The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 by Victoria Strauss
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Strauss, Victoria.
Passion blue / by Victoria Strauss. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In fifteenth-century Italy, seventeen-year-old Giulia, a Count’s illegitimate daughter, buys a talisman hoping it will bring her true love to save her from life in a convent, but once there she begins to learn the painter’s craft, including how to make the coveted paint, Passion blue, and to question her true heart’s desire. Includes historical notes and glossary.
ISBN 978-0-7614-6230-9 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-7614-6231-6 (ebook)
[1. Self-realization—Fiction. 2. Convents—Fiction. 3. Nuns—Fiction. 4. Artists— Fiction. 5. Talismans—Fiction. 6. Magic—Fiction. 7. Italy—History— 15th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S9125Pas 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011040133
Editor: Melanie Kroupa
First edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Part 1 The Talisman
CHAPTER 1 The Summons
CHAPTER 2 Last Resorts
CHAPTER 3 The Hour of Venus
CHAPTER 4 Anasurymboriel
Part 2 The Workshop of Women
CHAPTER 5 Santa Marta
CHAPTER 6 False Oaths
CHAPTER 7 A Small Blue Flame
CHAPTER 8 The Workshop
CHAPTER 9 The Repairer of Frescoes
CHAPTER 10 A Golden Evening
CHAPTER 11 Pigments and Horoscopes
CHAPTER 12 Plautilla and Alessandro
CHAPTER 13 The City of Painters
CHAPTER 14 The Balcony
Part 3 Under the Summer Stars
CHAPTER 15 Ormanno
CHAPTER 16 To Wield the Rainbow
CHAPTER 17 Orchard Girl
CHAPTER 18 Proposals
Part 4 Heart’s Desire
CHAPTER 19 Madonna and Child
CHAPTER 20 The Altarpiece of San Giustina
CHAPTER 21 The Breached Wall
CHAPTER 22 The Master Thief
CHAPTER 23 Attic Prisoner
CHAPTER 24 A Flash of Blue
CHAPTER 25 The Great and Beautiful Gift
CHAPTER 26 Coming Home
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Part 1
The Talisman
CHAPTER 1
The Summons
Milan, Italy, Anno Domini 1487
The clouds broke apart and sunlight flooded down, burnishing the rough bark of the apple trees and tossing their shadows across the grass. Giulia caught her breath at the sudden beauty of it, her charcoal stick racing across the paper on her knee as she tried to capture the moment before it vanished.
“Giulia!” The shrill call was as sudden as a slap. Giulia jumped; the charcoal slipped, botching the line.
“Giuuuuuulia!”
Giulia pressed closer to the tree she was leaning against, hoping it would hide her, but it was already too late. She could see Clara stomping toward her between the trunks, her fat moon-face flushed with exertion and annoyance.
“What are you doing out here?” Clara planted her hands on her hips, scowling.
“What does it look as if I’m doing?” Clara was the daughter of the cooking woman who had taken Giulia in after Giulia’s own mother died. She never missed a chance to try and make Giulia miserable.
“I’ve got better things to do than chase around trying to find you, you know,” Clara said. “You’re s’posed to be in the sewing room making shirts, not outside with your stupid pictures.”
Giulia sighed and closed her sketchbook on the spoiled drawing. She’d finished her sewing quota early and had slipped away to the orchard, braving the chill of the mid-April day for the pleasure of some uninterrupted sketching time. At least, that had been the plan.
“What do you want, Clara?”
“I don’t want anything.” Clara looked smug. “I’ve been sent to fetch you. The Countess’s maid is waiting in the cortile. She says the Countess wants to see you.”
It took all Giulia’s self-control not to betray what she felt. For weeks she’d been dreading this summons—ever since her father, Count Federico di Assulo Borromeo, died of a fall from his horse, plunging the whole of the household into mourning.
“Well? Don’t just sit there like a lump. She’s been waiting nearly half an hour, that’s how long it took to find you.”
The sun had gone away again and the grayness had returned. Carefully, for she didn’t want to give Clara the satisfaction of seeing her hands shake, Giulia stowed her sketchbook and her charcoal stick in the pouch at her belt, then got to her feet and shook out her skirts. She began to make her way back through the orchard, toward the great bulk of Palazzo Borromeo that rose beyond.
“Are you scared, Giulia?” Clara trotted along beside her. “I’d be, if I was you. Everyone knows the Countess hates the sight of you. Think she means to throw you out, now the master’s gone?”
Giulia, who feared exactly that, did not reply.
“I hope she does. I can’t wait to have the bed all to myself.”
“You’ll need it, as fat as you’re getting.”
“I’d rather be fat than a beanpole like you! A man likes something he can get hold of.”
“Yes, but he also likes his hands to meet round the back.”
Clara hissed. “I hate you, Giulia. Always so high and mighty, with your nose in the air and your stupid drawings, like being the Count’s bastard makes you better than the rest of us. Well, you’re a servant just the same as we are, and your ten drops of noble blood won’t fill your stomach when you’re on the street begging for pennies, or maybe doing other things to stay alive. And it will serve you right!”
Clara stopped following when they reached the cortile, the paved court at the heart of the palazzo, but Giulia could feel the other girl’s malevolent gaze as she went to meet the Countess’s maid, who was waiting by the fountain. The maid led her toward the marble stairs that rose to the palazzo’s upper floors, where the Borromeo family lived in a series of magnificent suites and chambers. The stairs were for the household and its guests, not for servants or for bastards. Never before had Giulia set foot on them.
The maid left Giulia in an unfurnished anteroom with faded frescoes of hunting scenes on the walls. It seemed a very long time before the Countess entered, in a swirl of velvet and brocade.
“My lady.” Giulia dropped a low curtsy. Too late, she realized that her fingers were stained with charcoal. Rising, she tried to hide them in her skirt.
“My husband made me the executor of his estate and will.” The Countess’s voice was as icy as the marble of the antechamber’s floor. “It is my word that rules here now.”
“Yes, my lady.” Giulia had felt this woman’s hatred many times over the years, but she could count on the fingers of both hands the number of sentences the Countess had ever addressed to her.
“You are—what, sixteen?”
“I tur
ned seventeen in March, my lady.”
“My husband made provision for you in his will. Three hundred ducats, to be used for a dowry.”
Giulia gasped. She looked up before she could stop herself, into the Countess’s hard dark eyes. Hastily she looked down again.
“I see you are surprised. As was I. My husband did not share this intent with me.”
“My lady—I never knew—that is, I never expected—”
“No matter.” The Countess waved Giulia’s words away with one ring-heavy hand. “I have arranged a chaperone, as is proper. At noon tomorrow you will leave for Padua, where you will begin your novitiate at the convent of Santa Marta.”
Convent? “My lady…I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite simple. My husband intended that you marry. Well, I have arranged for you to become the bride of our Savior Jesus Christ. Your dowry is small, but even so the nuns have accepted it, as a favor to my family. For as you know, Padua is where I was born.”
“But—” Giulia couldn’t seem to get her breath. “My lady, I don’t want to be a nun.”
“And what possible difference could you imagine that makes to me? This is my house now. And I say: Leave my house!” The Countess’s rigid self-control cracked. Rage strained her voice. “Did you think this day would not come? Did you think, when he died, you would continue as before?”
Of course Giulia hadn’t been so foolish. Her mother, the most skilled of the household’s seamstresses, had also been the Count’s favorite mistress, and he had protected Giulia for her sake—arranging for Annalena, the cooking woman, to take Giulia in after Giulia’s mother died, seeing that Giulia had her mother’s place in the sewing room when she grew old enough, summoning Giulia every year to ask if she was content. Giulia knew well that his protection ended at the instant of his death. Even so, she’d hoped she would be allowed to stay. Life in Palazzo Borromeo wasn’t always easy, but it was the only home she knew.
She’d tried to prepare herself for the worst. But never, in her most awful fantasies, had she imagined this. Not the Count’s bequest. Not the fate the Countess had just decreed for her.
“Now thank me, girl,” the Countess said. “For I am giving you a better place in life than ever you could have gotten on your own, and an opportunity to save your miserable soul in the bargain.”
Giulia raised her chin. She no longer had anything to lose. Even so, she couldn’t keep her voice from shaking, as she defied this woman who had absolute power over her, body and soul. “I will not thank you,” she said. “I will never thank you.”
Color flooded the Countess’s pale cheeks. She stepped across the space between them and slapped Giulia’s face—once, twice, three times, her rings adding weight to the blows.
“You go tomorrow,” she said, biting off each word. “Now get out of my sight. Never let me see you again.”
Head high, face throbbing, Giulia obeyed. She didn’t curtsy, a disrespect she never would have dared show before. But what difference did it make now?
She couldn’t face going downstairs, where Clara would be waiting to gloat. Instead, she climbed to the storerooms in the attic. She’d often hidden there as a child, to escape the unfriendliness of the other servants or the bullying of Clara’s brother, Piero, and it was still where she went when she wanted to be alone. She found her favorite nook among the bags of grain and crates of spices and dusty furniture, and huddled there, breathing hard with horror and with rage.
I can’t be a nun. I can’t! She was as devout as anyone, but to be locked away from the world in a cold cloister, dressed in a heavy habit, fasting and praying and doing penance day after day…even to imagine it made her feel as if she were being sealed inside a coffin, or falling down a well that had no bottom.
But what could she do? Run away? She had some money, and the topaz and silver necklace that had been her mother’s and was meant to be her dowry. But how far would those things take her? There was no one she could go to—her mother’s parents were long dead, and her mother’s brother, a soldier, had perished in an epidemic of fever. Survival would be hard enough for a grown woman with no relatives to depend on, no household to be part of, no village to take shelter in. For a girl of seventeen, it would be all but impossible.
Giulia had been brave enough, a few minutes ago, to look the Countess in the eye. But right now, this instant, she knew she was not brave enough to run away.
I wouldn’t escape even if I did. She’d do everything in her power to see me caught and punished, in return for all the years my father sheltered me.
Giulia bowed her head onto her drawn-up knees, feeling the pain in her cheeks where the Countess’s rings had bruised her. The Count had left her a dowry. A dowry! It was as unexpected as snow in June. She hadn’t loved him; it was impossible to love a man she saw so rarely, a man she could never quite convince herself not to be afraid of. But he had been her protector, and she’d always been grateful to him—now more than ever, knowing he had tried to extend that protection beyond his death.
The Countess had cheated him. She’d cheated Giulia as well, as thoroughly as if she’d kept the dowry for herself. It wasn’t just the money. It was Giulia’s whole future the Countess had snatched away—the dream Giulia had cherished since childhood, of a husband, children, a house of her own. A place where she belonged. None of those were possible for a nun.
It’s as if she knew the prediction of my horoscope. In the chill of the attic, Giulia felt a deeper cold. Short of killing me, what could be a more perfect way of making it come true?
“Oh Mama,” she whispered. “What shall I do?”
She’d been only seven when her mother died. It had comforted her, then, to imagine her mother looking down from heaven, like someone leaning over a high balcony. She’d long ago left that literal image behind, but she still spoke to her mother sometimes, half-hoping, half-pretending, she was close enough to hear.
And all at once, like an answer, Giulia saw what might save her.
She caught her breath. It was not a new idea. She’d first conceived it years ago. But it was frightening and risky, and she had always held it at the back of her mind, saving it for a last resort.
Everything had changed today. Last resorts were all she had.
She wiped her eyes. With new purpose she got to her feet, and went in search of Maestro Carlo Bruni, the Count’s astrologer.
CHAPTER 2
Last Resorts
As she descended to the palazzo’s third floor, where Maestro Bruni’s rooms were, Giulia found herself remembering the first time she had ever gone looking for him.
She’d been just seven years old, and her mother had been dead only a few weeks. Her mother hadn’t had much to leave behind. Just a pouch of coins she’d saved, the silver and topaz necklace she had inherited from her own mother, and a cedar box holding a few small gifts from the Count, the velvet dress and linen chemise that were meant to be Giulia’s trousseau, and Giulia’s horoscope, rolled into a scroll case for safekeeping.
Giulia had moved in with Annalena right after the funeral, in a room just down the hall from the one she’d shared with her mother. She’d already stitched the coins into the hem of her skirt and the topaz necklace into her waistband; the cedar box she brought with her, pushing it under the bed where she now had to sleep with Annalena’s two children, Clara and Piero. She left her father’s trinkets and the trousseau clothes in the box, but the horoscope she concealed under the mattress, where she thought it would be safer.
She was wrong. A few days later, she returned to find the box lying open on the floor. The garments her mother had so lovingly made and embroidered were ripped and smeared with mud. The Count’s trinkets were gone. So was the horoscope—all but a single torn fragment, which had fallen behind a chest.
Giulia had known Piero was responsible, just as she’d known he was the one who pulled the head off her doll and dropped it in the chamber pot and smeared the soles of her shoes with dog dung so that she tra
cked it about without realizing. But she was only seven, and she was afraid of Piero, who was twelve and twice her size, and she’d learned that complaining to Annalena only made things worse. So she said nothing. She packed the clothing back into the cedar box and found a hiding place in the attic. She hid the necklace and the coins there as well. For the horoscope fragment, she sewed a waxed canvas pouch that she could wear around her neck.
She’d been sad about the ruined trousseau, though she cared little about the stolen trinkets. But it was the loss of the horoscope that really hurt. The horoscope had been her mother’s special gift; she’d spent all her savings to commission it from the Count’s own astrologer, and it was as fine as the horoscopes of the Count’s legitimate children. On one side, against a deep blue background, was a large circle divided into twelve segments, each containing clusters of spiky symbols that represented the stars and planets that had been in the sky at the exact moment of Giulia’s birth. On the other side, neat columns of black-ink script described the symbols’ meaning.
“This is the story of your life, my love,” Giulia’s mother would murmur on the nights when she allowed Giulia to take the horoscope out of its case and unroll it on the bed to admire. “Everything that will ever happen to you is written here, everything you will ever be and do. I hadn’t enough to pay the astrologer to read it to me, but one day we’ll go to a notary and he’ll tell us what it says.”
“When will we go, Mama?”
“When you’re old enough to understand. This horoscope will guide your life, my love. You’ll never have to be like me, stumbling blindly through the years, never knowing what choices to make, letting all your chances slip away. You’ll always know what’s coming, and you’ll always be prepared. You don’t yet know how important that is, but you will one day, I promise. Because in the end, Giulia—in the end, the only person you can rely on is yourself.”
Giulia had known that Piero hadn’t just torn up the horoscope, but utterly destroyed it. Even so, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking for it—among the kitchen scraps, in the ashes of the fires, even in the foul-smelling darkness of the privies. She’d come to fear it a little, for her mother’s death had taught her that the world held awful pain as well as happiness, and the star-map of a life must surely show both. Yet she wanted it back, as painfully, as hopelessly as she wanted her mother back.
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