Passion Blue (25 page)

They worked together for the rest of the afternoon, grinding pigments and purifying walnut oil. Angela tried to chat, but Giulia replied with monosyllables, and after a while the other girl left her alone. Giulia knew Angela thought she was in pain, and she couldn’t meet the young nun’s sympathetic glances. It was a relief when the Vespers bell finally called her away.

Anasurymboriel came into Giulia’s dream that night, the tame flame that allowed her to caress it, that danced willingly on her palm. But when she closed her hands around it, the soft thrumming suddenly changed. It battered against her hold like a moth frantic to be free. She woke gasping, with a nightmarish feeling of constriction, as if she were the one being held against her will.

It was the first dream of the little spirit that had not been pleasant. She couldn’t guess what it might mean, or if it meant anything. She did not sleep again, lying open-eyed until the bell for Prime shattered the predawn silence.

By Friday night, when Giulia stole out to meet Ormanno in the orchard, her cheek was a vivid shade of purple.

“My poor girl!” he exclaimed, when she told him what Alessia had done. He opened his arms and she went into them, turning the uninjured side of her face against his shoulder, trying to lose herself in the familiar feel and smell of him.

“I’ve made the arrangements,” he said. “Next Friday night I’ll come for you, and we’ll shake the dust of Padua off our feet for good.”

“Friday? No sooner?”

“It’s not so long, my love.”

“No, I suppose not.”

But it
was
long. It was an eternity. Giulia wanted to be gone, she wanted the guilt and the regret to be behind her. She wanted to stop avoiding people’s eyes, fearing they would read deception on her face. She wanted to stop lying. She wanted to confess her sins and do penance, and finally be able to pray again. She wanted to start anew, to take the first steps into the life she had dreamed of since she was a little girl.

She felt the lump of the talisman, pushed hard against her chest by the pressure of Ormanno’s embrace. For the first time, she realized that she wanted to be free of it too.

“Are you happy, my orchard girl?”

“I will be, once we’re on our way.”

“There’s not much in Padua that I’ll miss. Though I do have one regret.”

“What is it?” She leaned against him. The September night held the chill of autumn, and his warmth was welcome.

“I wish I could have seen your Maestra’s altarpiece. The frame is done, and I don’t think it has an equal anywhere in the city. But I’m sure it’s nothing compared to the painting it will hold.”

“Yes. It will be a masterpiece.”

“You could show it to me, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“The altarpiece. We could go see it.”

“Yes, and we could also grow wings and fly over the walls.”

“Didn’t you say the workshop is on the north side of the convent, away from where everyone sleeps? And
the nuns don’t have to rise for prayers, so there’s no one in the halls at night anyway? You’ve been coming to me for weeks with no one the wiser. Don’t you think it would be fun?”

She pulled back so she could look at him. “You’re serious.”

He returned her gaze. “Why not?”

“
Why not
?” She pushed away from him, out of the circle of his arms. “Are you insane? Me sneaking out on my own is one thing, but you and I—if we were caught—”

“We’d be careful.”

“But what if we weren’t careful enough? You’re the one who told me about the penalties for men who corrupt nuns. Besides, the workshop door is locked at night. Even if there were no living soul in the whole of Santa Marta, we couldn’t get in.”

He let out his breath. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m sorry, Giulia. It was a bad idea.”

“How could you ask me that, Ormanno? How could you even think of such a thing?”

“Don’t be angry. I only thought it would be an adventure. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

They stood looking at each other. Somehow, their separation had increased; if Giulia stretched out her arm now, she would not be able to touch him. There was a pressure in her chest; something seemed to be rising between them, something that frightened her.

Ormanno’s expression changed. He raised his head and looked beyond her, toward the orchard.

“What—” she began, but he held up his hand. Quick and silent, he approached the trees. For a
moment he stood listening, his body tense. Then he turned and came back to her.

“I thought I heard something,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Twigs snapping. Maybe I imagined it.”

“Alessia.” Giulia felt cold.

“The girl who hurt your face? You think she followed you?”

Giulia hesitated, remembering Alessia’s malevolent whisper:
I’m going to see you’re thrown out…. It will happen sooner than you think
. But she’d been so careful. Besides, she was under Anasurymboriel’s protection.

“No. It must have been something else.”

“Well, even so, it’s probably best if I go,” Ormanno said. “Giulia—I’ll be two hours later than usual on Friday. There are some things I have to do before we leave. Come at one o’clock. No earlier—I don’t want you sitting by yourself in the dark. One o’clock. Promise me?”

“I promise.”

He took her hands. “Do you believe I love you?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised.

“Good.”

He pulled her toward him and kissed her lightly on the lips. Then he turned and scrambled over the breached wall. She heard the creak of the boat, the splash of the oars. Then silence.

She did not return to the dormitory right away. Instead, she sat down at the base of one of the fruit trees, amid the long grass that had gone dry and brittle with summer’s
end. She pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees, as she had done—so long ago, it seemed—in Palazzo Borromeo, when she went up to the attic to be alone. Clouds had closed over the face of the moon; the wall in front of her was a formless blur against the lighter expanse of the sky.

She could not shake off the pressure of the dark feeling that had risen in her as she and Ormanno stood looking at each other. She was still angry at him. His proposal—so strange, so outrageously unexpected—troubled her in a way that went beyond the thoughtlessness or the danger of it. The idea of him intruding into Humilità’s little kingdom of women made her queasy. He should not have asked. He never should have asked.

He’d been so inquisitive about the workshop. He’d asked so many questions, seemed so fascinated by everything she had told him. The natural curiosity of one artist about another, she’d assured herself—but she had never forgotten what he’d said about Humilità:
Your Maestra is a marvel not just for the paintings she makes, but that she makes them at all
. An exception to the rule that women could not paint. Was that the real reason for his interest—the fascination with something that should not be?

She thought of how he’d instantly rejected her proposal to join him in his workshop. When she begged him to think about it, he had promised he would—but there had been a pause before he answered. She remembered that now. A distinct pause, as if he’d said it just to soothe her. As if…as if he’d lied.

She had told herself she could change his mind.
But what if she couldn’t? What if she went with him, over the wall and out into the world, and he never let her paint?

She closed her eyes, remembering how it had felt to work on Angela’s Madonna and Child—to immerse herself in form and color, to weave magic with her brush. To think she might not have that, to think it might not be part of her life, was like something in her being torn apart.

She was shivering now. She didn’t want these thoughts. She didn’t want these questions. But she could not shut them out—and anyway, they were not really new, were they? They had come to her before. The other times, she’d banished them by force of will, or found some way to tell herself they did not mean what she thought they did.

This time, it was different. This time, she could not make them go away.

When she finally returned to the dormitory and climbed into bed—she could hear Alessia snoring, four beds down—she could not sleep. Miserably, she lay thinking and wondering, until, just before dawn, she remembered the astrolabe. She didn’t have to torture herself with questions. She could make a horary chart. She could get answers.

The clouds had departed during the night and the morning was clear and bright. Pretending to have an errand, she left the workshop just after the bell for Terce, when she knew the corridors and courtyards would be nearly empty. The astrolabe, some paper,
and a stick of charcoal were hidden in her sleeve. Her heart raced, and she thought of Maestro’s warning. Was she ready for an answer she did not want? But how, not knowing, could she follow Ormanno over the wall?

Her mother’s voice seemed to whisper in her ear:
The only person you can rely on is yourself
.

It was a long time since Giulia had thought of that. A long time, she realized, since she’d thought of her mother at all.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” she whispered.

In one of the deserted courtyards, she raised the astrolabe to the sun and murmured her question: “Will I be a painter in Ormanno’s workshop?” She took a sighting, then crouched down to transcribe the measurements, working quickly, trying not to think about what she was writing. Finished, she rolled up the paper, concealed it and the astrolabe again, and returned to the workshop.

There was a lot to be done that day, and she wasn’t able to snatch any free time until the evening, when Angela, Lucida, Domenica, and Benedicta departed to sing Vespers, leaving the
conversae
alone. She carried a candle over to the bench where she and Angela had their drawing lessons, and pulled the paper from her sleeve. For a moment she sat looking at it, bracing herself. Then she unrolled it.

She’d tried to close her mind to interpretation as she transcribed the symbols, but what she saw now was no surprise. The signs in the first house, the house of the questioner, were malign, as clear a “no”
as she had ever seen. The signs in the fifth house, the house of the question, were also negative—and they suggested not just that she would never be part of Ormanno’s workshop, but that there might never be a workshop at all. This had not occurred to her—that Ormanno might not get what he wanted either.

She felt a sinking at her core, as if she’d just learned she had a fatal illness.

She got to her feet, crumpling the horoscope in her fist, and crossed to the San Giustina commission. The altarpiece was not illuminated tonight—Humilità and Perpetua were in Humilità’s study, working on accounts. But the blue twilight of the court, and the candles and lamps burning elsewhere in the room, were enough to see by.

Over the weeks of August and early September Humilità had completed the scene at the foot of the Cross, and had nearly finished the thief at Christ’s right hand. The thief’s body was corded with agony, his mouth open in a cry of anguish. An angel hovered above his shoulder, with glorious wings of Passion blue. Passion blue shone around the Cross as well, in the cloak of the Virgin, the gown of Mary Magdalen, the garments of the crowd. Raised above them all on the Cross, Jesus was a monochrome of light and shadow, awaiting the moment when Humilità’s brush would layer His body and His tormented limbs with color, bringing to life a suffering so real that all who looked on it would share, for just a moment, a shadow of that holy pain.

It was a masterpiece. In the time to come, Giulia
thought, it would touch the minds and hearts of those who saw it, and they would wonder at it, and they would remember. The painting would become part of them; it would speak to them in Humilità’s voice. In her painting she would live on, down the years and perhaps even the centuries, speaking the beautiful truth of her art to all who listened.

This is what I want
. Giulia knew it, with utter clarity. This power. This passion. Could she tie her life to Ormanno’s, knowing that if she went with him, she might never have it?

In the autumn twilight, she felt as cold as winter. Ormanno was the gift of the talisman. He was her heart’s desire—the love, the home, the family she had dreamed of since she was a little girl. How could she think of turning away from that? From him? And what was the alternative—Santa Marta? The life Humilità had offered her? The life of an artist—maybe even of a Maestra—but still the life of a nun, the barren, loveless, childless, nameless life predicted by her horoscope.

But I would be painting
.

And all at once, by some strange turn of memory or perception, she stood in the sorcerer’s house again, the zodiac underfoot and the constellations overhead and the candles burning with flames that were not natural, and she heard the sorcerer say what he had told her as he placed the talisman in her hands:
Be very sure you know what your heart’s desire is, or you may find yourself surprised by what you receive
.

She felt everything inside her go still. She thought
of the horary chart she’d cast that hot afternoon in the workshop, the one that told her she already had her heart’s desire. She thought of her first dream of Anasurymboriel, which had come on the night Humilità made her an apprentice. She thought of how the dreams had changed after she visited Matteo Moretti’s workshop—she’d met Ormanno on the balcony that day, but it had also been the day Humilità spoke to her of finding a vocation in her art. Of how the dreams had changed again, becoming nightmares, after Ormanno asked her to leave with him.

She’d heard the spirit in her dreams. She’d sought the counsel of the stars. Had she completely mistaken what they were telling her?

The workshop’s door creaked. Uneven footsteps advanced across the room.

“Giulia?” It was Angela, returning from Vespers to accompany Giulia to supper, as she often did. “Oh. There you are.” She came round the scaffold, then stopped short. “Giulia, what’s wrong?”