Passion Blue (22 page)

“The rumors are flying about that altarpiece,” he said. “They say it’s the most expensive ever commissioned by a Paduan monastery.”

“That should please the abbot. The Maestra says he wants everyone to know what a costly gift he gave to God. He’s in the painting, you know, kneeling by the Cross.”

“Patrons often want to be painted in.”

“Ormanno…” Giulia hesitated. “The first night
you came here, you said there are rumors that the Maestra doesn’t paint her own paintings.”

“Just rumors, Giulia.”

“Are people saying that about the altarpiece?”

“They may be.”

“But why? Why would anyone think that?”

“Giulia…” He paused, choosing his words. “I know you respect your Maestra. As do I, from the little I know of her. But she is a woman, and women are…well, they are women, they are fickle and full of emotion and caprice. Women don’t have the temperament for the demands of painting any more than they do for science or the law.”

All her life Giulia had understood this to be so. It was why she could read books but never be a scholar. It was why Maestro could not teach her astrology. Yet hearing Ormanno say it, something rose in her, an instinctive denial.

“That’s not true. Every day in the workshop, I see it’s not true. Women
can
be painters. And if they can be painters—” She caught her breath. “They can be anything.”

Not until the moment she said it had she realized she believed it.

“Of course there are exceptions,” Ormanno said patiently. “There are always exceptions. That’s why your Maestra is a marvel—not just for the paintings she makes, but that she makes them at all. And marvels aren’t necessarily easy to accept. There’s always someone who is jealous. There’s always someone who won’t believe. That’s where the rumors come from. Do you see?”

“Yes. But it isn’t right.”

He smiled at her, tilting his head the way he did when he was teasing or flirting. “Do you ever think of staying?”

“What, at Santa Marta? Ormanno, I’ve told you, I can’t be a nun.”

“But you want to paint. You can do that here.”

“I can do it somewhere else too.”

“Can you?”

“Of course I can.” She tried not to let him see how much the question dismayed her.

“Your Maestra thinks highly of you. She told my master so. Maybe you could even be Maestra yourself one day. Have you thought of that?”

Giulia couldn’t speak. He was boxing her in, just as Humilità had—painting and the convent, or the world and everything else, but not both.

“My master has a book of secrets,” he said. “It’s hidden in his rooms, none of us know where. When he takes it out for us to use, for color recipes and so on, he has his manservant stand guard to make sure we only see the page he chooses. He’d never pass his secrets on to those of us who work for him—his secrets are only for his sons, who will inherit his workshop. When I realized that, I knew someday I’d have to leave him. But you—” He leaned forward a little, looking into her eyes. “You could have everything. All the secrets. All the things your Maestra keeps hidden.”

“She doesn’t keep things hidden,” Giulia said stiffly, though it wasn’t true.

“So she doesn’t have a book of secrets?”

Giulia thought of the pages in Humilità’s book that were written in cipher. “She has a book of
recipes
. It’s locked in a chest in a cabinet in her study, but she gives it to Angela and me when we need it, and no one has to watch us when we use it.”

“She trusts you, then.”

“Of course she does.”

“Even to mix Passion blue?”

“Only the Maestra mixes Passion blue. Only she can read that recipe.”

“It’s written down, then? In the book?”

“All her recipes are written down. Ormanno, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“I’m sorry, my orchard girl, have I made you unhappy?”

“No, of course not.”

But he
had
made her unhappy, and when she returned to the dormitory she lay awake, staring at the shadowed ceiling and thinking about what he had said. If he really thought women were unfit to paint…if he really believed something that she herself, soul-deep, knew to be false…and yet he’d admitted that there were exceptions. He’d dismissed the stupid rumor about Humilità. Perhaps after all it wasn’t so surprising he should say such things, never having known any women painters.

But he knows me now. I can change his mind
.

She thought about Matteo Moretti’s recipe book. How odd that she should know where it was hidden, and Ormanno should not.

She brought the astrolabe to their next meeting,
smuggled out of the workshop in her sleeve, along with paper and a charcoal stick. She thought he might like to ask about his workshop, or the money he needed. But when she explained the making of horary charts, he shook his head.

“No. No, I don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“The stars are beautiful. I love it when you name them for me. But I’d rather that they just stay stars.”

“But don’t you want your questions answered?”

“If the stars have blessed me, why spoil the joy of discovering it by finding out ahead of time? And if they’ve damned me, why worry before it happens, since there’s nothing I can do?”

“But there
is
something you can do. The stars tell what
may
happen—not necessarily what
will
happen. If you know what’s coming, you can change it. At least you can be prepared.”

“But what if I try to change things and fail? Do I curse the stars for troubling me, or myself for failing, or both? No. I’d rather find out as I go along. We wouldn’t do half of what we do if we knew how it’d turn out, and what would life be like if we never took chances? Like you climbing up on the scaffolding, the day we met.”

That wasn’t chance
. But Giulia held her tongue.

“I know something better we can do.”

He pulled her into his arms. She’d been nervous with him after the second night. As much as she assured herself that Anasurymboriel would not bring her a man who wanted only to ravish her, she could
not silence the small part of herself that feared he was just such a man: the kind of man who coveted forbidden women. But she craved his touch, the way his embrace made her body go hot and light, the way his kiss made her heart beat and her head spin. And he’d been so careful with her since—at first only kissing her good night, and then later, when she felt more comfortable, holding her as if she were made of glass. She could feel his arousal as he lay against her, and it made her dizzy to know how much he wanted her. But, true to his word, he did not act on it.

They parted at midnight, as usual. Giulia ran lightly through the silent corridors, the astrolabe heavy in her sleeve. Outside the dormitory, she pulled off her dress and bundled it and the astrolabe together. She started to lift them onto the windowsill—but then, gripped by a sudden impulse, she freed the astrolabe from the folds of her gown and held it to the stars.

“When will Ormanno ask me to marry him?” she whispered into the hushed night.

She rotated the astrolabe’s disks and pointers to match the star-sighting. The moon was waxing again but its light was faint, and she had to hold the astrolabe close to her face to see. Finished, she climbed through the window and into bed, concealing the astrolabe beneath her pillow.

Late the next afternoon, she stole a few moments from her work to carry the astrolabe into the court. Pretending she was sketching, she began to transcribe her measurements. But something about what she was doing felt wrong. After only a moment she put the charcoal down.

What was it Ormanno had said last night?
We wouldn’t do half the things we do if we knew how they’d turn out
. But she
did
know how things would turn out. She had the promise of the talisman, and the chart she’d cast in July, which had told her she would be free before winter. It was almost September now. Did she really need to know more than that?

Unbidden, she heard Maestro’s voice:
Be prepared, when you ask the question, to receive the answer you least desire
.

She crumpled the paper and spun the astrolabe’s moving parts to erase her measurements. Then she put the astrolabe back where it belonged and returned to work.

September arrived, with no lessening of summer’s heat. In the workshop, Giulia and Angela began gessoing a pair of panels for the private commission that would follow completion of the San Giustina altarpiece. Lucida gave another dinner party. Perpetua’s bad tooth became infected and one side of her face swelled up like a water skin. Despite her pain, she refused to visit the infirmary until Humilità, exasperated, ordered her to get it seen to.

Giulia had vowed she would work harder than ever—and she kept her promise, fulfilling her responsibilities with meticulous attention, taking on more of the heavy labor to spare Angela’s leg,
throwing herself into the drawing lessons as never before. She did her best to lose herself in her tasks—to try, when she was in the workshop, to truly be a part of it. But Ormanno was always in her thoughts, a presence underlying every moment, a secret she must be careful every second to guard. Even with Anasurymboriel’s protection, she knew her own carelessness might still betray her.

She should be happy now, she knew. She had her heart’s desire, or almost. These were her last days at Santa Marta. Yet she hated having to be so vigilant all the time. She hated having to invent explanations for her absentmindedness or her clumsiness, when thoughts of Ormanno distracted her. She hated suddenly remembering, when Benedicta spoke of color lore or Lucida offered the sweets her sisters brought or Perpetua smiled and thanked her for fetching something, that she was deceiving them. Especially, she hated imagining how betrayed Humilità would feel, how wounded Angela would be, when they discovered she was gone. She had to struggle sometimes to meet the other painters’ eyes, for fear of what they might read on her face.

This is how it has to be
, she told herself when guilt caught at her throat or knotted her stomach. She had chosen her path on the day she left Milan, and there was no other way to get to the end of it. She’d never expected it would be easy. She’d accepted the burden of sin she was taking on. It was just that she’d thought that all the difficulty would lie in her actions—not in their consequences. She hadn’t expected to hurt anyone
but herself.

So she worked even harder, filling every free moment with activity. If nothing else, she hoped the others would remember that when she was gone, and know she had not been completely false.

Just past dawn on the second Friday in September, Giulia stood at the end of the novices’ wash line, waiting while Lisa poured water into the basin. As the crippled girl bent to wet her face, a burst of giggles made Giulia glance around. Alessia and her cronies were watching Costanza, who was standing over Lisa’s bed, a bowl in her hands. Finished with whatever she was doing, she dropped the bowl out the window, then trotted over to Alessia. She whispered to the older girl, provoking a fresh explosion of stifled laughter.

Giulia turned away before they saw her looking. “Lisa,” she whispered. “Lisa!”

Lisa jerked around, water dripping from her face and hands. “What?”

“Shhh! Keep your voice down. I just saw Costanza put something in your bed.”

“What?” Lisa was incapable of whispering. “What did she put there?”

“I don’t know. Lisa, wait—”

But Lisa was already pushing past her. The crippled girl bent over the bed. An expression of horror spread across her face. Clumsily, she began yanking at the sheets. Elisabetta and Nelia and Costanza doubled over with laughter; Alessia stood straight, glaring at
Giulia.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Suor Margarita came striding in. “Saints preserve us, Lisa, what are you doing?”

“It wasn’t me!” Lisa was crying now, great gasping sobs. She pointed at her sheets, half on the bed, half on the floor. “My sheets—Costanza—”

“Lisa soiled her bed, Suor Margarita,” said Alessia. Behind her, her followers tried to control their mirth. The other novices, some of whom had seen what had happened, the rest able to guess, looked on—grateful, no doubt, that Lisa was the scapegoat and not them. “She’s very upset about it.”

“What? Lisa, is this true?”

“I didn’t!” Lisa cried, almost unintelligible in her distress. “I didn’t!”

Suor Margarita ripped the sheets entirely off the bed, and stooped to sniff the mattress. She straightened quickly.

“Lying is a sin, Lisa, indeed it is. Roll up those sheets and carry them to the laundry while I think what to do with you.”

“But Suor Margarita, I didn’t—”

“Do as I say! And you girls over by the window—” She turned on Alessia and the others. “Stop your sniggering. This is no laughing matter.”

Lisa bent to obey, sobbing. Her shame and misery were pitiful to see. Giulia felt something take hold of her, a kind of clearheaded rage.

“Suor Margarita.”

The novice mistress turned, impatient. “What is
it, Giulia?”

“It wasn’t Lisa.”

An echoing silence greeted this announcement. Lisa stopped sobbing and stared at Giulia with her mouth open.

“It was Costanza. I saw her pouring…whatever it was…into Lisa’s bed.”

“You’re a liar!” Costanza cried. “You didn’t see anything!”

“And I saw Costanza and Alessia talking afterward. Alessia told her to do it.”

“Alessia. Is this true?”

“She’s lying, Suor Margarita.” Alessia’s sallow features were tense with rage. “She’s a commoner who’s jealous of her betters. She’s trying to make trouble for me.”

“Costanza used a bowl,” Giulia said. “She threw it out the window when she was done.”

Costanza’s mouth opened. The expression on her face spoke her guilt as clearly as words.

Suor Margarita stepped to the window and looked out. For a long moment she did not move. Then she turned. In her face was the promise of punishment.

“Costanza. Alessia. Go and wait for me in the schoolroom.”