Usually quick and efficient, she was able to get nothing right. She broke egg yolks, fumbled pigment recipes, forgot instructions. She dropped an entire bowl of lacquer, which Domenica had needed for the last of the Santa Barbara panels, splattering her sandaled feet, the front of her apron, and a huge area of the floor with clay fragments and sticky, smelly liquid. Domenica stood over her, scolding, as she cleaned it up, until at last Humilità intervened.
“Really, Giulia,” she said, after she had sent Domenica back to work. “I don’t know what has gotten into you. Are you sure you are not ill as well?”
“No, Maestra. I’m not ill.”
But in a way she was. She felt as if she had a fever. No matter how she tried to keep her attention on what she was doing, the world around her would vanish and she would be in the orchard, under the stars, with Ormanno. She heard his voice again, felt the gentle brush of his fingers against her cheek and throat. He came to her in flashes: the tilt of his head, the way he tucked his hair behind his ears, his wide, wicked smile. Again and again she relived the kiss, the rush of heat and dizziness when his lips touched hers.
By the afternoon, she had managed to pull herself together, enough at least to focus on the daily drawing lesson, though she was aware she was not working well. Normally this would have brought sharp criticism from Humilità. But the workshop mistress seemed distracted. Her comments were uncharacteristically mild.
“That’s enough,” she said at last. “You’re not at your best today, and truth to tell, nor am I.”
It was an unusual admission for her to make. But she was visibly tired, her normally pink cheeks pale, her dark eyes puffy. She had finished transferring the San Giustina cartoons and had begun the underpainting, coming in before dawn, pausing only for the midday meal and the drawing lessons.
“I’m sorry, Maestra. I slept poorly last night.”
“I too. But then I never sleep when I’m starting a painting. Too many ideas, too many images. They trouble my dreams.” She let out her breath, not quite a sigh. “Especially with this painting. Especially this one.”
All the artists had seen her studies for the altarpiece, and Lucida and Perpetua had contributed both faces and background details. But Humilità had created the cartoons in secret, and when she finally unrolled the finished drawings on the drafting table for the others to look at, there had been an awed hush. It was not just the masterly composition and the exquisite draftsmanship that held them silent, but the suffering the drawings depicted, so graphically rendered that it was difficult to look at—Jesus’ brutally pierced palms and feet, the agony-stretched tendons of His neck, the thieves’ pain-contorted limbs and faces, the Virgin’s despair. Even Domenica had seemed affected, the harsh creases between her brows momentarily smoothed away.
“Because of Jesus’ suffering?” Giulia asked now.
“That’s one reason. I had to go deep into my soul to find those images. Very deep. It was not an easy journey.” Humilità added, with a little of her usual tartness, “I wonder whether it has ever occurred to the abbot of San Giustina to consider the irony of commissioning such a work from a painter who barely ever sees the male form at all, much less that form unclothed.”
“No one would know, Maestra. Your drawings…they are so real. As if you’d actually been there, at the foot of the Cross.”
“Yes.” Humilità nodded—not with pride, simply acknowledging a fact. “My father doesn’t believe a woman is capable of painting the world as truly as a man can. But I am capable.” She shifted on the bench, looking toward the huge panels in their scaffolds. “This painting will be my masterpiece. It won’t hang in some private chapel, or in a convent to be viewed only by monks and nuns. It will hang above the altar in the great church of San Giustina, where anyone may see it. It will be the painting for which I am remembered—the one that will place my name beside Mantegna’s, beside Lippi’s. If that is pride, God forgive me.” She crossed herself. “But I know it as I know these hands of mine.”
She spread them before her, small and strong, the fingers marked with ink and paint.
“Maestra…may I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Could you have become a painter, even if you hadn’t come to Santa Marta?”
There was a pause. Giulia held her breath. It was a bold question. She knew there was a good chance Humilità would refuse to answer. But when the workshop mistress folded her hands and looked at Giulia, there was no anger in her face.
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that I’ve been thinking, since we visited your father…. He trained you. He built you the balcony. Wouldn’t he have let you stay with him and be part of his workshop? If you hadn’t wanted to become a nun?”
“No. But not for the reason you might assume.”
“Why, then?”
“My father is a great man. But he’s not always a good one. He can tolerate no rivals, even among the men who work for him. I am a woman, and I would have been his rival. He couldn’t bear to waste my talent, and so he trained me, but he also could not bear the challenge of it, and so he sent me to Santa Marta. It was the best choice, for both of us.”
“So you wanted to go?”
“I wanted to be a painter.” Humilità regarded Giulia. “I think I know the source of these questions. It’s our conversation in the market, yes? About your future?”
Giulia nodded.
“Even if my father were a different man, I would not have asked to stay with him. He might have been willing to accept me into his workshop, but I could never have had my own workshop. He might have been willing to make me a journeyman—but I could never have become Maestra. Not in a world of men. Not in his shadow. Santa Marta is the one place on Earth where I can fulfill the whole of the gift God gave me, where I can shine with my own light. Do you understand?”
Giulia nodded again, struck by how similar Humilità’s words were to Ormanno’s, last night.
“This is so for you as well, Giulia, with the difference that you do not have a father, even a jealous one, to start you on your way. For you, there is only here, with me.” Her dark eyes held Giulia’s. “Even if you do not yet realize it.”
Giulia looked away, down at the half-finished drawing in her lap.
“Does that answer your question?”
“Yes, Maestra. Thank you.”
“Never fear to ask questions, Giulia, even difficult ones. And now I must work.” Humilità braced her hands on her knees and got to her feet. “Try to get through the rest of the day without dropping any more bowls.”
The shortened lesson left Giulia with unexpected free time. Humilità allowed her apprentices to sketch as much as they liked as long as they got their work done, so she took some sheets of paper and a stick of red chalk into the court, and, sitting on the edge of the fountain, attempted to draw Ormanno’s face. She had the idea of making a portrait she could give to him. But though she tried several times, the results did not satisfy her, and in the end she crumpled them all up and fed them to the brazier.
When the bell rang for Vespers, the choir nuns departed, leaving Giulia, Humilità, and Perpetua—all three conversae—alone in the workshop. Giulia finished the washing up, tipped the dirty water down the courtyard drain, and dragged the heavy washtub back to its place. Then she went to stand before the scaffolded panels to watch the painters.
Lamps and torches had been lit to supplement the fading evening light, amplified with an ingenious series of brass reflectors devised by Domenica. Humilità stood before the central panel, applying the shadows and highlights that would later be overpainted with color. The crowd, including the small portrait figures of San Giustina’s abbot and several of his administrators, would be completed first. Next would be the figures in the foreground—the Virgin, Mary Magdalen, the disciple John. The Cross, with the pain-wracked form of the Savior upon it, would be last.
At the right-hand panel, Perpetua worked on the ground at the foot of th
e thief’s cross. She, Lucida, and Domenica would share the painting of the backgrounds, the same in all three panels: stony earth, spiky shrubs and small dry grasses, distant desert hills and a threatening, cloud-clotted sky.
Over her weeks in the workshop, Giulia had observed the painters as often as she could, trying to learn not just from what they told her but from what she saw them do—noting their use of the different shapes and thicknesses of brushes, how they mixed prepared pigment with tempera or oil, how they applied the colors to the panels, how they layered and blended different paints to achieve the effect they wished. Color, its making and its employment, was a subject of almost infinite complexity. She could better understand, now, why there must be so much learning before an apprentice could begin to paint.
Yet, watching the artists bring scenes to life, she was often shaken by a profound sense of recognition—as if this were not new knowledge, but understanding that had always existed in some till-now undiscovered place inside herself. With all her desire and all her strength, she wanted to do as the painters did: to set brush to panel. To abandon chalk red and charcoal black, and wield the rainbow. To pluck moments from the flow of time and make them eternal. To pour her soul out onto the stark white of gessoed panels and bring another world to life.
I can do this, she thought at such times, feeling the familiar burning in her fingers. I must do this.
Now, watching the face of a Roman guard appear in monochrome under Humilità’s expert brush, she thought of the question she had asked today, and heard again Humilità’s judgment: For you, there is only here, with me. But she also sensed the stirring of the idea that had woken in her last night, under the changed stars that had guided Ormanno to her. Humilità was wrong. There was another way.
She felt the twisting of a familiar guilt. She’d been deceiving Humilità from the start—not by choice, though that didn’t make the lie any less. But she knew now how she would escape—or at least, with whom. From today, she would truly be living a double life, lying not just by her intentions but by her actions.
In a way it was no different. But in another way it felt much worse.
I’ll work harder than ever. I’ll give everything I can. There will be nothing false about my work.
It was the same silent promise she had made on the night Humilità claimed her as an apprentice. This time, it felt hollow.
She turned away, and went to clear up the preparation area.
When Giulia reached the wall on Friday night, her heart racing with both anticipation and the fear that Ormanno might not have come, he was already waiting. He had brought wine again, and heavy dark grapes.
“Does Lorenza ever notice the things you steal from her kitchen?” Giulia asked.
He laughed. “Lorenza notices everything. But she always forgives me.”
“Doesn’t anyone wonder where you go at night?”
“They just assume I have a sweetheart.” He reached to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “And they’re not wrong, are they?”
His touch stole her breath. “You’ve had many sweethearts, I’m guessing.”
“None I’ve risked prison for.”
“Prison?”
“Giulia, don’t you know the penalties for men who corrupt nuns? Fines, prison, flogging. Sometimes all three.”
Giulia was aghast. “I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry.” He waved away her distress. “I’ve a mate on the city watch, he’d see me right if ever there was a problem. Besides.” He smiled his teasing smile. “I don’t mind a bit of danger. It makes it more exciting, don’t you think?”
It was true. She laughed, exhilarated.
“Name the stars for me,” Ormanno said. “The way you did the other night.”
So she traced the constellations for him, and explained the spheres, and told him why the sun and moon revolved around the Earth. He seemed younger as he listened, his face upturned, his eyes following where she pointed.
When he grew tired of looking up, he stretched out in the grass. She lay down beside him, her shoulder touching his. Her heart beat high and fast. She was aware of his warmth, of his smell of wine and walnut oil and the faint tang of his sweat. The sky arched black and huge above them, the stars like diamond chips, the moon a misshapen silver coin. When he raised himself on one elbow and leaned down to kiss her, she closed her eyes and let herself fall into those depths, up and up, passing through the spheres as she did in dreams.
“What’s that?” His hand, caressing her throat, had encountered the oval of the talisman beneath her gown.
“Just a necklace. Something I brought with me from home.”
“Didn’t you say they took all that away from you?”
“Yes. I smuggled it in.”
He laughed softly. “I can see you were never meant to be a nun.”
He kissed her again, more insistently this time, opening her mouth with his tongue. His fingers moved from her throat to her breast, and she gasped against his lips. He traced the swell of her hip, the length of her thigh. But when he stroked the fabric of her dress above her knee and slipped his hand beneath it, she tensed and caught his arm.
“No,” she whispered.
He drew back at once. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s just…” She sat up, pulling away from him. “I don’t…I mean I’ve never…”
“No. It’s my fault. The girls I’ve been with…well, they weren’t like you. I forgot that. It won’t happen again.” He held out his arm. “Come. We’ll just lie together in the grass.”
She hesitated, then curled up beside him. His arm closed carefully around her. His body was long and warm against her own; his chest rose and fell under her cheek, and she could hear the steady thumping of his heart. Would it matter if she let him do as he wanted? They were meant for each other, after all. But something in her was not ready.
There are men who are drawn to nuns. Humilità’s voice spoke inside her mind. She pushed it away.
They lay chastely until the midnight bell struck. Then he got up and helped her to her feet. She patted down her rumpled dress and hair while he packed the wine flask into his bag.
“I’ll walk you to the edge of the orchard,” he said.
“Oh. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“But everyone’s asleep, aren’t they? I just want to see a little of where my orchard girl lives.”
The endearment made her catch her breath.
She led him back beneath the trees. The moonlight fell between the branches, painting a ghostly mosaic on the grass. Entirely naturally, her hand fell into his. He was careful to keep a little distance between them as they walked.
Beneath the final rank of trees she pulled him to a stop.
“What are those buildings in front of us?” he whispered.
“The residences of the wealthy nuns. There’s a beautiful garden in the middle, with a fountain.”
“Let’s go closer.”
“No!” She tightened her grip on his fingers. “No. We shouldn’t be reckless.”
“You’re right.” He raised her hand to his lips, kissed the back of it and then the palm. “You go on, then.”
“Good night, Ormanno.” It thrilled her to say his name.
“Good night, my orchard girl.”
She turned when she reached the other side of the courtyard. He was standing where she had left him, watching her go—she could just see the glimmer of his white shirt, the pale blur of his face. He lifted his hand. She raised hers, then slipped into the shadow of the loggia.
CHAPTER 17
Orchard Girl
Before the orchard, Anasurymboriel had only touched Giulia’s dreams, never her waking hours. But now, on the nights she stole out to meet Ormanno, she felt the spirit’s magic all around her—a vibration of the air, a stirring against her skin, and occasionally, faintly, a profound sweet scent, like the flower-smell that had filled the sorcerer’s rooms on the night he made the talisman. That did not mea
n she was reckless—she still counted twice to a thousand before she left the dormitory, still paused at the turnings of hallways to make sure no one was about. But she trusted the spirit’s protection. As long as she took care, she knew she would not be discovered.
Ormanno always arrived before her. As she slipped from her bed and raced like a shadow through Santa Marta’s nightbound corridors, she played a game with herself: Would he be leaning against the wall? Sitting cross-legged on the grass? Lounging against a tree trunk? Each time she saw him, she felt for an instant that she’d pulled him from her imagination, a dream-man. She had to go to him and touch him to make sure he was real.
He never failed to bring wine and something good to eat, and, as the moon waned, a candle to give them light. The little flame was too weak to illuminate very much, but it made the dark around them darker, isolating them in a tiny world of their own.
As they ate and drank, they talked, learning about one another. She told him stories of her life in Milan—though, as with Angela, she did not mention her lost horoscope or the sorcerer or Anasurymboriel. One day she would confess those things. One day, he would learn that they had not found each other just by chance. But not yet. Not till I’m out of Santa Marta. Not till we’re married.
She was hungry for knowledge about him too—what it had been like to be a foundling, to live by his wits on the street. The tales he told were stark with suffering and privation—the rivalry with other gangs, the casual brutality of the city watch, the times he had nearly starved to death. A hard life, as he had said, from which Matteo Moretti had delivered him. But not all the memories were bad ones. She could see that he still felt affection for the little gang of orphan boys who had been his only family. Some of them were gone, lost to hunger or disease, but some, like him, had survived and found a safer life. He never mentioned it, but she suspected he was still in touch with them.
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