Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Page 17

  “He said I must let my brush tell the truth,” Ferraldi said. “I fear I may have taken him too literally. Ah well.”

  He crossed to his desk. In contrast to the portrait, he was a study in monochrome: gray clothing, pale skin, silver hair, with only the brilliant blue green of his eyes for color.

  “What may I do for you, Girolamo?”

  “I wonder if I might ask you a favor, Maestro.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “There’s a painting competition that will be held on the last day of Carnival, sponsored by Archimedeo Contarini. I’d like to enter, with your permission.”

  “I’ve heard of that competition,” Ferraldi said. “An enormous purse, and open only to foreign painters—a nice insult to the many masters who have contributed to Venice’s glory. But though you are not Venetian, Girolamo, you are also not a painter.”

  “The rules exclude only members of the Venetian artists’ guild. They say nothing about anyone else.”

  “A loophole, eh?” A smile lifted the corners of Ferraldi’s mouth. “Do you really think Contarini will honor it?”

  “I don’t know, Maestro. But I’d like to try.”

  “You’ve ambition, Girolamo. And nerve. But have you time? Today is the fourteenth of January, and Giovedi Grasso falls on March third this year. Your oils will barely be dry.”

  “I think I can do it, Maestro.”

  “Well, I fear you are pursuing phantoms, but you don’t need my permission to make a painting of your own. Just be sure it does not interfere with your other work.”

  “It won’t, Maestro, I promise. Thank you.”

  “One more moment, Girolamo, if you please. I have a matter to discuss with you.”

  Giulia felt a pulse of apprehension.

  “You did fine work today. For a boy with so little training, you have extraordinary natural skill.”

  “Thank you, Maestro.”

  “You have proved yourself these past months. You are not only skillful, but diligent and obedient. You do all you are asked and more—I would not have thought to bid you to organize the storeroom, but you undertook it on your own. And you are eager always to learn, something I wish could be said of others in my charge. Stefano will be leaving soon, for his master painting is near complete. All in all, I think it is time I offered you a true apprenticeship. With all the privileges it entails, including a wage.”

  Joy flooded Giulia, pure and absolute, with not a shred of conflict in it. “Thank you, Maestro. Thank you! You won’t regret it.”

  “I don’t expect to.” Ferraldi smiled. “I’ll have a contract drawn up. You’ll get the same wage as Marin. And once Stefano is gone, you may move upstairs.”

  “Maestro . . . if it’s acceptable . . . I’d rather stay where I am.”

  “But why? Surely you’d prefer the light and air of the upper floor.”

  Giulia felt herself starting to flush. “I like being on my own. I like being private.”

  “Yes, you do, don’t you?” His vivid gaze enclosed her. She forced herself to meet it, like someone with nothing to hide. “Well, suit yourself. But you’ll take meals with us.”

  “Thank you, Maestro.”

  “And if by some astonishing chance you should win that competition”—Ferraldi pointed a finger at Giulia’s chest—“you are still bound to me and to your contract. Understood?”

  “Yes, Maestro.”

  “Good. You may tell Lauro I’ve given you the rest of the afternoon off. I imagine you’ll want to begin planning your painting.”

  —

  In the concealment of her bed curtain, Giulia pulled the waxed canvas pouch from beneath her clothes and extracted the recipe for Passion blue.

  She had known immediately that she would use it. In her mind she heard its ice-on-crystal voice . . . what would it be like to hear it in truth, rising not from the completed paint, as she’d always experienced it before, but from the grinding stone, as her own hands brought it into being? The moment she imagined it, there was nothing she wanted more. There was surely no risk. Matteo, Domenica, Madre Magdalena—all were in Padua and would never know. She even had the money she needed: Bernardo’s ducat, which would buy a quantity of Passion blue’s costly main ingredient.

  She had memorized the recipe at Santa Marta. Now she read it through again, her eyes lingering on the familiar loops and slashes of Humilità’s hand. To follow this formula was, in some sense, to bring Humilità back to life. She wanted to be certain she did it right.

  She returned the recipe to the pouch. In a corner of the big room, she’d chipped away loose mortar and made a hiding place behind a brick for the money she earned from portrait selling. Bernardo’s ducat flashed in the light of her candle as she drew it out. She placed it and ten scudi in her belt pouch, then set out for the Rialto and the color seller’s shop.

  “Lapis lazuli!” the color seller exclaimed when she told him what she needed. “Your master is making ultramarine blue, is he?”

  “He is,” Giulia lied.

  “Well, he’s in luck. I’ve some fine samples on hand. I also have a quantity prepared and ground, if he’d prefer it ready-made. Of course, the cost is greater. But if he needs it quickly—”

  “No,” Giulia said. “Just the stones, if you please.”

  “Now, as to price. Your master is an honored customer, but as I’m sure you know, lapis is among the rarest of materials, for it can only be mined in Persia. Your master will understand, therefore . . .” The color seller paused delicately. “Why I cannot put this on account.”

  “Of course, signor.” Giulia withdrew the golden ducat from her belt pouch and held it up. “He has given me this to give to you.” She pulled back her hand as the color seller, his eyes lighting up, reached for the gleaming coin. “He also wishes me to say that he knows well the value and quality of lapis lazuli. And that he is pleased with the business you and he have done together these past years, and hopes to be pleased with it equally today.”

  “Of course, of course. He may rely on me.”

  Giulia put the ducat in his hand. While she had no doubt that Ferraldi knew the value of lapis lazuli, she herself had only the vaguest idea. But the color seller had been honest in the past, and she could only trust that he would be honest this time also.

  A ducat, it turned out, bought four lapis lazuli nuggets, each about the size of the first knuckle of Giulia’s thumb. The color seller first tried to give her three; taking a chance, she demanded the ducat back, threatening to go to one of his rivals a few streets over, causing him reluctantly to produce the fourth. To his credit, they were of excellent quality: very blue, and less adulterated with other minerals than some of the stones she’d seen in Humilità’s workshop.

  With her remaining money she bought pine resin, gum mastic, beeswax, linseed oil, and lye, as well as the four other ingredients called for in Humilità’s recipe. Heading back to Ferraldi’s with the bundle under her mantle, she felt more vulnerable than she had with the ducat in her belt. The ducat was just a ducat, but the bundle was Passion blue.

  She sat that night at Ferraldi’s supper table on the third floor with Ferraldi and the apprentices. Prepared by Beata the maid, it was a better meal than those she’d bought from nearby taverns to eat in her storeroom hideaway.

  Even so, she would have preferred to dine alone. Stefano, she could tell, was annoyed by her promotion; she had the feeling that she was in for a rough few days until he satisfied himself that she’d been put in her place. Alvise, of course, was furious—to him this must seem like confirmation of all his fears. Only Marin seemed unconcerned, wolfing down his food with scarcely a breath between bites—and Ferraldi, who had a pile of drawings by his plate and was in a world of his own.

  Supper over, Giulia descended to the darkened workshop, where she took a covered mortar from a chest and brought it down to the storeroom. She lit her candle and set to work pounding the nuggets of lapis lazuli into coarse powder in the mortar. Returning to
the workshop, she began to grind the mineral fine on a marble grinding slab, using the short, rounded hand tool called a muller. With the braziers extinguished for the night, the workshop was frigid. She could see her breath, pluming out into the little circle of light cast by her candle. But the work warmed her—hard, monotonous labor, eased by all the color grinding she’d done at Santa Marta, which had padded her palms with calluses and made her arms and shoulders as strong as if she really were a boy. The muller crunched and squeaked on the slab, and she thought someone might come down from upstairs to investigate, but no one did.

  Her shoulders were on fire when she woke in the morning. The day that followed was as tedious as she’d feared, between Stefano finding inconsequential things for her to do and Alvise fixing her with hateful looks. Not until evening did she manage a minute for herself.

  Last night’s grinding had yielded a good half-pipkin of lapis powder. Following the recipe’s proportions, Giulia melted pine resin, gum mastic, and beeswax over her brazier in a beaker, and strained the liquid through coarse linen into a bowl. Holding her breath—for once the lapis was added, it could not be taken out, and if she’d made an error, all her effort and expense would be for nothing—she poured in the precious blue powder, tilting the bowl this way and that to blend it.

  The mixture thickened rapidly. When it was cool enough to handle, she coated her hands with linseed oil and began to knead it as if it were bread. The result was a waxy blue lump the size of her two clenched fists. She covered the bowl and hid it in her sleeping area.

  For the next four nights she warmed and kneaded the lapis mixture, thoroughly integrating the mineral with the other materials. At last, on Sunday, she was ready to extract the color, a lengthy process that would require the entire day.

  She had the house to herself, for even Ferraldi was away, at work on another portrait commission. She’d completed one extraction and was preparing a second when Bernardo arrived.

  “I can’t go out today,” she told him. “I am making paint.”

  “Your master has you working on a Sunday?”

  “It’s not for him, it’s for me. You were right about taking chances, Bernardo. I’ve decided to enter the competition. Or try anyway.”

  “Ah. Well, good. I’m glad to hear it.”

  She’d thought he would be more pleased. She felt the rise of the same sharp, foolish disappointment that had gripped her last week when he’d left her to walk home alone. Swallowing it down, she returned to the brazier, where she had just finished heating a porringer of lye.

  “Are your ribs mended?” she asked as she prepared to pour the porringer’s contents over the lapis mixture in its bowl—carefully, for the caustic lye would burn if it touched her skin.

  “Oh,” he said dismissively. “I’ve already forgotten about that. What is that you’re pouring? It smells foul.”

  “I’m making ultramarine blue from lapis lazuli.” She saw no harm in telling him this; it was only a small part of the secret. “Lapis is full of impurities, so you can’t just mix the ground stone with oil or egg to make paint, as you can with other pigments. You have to combine it with wax and other materials, and work it in a bath of lye to pull up the color.”

  He followed as she carried the bowl outside. On the pavement by the canal, she had set out eight clear glass beakers, one of which was already full of dark-blue liquid, the hue of a sapphire in shadow. Kneeling, she set down the bowl and began to push and prod the lump of lapis with a pair of wooden dowels.

  “This extracts the blue.” The sun was shining, warm on her shoulders even though it was January; she squinted against the flashes it called from the liquid lye. “I’ll do this eight times, and each time the color will be paler. Then I’ll mix the second beaker with the first and the fourth with the third and so on, to get four grades of blue.”

  Bernardo crouched down for a closer look. “How do you get the color out of the lye?”

  “It’s heavier than the lye, so it will settle to the bottom of the beakers. Then I’ll pour off the lye, wash the pigment in several waters, dry it, and regrind it. Then it will be ready to make into paint.”

  “It sounds a terrible labor. Could you not buy it ready-made?”

  “No. Not prepared this way, at any rate. It’s a labor, true, but the quality is worth it.”

  “What will you paint with your blue?”

  “A Muse of song.” Inspired by her San Sebastiano sketch, Giulia had thought first of Apollo with his lyre, or Orpheus casting his fatal look back into the darkness. But it seemed too likely that other painters might choose those subjects—and anyway, drawing and painting were not alike, and she feared that to paint a man’s body would show her inexperience too clearly. She’d turned instead to other myths, delving into her memory of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of the most precious of the books in Maestro Bruni’s library. “She’ll be holding her instrument but looking up, startled, interrupted in her playing by the whisper of a greater music: the music of the spheres.”

  “Well. If Contarini is hoping for something unusual, that should certainly suit his taste.”

  He rose and began to pace, back and forth along the fondamenta. Giulia finished kneading and poured the second extract into its beaker—less intense than the first, the color of a sapphire pierced by light—and returned to the storeroom to prepare more lye.

  Bernardo was still pacing when she came out again. His restlessness was like a fingernail scraping against slate; almost, she wished he would go.

  “My marriage agreement will be finalized soon,” he said abruptly.

  Giulia had nearly forgotten about this. Since she’d given him his portrait, he had not once mentioned his betrothal. She felt her heart contract, a reaction that, she knew, was as foolish as her earlier disappointment.

  “We had a letter two weeks ago. Her father and brother want the wedding to take place in September. They are traveling from Vicenza to discuss the arrangements.”

  If he’d said “funeral” instead of “wedding,” he could not have sounded grimmer. He’d stopped pacing and was standing at the fondamenta’s edge, staring down at the sun-sparked water of the rio.

  “Of course, there are still matters to be decided. Where we are to live, for instance. She—my betrothed—doesn’t wish to leave her family. Her father has offered to take me into his business in Vicenza.”

  “You’ll be leaving Venice?”

  It popped out before Giulia could catch it back. Her face was suddenly on fire—not so much at the words as at the completely inappropriate tone of dismay in which she’d spoken them. But Bernardo, who now was as still as he’d earlier been restless, did not seem to notice.

  “Of course not. I’ve no interest in the banking trade. My inheritance is in Venice—it’s absurd to expect me to manage it from a distance. Nor will I desert my mother.” He sighed. “But as far as my father-in-law is concerned, he has already made the greatest possible concession by giving permission for his daughter to wed a courtesan’s bastard, and now my mother and I must do our part by yielding to all his demands. Never mind that his present wife was also a courtesan—and never famous, as my mother was. Never mind that marrying his daughter off to me gives him an excuse to provide a dowry that is only just short of an insult. But if I must do this thing”—his stance was no longer merely still, but rigid—“I will not also give up my city.”

  Giulia saw, now, how things fit together: the marriage he did not want, his dark mood last week, and his bleak words about change and chances. Even his bruised ribs—for in his frustration, perhaps he had not merely happened upon but sought out a violent confrontation with a stranger.

  “Bernardo, if you don’t want this marriage, why did you agree to it?”

  “It’s what my mother wants. For me to have an ordinary life. A wife. Children. Security. Everything she lacked for so long.”

  “Does she know that you don’t want it?”

  “She believes I will come to want it. And who’s to sa
y she’s wrong?” He shook his head. “It’s too late for second thoughts, in any case.”

  “But if the agreement isn’t signed—”

  “It would be an insult to withdraw now. She’s a pleasant enough girl, my betrothed. Pretty enough too. I shall have nothing to complain of.”

  The third extract was finished. Giulia put down her dowels and poured the lye, the color of a cloudless summer sky at noon, into its beaker. All the while words pressed at her lips, words she knew it might be wiser not to say.

  She rose to her feet, the bowl of lapis mixture in both hands. Bernardo stood against the flooding sunlight, dark in his dark clothes, gazing down at the water, where reflections fragmented, reassembled, broke apart again. Something rose in her, a strange melding of sympathy and anger. She ached for his distress, but even more she burned at his passive surrender to it.

  “You told me once,” she said, the words coming easier because she did not have to look him in the face, “that you couldn’t ask your mother to release you to go to Padua, to the university, because you were afraid you might hate her if she refused. I think it’s the same now with this marriage. You’re doing what you think she wants, at the cost of what you want. But have you ever thought that in the end it may be that that will bring you to hate her? All the choices you are making to place her wishes above your own?”

  He turned, and in his expression she saw the affront she had expected.

  “You know nothing about it,” he said. “You’ve had hard luck in your life, I’ll grant you, but you’ve never been responsible for someone else’s welfare.”

  Giulia thought of Sofia, amber eyed and cool. “I don’t think she needs you to be responsible for her.”

  “Who are you to judge? You traveled with her for a week. I’ve lived with her my whole life. She could have abandoned me when I was born. Many in her profession do, for what patron wants his lover’s brat underfoot? But she never did. There were nights, before she became famous, when she ate nothing so that I might have a meal. She gave her favors to a scholar in exchange for my education—for years she serviced that old man, all so I might learn to read Latin and Greek and figure with numbers. The wealth she has built, the property, the house in Cannaregio—it is all for me. I owe her everything, do you understand? And now it’s my turn. I can never repay her for all she has done for me, all she has given up, but I can at least try. I can at least do what I can to make her happy.”