Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (11 page)

Asleep in the cart, Giulia dreamed. Santa Marta had found her. Domenica’s face loomed over her, distorted with rage; she felt Domenica’s hands, tearing at her clothing. She tried to resist, for she knew Domenica meant to claw through not just her garments, but her skin and bone, to plunge her fingers into Giulia’s heart and rip free the secret of Passion blue—

And then Giulia was awake, and for an instant dream and reality blurred, for there really
were
hands on her and faces above her, and she was utterly bewildered; but then she remembered where she was, and she saw that the faces were the brothers’ faces, the men who had let her ride in their cart, and the whites of their eyes were glinting in the moonlight, for it was full night now, and one of them was holding her down while the other was pawing at her doublet—

She began to struggle. But the younger brother had her hands over her head, gripped fast by the wrists, and as she tried to whip her body to the side, the driver, the one who had offered her the ride, planted a knee across her thighs, immobilizing her.

“Help!” she shouted. “Help!”

The driver laughed. “Shout away, boy, there’s no one to hear.”

He’d slit her tunic so he could get at her doublet. His fingers closed on the knot of the purse sewn into the inside. He yanked at the doublet’s laces, wrenching them loose. She heard a ripping sound, felt the purse tear free.

“There.” He held it up, shaking it so it clinked. “I knew there was more where that silver came from.”

He tossed the purse aside, then leaned over her, his weight crushing her thighs, his breath foul.

“Got any more on you?” She turned her face away; he seized her chin, jerked it back. “We’ll strip you to find out, so if you don’t want to be walking to Venice naked, you’d better tell us.”

“No,” she gasped. Her arms were stretched so high over her head she could barely breathe. “I don’t have any more.”

“Strip it is then.” His hands went to her hose, fumbling at the ties that attached them to her doublet. Panic burst inside her; she screamed, unable to help herself. The driver laughed again.

“Screams like a girl, don’t he?” Then suddenly he paused. “Wait a moment. Wait . . . just . . . one . . . moment.”

His hand moved down her belly. She writhed, trying pointlessly to pull away. His fingers slid between her legs, closed hard on the tender flesh there. She gasped, every part of
her desperate to escape the violation of it. He began to laugh, really laugh this time, great chortling peals of mirth.

“Oh, so that’s the story, is it? We’ve caught ourselves a different fish than we thought, Santello. Not some soft, stupid painter boy at all but a girl. A real girl.” His free hand went to Giulia’s chest, probing. “Yes indeed, there’s tits under there, they’re bound up tight but I can feel ’em. We’re going to have us a good time tonight, and no mistake!” His fingers dug brutally between her legs. She cried out. “See, Santello? She likes it!”

He bent forward, taking his weight off her thighs. He was grinning, the moonlight glinting off his teeth. Santello, the silent brother, was breathing hard through his mouth. Giulia could see his face upside down: his wet lips, his avid eyes. She felt his grip on her wrists slacken as the driver thrust his hand down the neck of her shirt and took hold of the binding around her breasts.

In a moment of complete clarity, she saw that she had one chance. There would not be another.

She whipped her legs up, twisting her body as violently as she could. Her arms came free. She bolted upright, lunging at the driver with clawed hands. Her nails raked his cheeks; he bellowed in surprise and pain, rearing back as she scrambled toward the end of the cart. One of them grabbed her foot. She kicked out and the too-large boot slid off. Then she was falling, tumbling off the cart, landing on the ground with a thump that knocked the breath out of her. Gasping, she scrambled to her feet and ran.

“She’s blinded me!” Behind her, she heard the driver shouting. “The bitch blinded me! Go after her, Santello, you idiot, go after her and get her back!”

Then all she could hear was her own panting, her own uneven footsteps pounding against the earth. She ran and ran, falling now and then, clambering to her feet and running on. At last she fell and could not rise. Her last thought before consciousness slipped away was to hope that the brothers, when they found her, would leave her alive.

—

She woke to cold. Opening her eyes, she saw an infinity of gray. Her first thought was that she’d lost her sight, but then she realized she was lying on her back, looking up at an overcast sky.

For a moment she could not recall where she was or why. Then memory returned in a terrible rush. She gasped, sitting up, her hands flying to her hose. They were ripped at the knees but otherwise whole, still tied firmly to her doublet.

They didn’t catch me. I got away.

She felt a huge relief, but only for a moment.

Where am I? How far did I run?

She’d come to rest in a meadow. There was tall grass all around, brown and dry. Some distance away, blurred by mist, she could see a fence, and beyond it a dark mass of trees.

She climbed carefully to her feet. She could feel the aches and bruises of her flight. The cut she’d gotten on the wall of Santa Marta, still wrapped in its dirty bandage, was hot and throbbing. She’d lost her cap, her tunic was slit all the way down the front, and she had only one boot. Her money was gone. And her bundle, the precious bundle with her artwork and the Alberti manuscript and Humilità’s rosewood brushes—that was gone too, left behind in the brothers’ cart.

I’ve lost everything.
She felt a dreamlike disbelief.
I’ve got nothing but the clothes on my back.

How had things gone so wrong? She remembered her rash confidence of yesterday. What a fool she’d been. Angela had predicted this—predicted it so exactly that now that it had come to pass, it did not seem real.

She was shivering, her teeth chattering, as cold as death. She couldn’t stay in this meadow. She had to move on—find a road, find a farm or a village, discover where she was. Beg for something to eat—for she was hungry, terribly hungry, the hollow pain of it drilling through her. And then what? Turn her face to Venice again. Pick up the pieces of her plan and resume her journey.

But I’ve no work to show Ferraldi now. I’ve no way to earn money, for I have no charcoal or paper or coins to buy them. And my clothes are in shreds, and my hand is getting worse . . . and I don’t even have a knife to defend myself, because it was in the boot I lost . . .

Hopelessness overwhelmed her, buckling her knees and dragging her down again onto the damp ground.

She had no idea how long she sat, her hands loose, her head hanging. Her mind was clouded, as if the drifting mist had seeped inside her. But at last she became aware that she was thinking about turning back—back to Padua, back to Santa Marta, where the high brick walls would imprison her forever, but also promised warmth and shelter and no rough men to abuse her. Where the outside world was held away—the huge and terrifying world in which she was a speck, a mote, unknown and unregarded by anyone but herself.

It was like a blow to the face, shocking her back to clarity. Of course she could not go back. She knew what waited for her at Santa Marta. She’d made her choice; for good or ill, it had
brought her here. She could sit in this meadow and wait to die, or she could get up and continue. But she could not go back.

One thing at a time. I’ll do one thing at a time, and see where it takes me
.

She dragged off her remaining boot, hissing as her hose ripped away from her heel, where burst blisters had pasted the fabric to her skin. Miraculously, the cloth on her bootless foot was whole. With her teeth she tore the hem of her mantle, ripping two long strips from the bottom to wrap around her feet and a narrower strip to use as a belt to hold her tunic together. She removed her doublet and shirt to rewrap the band around her breasts, then tied up her hose more loosely than before, letting them sag at the knees. The shortened mantle she draped over her shoulders.

That’s one thing done. What next?

The fence and the trees seemed as good a direction to choose as any. She began to walk, the dry grass rustling with her passage. The bindings on her feet felt lumpy and uneven, but cushioned her steps well enough, and the motion warmed her.

The fence was made of woven willow boughs, higher than her head. She followed it till she found a stile that let her cross to the other side. In the wood beyond, the trees were going gold with autumn, the ground beneath them knotted with roots. The mist was thicker here, enclosing her in a damp, white world through which the trunks loomed like phantoms.

The sound of water led her to a stream frothing over mossy rocks. She crouched down to drink and to bathe her hand. The cut was inflamed, the flesh swollen and hot to the touch. Since she could do nothing else, she wrapped it up again and moved on.

The day was darkening toward dusk by the time she came out of the trees. Before her lay another meadow, the grass scythed to stubble and dotted with hay ricks. Nearby was a farmhouse; she could smell the smoke rising from its chimney. Mist lay across the scene, lending everything a misleading semblance of softness.

She could hardly think of anything now but her hunger. She plunged into the meadow, the stubble sharp under her sore feet. A track began at the meadow’s edge, straggling toward the house. Its shutters were all drawn, but she could see the glint of candlelight through the cracks.

She knocked. After a moment she heard someone approaching.

“Who’s there?”

“I’m a traveler,” Giulia called. “I’ve been robbed by bandits. I need help.”

“And if I open the door, you’ll help yourself.” The man’s voice was hoarse. He spoke Veneto, as everyone in this part of the world did, but with an accent different from that of Padua. “We know that trick round these parts.”

“It’s no trick. Please, I just want something to eat. A crust, anything you can spare.”

“There’s nothing for you here. Get you gone.”

“Can you at least tell me where I am?”

The only answer was his footsteps, heading away. Giulia hit the door with her good hand. Silence.

Beyond the muddy pigsty at the side of the house she found a well, and near it several ancient apple trees. All the apples had been harvested; but, scrabbling on the ground in the deepening dusk, she scavenged a few windfalls, mushy and spoiled smelling but edible. She slaked her thirst at the well, then returned to the meadow, devouring the apples as she
went. The black sky showed through rents in the mist, shimmering with stars.

She made a nest for herself in the side of one of the hay ricks and curled up in its springy, sweet-smelling softness, warm for the first time since she’d left Santa Marta. She thought perhaps she should pray as she was accustomed to doing before sleep, but no words would come. At last she simply crossed herself.

God preserve me.

Sleep sucked her down like quicksand.

—

She woke at first light. She lay a moment, feeling the ache of her abused body and the pain of her hunger, her wounded hand pulsing with heat. Yet, strangely, she felt better. She had faced her fear and forced herself to move on. If she could do it once, she could do it again—and again, and again, as many times as necessary until she reached Venice.

She climbed from the warmth of the hay. The farmhouse was still closed up tight; she could see no sign of life except for the pigs rooting in their sty and a few chickens scratching in the dirt. She drank again from the well, then, her teeth chattering from the coldness of the water and the chill of early morning, turned toward the sun, just tipping up over the horizon.
East,
she thought.
To Venice.

The air warmed a little as the sun rose. The landscape was as flat as a tabletop, a patchwork of fields and vineyards and orchards, broken by occasional stands of uncultivated trees. Giulia followed meandering tracks where she could and tramped across the fields where she could not, her feet catching on stubble or sinking into raw earth, pushing through hedgerows and jumping drainage ditches.

Flocks of blackbirds, gleaning the leavings of the harvest, rose like ebony curtains at her approach; and now and then she spotted cows, grazing in autumn-hued meadows. Otherwise, she saw no living soul. Except when she’d traveled to Santa Marta a year and a half ago, she’d never been outside city walls. She had never imagined the world could be so wide or so empty of people, or that the sky could be so huge, a vast blue helmet clapped down upon the Earth.

Sometime after noon she came upon a family tending a field of cabbages. She called to them, begging for something to eat. They were suspicious, like the farmer, but more charitable. The wife came forward to offer the heel of a loaf. Giulia crouched where she was to gulp it down, aware that she was tearing at the bread like an animal but too ravenous to care. The wife watched.

“You’re a foreigner,” she said when Giulia had finished. Her accent was similar to that of the farmer, her face so weathered Giulia could not guess her age.

“I’m from Padua. I was set upon by bandits. I escaped, but now I don’t know where I am.”

“Near the town of Mestrino.”

Giulia shook her head; the name meant nothing to her. “Is there a road anywhere near?”

“North.” The woman pointed. “The Vicenza road.”

“Vicenza?” Giulia said, dismayed. Vicenza lay north of Padua, but also west. How had she gotten so far off course? Had the brothers lied about traveling east?

The woman nodded. “It isn’t far.”

Giulia thanked her and moved on, charting her course as best she could by the path of the sun. She was aware that her pace was slowing—she’d never walked so much in her life, and pain flared in her clumsily bound feet at every step. At another
farmhouse she asked directions again; the farmwife pointed her on and gave her a handful of small green pears to take with her.

The sun had set and the stars were beginning to show by the time she came upon the road. She paused among the trees that bordered it, steadying herself against a trunk. Her exhaustion was like a weight of stone. A little distance away she could see a camp, five or six carts with several tents pitched alongside and mules and horses staked out to graze. Men moved about the space. There was a fire; she smelled roasting meat.