Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (8 page)

She was so passionate, so certain. Giulia looked down at the scarred surface of the worktable, at the litter of materials she still had to clear away.

“Here’s what we’ll do. Tomorrow morning I’ll go to Madre Magdalena and tell her everything you’ve told me. I’ll beg her to rescind permission for the visit to Signor Moretti. And you’ll give Domenica Passion blue—and, Giulia, you will give it to her as if she had never threatened you. You will beg her to forgive your defiance. You will promise to renounce your pride. You’ll convince her she has won—and you will go on convincing her for as long as she is Maestra.” Angela’s eyes were filled with tears. “You must save yourself, Giulia. Domenica won’t be Maestra forever. Your day will come. I promise it will.”

Giulia leaned forward and put her arms around her friend, feeling Angela embrace her tightly in return. She was suddenly conscious of how tired she was, weary to the bone.

“It’s late.” Angela pulled away, raising her hands to wipe her eyes. “You go. I’ll finish here.”

Grateful, Giulia slid off her stool.

“Don’t worry.” Angela took up one of the candles, holding it so that her face seemed to be lit from within. She looked like a resolute angel in one of Humilità’s paintings. “We’ll make things right.”

CHAPTER 7

THE ORCHARD WALL

Despite her exhaustion, Giulia lay open-eyed after Suor Margarita locked her in her cell. She could feel the fearful thing she had admitted to Angela spreading through her like ink on wool, transforming everything.

I have no vocation.

It was to Humilità she’d been willing to swear herself. Humilità and the workshop and all she could become there. Not Santa Marta. Not religious life. Deep inside herself, she’d known it all along. She’d just never allowed herself to admit it. There had been no reason to do so until now.

She thought of Ferraldi’s letters, which she hadn’t had the courage to ask Madre Magdalena to give back. She’d dismissed the idea they’d woken in her as fantasy. But was it really so impossible?

She could escape through the orchard, the same way Ormanno had crept in a year ago. She’d need a boy’s disguise, but surely she could manage that—steal washing from a line, perhaps. She knew Venice lay east of Padua and that the two cities were not terribly distant from each other; maybe the journey would not take so very long. Once in Venice, she’d convince Ferraldi to apprentice her. And if he refused—well, Venice was a city of painters, or so Ferraldi had said. Surely there was an artist who would take her.

Of course, she had no experience of travel. She hadn’t grown up cosseted and sheltered, not as a noblewoman did, or a girl like Angela, who had been born into a wealthy merchant family—she’d always had to fend for herself. But she’d never been entirely alone before, had never been without a home to return to. She had no money, not so much as a single soldo. And though a boy on his own was safer than a girl on her own, even a boy was vulnerable to thieves, and sickness, and starvation, and a hundred other possibilities that threatened life and limb.

But you’ve done impossible things before
, her rebellious imagination whispered. Had she not found her way to the house of an astrologer-sorcerer and paid him to make her a spirit-haunted talisman? Hadn’t she escaped from Matteo Moretti’s attic and crept into his rooms by moonlight, and taken the secret he had stolen from under his very hand?

Wasn’t Santa Marta dangerous for her also, as long as Matteo knew she was inside it?

You’ve made mistakes before too.
Ormanno’s smiling face appeared in her mind. And all at once her thoughts turned, and she saw her plan through Angela’s eyes—as the madness it really was, the daydream of a desperate girl. At Santa Marta there were some certainties—if nothing else, of shelter and of
Angela’s support. Outside it there were no certainties at all, not even that she would reach Venice safely.

She heard Angela’s words again:
You can’t throw away all the Maestra’s hopes for you just because you are frightened of something that may never happen.

“What should I do, Maestra?” she whispered. “What would you want me to do?”

Of course there was no answer—only her own thoughts, turning and turning in the dark.

—

Hollow-eyed and exhausted, Giulia made her way to the workshop on Tuesday morning. Angela arrived late; as she’d promised, she had gone to Madre Magdalena to speak on Giulia’s behalf.

“You were right,” she told Giulia in a quiet moment that afternoon. “She said I was not a witness to the events you described. And with no corroboration, she could give no credence to such an accusation, or insult Signor Moretti by denying his request.”

“I told you.” Foolishly, Giulia had allowed herself a sliver of hope that Angela might succeed.

“Wait, I’m not finished. You must still go to him this coming Friday, but Madre Magdalena will give you two chaperones, not just one, and she will instruct them never to leave your side. So she did heed me, at least a little.” Angela was smiling, pleased with her accomplishment. “Do you feel better now, Giulia? There’s surely nothing that can happen with two chaperones watching over you.”

Giulia did not have the heart to tell her friend that all the chaperones in the world would not make her feel safe.

“She said I was to remind you of her command.” Angela was serious now. “Have you talked to Domenica yet?”

Giulia shook her head.

“Oh, Giulia! You must! You must do it at once!”

But by the close of the workday Giulia still had not spoken. She hurried through her tasks, managing to get back to her cell before Vespers ended and either Angela or Domenica could return. For a long time she stood at her unshuttered window, gazing at the sky. She’d prayed for guidance and had received none; the stars could not help her either. She was so confused and weary she hardly knew what she was thinking any longer.

She did not expect to sleep. But almost as soon as she closed her eyes, exhaustion claimed her. She was back in Milan, where she had grown up, in Maestro Bruni’s study in her father’s palace. Maestro sat behind his untidy desk, dressed in his shabby velvet robe and felt cap, his quill scratching across a sheet of paper. He rose when he saw her, smiling his sad smile. “You have a question for me, child?” Giulia realized that she did have a question, and she spoke it, though as the words left her mouth they lost their meaning and she had no idea what she had said. Maestro shook his head, looking grave. “There are no stars. I cannot take a sighting for your horoscope.” He gestured to the windows of his study, through which the sun streamed gold. Giulia was puzzled, for he could have taken a sighting on the sun. But then his face brightened and he reached toward her, plunging his hand into her chest. There was no pain, only a coolness like the kiss of water on a hot summer’s day. He pulled back, smiling. In the cup of his palm were stars—not diamond white, but lapis blue, pulsing with indigo brilliance, shedding sapphire sparks. “I can take a sighting after all,” he said, and tossed the stars up in the air so
that they came down again in a rain of cobalt, singing as they fell, the icy, unearthly song of Passion blue.

And then Giulia was awake, her eyes wide open in the darkness of her cell. Blue shadows swam at the edges of her vision. She could still feel a little of the coolness of Maestro Bruni’s dream-touch.

She thought of the question she had asked in her dream, the question she hadn’t understood as she was speaking it. And all at once it was as if a wind blew through her, sweeping away the clutter of question and doubt, leaving only the hard, flat clarity of truth behind.

Angela was right. If she surrendered Passion blue, Domenica might not banish her. Yet what she’d said to Angela was also true. Too much had passed between them ever to be healed. In Domenica’s workshop, she would labor each day under a woman who despised her. Who looked at her gift, the fire at the core of her being, and saw only something ugly and unnatural. Who would never teach her how to become the painter God had created her to be.

That was not what Humilità had wanted for her. It was not what she wanted for herself.

What, then, will I win by staying at Santa Marta? Only the safety of my body. While outside in the world, the wicked world with all its dangers, I may lose that and more . . . but possibly, just possibly, I may have everything to gain.

The bed seemed to tilt, as if the Earth had shifted underneath it. Terror swept her. For the rest of the night she lay open-eyed, her heart beating and beating, the dark around her like the impossible distance between stars.

—

When Giulia rose on Wednesday morning, she was still terrified. But something inside her had changed. She could feel it. It was as if she’d crossed the border into another country.

She was not supposed to go to Matteo until Friday. And Domenica’s ultimatum ran until Sunday, when she would take her final vows. But she knew she would be foolish to test Madre Magdalena’s patience.

I can’t wait. If I am leaving, I have to leave tonight.

In the afternoon, when Domenica vanished into her study, Giulia went to the shelf where she kept her own drawings. She could not say good-bye to the other artists, but she couldn’t bear to leave without acknowledging their trust, their friendship, their forgiveness. She wanted to do something that, looking back, they would realize had been farewell.

She’d drawn them all many times. She sorted quickly through the sheaf of sketches, picking out the best: Lucida in charcoal with white chalk highlights, her face alight with laughter. Perpetua in black chalk on gray paper, concentration smoothing away her homeliness. Old Benedicta dozing in the sun, contented as a cat. Angela in profile—a simple sketch, just quill and ink, yet none of the more finished drawings Giulia had done captured her friend so well.

She went first to Angela’s easel. “For you,” she said, laying the portrait on the little table where Angela kept her pigment pots and other materials.

“What is it?” Angela set down her brush. She was highlighting an angel’s wing feathers with vermilion; Giulia heard the color’s voice, a musical sizzle like oil in a hot pan. “Oh, Giulia, what a lovely drawing! But you’ve made me look so . . . so . . .”

“Beautiful? You are, you know.”

“Oh, well.” Angela made a dismissing gesture. “Thank you. What made you think of it?”

“I thought you might like it. Angela . . .”

“Yes?”

I never imagined I’d have a friend like you. Someone who cared about me, who stood up for me. I’m going to miss you so much.

“Nothing. I love you, Angela.”

“I love you too.” Angela frowned. “Giulia—”

But Giulia, already hurrying away, pretended she had not heard.

Lucida was delighted with her portrait and kissed Giulia on both cheeks for thanks. Perpetua was embarrassed, blushing as she looked down at herself. Benedicta had stayed in her cell that day; Giulia placed her portrait by her easel, where she would find it the next time she came in.

For the rest of the afternoon, Giulia went about her duties with a calm efficiency that amazed her, while fear vibrated in her like a swarm of bees and her pulse beat high and fast against her throat. She felt outside herself, unable to believe what she was about to do.

The Vespers bell rang at last. She stood by the grinding table after the artists departed, counting to a thousand to make sure they were truly gone. Then, half-certain she was dreaming, she crossed to the supply shelves, where she spread a square of linen on the floor and stacked it with her Annunciation painting, the best of her drawings, a supply of unused paper, a pouch of charcoal sticks, and a knife for sharpening them, which she could also use to cut her hair. She added Humilità’s bequests: the Alberti manuscript and the rosewood brushes. She’d left the workshop earlier to retrieve them, smuggling them back in under the bodice of her gown.

Last, she fetched a small silver plate from one of the chests that held the costumes and other items the workshop used for the models who posed for drawings. She hated stealing. But she had to have something to sell or barter for the clothing and food she’d need on her journey.