Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Read online

  “I don’t want any trouble.” Giulia’s heart had begun to pound.

  “Maybe he’s not pissing,” said the apprentice, making a lewd gesture at his groin. “Maybe he’s doing something else.”

  “Four times a day? He doesn’t look the type.”

  “Let me by,” Giulia said.

  “Let me by,” mimicked the merchant’s son. “I know what it is. He’s ashamed. He’s got a tiny little prick, and he doesn’t want anyone to see.”

  “Maybe he’s one of those whatdoyoucallits, the ones that get cut,” said the apprentice. “Maybe he’s got no prick at all. Maybe he has to piss like a girl.”

  “Come on then.” The merchant’s son stepped toward Giulia. “Let’s have a look.”

  “Leave me alone.” To Giulia’s horror, her voice cracked. The apprentice grinned like a wolf.

  “Grab him!”

  They rushed at her. Giulia sank to her knees, folding in on herself, protecting the parts of her body that could betray her. But when rough hands seized her arms, searing memories came over her—of the brothers and their cart, of all the times in her childhood when she’d been bullied for her bastardy. She wrenched free, scrabbling along the ground, staggering to her feet. Wildly she struck out, the side of her fist connecting solidly with the apprentice’s face. He howled and leaped away. The merchant’s son darted in and punched her in the ribs. All the air went out of her. For a moment the world went dark.

  “What’s this?”

  Giulia discovered that she was on the ground again. She heard someone gasping: herself, she realized, clawing for breath. Bernardo stood nearby, holding the merchant’s son by the back of his doublet. The apprentice was crouched on his haunches, moaning, his hands covering his nose. Blood seeped from between his fingers.

  “Two against one, is that it?” Bernardo shook the merchant’s son like a puppy.

  “Just having a bit of fun. What’s it to you?” The merchant’s son tried to twist away. “Let me go!”

  “Go on then.” Bernardo pushed the boy so hard that he stumbled to one knee. “You too.” Bernardo aimed a kick at the apprentice, who scuttled out of reach. “Get back to the carts.”

  “I’ll tell my father you laid hands on me,” the merchant’s son said, climbing to his feet.

  “And I’ll tell him you enjoy beating younger boys.”

  “Whore’s son!” the merchant’s son yelled, backing away. “Bet you don’t even know your father’s name!”

  He turned and ran. The apprentice stumbled after him, still clutching his face.

  “Blood will out,” Bernardo said quietly, though the merchant’s son was by now too far away to hear. “Whether or not it has a name.”

  He smoothed his clothes and shook back his hair, then turned and held a hand down to Giulia. “Come. Get up.”

  She tried to push herself up on her own, but pain burst like fire along her ribs, and she subsided to the ground again, gasping. Before she realized what he meant to do, Bernardo stooped and gripped her under the arms, heaving her easily to her feet. She cried out, with shock this time as well as pain, pulling free and staggering back, hunching over as she did, for the sudden motion had caused the binding around her breasts to slip.

  Bernardo stared at her, his hands still outstretched. Please God, she thought, don’t let him notice anything.

  “You’re hurt,” he said.

  “It’s nothing.” Giulia forced herself to straighten. She pulled her mantle close, hiding in its folds. “Just bruises.”

  “You should let my mother have a look. She’s sure to have something in her box of remedies that would help.”

  “No! Truly, it’s not necessary.”

  “Well.” He shrugged. “If you’re certain.”

  “I am. Thank you for helping me.”

  “I despise bullies.” His face went cold as he said it, and Giulia wondered what experience lay behind the words. “Fortunate for you I spotted what was going on.”

  “I would have managed.”

  “I doubt it. Though you gave a decent account of yourself, considering. That boy will be swallowing blood for some time.” He eyed her. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

  “I’m not a weakling,” she said, stung by his tone.

  “I didn’t mean—” He stopped, frowning. There was a beat of silence. “Well. The caravan will be moving on. We’d best get back.”

  Giulia found her clogs, which had come off when she fell. The bottoms of her hose were soaked. The fabric bunched uncomfortably under her feet as she began to walk.

  “What was it about anyway?” To her surprise, Bernardo fell in beside her. “The fight.”

  “Nothing.” It had begun to drizzle, a fine, cold spray that chilled Giulia’s hot cheeks. She drew up the hood of her mantle.

  “I’ve noticed they’ve been teasing you.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said again, wishing he would stop watching her, that he’d let her go on alone.

  “You are asking for it, you know,” he said. “Always going off alone to do your business. Boys like that are like dogs. They can’t bear anyone who breaks from the pack.”

  “I just like to be private.”

  “You’d be better off—”

  “I’m grateful for your help.” She rounded on him, the sudden motion making pain flare along her side. “But it’s none of your business. In fact, you’ve probably made things worse. They’d have beaten me, and that would have been the end of it. Now they’ll want revenge.”

  His obsidian eyes narrowed. She turned away, more carefully this time, and trudged on. Surely now he would leave her alone. But he walked beside her in silence all the way back to Sofia’s cart.

  —

  Giulia feared she would have to argue with Sofia about inspecting her injury and was surprised when Sofia did not even suggest it. Instead, she prepared a draft of some sort of medicine, which made Giulia dizzy but helped her sleep. The draft had worn off by morning; she had to grit her teeth against the pain as she climbed to her feet. Later, in the seclusion of some bushes, she found that a lurid purple bruise had bloomed all down her side.

  She caught sight of the apprentice when the caravan paused at midday. His nose was twice its normal size, his eyes ringed with black. It gave her a surprising amount of satisfaction to see the damage she’d done. She was wary as she left the camp, but he did not follow her, nor did the merchant’s son. She wondered if Bernardo had talked to them, then dismissed the thought. Why would he bother?

  “We’ll reach the lagoon the day after tomorrow,” Sofia said that night. “Can you smell it, Girolamo? The ocean?”

  “Is that what it is?” Giulia had begun to be aware of it that day: a briny, slightly sulfurous odor that she noticed when she drew a deep breath.

  “Yes.” Sofia smiled, the rare full smile that showed her bad teeth. “How I’ve missed it. Have you ever seen the ocean?”

  “No, clarissima. Though my tutor told me of it.”

  “All the words in the world cannot compare to the reality.” Then, seeing Giulia shifting about, trying vainly to find a comfortable position: “I’ll make you another draft. Be sure you drink it all.”

  The sun shone the next day. Giulia was still sore, but the stiffness had lessened, and she could move more easily.

  During the noontime halt, she brought out Sofia’s portraits and laid them in front of her, side by side. She’d made two, in a combination of homemade charcoal and borrowed ink, with a gray wash she had created by diluting the ink with water.

  In the first Sofia was turned slightly away from the viewer, her eyes cast down as if she were reading, her expression inward and serene. In the second she was looking back over her shoulder as though someone had called her name, smiling her closed-lipped smile, her eyes alight with laughter. In both she wore her rich silk wrapper, her hair flowing loose across her shoulders; in both, she looked exactly what she was: a beautiful woman just beginning to lose the battle against age. G
iulia had hesitated over this, remembering what Sofia had said, the first night, about flattery. In the end she’d drawn the truth, as much of it as she was capable of perceiving.

  The portraits were as good as anything she’d ever done. She knew that without vanity, in spite of the difficult conditions and improvised materials. But she also knew that they were flawed—criticisms that came to her in Humilità’s voice, as if she were in the workshop again and Humilità was standing at her shoulder: the stiffness of Sofia’s bent neck in the first portrait, her not-quite-in-proportion left arm in the second. This sense of Humilità’s presence had visited Giulia often over the past days. She knew it was really only her own voice she heard, speaking her teacher’s wisdom back to her. But at Santa Marta she’d felt only the black void of Humilità’s absence. It comforted her now to feel something else—to imagine that she carried a little of her teacher with her as she ventured out into the world.

  Her hand went to her neck, where the canvas pouch hid beneath her clothes. Are you angry with me, Maestra, wherever you are, for running away? For abandoning the workshop you gave your life to? But it wasn’t your workshop any longer. And if I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have been able to save Passion blue.

  With an effort, Giulia pulled her mind away from the past.

  Flawed or not, the portraits were finished; she’d only harm them if she tinkered with them further. Now she needed to sign them—but how? Not as Girolamo; that felt too much like attributing her work to someone else. Yet her artist’s pride demanded that she mark them as her own. In the end she simply inscribed them with the letter G, the initial of both her true name and her false one.

  That night at supper, Giulia sat as usual on one of Sofia’s clothing chests. Sofia was gracefully arrayed nearby on a folding chair, while Bernardo lounged on the cot, his long legs in their fine boots carelessly extended. The smell of the wood burning in the brazier masked the scent of the sea, which was stronger than it had been yesterday.

  Sofia drew in her breath when Giulia put the portrait into her hands—the first one, without the smile. “This is beautiful,” she said. “Truly, Girolamo, it is exquisite.”

  “And you thought him not a flatterer,” Bernardo said dryly.

  “No, Bernardo, you cynical beast.” Sofia was usually tolerant of his occasional needling, but now she sounded almost angry. “That is not what I mean. Look.”

  She thrust the drawing toward him. For a moment Giulia thought he would refuse to take it. But then he leaned forward and twitched it from his mother’s fingers.

  “I knew you had ability.” Sofia turned to Giulia again. “But this is beyond anything I imagined.”

  “It’s a small enough repayment for your kindness, clarissima.” Giulia was pleased, and also relieved. She’d learned that people did not always enjoy seeing themselves through an artist’s eye.

  “One day, I wager, it will be you who’ll be paid, and far more than the price of a journey. Have you always had it? This sorcery in your hands?”

  “Not the skill, clarissima. That has come with time and teaching. But I’ve always been able to draw. One of the first things I remember is scribbling on a flagstone with a bit of chalk. I was punished for it after my mother died—the woman who fostered me thought it a waste of time. But I never stopped. I couldn’t stop, any more than I could stop breathing.”

  “I think perhaps I understand you better now.” Sofia tilted her head, embracing Giulia in her cool, amber gaze. “Why you would leave your home and travel so very far alone to a city where you are a stranger in order to apprentice yourself to a master you do not know. It is your gift that demands this of you, is it not? Your gift demands everything of you.”

  Giulia felt a prickling down her spine at how exactly Sofia had touched upon the truth. She was suddenly acutely aware of her disguise—her exposed legs, the binding at her chest, the loose hair around her face.

  “You have looked enough, my beast.” Sofia reached toward Bernardo, who all this time had been staring at the portrait. “Give it back to me.”

  His eyes came up, as if she’d startled him. For an instant he didn’t move. But then he placed the drawing in his mother’s hand and sat back, turning his head to look at Giulia, not haughtily or dismissively, but in a way she couldn’t read.

  “I see you’ve signed it,” Sofia said. “But only with an initial?”

  “It’s the way I’ve always done it, clarissima.”

  “G,” Sofia said in a musing tone. “Well. I shall treasure it.” Reaching for her writing desk, she slipped the portrait carefully inside. “Do you need another sleeping draft? I’ve nearly used up my stock of herbs, but there should be enough for one more night.”

  “No,” Giulia said, even though she knew it meant she wouldn’t sleep. “But thank you.”

  She rose carefully, and escaped into the dark.

  —

  They reached the coastal town of Mestre the next morning. There, Giulia knew, Sofia and her party would separate from the merchant train, leaving behind the cart, the horses, the tent poles and canvas, all of which had been rented for the journey. Bernardo, who’d seen to the unloading of the baggage, went off to hire boats, while Giulia and Sofia and Maria waited on the dock.

  It was another damp, overcast day. The tide was out, exposing mudflats and salt marshes, which gave off a sulfurous stench of brine and rot that stung the inside of Giulia’s nose. A mist lay across the ocean and the town—not thick enough to obscure objects close by, but completely obliterating the horizon. Huddled in her mantle against the chill, Giulia felt a keen disappointment. Sofia had told her how, on a clear day, it was possible to see Venice from the shore, rising like a mirage from the green waters of the lagoon. Now, Giulia thought, she might merely have been standing by a large lake, or on the banks of a tidal river.

  Bernardo returned. He’d found two boats, but they would have to wait for the tide. He’d purchased food and drink, and they made a meal of roast fowl and thin wine in the open air.

  They embarked at last, Sofia and Maria in the first boat, Bernardo and Giulia in the second, the baggage divided between them. Giulia had traveled in a boat before, on the night Ormanno had kidnapped her—but that had been a brief ride on the calm waters of a canal. This was the sea, its choppy swells much bigger than they appeared from land, tossing the boat sickeningly up and down. She clung to the side, her knuckles white, rigid with fear as Mestre vanished behind a wall of fog and the clean saltiness of the ocean replaced the stench of the marshes. She could see Sofia’s boat a little way ahead, but apart from that there was only the mist and the heaving water—not rich blue green as Sofia had described, but as dull and gray as lead.

  Without landmarks she had no way to judge their progress. How could the boatman tell where he was going? But at last she glimpsed something within the obscurity ahead: light, at first just a single point, but quickly joined by others. In the space of a sigh Venice appeared, melting through the mist, a line of close-packed buildings that seemed to rise directly from the waves, as if they had grown like trees from the bottom of the ocean.

  Giulia felt wonder thrill through her. It was as if the city had not existed before that moment, as if a spell or a wish had conjured it into being.

  “La Serenissima,” Bernardo said, startling her; he hadn’t spoken a word since they’d cast off. “The daughter of the sea. What do you know of her?”

  “Only a little,” Giulia said.

  “She is not simply a city, but the heart of a great republic.” Pride filled his voice. “She has never been conquered, not once in all her history—how many places can say the same? Her trade extends across the sea, her dominion across the land. There is no city in Europe to match her for wealth and beauty. You’ll see as we travel down the Grand Canal.”

  The boatman pulled steadily at his oars. They were so close now that Giulia could count the windows of the houses.

  “Look.” Bernardo pointed. “There is where we enter.”

&nb
sp; Ahead, Giulia saw a forest of poles rising from the ocean. Channel markers, she thought, remembering Ferraldi’s sketches. Sofia’s boat was already passing between them, into the canal beyond.

  The swells diminished, the boat slipping along more smoothly. Long brick buildings—warehouses?—rose on either side, their contours softened by the mist, interspersed with smaller structures crowded as close as teeth. There was water traffic here: barges, other rowboats, and slim, curve-prowed craft guided with a single rear-mounted oar by a boatman standing on a platform at the back. These too Giulia recognized from Ferraldi’s letters: gondolas.

  Ahead, where a great church towered above the buildings alongside it, she saw another waterway.

  “The Grand Canal,” Bernardo said. “It runs through the city from north to south, all the way to the Molo and the Doge’s Palace. It used to be a river—that’s why it bends so, in the shape of an S. But long ago our engineers dammed the source and turned it into a canal.”

  Giulia braced herself against the tipping of the boat as the boatman steered left. The Grand Canal was much wider than the canal they’d come from, and the traffic was heavier; the air was filled with curses and shouts of warning as craft drew too near one another.

  Ferraldi had written of the splendid palazzi that adorned the entire length of the Grand Canal, and sketched them, too, in all their astonishing variety. Now Giulia saw the reality, more amazing than words or drawings could convey: palazzo after palazzo, two and three and even four stories tall, their façades of patterned brick and colored marble embellished with columns and balconies, their immense windows framed in elaborate stonework, and their red-tile roofs crowned by a forest of trumpet-shaped chimney pots. Torches and lanterns burned in water-level entryways, gilding the mist. Many of the entryways had steps or landings extending out into the water, but others opened onto internal docks, so that the canal seemed part of the palazzo itself.

  Giulia had grown up in a great palace. But never in her life had she seen so many magnificent buildings together in one place, or imagined such a display of opulence and grandeur. She forgot she was cold, forgot she was queasy from the motion of the water. Bernardo, grown suddenly talkative, named the palazzi as they passed: Barbarigo, Foscari, Morosini, Gritti—the names, he said, of Venice’s great families; but she barely heard him. She had become a pair of eyes: painter’s eyes, entranced by mist and shadow, by form and color. Her hands burned with the desire to put brush to panel. In her mind, she could hear the singing of the paints she would use.