Passion Blue (5 page)

She shivered.
How do I know the spirit is truly bound? How do I know it won’t get free?
She heard Maestro’s words:
Sorcery is a sin, not just for those who practice it but for those who seek it
. And the sorcerer’s:
What you want from me is dangerous
.

And her mother. What would she say, if she were here?

In the end, the only person you can rely on is yourself
.

Giulia drew a deep breath. She licked her finger and pressed it to the talisman. “A-na-su-rym-bor-i-el,” she whispered, enunciating carefully to keep from tripping over the strange syllables. Then again, for good measure: “Anasurymboriel.”

She half-expected to sense the spirit as it woke: a tremor against her hand, a spark of light. Nothing happened. But when she looked up again, the attic around her seemed clearer than before, the bags and barrels and boxes more distinct, the scent of cinnamon and clove and saffron more sweet. As if the world had been veiled in gauze, which had just now been pulled away.

She clasped the talisman around her throat. It fell just below the little pouch that held her horoscope fragment; the chain showed at the neck of her dress, but the talisman itself was safely hidden. She was struck again by how heavy it was, almost as heavy as her mother’s necklace.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t have given him your necklace if there was any other way. You understand, don’t you?”

There was, of course, no answer.

It was time to go. She raised her hand to cross herself, to say a prayer for the journey. But could she pray to God, now that she wore a celestial spirit around her neck, bound to defy God’s will for her?

For a moment she hesitated. Then she lowered her hand.

“Forgive me,” she murmured.

The weight of the box pulled at her arms as she descended the back stairs to the ground floor, where the kitchens and workshops and servants’ quarters were.

Since her meeting with the Countess, she’d thought only about the sorcerer and the talisman. But
now, for the first time, she felt the weight of what was about to happen to her. By the end of this day, she would have passed beyond the walls of Milan, beyond the only home she had ever known, beyond all that was familiar. The dim, spice-scented attic, the orchard in the spring, the serenity of the
cortile
, the way the kitchens smelled on feast days, Maestro’s rooms, his books, her studies—she would never experience those things again. She would never see Maestro again, or Annalena.

And what of her mother? Palazzo Borromeo held all the memories of her mother that she had. Would the memories fade, once she was gone? Would she begin to forget her mother’s face?

As long as I have my drawings, I can’t forget
, she reminded herself.
I’ll never have to listen to Clara’s taunting again. I’ll never have to hide in the pantry to avoid Piero. I’ll actually see some of the world I’ve been reading about for all these years
.

It didn’t help. Fear sat in her stomach. It fluttered in her throat.

In the room she shared with Annalena and Clara—Piero had moved into the stables years ago, with the other grooms—Giulia made a bundle of her possessions: two chemises, a spare dress, her sewing kit. She left the box and bundle in the hall, and went to the kitchen to say good-bye to Annalena.

Annalena had been good to Giulia—better than she needed to be, with two children of her own. She’d cried yesterday when Giulia told her about the Countess’s decree. Today they both wept, embracing
amid the noise and bustle of the kitchen.

“’Tisn’t right, you being sent off this way.” Annalena pulled away, scrubbing at her cheeks, then using a corner of her apron to dry Giulia’s eyes. “You never said nothing about wanting to be a nun.”

“Don’t worry.” Giulia tried to sound confident. “I’ll be all right.”

“Maybe you can write a letter. I can get one of the clerks to read it for me.”

“I will if I can, I promise. Thank you, Annalena. For all you’ve done for me.”

“’Twasn’t so much. You’re a good girl.” Annalena crossed herself. “I’ll pray to the Blessed Virgin to keep you safe. Now go, before we both start bawling again.”

There was no one else Giulia cared to say goodbye to. Though it was not yet noon, she retrieved her bundle and box and went out to the
cortile
. She set the box in the sun and sat down on it to wait.

“I’m frightened, Mama,” she whispered.

To stop herself from crying again, she summoned her favorite daydream: the dream she turned to whenever she needed strength or comfort, the dream that was also a promise—her own promise, to herself, that she would never give up her fight against her stars. In the dream, the difficulties of her horoscope had been solved, and she was at home in her own house, awaiting her husband’s return. Sometimes her husband was a notary or a clerk. Sometimes he was a scholar—someone who would not object to an educated wife, a wife who drew pictures. Sometimes her house was within city walls, sometimes it was outside,
surrounded by orchards and fields. Sometimes children tumbled at her feet, and sometimes it was just the two of them. But always, she had a place of her own. Always, she had someone who belonged to her, and to whom she belonged.

Always, she was free.

“Anasurymboriel,” she whispered. It was already easier to say.

Part 2
The Workshop of Women

The carriage door sprang wide, admitting an incandescent blast of sunlight. Framed in the opening, Giulia saw an expanse of cobbled street, a slice of red brick wall.

They had arrived at Santa Marta.

In the seat opposite, Giulia’s chaperone, Cristina, checked one last time to make sure the Countess’s letter was safe inside its leather case. Cristina was the Countess’s second cousin, and her choice as Giulia’s escort was meant to reflect the Countess’s high position, not to suggest that Giulia herself had any value. The same was true of the nun’s trousseau the Countess had provided—a set of sheets, a pair of sandals,
white woolen fabric for the habit Giulia would wear once she took final vows, lengths of linen for undergarments, and a daily prayer book, all packed into a chest of walnut wood, with a metal clasp to hold it closed.

“Come, Giulia.”

Cristina gathered her skirts and let the driver assist her to the ground. With an effort of will, Giulia followed.

It was unseasonably warm for the end of April, but after the carriage’s ovenlike interior the air seemed almost cool. On one side of the street, a long block of houses rose four stories high, with an arcaded walkway running along their fronts. On the other side stood an imposing red brick church, with a double-arched doorway and a huge rose window. The wall Giulia had glimpsed from the carriage began where the church ended, extending along the street as far as she could see, flat and featureless and half as high as the church itself. The wall of Santa Marta.

She tilted back her head. She could just see that shards of stone were set into its top, jutting like teeth against the cloudless sky.

I’m not really standing here. Surely this is a dream
.

The journey from Milan had taken a little over two weeks. The carriage was cramped and hot; dust came through the windows, and water when it rained, and even with cushions, the seats were hard enough to make Giulia’s back ache by the end of each day. But the discomforts faded beside the pleasure of watching the countryside scroll past the windows, of
picnicking in olive groves, of sleeping each night in a different inn—or, if no inn were near, on bedrolls under the stars. Best of all, for the first time in her life she was able to draw to her heart’s content, for there was nothing else she had to do and no one to tell her not to do it.

It had been eerie at first to wear the talisman. Giulia couldn’t forget the living spirit trapped inside—a little spark of the heavens, compelled into service on the Earth. But it was so much like an ordinary necklace. As day followed day, Anasurymboriel’s presence ceased to trouble her.

She’d hoped the spirit’s magic would take hold before they reached Santa Marta, and she did what she could to help—dawdling in the courtyards of inns, persuading Cristina to take meals in public dining rooms rather than privately in their lodgings, braiding her hair into becoming styles and belting her dress extra tight. She was still afraid to pray to God, Whose will she had undertaken to defy; she could not pray to the spirit of the talisman, for that would be blasphemous. Sometimes, though, she couldn’t help resting her hand on the place where the talisman lay beneath her clothes, and longing with all her strength for her heart’s desire.

And now they were in Padua, and her heart’s desire had not yet arrived. Staring up at the high, fanged wall of Santa Marta, it occurred to Giulia, for the first time, that she had never asked the sorcerer how long the talisman might need to do its work.

What if I have to spend months in this place? What…
what if I have to spend years?

She gasped. During the journey, the talisman secure around her throat and the sorcerer’s promise safe in her heart, she had never really been afraid. But now it seemed that two weeks’ worth of fear fell on her all at once. The wall leaning over her, the convent waiting to swallow her—they were no longer dreamlike, but hideously, horrifyingly real. She imagined herself turning, running, not caring where she was going, so long as she escaped that wall—

Even if she would have done it, it was already too late. Cristina’s arm closed firmly around her waist, urging her toward a door set into the brick. The driver followed, carrying her luggage.

Cristina pulled the bell cord. After a moment a wooden flap popped open. A woman peered through the grate that covered it, her face framed in a white wimple and a black veil.

“Yes?”

“I am the representative of Countess Marcelina Borromeo, late of Padua, now of Milan,” Cristina said in her most haughty voice. “She has entrusted me with the delivery of this girl, Giulia Borromeo, to be admitted into your house. I have a letter.”

“Place it in the wheel,” said the nun, and banged the flap closed.

To the door’s left, another grate covered an opening in the wall. Cristina slid the letter, with its big wax seal, through the bottom of the grate and into the box that waited there. A grinding sound, and the box began to rotate, delivering the letter to the nun inside.
There was a pause. Giulia was aware of the noise of the street—the voices of pedestrians, the clatter of hooves, the creak and thump of the church door as it opened to let out a worshipper.

At last a bolt scraped back and a key rattled in a lock. Christina turned to Giulia.

“Good-bye, my dear.”

“Don’t leave me here.” Giulia had not intended to say it. But her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t think.

“Oh, child.” Cristina took Giulia’s hands. “Try and make the best of it. None of us can know God’s will. You may not see it now, but I’m sure this is His plan for you. I’ll pray for you.”

She pulled Giulia into her arms. Over her shoulder, Giulia saw that the worshipper, a young man with curly hair, was staring in their direction. Wildly, she imagined struggling, screaming for help. But Cristina was already releasing her, and a hand was closing around her wrist: the nun, accustomed perhaps to reluctant novices.

She felt herself pulled into the dark beyond the doorway. The driver set her luggage over the threshold and stepped back. Her last glimpse of the outside world, as the door swung closed, was Cristina, framed in sunlight, her hand lifted in farewell.

With a thump and a scrape, the nun shot home the bolt and turned the key in the door’s great lock.

The floor seemed to heave under Giulia’s feet. Her heart felt as if it might split her chest. It took all the
will she had to hold herself still, to swallow the frantic sobs that wanted to burst free.

She stood in a vaulted chamber with a flagstone floor and whitewashed plaster walls. It was not as dark as it had seemed from the street—a candle burned on a little table, and daylight filtered through the open grate of a door opposite the one that had just shut. A large crucifix hung on the wall.

The nun crossed the room, selecting another key from the jangling key ring at her belt.

“This is called the saint’s door.” She fitted the key to the lock. “Many of our sisters pass through it only once, when they come to us as novices.”

But not me
, Giulia told the chattering panic inside her.
I’ll come out again. I will
.

On the other side of the saint’s door, another nun stood waiting. She was young, and wore a white veil rather than a black one. She took the Countess’s letter. Beckoning Giulia to follow, she led the way briskly along a wide loggia, its tiled floor bright with the sun that slanted between its columns. Beyond lay a formal garden, with velvety lawns and a reflecting pool flanked by dark cypresses. Giulia stared. She hadn’t expected to see anything beautiful in this place.

They entered torchlit corridors. The young nun stopped at last in front of one of the many closed doors that lined the halls. She held up her hand to indicate that Giulia should wait, then knocked and slipped inside. After a few minutes she returned and gestured for Giulia to enter.