Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (4 page)

This night she finished early. She was blowing out the candles when she heard footsteps. She turned, expecting Angela—but it was Domenica.

“I am glad you are still here,” Domenica said, in a tone that suggested the opposite. “I wish to speak with you. Come to my office, and bring a candle.”

Giulia obeyed. She felt dread, but no surprise. She’d known this confrontation was coming.

Three days ago, Humilità’s possessions had crowded the office: books, painting tools, the chunks of quartz and amethyst she’d used as paperweights, sketches nailed to the walls. Now Giulia saw that they had all been removed. The chests that contained the workshop’s papers and accounting ledgers had
been rearranged. Only the locked cabinet that held Humilità’s book of secrets remained in its old place.

Giulia set down the candle on the newly bare surface of Humilità’s desk, waiting as Domenica seated herself in Humilità’s chair and folded her hands before her. Domenica’s face, gaunt with constant fasting, was as pale as paper within the severe frame of her wimple and veil. The air in the little room was perceptibly chillier than in the workshop, for there was no brazier. Domenica, who strove never to take pleasure in the comforts of the body, preferred to endure the cold.

“Before she died,” Domenica said, “Humilità informed me that she intended to give you Passion blue.”

“Yes, Maestra.”

“You have the recipe, then?”

“I do, Maestra.”

The corners of Domenica’s mouth turned down. “You should know that I consider her actions highly inappropriate. Her mind was unclear, especially at the end. I believe her judgment was impaired.”

“I saw her the day before she died.” Giulia had to struggle to keep her tone respectful. “She was as much herself as ever.”

“Of course you would say so. Especially if it was your idea.”

“
My
idea?”

“You may have fooled Humilità and the others, Giulia Borromeo, but you have never fooled me.” Domenica fixed Giulia with a flat, unblinking stare. “I know what you are capable of. You showed your true face last year when you whored yourself to that thief, Ormanno Trovatelli, and helped him steal our precious book of formulas. I think you saw your chance to steal from us a second time by whispering lies into the ears of a dying woman.”

Giulia was too stunned to speak. She knew very well that Domenica detested her. She’d been certain Domenica must be angry at Humilità’s decision to bequeath her Passion blue, no matter what Humilità believed. But she’d never imagined anything like this.

“So,” Domenica said. “You don’t deny it.”

“I do deny it.” Giulia’s tongue felt stiff. “She gave it to me of her own free will. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t even want it.”

“Then you should have no trouble surrendering it.”

“Surrendering it?”

“To me and to the workshop, where it should have gone to start with. A workshop is not simply a collection of individual painters. It is a body, with all its limbs connected, no part of it divided from or superior to another. Humilità did not understand that. She separated herself from the rest of us. She raised herself above us, not least by keeping secret what should have been shared with us all.”

“But she
did
share with us all! Passion blue is part of all our paintings!”

“That was not
sharing.
That was
husbanding.
Only she could read the cipher, only she could mix the paint or use it. She made sure that it was
she
who became famous,
she
who was acclaimed. She forgot that it is not our own names we glorify by the work we do, but
God’s
name. Even in her illness she would not renounce her pride—do you know she tore the recipe out of the book and took it with her to her sickbed, so the secret would not pass out of her hands? And then, knowing herself to be dying, did she bequeath this precious thing to the workshop, whose reputation it sustains? No. She bestowed it upon
you
, her protégé, her pet. A mere apprentice. A girl of proven cunning and dishonesty.”

There was a moment of echoing silence. Slowly Domenica relaxed her hands, which had tightened into fists.

“It is in you too,” she said quietly. “The sin of pride. It is no wonder Humilità took you for her own, for you are like her. But you must humble yourself or there is no place for you here.”

The chilly office suddenly seemed to have acquired a deeper cold. “What are you saying?”

“Give the recipe for Passion blue to me. And since I have no doubt you have already memorized it, you are henceforth forbidden from mixing it or using it, except at my express instruction.”

“But—the Maestra wanted me to have it! It was her wish!”

“
I
am your maestra now. I have given you a command. If you do not heed it, I shall have no choice but to dismiss you from your apprenticeship.”

All the air seemed to have left the room. “But you can’t do that,” Giulia said faintly.

Rage flared behind Domenica’s rigid face. “
What
did you just say to me?”

“Maestra—I’m sorry—but you know—you know what Maestra Humilità wished for me—for my training and my future—”

Domenica brought both her open palms down hard on the surface of the desk.
“Humilità is no longer here!”

It shocked them both to stillness for a moment. Then, deliberately, Domenica sat back, clasping her hands before her once again.

“I have made myself clear. You take your final vows in a little less than three weeks. You have until then to follow my command. That is all. You may go.”

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.