“If she’s clever, she’ll get herself with child,” said Benedicta from her lectern. “Then no one will be able to pretend the marriage wasn’t consummated.”
“Benedicta!” said Perpetua, scandalized. Beside Giulia, Angela giggled.
“That’s exactly what they’re hoping won’t happen, obviously,” Lucida said. “But there’s another problem. Nicolosia had been affianced to Erasmo da Carrara since she was ten years old. Now her family owes the Carraras a bride. But their only other daughter is Nicolosia’s sister Catarina, who is a nun at Santa Anna.”
“Oh, what a dilemma!” Perpetua clasped her hands. “What will they do?”
“My sister Maria says they will remove Catarina from the convent and give her to Erasmo.”
“Remove her?” Perpetua was horrified. “They can’t do that! She is the bride of Our Lord Jesus Christ!”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. Forty or fifty years ago, at…oh, Maria told me the convent’s name but I’ve forgotten…at any rate, there were two daughters, the older was affianced and the younger took vows. The older sister died before the wedding, and they removed the younger so she could take her sister’s place. It required special intervention by the Church, but it was a noble family, and so it was done.” Lucida shook her head. “The sister begged to be allowed to resume her vows. When her family refused, she threw herself from her bedroom window. She didn’t die, but it cost her the use of her limbs. Of course she couldn’t be married in such a state, so her family sent her back to the convent, where she lived out her life in the infirmary. In the end she got her wish. And her family got nothing, except for grief and scandal.”
“Oh, that poor girl!” Angela said. “To be crippled so!”
“I know a scandal,” said Benedicta from her lectern.
“You, Benedicta?”
“Who better, Lucida, since it happened fifty years ago, right here at Santa Marta. A nun who was taken from the convent—by her own will, though, not another’s.”
Giulia, who had finished her almond balls and was at the shelves gathering supplies, felt a chill ripple down her back. Normally she only half-listened to these gossip sessions; the names of the people and places meant nothing to her. But now, all at once, she was fully alert.
“Here?” said Perpetua. “Surely not.”
“My teeth may be gone,” said Benedicta tartly, “but I’ve still got my memory. It happened not long after I took my vows. There was a young nun named Plautilla, whose brother loved her dearly and came frequently to visit. Often he brought his friend Alessandro. Somehow, Alessandro and Plautilla fell in love. They took to meeting secretly in the orchard. There was a broken spot in the convent’s western wall, at the very back where it ran beside the canal. Alessandro climbed into the orchard that way, and they met under the trees.”
Giulia turned. A breach in those impregnable walls?
“He must have loved her greatly, to take such a risk,” Lucida said.
“He loved her thoroughly, at any rate.” Benedicta cackled, rocking a little on her stool. “Oh, what a scandal, when Plautilla was found to be with child! The abbess didn’t want it known, for fear the Cardinal would hear of it and curtail our privileges. So she kept it secret, meaning to smuggle the baby out to be adopted when it finally came. But then…” Benedicta leaned forward. “On a night when the moon was full, Plautilla disappeared. Poof!” She threw up her hands. “Just like that. As for Alessandro…that very same night, he vanished from the city.”
“He came for her!” Giulia hadn’t meant to say anything. “He came over the wall!”
“That’s what I’ve always believed, my dear.”
“What happened?” Angela asked. “Was she ever found?”
“They were never heard from again.” Benedicta smiled her sweet, toothless smile. “Quite a love story, eh?”
“Love story!” Perpetua was indignant. “A disgrace, you mean! No, I don’t believe it. How could we not know about such a thing, if it really happened?”
“Because,” Benedicta said, “the abbess decided it should be forgotten. She had the break in the wall bricked up, good as new, and she ordered us never to speak of it. But you can’t forget a thing like that, can you?” She sighed, her wizened old face suddenly sad. “We’re almost all gone, those of us who were nuns then. Strange to think of it now.”
“Those bricks have fallen in again,” Lucida said thoughtfully. “I walk sometimes in the orchard, and there’s a gap in the wall, at the very back along the canal, just as you said. I told my aunt about it. She said she knew, but there were repairs that were more pressing.”
“That’s the problem with suppressing stories.” Benedicta cackled again, her momentary sadness gone. “Sometimes they hold lessons we should remember.”
“What lessons?” demanded a new voice. It was Humilità, entering in her usual vigorous manner, with Domenica beside her. Behind them walked one of the local servant women who came in daily to help in the kitchens.
“We were just gossiping,” Lucida said. “It’s my fault, Maestra. My sisters brought me sweets and I was sharing them, and we fell to talking.”
“Well, no harm done. Serena”—Humilità addressed the servant—“you may prepare over by the benches. The rest of you, to work! You too, my butterfly, but not before you give me a few of those—what are they? Ginger comfits?”
“Almond balls. From Signorelli.” Lucida held out the basket. “Domenica, won’t you have some? A little sugar might do you good.”
Domenica swept past as if she hadn’t heard. Humilità, digging into the basket, shook her head.
“Lucida, Lucida.” She turned. “Come, girls. Time for our lesson.”
Humilità was a demanding teacher, intolerant of anything less than what she judged to be her pupils’ best. She expected Giulia and Angela not just to draw, but to think about what they drew—evaluating every line, considering every choice—and to be able to explain, after finishing a picture, exactly why they had drawn it as they did. She gave praise where she judged it due, but never softened her criticism to spare the girls’ feelings.
Giulia had always drawn instinctively, choosing whatever subjects took her interest, the images flowing from eye to hand as water flowed downhill—a swift, almost alchemical transformation that she had never tried, or wanted, to put into words. She found it hard to draw when the subject was selected for her. It was hard also to be forced to explain the process, to have her mistakes and successes picked apart like a piece of embroidery, until, as it seemed to her, there was nothing left. She was a better artist than Angela (she knew this without vanity), yet she was more often the focus of Humilità’s criticism, and less often the subject of her approval. It was impossible, sometimes, not to feel aggrieved.
Yet Humilità was a master. Giulia was always aware of it, and never more so than in the lessons, when Humilità’s passion poured from her like heat or light. She couldn’t deny that, over the past weeks, her own technique had improved. She craved Humilità’s praise, even as she resented the workshop mistress for how stingy she was with it.
Today was to be a life class, quill and ink on rose-colored paper. The model, Serena, pulled off her gown and shoes and shook out her long red hair. Humilità arranged her on a stool, the hem of her chemise drawn up and one sleeve pulled down, exposing her plump bare legs and one smooth naked shoulder. Strictly speaking, such posing was forbidden; it was sinful for a woman to look upon uncovered flesh, even another woman’s. “But how can you draw people in their clothes, if you don’t know what they look like out of them?” Humilità, explaining this to Giulia, had demanded. “So we do it anyway.”
Serena was a lovely subject, but Giulia couldn’t concentrate. Benedicta’s story, the nun and her lover who had met in the orchard and escaped through the gap in the wall, would not leave her mind. She was uncomfortably aware of the silent, judging presence of Humilità, pacing slowly at her pupils’ backs, pausing every now and then to peer over their shoulders
. When, about halfway through her drawing, she carelessly filled her quill too full and made a blot on the paper, she braced herself for a reprimand. But all Humilità said was, “Start over.”
When the lesson was done, Humilità motioned for Giulia to stay. “Your mind was somewhere else today.”
“I’m sorry, Maestra. I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“See that you do. I have something to tell you. You may know that I have permission to visit my father’s studio four times a year to obtain supplies. The day after tomorrow is my summer visit. Each time I go, I take one of my artists with me. This time it will be you.”
“Me?” Giulia said. “Going out? Into the city?”
Humilità smiled. “Since my father’s studio is not inside these walls, yes, we will go out. I have written him to expect us. Does that suit you?”
“Oh, yes, Maestra! Thank you!”
“It will be a good learning experience for you, to see the running of a larger workshop. Now go along, work is waiting for us both.”
She strode off to begin transferring the cartoons for the San Giustina commission to the scaffolded panels, a task she would not allow any of the others to help with. Giulia returned to the preparation table.
“She’s taking you to her father’s studio, isn’t she,” Angela said, measuring finished pigment into a jar.
“Yes,” Giulia replied, hardly believing it.
“Wait till you see it.” Angela smiled. “It’s so big! And so busy! There’s nearly a score of apprentices and journeymen, and they make all kinds of things, sculptures and silver goods and gold jewelry, not just paintings.”
“Silver goods and jewelry? Really?”
“The Maestra’s father can fresco a chapel, and furnish it too. He’s famous, you know—all the great and noble of Padua are his patrons. Paintings and goods from his workshop are in houses and holy places all over the city. And he dotes on our Maestra. You’ll see.”
Returning to the dormitory with the other novices for recreation hour, Giulia discovered that her bedclothes—which she’d left perfectly tucked in as Suor Margarita required—had been pulled askew, her pillow tossed to the floor. She sighed. In addition to pinching, hair-yanking, and mockery, Alessia and her friends occasionally sneaked back to the dormitory to leave nasty surprises for the other girls.
Suor Margarita noticed, of course, and sent Giulia to do penance with Lisa at the fireplace. Lisa, who was being punished for knocking over her soup bowl, gave Giulia a sympathetic look as Giulia knelt down.
“It was Costanza,” she mumbled. “Your bed. I saw her. But really it was Alessia.”
“It always is.” The others treated Lisa as if she were slow-witted, but to Giulia it was clear that she was not stupid at all.
“I’m going to pray she gets warts.”
Lisa went back to muttering the Paternoster. Giulia clasped her hands as if in prayer and closed her eyes. She could hear the giggles of Alessia and her clique, but for once she didn’t care. I’m going out the day after tomorrow. Out of Santa Marta, out into the city. She could feel herself yearning toward that freedom, like a sunflower twisting to the light.
She thought of the horoscope she had cast. Before winter, it had said. The day after tomorrow wouldn’t be the day she escaped. But something would happen. She was sure of it.
“It’s my chance, Mama,” she whispered, so softly only she could hear. “Everything is about to change.”
CHAPTER 13
The City of Painters
On the appointed day, Giulia arrived at the saint’s door right after breakfast. No one was there, and for a few uncomfortable moments she feared that she had somehow mistaken Humilità’s meaning or that there had been a change of plans. But then Humilità appeared, striding along the loggia in her purposeful way. She wore a black cloak over her white habit and carried a covered basket.
“Are you ready, Giulia?”
“Oh yes,” Giulia breathed.
Humilità rapped briskly on the saint’s door. The lock scraped and the door swung open on the cool dimness of the vestibule. Giulia vividly remembered her panic the one and only time she had crossed this threshold—but today she was going in the opposite direction. Her heart pounded with excitement, not dread.
The doorkeeper pulled open the outer door, and Humilità led the way into the heat and light of the street.
“Take my arm, Giulia.” Behind them, the door thumped closed. “There will be crowds, and I don’t want to lose you.”
Giulia had not seen much of Padua on the day of her arrival, for Cristina had insisted on keeping the carriage’s window covers closed. Now, as she and Humilità walked, she craned her neck to look up at the houses that rose two, three, even four stories on either side, their plaster fronts tinted cream and gold and pink. Balconies jutted overhead; windows spilled drying laundry or held pots of brightly colored flowers. On nearly every block, arcaded walkways along the house fronts allowed pedestrians to stay clear of the carts and riders that thronged the street. The clatter of wheels and hooves echoed in the confined spaces; the air smelled of animals, refuse, smoke, and, distantly, the stagnant water of the canals.
Giulia breathed deeply, savoring the bustle and the noise, the sight of buildings that were not cloisters and people who were not nuns. Humilità set a quick pace, expertly navigating a succession of narrow, twisty avenues. Pedestrians made way for them, bowing or crossing themselves; a few offered alms, which Humilità accepted with a nod and a blessing and dropped into her basket.
Ahead, Giulia saw a dazzle of sunlight. A roaring swelled beneath the din of traffic: the sound of a great crowd. The houses and arcades fell away, and they emerged into a huge light-filled piazza, packed with market stalls and teeming with people. Beyond the stalls rose one of the most extraordinary buildings Giulia had ever seen, overtopping the surrounding houses and extending almost the entire width of the piazza. It was fronted at ground level by a columned arcade; above the arcade, a graceful loggia ran the full length of the second floor, and above that, red brick walls supported the dome of an immense roof, shaped like a great barrel sawed in half.
“That’s the Palazzo della Ragione, the Palace of Justice,” Humilità said. “It’s a marvel of engineering—that roof is self-supporting, there’s not a single column holding it up. Padua’s courts meet on the upper level, and below is the market, the Piazza della Fruitta on this side, the Piazza dell’Erbe on the other. But it’s not just fruits and vegetables. In the Padua market, you can buy nearly anything.”
They plunged into the market, past stalls heaped high with every kind of fruit, with great cheese wheels and baskets of spices and metal and leather goods and cloth. The air was rich with the odors of all these things, clamorous with the voices of vendors crying their wares and customers haggling over prices. Humilità paused at a stall arrayed with fat rounds of bread, and one offering velvety apricots and dusky plums, and one selling pots of soft cheese. She insisted on paying for her purchases, even when the merchants would have provided them as charity.
With the items tucked into her basket, she steered Giulia into the shadow of the Palazzo’s ground-level arcade and sat down on one of the benches there, motioning Giulia to do the same.
“I used to come here with my mother when I was a girl,” she said, settling the folds of her cloak. “It seemed like the most wondrous place in the world.”
“My mother used to take me to the market too, when she needed special fabrics or embroidery thread.” Giulia smiled, remembering. “She always bought me a sugar pig.”
“Your mother was a seamstress?”
Giulia nodded. “She taught me to sew. I was never good at it, though. Not the way she was.”
“Were you very young when she died?”
“I was seven.” After all these years, it was still hard to say.
“I was eight.”
Giulia looked at Humilità, surprised, but the workshop mistress was bending forward, rummaging in her basket.
She took out her sketchbook, which she carried everywhere in her waist pouch, as Giulia once had done, and set to work.
Giulia drew a woman lugging a heavy oil jar, a child hanging on his mother’s skirts, crows wheeling against the cloudless sky. But the bustle of the market was distracting, and after a little while she set her paper aside. It was very hot, even in the shade of the arcade; her chemise was damp under her scratchy novice dress. How did Humilità stand it, with her wimple and veil, her heavy habit and enveloping cloak? Passersby cast them curious looks. At first shyly and then more boldly, Giulia looked back. But their eyes, especially those of the young men, always slid away. Like Alberto, they saw only the ugly novice uniform.
But someone will see more, she told herself. This is my day, and it has only just begun.
She looked at Humilità. The workshop mistress was not sketching scenes or figures, but filling page after page with faces. Giulia was fascinated by the workshop mistress’s swiftness, the sureness with which she captured features and expressions.
At last Humilità sighed, put down her charcoal, and stretched her arms.
“That’s enough for now, I think.” She turned over the sheets she had filled. “I can draw from imagination, but I prefer to work from life, and I can’t use the same nuns’ faces over and over again. And how, in the drawing of men’s faces, can one find inspiration inside a convent? So I bring my book”—she closed the cover and patted it—“on each of my outside days, and add to it as I can. When I need a fresh face, I have it.”
“I used to carry a sketchbook,” Giulia said. “And charcoal. My fingers were always black with it.”
“I too, when I was a child. My mother used to scold me, though it never did any good. Where is your sketchbook now?”
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