Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel)

by Victoria Strauss

  “Yes, clarissima,” Giulia said. “Thank you. I’m more grateful than I can say.”

  Maria returned with a bowl of stew and part of a loaf. Giulia ate, trying not to gulp the food as her hunger urged her to do. When she was finished, Sofia gave her one of the mats from the floor and a blanket from her own bed, and Maria led her outside and pointed her to a spot beside the tent, close to the fire.

  The ground was hard under Giulia’s weary body. But the mat blocked its chill, and the blanket was thick and warm. It smelled of cedar. The scent, spicy and exotic, followed her into sleep.

  —

  Giulia opened her eyes on the great arch of the sky, where the gray of dawn was just overtaking the pinpoint brilliance of the stars. She smelled wood smoke and animal dung, heard the whickering of horses and the voices of men.

  I didn’t dream it, she thought, marveling.

  She pushed back the blanket and rose, shivering in the early morning chill. She could see men gathering by the camp’s main cook fire, their forms shadowy in the rising light of dawn. There was a rustling nearby: Maria, ducking out of Sofia’s tent, carrying her mistress’s chamber pot covered with a cloth. She cast Giulia an inscrutable look and moved on.

  A pair of wooden peasant clogs had been placed nearby. Giulia unwound the clumsy bindings around her feet and slipped them on, then left the camp, heading for a nearby copse of saplings. Of all the difficulties of managing her disguise, she could already tell that finding privacy to relieve herself was going to be the most troublesome. Finding time too—for the hose, with a codpiece at the front, were designed for male convenience. She, on the other hand, had to untie all the points attaching hose to doublet so she could take them down, and then knot everything up again. At least her fingers were less stiff than they’d been yesterday. Her hand was still painful, but she could tell that the swelling had gone down.

  By the time she returned, the sun was rising and the camp was readying for departure. She passed Bernardo, hitching the horse he’d been tending last night to Sofia’s cart.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  He glanced up. In daylight, she saw how young he really was—not much older, perhaps, than her own true age. He dipped his head, a single curt nod, and went back to what he was doing.

  Someone—Maria—had left a hunk of bread on Giulia’s blanket. As she swallowed the last of it, she looked up to see Bernardo approaching. She felt a surge of apprehension. She hadn’t forgotten his objections last night.

  “My mother says you are to travel with us.” His voice held the cool hauteur of someone accustomed to command. “There’s room at the back of the cart with the baggage, or you can walk. We halt once a day for a meal, and as necessary to water the horses. It’s up to you to keep pace. If you fall behind or wander off, we won’t wait for you. Is that clear?”

  Giulia looked up at him, acutely conscious of her tangled hair, her torn and dirty clothing. “Yes.”

  “Do not mistake your situation. My mother enjoys collecting stray creatures, but her tolerance extends only as far as this journey. Once we reach Venice, you’ll be on your own.”

  “I understand. I’m very grateful to clarissima Sofia and . . . and to you.”

  In his hard mouth and unblinking eyes she read his opinion of her gratitude. “Just see that you keep up.”

  Stung by his condescension, but relieved he hadn’t banished her, Giulia knelt to roll up her bedding. She’d just gotten to her feet again when Sofia emerged from the tent, dressed in a dark mantle and a gown of red wool, both garments plainly cut but obviously of the finest quality.

  “Good morning, Girolamo,” she said, smiling her secretive smile.

  “Good morning, clarissima.”

  Bernardo handed his mother into the cart, settling her beneath the awning that spanned the front. She touched his cheek in thanks; he smiled at her, a brief softening of his stern face. Returning to the tent, he began to break it down, collapsing the poles and dragging the canvas flat so he could fold it.

  “Can I help?” Giulia asked, reasoning that this was something a boy would do, wounded hand or no.

  “No need.” He did not bother to look up.

  Maria had already joined her mistress under the awning. Giulia tossed her bedroll up behind it, then climbed in herself, pushing at the bundles and boxes to make a place where she could sit. Bernardo heaved the folded canvas into the rear of the cart and stowed the tent poles in brackets along the side, then vaulted into the driver’s seat.

  With much shouting and creaking, the caravan got under way. It was a merchant train, Sofia had told Giulia last night, returning to Venice from trading in Milan. Sofia and her companions were not part of it but were following it for safety on their way home from Vicenza, where Sofia had been attending the birth of a friend’s second child. Venice was not far: forty miles, maybe a little more. But according to Sofia the roads were bad, and it would be more than a week before the party reached the Venetian lagoon. The contents of the carts would then be loaded onto boats, the mules and horses and the carts themselves left behind—for as Giulia had learned from Ferraldi’s letters, nothing came to Venice except by water.

  It was a long, dull, bone-rattling day. By the time the caravan halted to make camp, Giulia was grateful to escape the cart. Maria assisted Bernardo with the baggage and the tent; again Giulia offered to help, and again Bernardo turned her curtly away. At Sofia’s insistence she shared the evening meal, perched awkwardly on one of the painted chests while Sofia and Bernardo discussed their stay in Vicenza and Maria knelt by the brazier, her dark face as still as a painting.

  Later, wrapped in her blanket, Giulia lay awake, staring at the red eye of Maria’s cook fire. She was still mistrustful of this sudden turn of luck. But she was warm. Her belly was full. And she was one day closer to Venice.

  —

  By the third morning the cut on Giulia’s hand had scabbed over, and she’d begun to believe, cautiously, that her luck might hold after all.

  That afternoon Bernardo gave Maria the reins and jumped down into the road to stretch his legs. He kept pace with the horse for a time, then jogged back and hoisted himself into the rear of the cart, settling down on the other side of the pile of baggage. His eyes passed over Giulia as if she were just another bundle. He took a book from his belt pouch and began to read, shading his eyes against the sun.

  Giulia craned her neck, trying to see the print. Growing up, she’d had access to books, for Maestro Bruni had allowed her to borrow as she pleased from his small library of printed and hand-copied volumes. She’d read Ovid in the original Latin, and Plato in translation. She’d read Dante in Italian, and suffered nightmares of his vision of Hell. At Santa Marta, however, there had been no opportunity to read, other than the formulas in Humilità’s book of secrets. She missed it.

  She craned too far. Bernardo raised his head and fixed her with a flat stare. “Do you want something?”

  “No,” Giulia said, remembering to lower her voice.

  “Keep your eyes to yourself, then.”

  He returned his attention to the book. Giulia felt a rush of anger. As herself, as a girl, she might have swallowed it, but she was a boy now. She did not have to be so deferential.

  “I was only wondering what you were reading.”

  He looked up again. “Why? It would mean nothing to you.”

  “I can read. I have book learning.”

  She saw the skepticism in his face. Like his mother, he was extraordinarily good-looking; but where Sofia was gold, he was iron, his eyes too dark to see the pupils, his glossy hair as black as the charred animal bones Giulia had so often ground up for paint. It was cut in the Venetian fashion, with short bangs across the front, angling down to fall below his shoulders at the back. His clothes were conservative, made of plain dark materials, though the fine cloth and meticulous cut, as well as the silver at his belt and at the pommel of his dagger, spoke of wealth, as surely as did the luxurious furnishings of Sofia’s
tent.

  “Read this, then.” He held the volume toward her in the manner of someone calling a bluff.

  Giulia could not resist the lure of the book. It was small, beautifully bound in leather, with a silver clasp that caught the sunlight. The text was Latin, printed on creamy paper: poetry, though she did not recognize the poet’s name.

  She leafed through it, turning the pages with care—a book like this, she knew, might cost as much as a week’s wages for a notary or a clerk. Picking a poem at random, she began to read—haltingly at first, for it had been nearly two years since she’d held such a volume in her hands, but then more fluently, taking pleasure in the words. It was a love poem, the lament of a lover pining for his absent beloved. She read to the end, then closed the book and offered it back to Bernardo. He took it. She could see that he was trying to hide his surprise.

  “Where did you learn Latin?”

  “I had a tutor, growing up.”

  “Yes, my mother said you told her that.” And I assumed you were lying. He didn’t need to say it. “Is he the one who taught you to draw?”

  “No. I’ve always known how to draw, ever since I can remember.”

  “Tell me the truth.” That flat stare again. “Are you really apprenticed to Gianfranco Ferraldi?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s not the whole story, is it?”

  The cart passed over a deep rut, jolting them both. Giulia shoved away a bundle that had shifted. “What do you mean?”

  “There’s something else. Something you haven’t told my mother. Did you run away? Did you steal something?”

  His regard was almost as penetrating as Sofia’s. Giulia forced herself to meet his eyes. “I stole nothing. Everything I’ve said is true.”

  She braced herself for another harsh question. But all he said was “Lucky for you my mother has so soft a heart.”

  “She’s very kind.”

  “You needn’t call her ‘clarissima,’ you know. She’ll let you do it because it flatters her, but in truth she has no claim to any title of respect.”

  “Oh. I assumed . . .”

  “Because she is wealthy? She built her wealth herself. And kept it too.” Giulia heard the pride in his voice. “Few in her profession can say the same.”

  “Her profession?”

  “Did she not tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “My mother is a courtesan. Retired now, but for a few of her oldest clients. In her prime, though, she was famous.”

  Giulia’s mouth had fallen open.

  “Be careful,” he said, deadpan. “You’ll catch a fly.”

  “I’m sorry.” Giulia found her voice. “I meant no offense.”

  “Offense?” Contempt twisted his lips. “In her youth she was called La Fiamma, for the beauty that burned men’s hearts to ash. She was a confidante to members of the Council of Ten, even to one who became doge. Giovanni Bellini himself begged to paint her portrait. How could the ignorance of a boy like you give offense?”

  Giulia’s face was on fire. Angry retorts filled her mouth. Instead of speaking them she turned away, reminding herself that she was dependent on this haughty young man’s tolerance, just as she was on his mother’s.

  I should have held my tongue when he first spoke to me. She stared at the sunlit countryside rolling past the cart, hearing the rustle of pages as Bernardo opened his book again. I won’t make that mistake a second time.

  —

  That night in Sofia’s tent, as the three of them shared a meal, Giulia looked at Sofia with new eyes. It had been obvious that Sofia was rich—though whether by birth or marriage, Giulia had not been able to guess—and, for a woman, unusually highly educated, for she carried with her several printed books and wrote daily in a journal. Giulia had gathered, from Sofia’s and Bernardo’s conversations in the evenings, that Sofia was a widow—or at least that she had no living husband—and that she owned a house in Venice along with a number of properties rented out to tenants, which Bernardo managed for her.

  Now these things took on new significance. Giulia was not unfamiliar with Sofia’s profession—in her father’s household, it had been common knowledge that in addition to the mistresses he kept under his roof, he visited a courtesan called Emilia alla Tresca. Emilia was no common whore: She was beautiful, accomplished, equal in intellect to any man—or so said the gossips in the sewing room where Giulia worked. They also said that Emilia’s career had made her wealthy—that she wore silks and velvets, that her throat was wound with gold, that she received her admirers in chambers as magnificent as any noblewoman’s.

  Giulia had listened to these stories as she might have to tales of angels or two-headed calves—things so improbable that there was no likelihood of ever actually encountering them. Yet here was Sofia, so close Giulia could have touched her, talking with Bernardo about repairs that needed to be made to the roof of one of their properties. Giulia thought of the seamstresses at Palazzo Borromeo, some of whom had spat at the mention of Emilia alla Tresca. She thought of the priest at Santa Marta, who would certainly denounce Sofia as a harlot. She thought of Suor Margarita, who would say that the proper response to such a corrupted soul was revulsion, and of Angela, who would counsel compassion. And then she thought of Bernardo—of the pride in his voice as he spoke of the rewards Sofia’s profession had won her, as if they were accomplishments to be envied rather than the fruits of sin.

  He must be illegitimate. Like me.

  Or maybe not like me. For my mother had only one lover, while Sofia . . . Does he even know who his father is?

  Later, Bernardo left the tent to bed down in the cart, and Sofia allowed Giulia to sketch her. As a form of payment for the journey, Giulia had offered to make Sofia a portrait—a real portrait, not a simple sketch like the one she’d done the first night. Sofia had given her six precious sheets of paper from the store in her writing desk, and Giulia had made charcoal sticks by burying willow twigs, cut with a knife borrowed from Maria, in the embers of the cook fire overnight. In the morning before starting out, in the pauses during the day, by the ruddy light of the dying campfire at night, she worked not just on the promised portrait, but on images of her own: a tumbled wall, a ruined cottage, a line of cypresses. It was an entirely unexpected blessing to be able to draw again; she’d resigned herself to days or even weeks without charcoal and paper. To conserve space, she made the drawings tiny, filling up both sides of the sheets.

  Sofia’s loosened hair, which Maria braided each day into elaborate arrangements, rippled past her waist. The candles in their swaying globes gilded her milky skin. Her ability to hold a pose with perfect immobility was amazing; she knew, also, how to flatter herself by the positions she chose, her head angled so that the skin of her throat and the flesh beneath her chin seemed taut and smooth. Giulia had thought her merely vain, but now she saw even this with different eyes. Sofia’s livelihood depended on her beauty. She had no choice but to be vain.

  At last Sofia yawned. Over the past days, Giulia had discovered why she kept her lips closed when she smiled: Her teeth were discolored at the front and gapped at one side, the only part of her that was not beautiful.

  “Is it enough, Girolamo? I am tired.”

  “Yes, cla . . .” Giulia caught herself, but then thought, Why not? “Yes, clarissima. Thank you.”

  “Good.” Sofia extended her arms above her head, stretching like a cat. “Sleep well, Girolamo.”

  No, Giulia thought as she passed from the tent’s warm illumination into the chill blackness of the night. It wasn’t horror or disgust or pity that she felt now that she knew what Sofia was. It was only what she’d felt before: curiosity. And respect.

  CHAPTER 11

  LA SERENISSIMA

  The distant mountains rose higher as the caravan approached the coast, their peaks now crowned with snow. Fog gathered during the night, muffling the campsite at dawn, burning off later in the day. Giulia’s blanket was always damp when she climbed
out of it in the morning.

  She was growing used to her disguise. Her exposed legs no longer felt so naked, and she was beginning to enjoy the freedom of not being encumbered with long skirts. She was even starting to appreciate the convenience of shorter hair, which she could simply untangle with her fingers and tuck behind her ears, rather than spend the time to comb and braid and bind it up.

  But there was so much to remember. Lowering her voice. Walking with her shoulders back and her eyes focused boldly straight ahead. Sitting with her knees apart. The binding around her breasts was a constant irritation—too tight and it was hard to breathe, too loose and she worried it would slip. She was becoming anxious about her monthly courses, though they were not due for another couple of weeks. She borrowed Maria’s knife again and cut another strip from the bottom of her mantle, wrapping it around her waist under her doublet to have it ready.

  And then there were her several-times-daily excursions away from camp. She tried to leave only when others were not watching, but that was not always possible. Sofia had noticed—Giulia was aware of her gaze sometimes as she returned, the cool regard that seemed to perceive so much yet revealed so little. The merchant’s teenage apprentice and son had noticed also. They’d begun to tease her, whistling and making rude comments.

  On a gray afternoon, with only two or three days remaining in the journey, the caravan halted to water the animals, and Giulia made use of a handy hedgerow. When she came back, the two boys were waiting for her, a little distance beyond the gathering of carts. The minute she saw them, she knew she was in trouble.

  “If it isn’t the whore’s charity case,” the merchant’s son drawled. “Have a nice walk?”

  Giulia ducked her head and kept going. If she ignored them, perhaps they would let her pass. Instead, they moved to block her.

  “Think you’re too good to talk to us?” the apprentice demanded.

  “Too good to piss alongside us, that’s for sure,” the merchant’s son sneered.