Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) Page 3

  Numb, on legs that did not feel like her own, Giulia turned to obey. Nearly to the door, Domenica’s harsh voice reached after her.

  “She believed your gift was God-given. But I know that gifts can come from other sources, and that some have no purpose but to corrupt and to deceive. She should never have let you back into the workshop.”

  Deep emotion heaved beneath the words, like a fire raging under a stone. Giulia did not pause. But even after she was safe inside her cell, she could feel the heat of Domenica’s hatred, and hear the poison of her condemnation.

  CHAPTER 4

  MATTEO MORETTI

  The next morning, Giulia woke dreading the day ahead. As she put on her clothes and tidied her bed, she felt the tiny weight of the little pouch around her neck: the weight of secrets.

  She’d sworn never to give Passion blue to Humilità’s father. But Humilità had not forbidden her to give it to others. She was not bound to hold the secret for herself alone as Humilità had done—she could share it, if she chose.

  But that’s the key: choice. The Maestra gave it to me. Not to Domenica, not to Perpetua or Lucida or Angela or Benedicta—to me. If I pass it on, that should be my decision.

  It might have been different if Domenica had simply asked. Instead, she had commanded—and not simply that Giulia share the secret of Passion blue, but that she renounce all use of it. If she gave the formula to Domenica, she would never see Passion blue take shape beneath her own hands, its voice rising from the grinding stone. She would never learn what it was like to take it on her brush and lay it on a panel. She would never hear it singing—except perhaps at a distance, when Domenica used it.

  It was intolerable. What right had Domenica to make such demands? To impose such ultimatums? And the way she’d spoken of Humilità . . . As inflexible as Domenica was, as self-righteous and intolerant, she’d never shown anything but respect for Humilità, or deference to Humilità’s orders. Obviously, this had been pretense—and a skillful one, for she’d completely concealed her judgment until Humilità was gone and she needed to conceal it no longer.

  If so much guile and bitterness could hide behind Domenica’s controlled façade, could greed be hidden there as well? Domenica already had the gift she wanted most: She was Maestra now, which she would never have become had Humilità lived. But perhaps that was not enough for her. She’d claimed she wanted Passion blue for the sake of the workshop—but she would not be the first artist to covet the radiant color for herself. Or to act on that desire.

  If that’s so, she’s no better than a thief. As Ormanno was a thief. As the Maestra’s own father is a thief.

  Would she really do it? Would she really dismiss me from the workshop?

  Even to think it made Giulia feel ill. She could not remember a time when she hadn’t drawn. It was not something she’d been shown or taught, simply something she knew how to do, as instinctive as breathing. Yet until she came to Santa Marta, she had never thought of her sketching as anything but a private passion. The world was ruled by men. Women could become wives or nuns or servants or whores—but only a man could become a painter.

  Humilità had shown her a different truth. Convent walls were prison walls, but they enclosed a paradoxical freedom, for within them women must necessarily do all the things men did in the world outside. In Humilità’s workshop of painter nuns, the only one of its kind in all the world, Giulia had given herself to the fire that burned in her, opened herself to it and let it consume her utterly.

  She was that fire now. Painting was her heart, her soul. If it were taken away, there would be nothing left but ash.

  —

  Domenica ignored Giulia for the first part of the morning. But near noon, as Giulia was measuring a batch of yellow ochre into the little clay pots in which paints were stored, she stalked over to the grinding table and stood watching. In her nervousness Giulia lost her grip on one of the pots, which fell to the floor and smashed.

  “Clumsy girl,” Domenica said in a voice of ice.

  “I’m sorry, Maestra.” Giulia kept her eyes lowered. “I’ll clean it up at once.”

  “I can see from what’s on the slab that you’ve not ground the mixture nearly fine enough. Discard what you’ve prepared and begin again.”

  “Discard it?” To Giulia’s spirit-altered senses, the rasping song of the ochre sounded just as it should, with not the slightest off-note of impurity. “All of it?”

  “I despair of your future, Giulia, if you cannot comprehend simple verbal instructions. Let me know when you are finished.”

  Domenica turned away. The other painters, who had been watching, quickly went back to work. Giulia began to clean the grinding slab, anger burning dully behind her breastbone. I’m sorry, she told the ochre silently as she scraped it out of its pots and dumped it in the discard bucket, where the muddle of paint already there swallowed up its gentle voice. I’m sorry.

  The new batch of ochre passed muster. But the brushes Giulia cleaned that afternoon did not; and when she snatched a few free moments to take her drawing board into the courtyard, Domenica called her away almost at once, instructing her to dust the containers on the already dust-free supply shelves.

  “What did you do to annoy her so?” Angela asked that evening after Vespers, when she returned to help Giulia finish the day’s work.

  “What do I ever do?” Normally Giulia shared everything with Angela, but she had not yet told her friend about Humilità’s bequest. “I feel more like a servant than an apprentice.”

  “Well, it’s a bad time.” Angela pulled a worn-out bedsheet from the pile that Giulia was tearing up for rags. “None of us is ourself.”

  “Perhaps she’s free to be herself at last,” Giulia said bitterly. “Now that the Maestra’s not here.”

  “Think how difficult it must be for her, Giulia. She must prove that the workshop is still worthy of patronage under her leadership, but she’ll never be Maestra Humilità’s equal, and everyone knows it. It’s no coincidence that we haven’t had any major commissions in the past few months.”

  “You always think the best of people, Angela, even when they don’t deserve it.”

  Angela sighed. “Well, in three weeks you’ll be a vowed nun. That will make a difference. Oh, Giulia.” She clasped her hands, her brown eyes shining. “I can’t wait for your ceremony! We’ll truly be sisters then.”

  Giulia tore another strip of linen. She’d thought she had put away her doubts about becoming a nun a year ago, when she brought Humilità’s book of secrets back to Santa Marta. But Humilità was well then, and Giulia’s path had seemed clear, a smooth transition from apprentice to journeyman to master painter, eventually even to Maestra. Now the path that had seemed so wide and welcoming had darkened and turned in on itself. Giulia could no longer see with any certainty what lay ahead—except her final vows, each day a little closer. Each day a little more inevitable.

  “You’re nervous,” Angela said, perceptive as always. “Don’t worry; it’s natural. All I ever wanted was to vow my life to God, but on the day of my ceremony I could do nothing but weep. Then I put on my wedding dress and crown, and it was as if the Savior himself reached down from heaven and took my hand. All my doubts fell away. The ceremony, the feast . . . it was the most wonderful day of my life. It’ll be the same for you—you’ll see.”

  Giulia nodded, but only because Angela expected it. There would be no wedding dress or feast for her as there were for nuns of noble birth. Her father had been noble, but her mother was a commoner; and in Santa Marta, as in the outside world, her common blood was what defined her. Her vows would be made in Madre Magdalena’s office, in the presence of the abbess and a witness. She would put on her nun’s habit and veil, and go back to work.

  She felt a surge of dread. Even before Humilità’s death, the thought of her final vows had started to make her breathless. Now it was like a hand closing around her heart.

  “Giulia.” Angela put down the knife she was using to
nick the sheets to make them easier to tear. “We’ve been wondering. Well, Lucida and Perpetua and I have been wondering. Did the Maestra say anything to you about Passion blue before she died?”

  “No.” The lie was out before Giulia knew she meant to tell it.

  “It’s just that Domenica . . . Maestra Domenica . . . hasn’t mentioned it. And you were closest to Maestra Humilità of all of us.” Angela’s brows drew together in a frown. “Surely she would have wanted to pass it on.”

  “I think I have enough here.” Giulia gathered up the rags she’d made. “I’ll just put them away.”

  She took the rags to the rag basket, then got a broom and began to sweep. It had seemed easier to lie than to explain, but already she regretted it. Too late, though, to take it back.

  —

  In the middle of the next morning, one of the novices came looking for Giulia.

  “You’ve a visitor waiting for you in the parlor.”

  Giulia felt all the blood drain from her face. The Maestra’s father. It has to be.

  “It’s a mistake,” she said through dry lips. “I know no one in Padua. Tell whoever it is to go away.”

  “Nonsense,” Domenica said from across the room. “I will not tolerate discourtesy in my workshop—you will go, Giulia. At once.”

  I should have seemed eager, Giulia thought miserably, untying her apron. Then she would have forbidden me to stop working.

  She was dizzy as she left the workshop, her heart racing as if she were running instead of walking as slowly as she could, putting off the moment when she must see him. She knew it had been foolish to hope he had forgotten her; but she’d allowed herself to hope anyway, and now she felt that she might faint with dread.

  The visitors’ parlor was a huge chamber, with whitewashed walls and a flagstone floor. An iron grille ran down its center, dividing it in half. On the far side, a door stood open to the street, admitting the brightness of the sunny September morning. Here, in one of the few locations where the outside world was allowed to touch the sacred precincts of the convent, nuns and their visitors could exchange news, share food and drink, even clasp hands—though always with the grille between them, so they would never forget that they inhabited separate worlds.

  He stood beyond the grille, among the other visitors: Matteo Moretti, famed painter, chief of the Paduan artists’ guild, man of wealth and influence. Betrayer and thief: Humilità’s father.

  Giulia froze. With every part of herself, she wanted to turn and flee. But Matteo’s eyes had already found her. She knew that if she ran away, he would only come again.

  She forced herself to approach, halting a safe distance from the grille. It was impossible to breach those iron bars. Even so, she did not want to be within his reach.

  “So.” He looked her up and down, with his dark eyes that were so much like Humilità’s. She remembered him as a huge man, but he seemed even bigger now, as tall and broad as a bear in his velvet mantle and tunic of rich brocade. A cap trimmed with feathers rested on his mane of gray curls. “Here you are, the girl who stole my daughter from me.”

  “I?”

  “Except for you, she would never have known the truth. But you told her everything, did you not?”

  “Yes, I told her.” Anger at his hypocrisy overcame Giulia’s fear. “I told her how you paid Ormanno Trovatelli to beguile me and steal her book of secrets. I told her how he abducted me when I discovered his intent and brought me with him when he went to you to collect his pay. I told her how you imprisoned me in your attic when you saw the formula for Passion blue was ciphered, even though I swore I didn’t know the key.”

  “And how you managed to escape? And stole the book from under my very hand as I lay sleeping?”

  “Rescued it,” Giulia said. “She would have guessed. Whether I told her or not, she would have guessed it all.”

  “Say you so?” The words were icy cold. “Well, it hardly matters now, for she is dead. Do you know how many letters I’ve sent over the past year? How many times I tried to see her, only to be turned away? Even on her deathbed, even then, she would not relent. My only sight of her the whole of this long year past was in her coffin.”

  Giulia was silent.

  “Tell me, since I have no choice but to ask what a father should know of his own experience. Did she have a gentle death?”

  “No,” Giulia said, wanting to be cruel. “She suffered.”

  His jaw clenched. He turned away, fixing his eyes on the family group nearby, laughing and chatting through the grille with the elderly nun they had come to visit. Giulia remembered, suddenly, glimpsing him at Humilità’s funeral, surrounded by his sons and their wives and children. She’d thought she had seen tears on his cheeks.

  “Perhaps you think I did not love my daughter.” His voice was quiet. “In fact, I loved her dearly, more dearly than I love my sons—yes, I will admit it, for of all my children, she was most like me. Another man might have let her talent go to waste. But I trained her like a boy, like one of my own apprentices. And then, so she might follow her gift, I arranged for her to be taken into Santa Marta, where she could give her life to painting as no worldly woman ever could.”

  He turned toward Giulia again, a sudden motion that startled her, and took hold of the grille. She could see the paint under his nails, the charcoal stains on his fingers.

  “I gave her everything. Everything. All she was and all she became, she owed to me. Yet when I asked for Passion blue, she denied me. Again and again I asked, but always she refused. Was that the duty a daughter owes her father? To refuse the one thing I asked of her after all I’d done, a thing that would not even exist had I not opened the way for her to discover it? She left me no choice but to take matters into my own hands. Yet through it all I loved her, as any parent loves his disobedient child. Had she lived, we would have reconciled. Now . . . now we will never forgive each other, she and I.”

  His hands tightened on the bars, the knuckles whitening, as if he wanted to wrench the grille apart. In that gesture, even more than in his words, Giulia saw to the heart of the conflict between father and daughter: not just his greed for the fabulous color Humilità had invented, not just Humilità’s stubborn determination to keep her creation for herself, but his desire to rule her, her proud refusal to be ruled, Passion blue both the object and the symbol of their battle.

  “But I did not come to speak of this.” Matteo released the grille and stepped back, rubbing his palms together. “I have another matter in mind. I think you know what that is.”

  Giulia’s heart had begun to race. “No,” she said.

  “Come now. Let’s not pretend we do not understand each other. Did my daughter pass Passion blue to you before she died?”

  “No.” Giulia could not hold his gaze. She could feel the secret inside herself, and was terrified he would somehow perceive it. “She didn’t.”

  “Ah, but you see, I find that difficult to believe. You were her protégée. The one she hoped would succeed her. To whom else would she have given it?”

  “Perhaps she gave it to no one.”

  “My daughter was endowed with a full measure of womanly caprice, yet not so much, I think, that she would have taken Passion blue with her into death. No.” He shook his head. “She would have wanted it to live after her—for the sake of her pride, if nothing else. She passed it on, and you are the one she gave it to. Deny it as you wish; I know I am correct by the way you cannot look at me.”

  Giulia forced herself to raise her face to his. It was like walking against the wind. His eyes, unblinking beneath heavy brows, seemed to scour the inside of her skull. Was this what Humilità had confronted each time he demanded the secret? But Humilità had been like him. She would have found it easier to resist.

  “Truly, you are mistaken.” Giulia cursed herself for the quaver in her voice; but she was afraid of him, and she could not hide so many things at once. “She never gave me the secret. She never even spoke of it.”

&n
bsp; “That is your answer?”

  “I can give you no other.”

  He knew she was lying. She could see it in his face. She felt a terrible despair. He’d come here suspecting she had Passion blue, but he hadn’t known for sure. Now he did know. She’d kept the secret, but even so, she had failed Humilità’s trust.

  “Very well,” he said. “But we are not finished, you and I. Think on the answer you have given me today.” He aimed a paint-marked finger at her throat. “I will come and ask again.”

  “I won’t see you. I’ll talk to the novice mistress. I’ll remind her that you are no kin of mine, and it isn’t proper for you to visit me.”

  She sounded weak and foolish, like a child. He regarded her a moment, almost with amusement. Then, without haste, he turned and strolled toward the door, darkening it briefly as he passed into the white light of the sun.

  CHAPTER 5

  LETTERS FROM VENICE

  He cannot touch you inside these walls. Santa Marta will keep you safe.

  Giulia clung to Humilità’s words for the rest of the day. But sleep swept all assurances away, and she dreamed of the attic where Matteo had imprisoned her, pitch-dark and alive with menace. She woke with her blanket tangled around her legs and her pillow across her face, suffocating with dread.

  The next evening when Suor Margarita came to lock Giulia in her cell, she brought with her a cloth-wrapped package. “For you,” she said brusquely, thrusting it into Giulia’s hands. “A bequest from Maestra Humilità.”

  Another bequest? Unwrapping the cloth, Giulia found Humilità’s manuscript copy of Leon Battista Alberti’s Delle Pittura, a text on painting that Humilità had especially treasured, and a bundle of brushes with rosewood handles: Humilità’s own. She held them a moment, stroking the silky wood, then set them aside and picked up the last item, a fat packet of letters tied with cord. Accompanying these was a note in Humilità’s sickness-weakened hand: