Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (36 page)

“When?”

“I don’t know exactly. One day I looked, and there it was. I never thought—I never dreamed—that anything would come of it.”

“Then perhaps we owe Matteo Moretti a debt of thanks.”

He kissed her again, less urgently than before but all the sweeter for that. When he pulled away, his face was grave.

“Understand, Giulia, I can promise you nothing. Not now. I must go to Padua, and it may be years before I can return.”

“I understand.” She had not expected promises. She had not expected even so much as this.

“But I will return, be certain of it. Venice is my home. One day I will come back for good.”

It
was
a promise of a sort—if only of the possibility of a different promise. She looked into his shadowed face, into his glinting eyes.

“I can promise nothing either, Bernardo,” she said. “I don’t know yet what I will do—even what I
can
do, after tonight. But I do know—” She caught her breath. Something surged in her, like the fireworks exploding over the Piazza San Marco, a pure, hot radiance that lit up everything inside her. “I do know that I will paint.”

“Yes,” Bernardo said, as if it were completely to be expected.

“And I will do more . . . I will do more than simply use a brush. I will
be
a painter. As my profession.” In her mind she heard Ferraldi’s voice:
The world will change. That
was what she must hope.
That
was what she must believe. “Maestro Bellini told me it was impossible, but I will prove him wrong. I don’t know yet how I’ll accomplish it. I don’t know what I’ll
have to do or where I may have to go. I only know that I will be a painter, and I will do anything,
everything,
to make that so.”

He watched her. “Even disguise yourself again?”

“If I must.”

A silence. Then he nodded. “But you will have a home. And if you leave it, you can return. As I will.”

“Yes.”

Not a promise. The possibility of a promise.

“Come.” He stepped away. The cold night air rushed into the space between them, but his hand was still folded around hers, warm and firm. “Let’s go in and see my mother.”

“Wait! My painting.”

She stooped to the gondola to retrieve it. He bent with her, for he would not let her go. Hand in hand, they crossed to the door, where the servant who had been drowsing in the passage held a candle to light their way.

As she passed inside, Giulia looked back, her eyes rising to the distant, circling stars, fully visible tonight in a sky that was icy-clear. The words of her horoscope fragment returned to her: the prophecy that had dogged her life. But now, for the very first time, she understood it differently. It barred her from family and children. It denied her name. But it did not forbid her to love, or to be loved in return.

CHAPTER 27

REBIRTH

Giulia woke from dreamless sleep to gray light and the sound of church bells.

Cocooned in the comfort of feather quilts, she lay looking up at the ceiling of the cabinet-bed where she’d slept on her first night in Venice, the events of the day before taking shape in her mind like ships emerging from fog. Almost, it seemed a dream—a long, complicated dream of many parts.

Bernardo.
The warmth that unfolded in her was no dream, nor the shiver of delight that ran through her, transporting her back to last night: his body against hers, his arms so tight around her she could hardly breathe.
I think I fell in love with you tonight.
She closed her eyes, hearing it again.
The girl who was a boy . . .

He’d held her hand all the way into the house, all along the pòrtego, releasing her only as they reached the fan of fire glow that spread from the open door of Sofia’s sitting room. When they’d entered, they had been separate. From her chair by the fire, Sofia had smiled in welcome, enclosing them in her tawny gaze. Giulia sensed that she knew exactly what had just happened, outside on the landing.

Bernardo pulled up a chair for Giulia and seated himself on the hearth. Giulia sat silent as he told the story of the evening, while Sofia listened and exclaimed.

“It will be the talk of the city!” Sofia said when he had finished. “One of the contestants at Contarini’s splendid event exposed as a fraud by a mere girl, who then had the audacity to demand a place among the men! And her accomplice, the son of a famous whore!” She laughed, a ripple of delighted amusement. “Oh, it is delicious!”

“It’s certainly not what Contarini hoped,” Bernardo said with satisfaction.

“You are famous now, Giulia. Or perhaps notorious would be a fitter word.”

“I take no delight in that,” Giulia said, a little stiffly.

“Ah, Giulia, I am sorry. You must excuse the pleasure such scandals give my son and me.” Sofia’s smile became mischievous. “But you might take a
little
delight. Notoriety has its benefits. I’ll wager you could get patronage from this, if you wished it.”

This had not occurred to Giulia. “Do you really think so?”

“The lovely girl painter whose beautiful blue caught the eye of Giovanni Bellini himself?” Sofia gestured to the Muse, propped against Giulia’s chair. “Venice loves novelty, the more shocking the better. If you are careful and clever, you could
turn this to your advantage.” Her eyes gleamed. “I can advise you, if you wish.”

“Mother.” Bernardo shifted on the hearth. “There’s something I wish to ask you.”

“Indeed?” Sofia turned to him. “And what might that be?”

“I have offered—that is, I would like to offer Giulia a home here, with us. Not a temporary refuge, but a true home that she will not have to leave. The benefit won’t be to her alone. She can be a companion to you while I’m gone.”

“And to you?” Sofia looked into her son’s upturned face. “What will she be to you?”

“A friend,” he said, his eyes sliding away from hers. “And one day, perhaps, something more.”

“I see.” Sofia turned her amber regard on Giulia. “What do you say, Giulia? Is this what you wish? To live with me?”

“Yes, clarissima, if you’d allow it.”

“Consider well. This is not an ordinary house. For one who does not delight in notoriety, the household of a courtesan might not be the wisest choice of residence.”

“You know everything I’ve done, and you don’t condemn me for it. You know all I want to do, and you don’t condemn me for that either. And there is freedom here.”

“A kind of freedom, yes. But I wonder if it is the kind you seek.”

“I seek only the freedom not to be judged. Never again to be told I cannot paint. Clarissima, you have been so kind to me. You had no reason at all to help me and yet you did, and I’m already in your debt more than I can ever repay. You know my history—you know I have nothing. What Bernardo is asking is too much—I know that. But I would like more than anything to call your house my home. If you consent, I swear
that I will never take advantage of your generosity. I swear I’ll find a way to pay you back.”

“Then it is settled. This shall be your home, for as long as you wish it.” Sofia held out her hands. “Come. Kiss me to seal the bargain.”

“You see?” Bernardo was smiling as Giulia settled back into her chair. “I told you she would welcome you.”

“My presumptuous beast.” Sofia looked at him with affection. “One day you’ll presume too much, and then what will you do?”

“Persuade you it was your own idea.”

Sofia laughed. “Go now, Bernardo. I would like a word with Giulia alone.”

Bernardo departed, with a kiss for his mother and a lingering look for Giulia. She could not help turning to watch him out of sight. He glanced back when he reached the door, and their eyes met. Then he was gone.

Giulia turned back to the fire, and to Sofia’s knowing gaze.

“There is something I must ask you, Giulia. Is there an understanding between you and my son?”

“No, clarissima. That is . . . he has promised me nothing. But we . . . I . . .”

Giulia trailed off. Her cheeks were aflame.

“I understand,” Sofia said. “I suspected as much.”

“I would never presume, clarissima. I know . . . I know you wish him to make a good marriage.”

“What I
wish
is that he be happy. If he were happy with you, it would be no presumption.”

“Clarissima, I don’t know what will become of me.” Giulia looked down at her hands, clasped together on her knees. “There’s nothing in the world I’m certain of, except that I will paint. Also—” She hesitated. “When I was a baby, my mother
had a horoscope cast for me. It said—” She raised her eyes. “That I would never marry.”

Sofia made a dismissive gesture. “I set no store by horoscopes. The stars are the stars. We make our own fates.”

“I believed that too when I was younger. But everything I’ve done to fight my stars has only brought me back to the prediction.”

“Well, perhaps that is so and perhaps it is not. Either way, it is certain that your path will be a difficult one.”

“I know that, clarissima.”

“Know this also, Giulia. I welcome you as my companion, and I would welcome you also as my daughter, if things between you and Bernardo were to come to that. But I would not have him suffer for your ambitions. He does not love easily, and when he does, he loves too well. If your journey carries you where he cannot follow, do not hold him. Do not trifle with his affections. It is the only thing I will not bear.”

The fire had dwindled as they spoke, and Sofia’s skin gleamed pale in the dusky light. She had shown Giulia many aspects of herself in the time they’d known each other: compassion, warmth, amusement, interest. But the woman Giulia saw before her now did not wear any of those faces. This, Giulia understood, was the face of the woman who had chosen whoredom over slavery, who by force of will had carved for herself a place in the world, and made certain she could keep it.

“I would never hurt him, clarissima. I swear it.”

“Then you and I will do very well together.” Sofia smiled. The fierce woman, the hard woman, faded back behind the lovely mask—which was also the true Sofia, but only because the fierce woman had made it possible. “I’ll tell you a secret. I like to let Bernardo think he gets his way more often than he
does, for it lends force when I must refuse him. But I would have invited you to remain even if he had not asked it. I’ve come to care for you, though we know each other only a little. And I would be pleased to help you in the struggle that lies ahead of you.”

“Thank you, clarissima.” Giulia’s eyes stung with tears. “I’m truly grateful.”

“I think it’s high time you stopped addressing me as ‘clarissima.’ Call me by my name.”

“Thank you . . . Sofia.”

Sofia had taken Giulia by the hand then and brought her to her room, and helped her remove her complicated clothes and take down her hair. She’d kissed Giulia and held her in an embrace, and then departed. Exhausted, Giulia had crawled into bed. Sleep had received her instantly.

Now, in the pearly light of the overcast morning, she felt as if a lifetime had passed since she’d woken yesterday under the crimson canopy of Sofia’s bed. She had claimed her painting and exposed Stefano. She had claimed her name, standing before the assembled nobility of Venice. She’d gained a home: a place to rest, a place where she need keep no secrets. And whatever fragile thing there was between herself and Bernardo—she had gained that too.

She thought of what he had offered her: not a promise but only the possibility of one, years into the future.
And if he had offered more. Would I have wanted it?

Her eyes went to her painting, propped across the room on the lid of a chest. Her own beautiful blue shone from it, jewellike even on this clouded day. She felt the presence of her plan, the idea that had come to her deep in the night, after the midnight bells had rung the clamor of Carnival away.

She pushed back the covers and swung her feet to the chilly floor. She had things to do.

—

Venice was a city transformed. The memory of Carnival lingered: discarded masks, broken eggshells, a reveler sleeping off his drunkenness in a doorway. But the color and the gaiety, the mad dance of life, were gone as if they had never been. The streets and canals were crowded, for commerce never ceased; but there was a new soberness to the way people went about their business, their foreheads marked with ashes for the first day of Lent.