dark blot against the light of the fires and torches from the campo.

“I don’t feel very courageous,” she said.

“But you are. Never doubt it. I saw in you tonight the same bravery Humilità had, to stand against the scorn of the world and refuse to yield. I think she would have been proud.”

Giulia felt something turn in her, a mix of hope and pain. “Do you really think so?”

“I know it. The world
will
change, Giulia. It must.”

He rose and ducked out from beneath the felze, nodding to Bernardo. Giulia looked back as they pulled away. Ferraldi stood against the fire glow, gazing after them.

The world will change.

You are not a painter
.

Ferraldi’s words, Bellini’s. A promise; a refusal. Which should she believe?

Like the Grand Canal, the Rio dei Miracoli was crowded with illuminated boats. Revelers made their way along the
fondamenta, bearing torches and lanterns. Venice, Giulia thought, was surely the brightest city in the world tonight.

Bernardo moored the gondola at Sofia’s landing, then leaped out and reached back to assist Giulia. She set the Muse on the floor of the boat and gripped his fingers, remembering how he’d made no move to help her when she embarked that afternoon. Once on the landing, she would have stooped to retrieve her painting, but he held on to her hand.

“I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you offer your painting to be judged.”

They were the first words he’d spoken since they left Palazzo Contarini Nuova. Giulia looked away from him, down at the damp marble under her feet, glistening faintly in the light of the lanterns burning by the door. She hadn’t realized until now how exhausted she was. The memory of the evening turned inside her, a tangle of hope and disappointment—and also, obscured for a little while but as inevitable as the dark days of Lent that came after this season of light, the questions she must face: What to do next? Where to go?

“Thank you,” she said. “For accompanying me. For speaking for me.”

“Giovanni Bellini is a fool.”

“He’s a great master.”

“And a fool. I’ll tell my mother to turn that portrait to the wall.”

Giulia had to smile. “It’s not the painting’s fault.”

“Stefano is ruined, isn’t he?”

“I should think so. In Venice, at any rate.”

“Good.”

He was still holding her hand. It was beginning to feel uncomfortable. She was too aware of his closeness, of the
warmth of his fingers twined with hers. Yet she did not wish to pull away.

“What you did tonight,” he said. His face was in shadow, but his eyes caught the lantern light, glinting. “It was . . . quite something.”

“You got your scandal, I suppose.”

“You won’t be able to disguise yourself again. Not in Venice.”

It was true. She hadn’t considered that. Yet if she had, she did not think she would have acted differently.

“This afternoon . . . in my mother’s sitting room . . .” Bernardo paused, then went on in a rush. “I told you that I never guessed. About you, who you—
what
you really are. But I think that’s not wholly true. Somewhere in myself I must have known. Otherwise, how could I—”

He bit off the words. He’d dropped his eyes, fixing them on their clasped hands. Giulia held her breath. Her heart had begun to race.

“I thought I must be unnatural. Or that you must be. I told myself I had to overcome it. I told myself that was why I kept returning, to prove to myself that I didn’t—” Again he stopped himself. “And then I learned the truth, that there was nothing unnatural after all. But I’d been telling myself for so long that there was . . . I didn’t know what to feel, about you or about myself. And so I was angry.” He raised his eyes to hers. “But you were right in what you said to me. You did not owe me the truth. I see now . . . I see now that I was angry not at you, but at myself.”

It shook Giulia to the core to hear him admit so much. She would never have expected it. She wanted to tell him she understood, that she bore no grudge, but she could not find the words.

“Giulia.” He had never spoken her real name before. The sound of it thrilled her. “I want to offer you something. A home.”

“A . . . home?” she repeated, not sure she had understood.

“With my mother and me. A true home, one you will never have to leave.”

She looked up at him, disbelieving. “You are asking me to . . . to live . . .
here
?”

“Yes. You are all alone in the world. You have nowhere to go.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, that was badly spoken. But it’s true. You need a place to rest. A place where you can be safe. We could give you that.”

“Bernardo . . . I have nothing. No money, no family, not even the clothes I’m wearing. I’ve just made a spectacle of myself in front of the highest nobility of Venice, and before that . . . well, you know my story. You know what I come from.”

“My mother came from less. And if you think either she or I care about such things, you very much mistake our characters.”

Giulia felt longing sweep her.
To have a home. Not to make my way alone again . . . not to disguise myself or lie . . . and if he is offering this to me, does it mean . . . could it mean . . .

“Your mother. Does she . . . is this her wish too?”

“I haven’t asked her yet. But I know she’ll welcome you.” All this time Bernardo had not let go of her hand. Now his fingers tightened, until his grip was almost painful. “Say you will stay. Say yes.”

“Yes,” Giulia said. Her eyes, suddenly, were full of tears. “If your mother agrees, I’ll stay.”

He did not move. His searching gaze did not shift. But something had changed—Giulia sensed it, a tightening of the
air, a tingling on her skin. The night leaned in around them, alive with anticipation.

When he drew her toward him, it felt inevitable. And then she was in his arms and his mouth was on hers, just as she had sometimes dreamed but never allowed herself to hope. A lightness burst inside her head, a swirling dizziness that threatened to sweep her away. She rose into the kiss, sealing herself against him, feeling his heart pounding like a hammer, beat for beat with her own; and then they were spinning, spinning, and the great city of stone and black water spun with them, wheeling like the celestial spheres around the Earth; and the night embraced them, the gorgeous glittering mad Venetian night, so urgent with life that it seemed, for just these moments, life could never end.

When she heard applause and laughter, it seemed to her at first that Venice itself must be speaking. But then Bernardo lifted his head and Giulia, returning abruptly to Earth, realized that it was only a group of revelers who’d paused on the fondamenta across the canal to watch.

“I’ll wager you won’t be giving
that
up for Lent!” one of them yelled.

“Mind your business,” Bernardo called back, producing more laughter.

The men moved on. Bernardo’s arms had loosened, and like a door cracking open to the cold, Giulia wondered if he was regretting what they had just done. But then he looked down at her. In what she saw in his face, she knew he felt no regret.

“Giulia Borromeo,” he said softly. He reached up to smooth back a tendril of her hair that had escaped its braid, his fingers lingering on her skin. “The girl who was a boy. I think I fell in love with you tonight.”

Joy filled Giulia so full that for a moment she could not speak. “And I with you,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Though much longer ago than that.”