Passion Blue (6 page)

The room had the same whitewashed walls and
flagstone floor as the first chamber, and was bare of furnishing except for two wooden chests pushed against one wall and a long table by the window. Behind the table sat an elderly woman, dressed in a white wimple, a black veil, and a wide-sleeved white gown. Over the gown she wore a white scapular sewn with a black cross. Another cross shone at her throat, this one of heavy gold. She was as still as an image in an illuminated manuscript, and her gaze was like the gaze of a queen: calm, commanding, unreadable.

Giulia stepped forward. Her heart was beating too fast, but the panic that had overwhelmed her in the antechamber had receded. She could still feel it, ready to rise up again if she wasn’t careful—but for now, she was in control.

“My lady.” She curtsied deeply.

“We don’t use such earthly titles here.” The old woman’s voice was deep and slow. She had a proud, aristocratic face, with skin like creased linen. On her left hand she wore a broad gold wedding ring. On the first finger of her right gleamed a signet set with a dark gemstone. “I am Santa Marta’s abbess. You may call me Madre Damiana.”

“Yes, Madre Damiana.”

“I understand there has been flooding in Vicenza. Hopefully it did not delay you too greatly.”

“Only a day, Madre Damiana.” Giulia was surprised. She’d imagined the nuns living in a world no bigger than their walls, unaware of what went on outside. “The waters had mostly receded by the time
we passed through.”

“God be thanked for that,” Madre Damiana said. “We are a family at Santa Marta, Giulia. As the mother of that family, it is my duty to greet each of my daughters as she arrives, to tell her what the family expects of her, and to learn what she expects of the family. Tell me, why have you come to us?”

“I…” Giulia hesitated, confused. “I was sent. By Countess Marcelina Borromeo.”

“Yes, child, I know it is the Countess’s will that you be here.” Breaking her stillness, the abbess picked up the Countess’s letter, where it lay on top of the ledger she must have been reading before Giulia entered. “I do not approve of forced vocations, though it’s impossible to prevent them. Illegitimate daughters, troublesome sisters, unmarriageable nieces, women who are dishonored or crippled or demented—all are pushed through the convent door by fathers and brothers and uncles who do not want the trouble of their care, and care not what trouble they may give to others. Such women bring bitterness and anguish to a community that should include only willing souls.” She set the letter aside. “That is why I ask this question of every novice who enters here. Do you truly wish to give your life to God?”

Her eyes were as sharp, as unblinking, as a hawk’s. For one wild second, Giulia considered telling the truth. But what good would it do? Santa Marta had already accepted her dowry. The abbess would never set her free. And what was the punishment for being
an unwilling nun? Less than five minutes in Madre Damiana’s presence was enough to make Giulia sure that she did not want to find out.

She looked down at the floor so her face would not betray her. “I do.”

A pause. Then, unexpectedly, Madre Damiana sighed.

“So be it, child. Now, to what the family of Santa Marta expects of you. Prayer and work are our duties here, and those who work give no less honor to God than those who pray. I understand you have skill with a needle.”

“I was a seamstress in Count Borromeo’s household.”

“You’ll work in the sewing room, then. I will send word to Suor Columba. For all else, the novice mistress will have charge of you. Her name is Suor Margarita. She will see that you learn our ways.”

“Yes, Madre Damiana.”

“And I have scheduled your vestition ceremony for this afternoon, so you may become one of us as soon as possible.”

“My…vestition ceremony?”

“The ceremony of your transition into the novitiate. The moment in which you abandon the profane world of men and embrace the sacred space within these walls. You will make your novice vows and exchange your secular garments for the clothing of our community.”

“I have to ... take off my clothes?”

“How else would you be able to put on your novice
habit, child? The clothes you wear now will be given to the poor.”

“I had a box—”

“That too.”

“But—please, Madre Damiana, there were some things that were my mother’s, all I have of her—if I could just keep—”

“No, no, child.” The abbess shook her head. “When we enter this house we must renounce the temptations of the world. We must all become the same, rich or poor, noble or commoner. It is a rule I enforce for my novices, and…recommend…for my nuns.”

Giulia stared fiercely at the edge of the table. She had known this might happen, and had taken what steps she could against it. Even so, she’d allowed herself to hope she could keep everything.

“Is there anything else you wish to ask?”

“No, Madre Damiana.”

“Then I will escort you to the novice wing.”

The abbess led Giulia through a maze of corridors. She walked the way she spoke, slowly and with firm dignity, her tall crook-necked staff tapping in counterpoint to her steps. The nuns they met—young and old, pretty and plain, a few with white veils, most with black—bowed and crossed themselves as she approached. Giulia thought again that she was like a queen, serenely in command of all within her realm.

The novice wing lay on the other side of another
garden court, this one a simple rectangle of clipped grass with a sundial in the middle. There was a schoolroom, a chapel, and a dormitory with a double row of beds and a fireplace at one end. Several windows, their shutters drawn against the heat, faced out onto the court.

“This is yours,” the abbess said, stopping before a bed beneath one of the windows. A pile of clothing and a blanket lay folded on the mattress. “There is your nun’s trousseau chest that you brought with you. Make up the bed with your own sheets, then wait here for Suor Margarita.” She dipped her staff toward the pile of clothes. “That is your novice habit. It is not to be put on before the ceremony.”

“Yes, Madre Damiana.”

“Fear not, child. What is strange to you now will soon become familiar. Our walls are high, but there’s freedom to be found here, if you are willing to seek it.”

Never
, Giulia thought, turning her face away so Madre Damiana would not see what was in her eyes.

“You are welcome among us, Giulia Borromeo, by God’s grace.” Madre Damiana reached out her right hand, the one with the signet ring, and placed it briefly against Giulia’s cheek. “My door is open to you always, as it is to every sister of this community.”

She left the dormitory, back straight, staff tapping.

Giulia waited a few minutes, until she was sure the abbess was gone. Then she reached under her gown and pulled out a sheaf of drawings, the ones she’d brought with her from Milan. She’d removed them this morning from her mother’s cedar box and
secured them against her body with her belt. From her belt-pouch, she took the talisman, the little pouch with her horoscope fragment, and her sketchbook, full of the sketches she had done on the journey.

She looked around. Where could she hide everything? Inside the mattress? At the bottom of the Countess’s trousseau chest? But there might be snoops among the novices, and for all she knew the nuns prodded the mattresses and searched the chests on a regular basis. Maybe a loose floor stone? She scuffed about, but the flagstones were solid. The whitewashed plaster walls were equally unhelpful—no holes, no cracks.

That left only one possibility. She crossed to the fireplace, swept clean of ashes for the summer. It was large enough for her to crouch inside. She reached up, feeling with her hands, trying to dislodge as little soot as possible. After a moment she found something, a spot where the brick had crumbled, making a kind of shelf that was large enough to hold the talisman, her horoscope fragment, and the sketchbook. She hated to be parted from the talisman, even briefly, but there was no other way.

The hiding place would be good only for as long as summer lasted.
But that doesn’t matter
, she told herself firmly.
Come winter, I’ll be gone
.

She ducked out of the fireplace, cleaning her sooty hands on the inside of her skirt. That left the sheaf of drawings from Milan. She undid some of the stitching at the head of her mattress, knotting the severed threads so the hole wouldn’t open farther, and stuffed
them inside. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best she could manage.

She took the sheets from the trousseau chest and made her bed as the abbess had ordered. She got the sandals out as well, placing them on top of the pile of novice clothing. She tried not to think of the cedar box with her mother’s things inside it, given away or thrown away, gone forever, like the topaz necklace. She had nothing of her mother now, except her memories and the drawings hidden in the mattress.

“Oh Mama,” she whispered.

Her throat ached with unshed tears. But she was afraid to cry, afraid that if she yielded, even a little, the awful panic would return and swallow her whole.

Since there was nothing else to do, she sat down on the bed to wait. The hateful walls pressed in. Silence sang inside her ears.

It’s not for always. Soon I will be free
.

“Giulia. Giulia Borromeo.”

An unfamiliar voice was calling Giulia’s name. She bolted upright in sudden fear. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was. But then she saw the white-robed nun, standing at the foot of the bed, and realized that, without meaning to, she had fallen asleep.

“Come, girl. Get up, get up at once.” The nun was a slender, middle-aged woman who might have been pretty if not for her tight-pursed mouth and the frown lines between her eyes. She stood pillar-straight, her black veil falling in symmetrical folds, her hands tucked into her wide sleeves. “We do not sleep during
the day at Santa Marta, indeed we do not. The night is for sleeping and the day is for working, and we don’t confuse the two.”

“I’m sorry.” Giulia stood.

“What on Earth have you done to your novice clothes? Pick them up, pick them up at once!” Somehow, the garments had fallen to the floor. Giulia bent to gather them. “No, no, no! Not like that, all wadded up! Fold them properly. When we make order with our hands, our minds follow, and an ordered mind is a door closed on the devil. I’m Suor Margarita, the novice-mistress,” the nun continued. “I’ll have charge of you for the next year and a half, until you take your final vows. We will get on well, you and I, if you remember that a novice’s first duty is to learn, and her second is to obey.”

“Yes, Suor,” Giulia murmured. She had finished folding the clothes, and held them, with the sandals, clutched to her chest.

“Good, good. Now, here is what you may expect at your ceremony. Madre Damiana will ask you your name, which you will tell her. Then she will ask why you have come to Santa Marta, to which you will reply, ‘For God’s grace and my salvation.’”

Suor Margarita pursed her lips and waited.

“For God’s grace and my salvation,” Giulia repeated. She felt numb, as if she hadn’t woken.

“Next she will ask you several questions, which you will answer honestly, in fear of God Who sees and hears all. Then you will be clothed and sworn. After that, you’ll have time to get acquainted with the other
girls. There’s an hour of recreation before bedtime. Novices must keep the Little Silence during the day—that is, they may not speak unless spoken to—and all of us keep the Great Silence at night, when speech is entirely forbidden. But during the recreation hour, conversation is allowed.”

“Yes, Suor. Suor, may I ask a question?”

“You may.”

“Will I have to cut my hair?”

The nun’s brows shot up again. “I can see you suffer from the sin of vanity, Giulia Borromeo. We shall have to do something about that, indeed we shall.”

“I’m sorry, Suor, it’s not that, it’s just…I’d like to know what to expect.”

“A novice who aspires to perfect obedience need not trouble herself with expectations,” Suor Margarita said, but then seemed to relent. “No, at Santa Marta we do not cut our novices’ hair. Not until they take final vows and receive their religious names.”

Well, that’s something, anyway
. Giulia had thought of this while she was waiting, a horrible possibility she hadn’t considered before—for what man would want a shorn-headed wife?

“Ready now? Good, good. Come along.”

Suor Margarita led the way briskly out of the novice wing and along the torchlit corridors. They arrived at last in a paved courtyard with a fountain at its center. Beyond the fountain, a little chapel was tucked against the wall, its door flung open. The sun had begun to set, drowning the court in shadow; against the dimness,
the chapel’s candle-shimmering interior glowed gold.

Suor Margarita entered the chapel without pausing, but Giulia halted on the threshold, astonished yet again by unexpected beauty. The chapel was like a jewel box, with a glossy marble floor, walls paneled in polished wood, and a gleaming gilded ceiling. A crucifix hung above an altar draped in gold-embroidered velvet; nearby, a pedestal supported a life-sized wooden sculpture of Madonna and Child, dressed in real garments of silk and cloth-of-gold. The fat white candles burning in silver candelabra made the whole space slippery with light.

“Come, girl.”

Suor Margarita gripped Giulia’s arm, urging her toward the altar, where Madre Damiana stood waiting, her crooked staff in her hand.

“Welcome, postulant.” The candlelight was kind to the abbess’s hawkish features. “Set down what you carry.”

Giulia laid the novice clothing by her feet.

“Before God, postulant, declare your name.”

“Giulia Borromeo.” It came out as a whisper.

“Before God, why have you come to this house of prayer and contemplation?”

Because I was forced to it
. “For…for God’s grace and my salvation.”

“Before God, are you free of bond, debt, or obligation to another?”