Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Read online

  He turned away at last, back to the vista beyond the window. “Will you try again?”

  “I don’t know.” The words were heavy in her mouth. “Your mother says I may stay here for a little while. I . . . I hope you don’t mind.”

  A pause. Then: “No.”

  One word, quietly spoken. Giulia felt something loosen inside her.

  “Did you ever finish your competition painting?”

  “I did. It’s still at Maestro Ferraldi’s.” Giulia thought of the painting, of her sketches and the small amount of blue pigment she had not used. “I’d like to have it back.”

  “My mother can send one of the servants to fetch it.”

  “That would be kind.” Giulia sighed. “I’m not sorry I painted it, even if it can’t be part of the competition now.”

  “Why not? You’ve time. It’s only midafternoon.”

  Giulia shook her head. “Please don’t make fun of me.”

  “I am not making fun of you. The painting is finished, and it is by your hand. Why should you not enter it?”

  “My disguise is lost.”

  “The rules don’t exclude women.”

  “They don’t include them either, which is as good as the same thing.”

  “Now you sound like my mother.”

  “I’d never be allowed to present it.” Giulia felt disbelief; were they really discussing this? “No one would even believe I’d painted it.”

  “I’ll vouch for you.”

  She turned on him. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  He met her gaze. The corners of his lips lifted in what was almost a smile. “To see the scandal it will cause.”

  “That’s truly your reason?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it again. “It is part of the reason.”

  She stared at him. It was impossible. Or was it? She felt the idea taking hold of her, like the forbidden thing to which one cannot help but yield.

  “I don’t know if I can go back there. To Maestro Ferraldi’s.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  It’s mad. Absurd. With complete clarity, Giulia saw all the reasons she must fail: Ferraldi would turn her away. Palazzo Contarini Nuova would deny her entry. Even if she were allowed in, what could possibly come of attempting to present her work as if it—as if she—were worthy of consideration alongside the other painters gathered there? Professional painters. Male painters. At best she’d be treated as a curiosity. At worst she’d be ridiculed and censured. Bernardo might really get the scandal he wished for.

  And yet . . . isn’t it at least possible that if my work draws Giovanni Bellini’s eye, it will speak for itself?

  “You know they may not even admit me,” she said.

  “Then that,” Bernardo said, “will be that.”

  Giulia felt as if she were balanced on a ledge, with air on both sides. She could fall either way.

  Do I really have anything to lose?

  “The competition begins at dusk,” she said. “If we are to go, we must go now.”

  Bernardo smiled—a real smile, quick and fierce. “You’ll need a mantle. I know where my mother keeps them.”

  He went into Sofia’s bedchamber and returned with a cloak of grass-green wool, its hood lined with ermine. It was a garment any noblewoman might have envied, and Giulia felt like an imposter as she put it on.

  Her breath came quick with fear as they left the sunny sitting room. But as on the night she had run away from Santa Marta, she could no more have turned back than she could have stopped her heart from beating.

  CHAPTER 24

  A SOUND OF BELLS

  Getting into the gondola was a challenge, for Giulia had to manage four layers of clothing—chemise, underdress, overdress, and mantle. She felt a sharp nostalgia for the ease of hose and boots, for a boy’s long, unencumbered stride. Bernardo, already on the pilot’s platform, made no move to assist her.

  It was the last day of celebration before the prayer and fasting of Lent, and the city had gone mad. The Grand Canal teemed with gondolas ferrying Carnival revelers of all classes. On the quays of the Rialto, masked men and women danced to the music of horns and drums; and at the highest point of the Rialto Bridge, a gang of boys leaned down to toss objects at the boats below: eggs, Giulia realized as Bernardo steered toward the bridge’s pilings, filled with scented water.

  They reached the Campo San Lio, where a whole pig was being roasted and the entire neighborhood had turned out to celebrate. In the Salizzada San Lio, the shops were closed but the taverns were jammed, the noise of merriment spilling from open doors as Giulia and Bernardo passed. The Calle del Fruttariol, however, was deserted. They made their way to its end, Giulia holding her skirts off the grimy paving.

  “Go on,” Bernardo said when she did not raise her hand at once to knock at Ferraldi’s door.

  She looked up at the plaque of the Lion of San Marco. How many times had she seen it over the past months, going in and out on Ferraldi’s business and her own? Yet in this moment it seemed completely unfamiliar. What had seemed possible in Sofia’s sitting room suddenly felt as unlikely as flying to the moon. The thought of coming face-to-face with Ferraldi made her feel sick.

  She might have stepped away. She might have turned to Bernardo and said, “I’ve changed my mind.” But before she could do either, he leaned past her and knocked, three hard blows with the side of his fist.

  Almost at once there were footsteps. The door opened to reveal the skinny form of Alvise. Expressions chased rapidly across his face when he saw Giulia: puzzlement, suspicion, shocked recognition, hardening into the familiar hostility.

  “You’ve got a nerve,” he said. “Coming back here after what happened.”

  “She has come for her possessions.” The pronoun left Bernardo’s lips without the slightest awkwardness. “Let her in.”

  Alvise scowled. “None of that’s here anymore. We got rid of it.”

  Giulia found her voice. “You won’t have found my drawings or my painting. It’s those I’ve come for.”

  Something flickered in Alvise’s face. He hesitated, then stepped back and let the door swing wide.

  Giulia’s sleeping area had been dismantled. The mattress, the makeshift curtain, her brazier—all were gone. Rolls of canvas were bundled haphazardly into the place where they had been—the disarray that Ferraldi seemed naturally to create around himself, already beginning to undo the order Giulia had made.

  She crossed to the stacked planks behind which she’d made a hiding place for the things she had wanted to keep safe. Her sketches were there, neatly tied with cord, and the blue pigment. But the painting—

  “It isn’t here,” she said, breathless. “My painting. It isn’t here.”

  “Are you certain this is where you left it?” Bernardo asked.

  “Yes. Yes. I had it out last Saturday, the day Signor Moretti came, but I put it back.”

  She tossed Sofia’s mantle aside and knelt, careless of the rich fabric of her borrowed gown, pushing at the heavy bags. Bernardo came to help. It was no use. The painting was gone.

  “Someone’s taken it.” Giulia stood. Her heart was pounding. The warehouse was empty: Alvise had vanished. She thought of the flicker she’d seen in his face just before he let them in. “That little snake. He must have seen me hide it.”

  “Who, Alvise? You think it was him?”

  “Oh saints—what if he’s done something to it?”

  She lifted her skirts and ran to the stairs. Bernardo followed. The workshop was deserted—Alvise must have fled to the third floor. Giulia rounded the landing, ready to rush after him. But then something brushed the edge of her awareness—faint, almost imperceptible, like the touch of cobwebs.

  She checked, holding her breath. And there it was, trembling ever so faintly at the limits of her perception: a sound of bells.

  She felt her heart stop.

  “What?” Bernardo said from behind her. “What is it?”

  Ignoring him,
she advanced into the workshop. There she paused, closing her eyes and stilling her thoughts, reaching out with the strange sixth sense that once had terrified her but now seemed as natural as touch or taste. Step by step, her eyes open just enough to see where she was going, she followed the color song, her gown dragging unheeded in the sawdust and other debris that littered the floor.

  She found herself at the far wall, by the door to Ferraldi’s study. There, as in Humilità’s workshop, the apprentices had a separate area in which to store their materials and sketches and the smocks they wore while working. Giulia had never been given a space, even after Ferraldi had made her an apprentice. But Alvise, Marin, and Stefano each had his own shelf.

  Wherever her painting was, it wasn’t on these shelves. That had been obvious even from a distance. Yet she could hear the glass-clear singing of her blue, faint as a memory but, to her altered senses, utterly distinct. Not knowing what she expected to find, she began to rummage among the jumble of objects on Alvise’s shelf, lifting papers, knocking brushes to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Bernardo had followed her.

  She opened her mouth to reply. And then she saw it: a smear of blue on the rolled-up sleeve of a painting smock. She would have recognized its pure intensity even if it had had no voice. But the smock was not Alvise’s.

  She drew in her breath, disbelieving.

  A door creaked. She turned. Ferraldi stood in the entrance to his study, wearing his painting clothes, his silver hair bound back with a cord.

  “Ah,” he said. In his face she saw none of the confusion Alvise had shown; he recognized her at once. “I had not thought ever to see you again.”

  “Signor Moretti let me go.”

  “Let you go?”

  “He wanted Passion blue. I gave it to him. He had no more use for me after that.”

  “What about Santa Marta?”

  “They know nothing. He was never sent to bring me back—he came because you wrote to him and mentioned me, or who I made you think I was, and he guessed the truth.”

  “It was my letter that brought him? My letter of condolence?”

  “Yes.”

  Ferraldi dropped his eyes. “Ah,” he said again.

  “I’m sorry I deceived you.” The words came in a rush. “But the new Maestra didn’t want me after my Maestra died, and there was no one else to teach me. She left me your letters—Maestra Humilità did; that’s how I knew to come to you. But a girl can’t be a painter’s apprentice—I had to disguise myself or you wouldn’t have taken me. It was never my intent to bring trouble to your workshop, I swear it. I’d never have stolen your secrets, no matter what Signor Moretti said.”

  Ferraldi did not reply at once. “Well. It is done now.” He surveyed her gown, her gold-laced hair, Bernardo standing by her. “You seem to have found a comfortable refuge.”

  Giulia flushed. “I’ve been fortunate.”

  “Why have you come here?”

  “There are things I left behind, my sketches and my competition painting. They were hidden downstairs. But my painting has been stolen.”

  “Stolen?” Ferraldi looked skeptical.

  “I thought it was Alvise. But—” Giulia turned to pull the smock off its shelf, holding up the sleeve with its telltale smudge of blue. “This is my blue. I’d know it anywhere. It wasn’t quite dry, he must not have realized that when he took it—Stefano, I mean. This is Stefano’s smock.”

  “Stefano? Why would Stefano take your painting?”

  “To enter it in the Contarini competition.”

  The three of them turned at the sound of a new voice. Alvise stood just inside the doorway.

  “What?” All at once Giulia could not get her breath. “But he has his own painting.”

  “Yes, but it’s rubbish, isn’t it? And yours is better. Any fool could see it, even Stefano. He wants that five hundred ducats, so he took your painting to pass off as his.”

  “But . . . but he can’t do that! It is mine! It has my signature!”

  “He painted over your name and put his own name on top.”

  Giulia couldn’t speak. She could hardly credit that Stefano, with his overweening vanity, could be capable of perceiving the superiority of someone else’s work. But she remembered how he’d come to watch her, how he’d frowned when she mocked his angel orchestra. Alvise had no reason to tell the truth, yet she found that she believed him.

  “This is a serious accusation, Alvise.” Ferraldi’s voice held the end-of-patience tone he reserved for his nephew. “Have you grounds for making it, or is it merely something you suppose?”

  “I caught him doing it. The night after they took that one away.” Alvise pointed at Giulia, as he might have to an animal in a menagerie. “I know you think I’m an idiot, Uncle. But I saw what I saw. When I asked how he thought he’d get away with it, he said you and Lauro were the only other ones who knew who’d really painted it, but neither of you were going to be at the competition, and even if you were you wouldn’t say anything because then he’d tell everyone that the workshop had harbored a runaway convent girl in man’s disguise.”

  “God’s death,” Ferraldi swore. “And you are only informing me of this now?”

  “He said he’d beat me senseless every day for a month if I told. I wasn’t going to say anything, especially not to that one.” Alvise’s eyes flicked to Giulia’s face. “But you’ve already figured most of it out, haven’t you? Stefano is a shit, Uncle. He manages things so you and Lauro don’t notice, but Marin will tell you the same if you ask him, and I’ll bet that one will too. I know he’ll hurt me, whatever you decide to do. But it’ll be worth it if he gets what he deserves.”

  “He cannot do this. He cannot.” All Giulia’s fear and uncertainty were gone, swallowed by a high, clear rage. She turned to Bernardo. “You said you’d vouch for me before Contarini and the others. Will you still?”

  Bernardo’s gaze was steady. “I will.”

  “What do you plan to do, storm Palazzo Contarini Nuova?” Ferraldi said. “You have neither a painting nor an invitation—you’ll be turned away, and not kindly. I will deal with Stefano myself when he returns. I will get you your painting back.”

  “No! It is my work. It is my hand, my eye, my colors that I mixed myself. It is . . .” Giulia heard Humilità’s voice: You are the sum of your work. “It is the sum of me. I know I am merely a girl. I know it will cause a scandal. But I have to stop him. I cannot let him take what I have made and claim it’s his. I will not!”

  The words rang through the quiet room. Ferraldi regarded her. She met his eyes, challenging that vivid gaze.

  “You will not gain admittance on your own,” Ferraldi said. “But I have an invitation—which, fortunately for you, I did not discard.”

  Giulia caught her breath. “You will help me?”

  “Against my better judgment—yes, I will.”

  “Thank you, Maestro. I swear I will say nothing about you or my time here.”

  “If I were a gambler, I’d wager you won’t get far enough to say anything at all.”

  He returned to his study. Giulia could hear him rummaging among his papers. He emerged after several moments with his mantle over his arm and the invitation rolled up in his hand.

  They headed for the stairs. When Alvise would have followed, Ferraldi gestured him back.

  “You’ll remain here, Alvise. The city will be wild tonight. Someone needs to watch the house.”

  “But, Uncle—”

  “Do as I say.” Then, in a kinder tone: “You did right to speak up. I’ll make sure Stefano doesn’t touch you.”

  “It won’t matter,” Alvise muttered. “He’ll get me anyway.”

  They left him standing at the head of the stairs. Giulia looked back once; he scowled when he saw her turn, but not quickly enough to hide the misery in his face.

  CHAPTER 25

  GAMMA ME FECIT

  On the Grand Canal, Bernardo turned the gondola north, toward the R
ialto Bridge.

  The afternoon was waning. In the west, the falling sun had set the sky on fire. Lanterns swung from gondola prows and shone from felze enclosures, and all along the quays bonfires had been kindled, their smoke hazing the dimming air. In the black water, a mirror-world of light stirred and shimmered, mocking the solidity of the world above.

  The bridge was a bright necklace across the throat of the canal, with torches for jewels. Giulia barely saw it as they passed beneath, was barely aware of Ferraldi beside her or of Bernardo on the gondolier’s platform, deftly manipulating the oar. She willed the gondola to move faster, her hands closed on the edge of the seat, her fingernails digging into the wood.

  “There it is, ahead,” Bernardo said. “The one that looks as if it’s on fire.”

  Giulia saw it at once, climbing three stories above the canal’s right bank. Every window blazed, as if an entire city’s worth of candles had been set alight inside. An army of torches flared along the water floor; more torches lit the water of the canal itself, raised up on long stakes. In the gathering dusk, it really did look as if Palazzo Contarini Nuova were burning—both the high house above and the reflection-house below.

  Mooring poles bristled before the water steps, already crowded with gondolas. As Bernardo steered toward them, Giulia gazed up at the palazzo’s vast façade, each story faced in a different kind of marble and densely embellished with balconied arcades and decorative stonework. Am I really here—I, Giulia Borromeo, nobleman’s bastard, convent runaway, preparing to steal into the palace of one of the richest men in the richest city in the world? Like so much else in these past days—these past months—it seemed to be happening to someone else, someone larger and braver and more determined, while the real Giulia, small and frightened, crouched in a corner and looked on.

  Bernardo found an empty mooring post. They crossed from boat to boat to reach the palazzo’s broad landing, Giulia holding up her skirts so she would not stumble.

  “If anyone asks, I’ll say you are my niece and nephew,” Ferraldi said as they approached the liveried servant who was inspecting invitations. Giulia nodded. Her heart beat high and fast. She could feel the heat of all those torches licking at her skin.