“Oh my goodness, Giulia!” There wasn’t a trace, in Angela’s voice or face, of the contempt that Alessia and her clique had shown. “That’s funny, that you’d ask if I’m a noblewoman, when you’re the one with noble blood!”
“Not in any way that matters.”
“Well, that may be.” Angela leaned over the wash-tub again. “But we are all God’s servants. The meanest task, done with devotion, is as pleasing to our Lord as the highest work of art. So I give thanks for what I do for the Maestra, even if it makes my back ache and my leg hurt, for I know I will one day paint pictures that will speak God’s glory to all who see them. What could be more wonderful?”
Giulia looked at the other girl, up to her elbows in cloudy water, sweat dampening the edges of her wimple, her soft mouth curved in a smile. A sudden, surprising envy gripped her—for Angela’s serenity, her calm certainty of her place in the world.
She picked up another dirty bowl and went back to work.
At the bell for Sext, the noon Holy Office, Domenica, Benedicta, Lucida, and Angela departed for the nuns’ chapel. Sext was the only daytime Office they were required to attend—to avoid interrupting their work, they had special exemption from Terce and None, the midmorning and midafternoon Offices.
With less difficulty than she’d feared, Giulia found her way back to the novice wing, where the other novices were gathered for the daily prayer service. Angela was waiting to escort her back to the workshop once the midday meal was done.
As they left the refectory, Giulia saw an unusual group approaching—unusual, because one of its members was male, and not wearing the clothing of a priest. He was escorted by two elderly nuns, as if he were a prisoner under guard. With an odd little shock, Giulia realized that this was the same young man who had turned to stare at her on the day she arrived at Santa Marta. She’d gotten only a glimpse, then, but she remembered his long curly hair and his wide mouth.
He looked at her today too, or rather at her and Angela, a brash, assessing glance—and then he winked.
Without thinking, Giulia turned to watch him go past.
“Giulia!” Angela whispered. “You are too bold!”
Hastily, Giulia turned away.
“I thought men weren’t allowed in Santa Marta,” she said, when they reached the workshop.
“They aren’t.” Angela’s pretty face was disapproving. “That was an extremely disrespectful young man. I should report him to Madre Damiana.”
“Why is he here, then?”
“Things need to be built or fixed sometimes, and when we can’t do it ourselves we have no choice but to bring in those who can. He must be the craftsman who’s repairing the refectory fresco. Tiles blew off the roof in February and rain got in. The Maestra is afraid the plaster will come off the wall.”
That explained the scaffolding. “So…he’s here all the time?”
“Until the repair is finished. Well, except for when we are having meals, that wouldn’t be proper. Look, there’s the Maestra.” Giulia turned; Suor Humilità was just coming in from the corridor. “It’s time for our lesson.”
“My two apprentices!” Humilità came toward them, smiling. “How are you settling in, Giulia? Is Angela taking good care of you?”
“Yes, Suor Humilità. Maestra, I mean.”
“Excellent! Come.”
Humilità led the way over to a portion of the workshop marked out by benches. There, shelves and cabinets held a strange jumble of objects: household and kitchen items, seashells, cushions, bits of armor, several plumed hats, a gilt crown and scepter, stuffed birds and animals, even a gruesome-looking collection of human skulls. Beneath the shelves, chests contained secular clothing, cloaks and gowns and other garments in modern and antique styles. These, Angela had explained, were the costumes worn by the models Humilità used for her paintings. There were also several life-size statues of saints in wood and stone, and a number of marble busts.
A tableau had been arranged on a table: a clay cup, a glass flask half-full of water, a pottery dish heaped with apricots. Humilità set Angela to drawing it, then sat down by Giulia.
“So,” she said. “I already know you have talent, Giulia, but today I want to test it.” She handed Giulia a sheaf of paper, a tablet of wood to rest it on, and a stick of charcoal wired to a wooden holder, then sat back and folded her arms. “Draw me that stuffed fox over there.”
Giulia was not used to drawing while anyone was watching; especially, she was not used to being judged. The sketch went wrong almost at once.
“May I try again?”
“As many times as you like.”
It went wrong again. And again. But it felt so good to have paper under her hand and charcoal in her fingers; and on the fourth try the rhythm of it came to her, and she forgot Humilità on the bench beside her, forgot the sounds and smells of the workshop around her, saw only the fox, knew only the flow of image from eye to hand, the transformation of one reality into another.
Humilità did not comment on the finished drawing. “Now San Sebastiano.” She pointed to the statue of the saint.
Giulia drew him, his arrow-pierced body contorted with suffering, his head thrown back in agony. She drew a stuffed bird, a skull, a glass dish, the court viewed through the arches of the loggia. All the while Humilità watched, her dark eyes intent, her expression giving nothing away. It was intimidating to be the focus of such concentrated regard—but also oddly thrilling. No one had ever paid so much attention to her drawing, not even Maestro.
“Now I want you to draw from memory,” Humilità said. “Draw me someone you know well.”
Giulia’s hand moved almost of itself to shape Maestro’s features. She drew him as she remembered him best, hunched over his worktable in his felt cap and his frayed-at-the-collar doublet, a quill in his fingers and an ink pot close by. Finished, she sat looking down at him, feeling the press of tears behind her eyes.
“Who is he?” Humilità asked.
Giulia drew a deep breath. “Maestro Bruni. My teacher.”
“You love him.” It wasn’t a question. “I can see it there, on the paper. Now, one last test. Draw me someone from your imagination. Someone you have never met.”
Giulia put charcoal to paper and sketched a head. She added a torso, then a pair of arms and two long legs. She dressed him in striped hose and a loose-sleeved shirt, then gave him hair, curling long onto his shoulders. Last, she gave him features—eyes, nose, a wide smiling mouth.
“Who would he be, if you knew him?” Humilità asked.
“I don’t know.”
It was a lie. A hundred times over the years Giulia had drawn this man, wearing a hundred different faces, mostly imaginary but sometimes taken from life: the man in her daydream, the man she would marry. Today, she had borrowed the face of the brash young man in the corridor. As she thought of him, she was conscious of the talisman, the stone as warm as a promise against her skin.
“It’s interesting that both your choices are male.” Humilità took the portraits, holding them at arm’s length. “Not quite proper for a pledged novice, perhaps.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Maestra, I didn’t mean—”
“No, no. It’s a good thing! The paintings we make here must include men, our Lord Jesus Christ among them. The drawing of men poses difficulty for any woman, who for the preservation of her virtue isn’t supposed to look upon the unclothed male form”—there was a distinct edge to Humilità’s voice—“but especially for nuns, who cannot look at any man at all, apart from priests and members of their own families. That is why we have those busts and statues over there. They are a poor substitute for flesh and blood, but all we are allowed.” She returned the portraits to Giulia. “But you have a natural sense for the male form. These are very good.”
Not till Humilità’s praise was given did Giulia realize how very much she had wanted it. “Thank you, Maestra.”
“Now, you have some bad habits, which isn’t surprising considering that you a
re self-trained. I will be addressing those in our lessons. We shall also have to teach you about anatomy, as much at least as a nun is allowed to know.” That edge again. “Angela will train you in the manual tasks, preparing pigments and making gesso and all the rest. Benedicta will help you with color lore. You must completely master color before you begin to paint, and that will take time. But as you are already so far along in your drawing skills, I see no reason why you shouldn’t start to work with paint in, oh…” She considered. “Two years, perhaps.”
“Two years?” The words were out before Giulia could stop them. Humilità’s eyebrows rose.
“That’s not long, child, did you but know it. Perpetua was four years just learning color. Angela has been with me three years, and is still not ready to put her brush to a commission.”
“I’m sorry, Maestra.” Giulia knew it was foolish to be disappointed. “It’s just that it seems like such a long time.”
“You’ve much to learn, and about much more than color.” Humilità’s dark eyes bored uncomfortably into Giulia’s. “Now go sit by Angela, and do as she’s doing, and I will be with you both in a little while. Oh, and I’ve arranged for you to accompany us to Lucida’s supper on Thursday.”
“Thank you, Maestra.”
Angela had nearly finished her drawing—a very good drawing, Giulia noted—and soon put down her charcoal. She sat watching as Giulia, working quickly, roughed in the objects on the table and began to add detail.
“You’re awfully good, Giulia. I can see why the Maestra was so excited when she found out about you.”
Giulia looked up. “Was she really?”
“Oh my goodness, yes. She showed us all your drawing. You’re the first novice she’s ever taken as an apprentice, did you know?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, it’s true. I’m one of the youngest she’s chosen, but I’d made my final vows almost a year before she took me on.”
Humilità returned from speaking to Domenica and Benedicta at their lecterns, and for the next hour the girls drew under her supervision. She was a challenging teacher, able with a single question or observation to turn an assumption inside out or flip a perception on its head. Maestro, too, had been that way, though he’d been gentler with it.
Later, while Angela prepared yet more tempera, Giulia knelt again at the washtub. The egg mixture spoiled quickly in the heat, and the clotted yolk smelled foul as she scraped it down the drain beside the fountain. Yet she felt none of the discontent of the morning. Perhaps it was being able to draw again. Perhaps it was what she had drawn. In her mind’s eye, she saw her sketch of the man who was her heart’s desire, wearing a borrowed face—imaginary now, but soon to be real.
“This is the beginning, Mama,” she breathed to the dirty water, the egg-crusted bowls. “This is how I will get free.”
CHAPTER 9
The Repairer of Frescoes
There were several things, Giulia realized, that she should have asked the sorcerer on the night he made the talisman. How long the spirit would take to find her husband, of course—but also how she would recognize him when he arrived, and whether she should wait for him to find her or make some kind of effort to seek him out. Since she had no answers, it seemed to her that taking action was better than waiting. Surely it made sense to give the spirit as many opportunities as possible.
So the moment she learned about the young craftsman who was repairing the fresco, she was determined to find a way to visit him.
Her chance came three days after she became part of the workshop, on the morning of Lucida’s dinner party. The evening before, she and Angela had sealed twenty slender twigs into a clay pot and placed the pot in one of the kitchen bread ovens, so the twigs could bake into charcoal overnight. When she arrived at the workshop the following morning, she volunteered to fetch the pot.
“Can you find the kitchen on your own?” Angela, tying on her apron, sounded distracted.
“I think so.”
“Well, don’t take too long. I’m going to show you how to make gesso today. We must get a start on the panels for the San Giustina commission.”
Santa Marta’s main building was shaped like a long narrow box, with the kitchen and the refectory and the living quarters ranged along the south side, and the workshops and the store rooms and the chapter hall along the north. Humilità’s workshop was on the north side; to reach the kitchen, Giulia had to cross a garden court, then walk all the way to the back. It seemed to take forever; she was breathless with nerves, afraid that the nuns she passed would somehow be able to read her intentions on her face. She reached the kitchen at last, and waited while one of the cooks fetched the pot of charcoal sticks, wrapping it in a cloth to protect her hands. Its heat warmed her palms through the fabric as she approached the refectory. Two nuns were ahead of her. She dawdled until they turned the corner, then, glancing back to make sure no one was about, she trotted to the refectory door and slipped inside.
She’d worried that there might be nuns stationed as chaperones, but the sun-drenched room was empty. She could hear tapping sounds, though, coming from behind the canvas that shrouded the scaffold. Balancing the clay pot in one hand, she smoothed down her dress and pushed at her kerchief so a little of her hair showed. Her pulse beating in her throat, she approached the scaffold.
The canvas covered the scaffold’s length, but not its sides. As she rounded the edge, she could see him: the young man who had winked. He was doing something with a hammer at the fresco’s top. She stopped. Should she speak? Wait for him to notice her?
As she stood there, irresolute, he turned and saw her.
“Saints!” He took a step back. “Where did you come from?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Is that for me?” He pointed to the pot.
“Oh! No. No, it’s just something…I mean, no. It’s for someone else.”
“I see.” From the height of the scaffold, he looked down at her. He wore russet hose and a loose shirt under a workman’s smock, the collar open to show a smooth throat, the sleeves rolled above sinewy forearms. His nose was crooked, as if it had been broken long ago. His long light hair curled onto his shoulders. “Well, was there something you wanted?”
Get hold of yourself. He’s going to think you’re a halfwit. “I was, um, curious. About what you’re doing to the fresco.”
“Ah. Well, I’m repairing it. Water got in behind it, and I’m stabilizing it so it won’t fall off the wall.” He smiled, and Giulia, who had been thinking he wasn’t particularly good looking, realized she was wrong. “Would you like to see?”
“Yes. If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Not a bit. Come up the ladder.”
Giulia set the pot down on the nearest table. He waited, arms folded, as she began to climb, bunching up her skirt so she wouldn’t trip over the hem. When she reached the top, he extended his hand to help her. His fingers were rough, his grip firm, and he held her hand for longer than he needed to before he let go.
The scaffold was composed of thick planks laid across a wooden framework. Bounded on one side by the fresco, enclosed on the other by the canvas, the effect was of a narrow hallway. Some light filtered in from above, but most of the illumination came from lanterns hung on brackets attached to the scaffold posts.
“They’re not going to call the watch to take me away, are they?” he said. “For talking to a…what are you? Not a nun.”
“I’m a novice. I don’t actually know what they’d do.” She’d considered the punishment she might receive if she were discovered, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he might be penalized also. “I was careful. No one saw me come in.”
“Well, where’s the fun in life if we don’t take chances, eh? As long as you stay clear of those two old crows who lead me around at meal times, making sure I don’t steal anyone’s virtue.” His smile was wicked. “I’m Ormanno, by the way. Ormanno Trovatelli.”
“Giulia Borrom
eo.”
“Pleased to meet you, Giulia Borromeo.”
He was only a little taller than she was. She hardly had to tilt her head at all to look into his eyes. Like his hair, they were light, an icy shade of blue. They moved from her face to her throat, a frankly appraising gaze. She felt herself beginning to blush. Is he the one? Is he my heart’s desire? She’d wondered if the talisman might give her a sign of some kind. But all she felt was the uncomfortable thumping of her heart.
“You know,” he said, “I have the strangest feeling I’ve seen you before.”
“You have. Twice.”
He snapped his fingers. “I remember now. The corridor, a few days ago. You were with that pretty nun.”
“Yes. You winked at us.”
“That was wrong, I know it.” He grinned. “But I couldn’t resist, you were both staring at me so. And the other time?”
“In the street, about a month ago. You were coming out of the church. I was just about to go in the convent door. There was a woman with me, and a big carriage—”
“The carriage! I remember. That was you?” Giulia nodded. His eyebrows rose. “You didn’t seem pleased about it, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“I wasn’t.” Giulia took a deep breath. “I’m not at Santa Marta by choice. I was forced.”
“By your family?”
“Not exactly. But I don’t plan on staying. I don’t intend to become a nun.”
“Well.” His eyes moved over her again, more slowly this time. “If I’d been wondering why a novice would climb a ladder to flirt with a man who winked at her in a corridor, I suppose that would be my answer.”
Giulia felt her blush deepen.
“So,” he said. “The fresco.” Turning, he stepped toward the scaffold’s far end. “You can see over here how the plaster has begun to crack. And there are stains, see? Mostly mineral deposits, but some black mold as well. So over here”—he moved in the other direction, forcing her to retreat before him—“I’ve used bronze tacks to fix the plaster to the wall. I have to be careful where I place them, for I don’t want to spoil the images or create further cracking. With the mineral deposits, you can’t remove them completely without damaging the plaster, so I’ve been scraping away as much as I dare and then trying to make them less visible.”
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