Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel)

by Victoria Strauss

  Ferraldi understood. She could see him struggling with it. She felt a desperate hope.

  “Please, Maestro, don’t let him take me.” She held out her hands, pleading. “I’ll go away—you’ll never see me again. Just don’t let him take me.”

  “Listen to me, Gianfranco.” Matteo’s voice was quiet. “Whether you believe me or the girl, Santa Marta has a claim on her. She is pledged and promised to it by vows made before the altar. I advise you to consider well the . . . distress . . . it will cause if she is not returned. Venice may wink at the authority of Rome, but I promise you, Rome’s hand can reach as far as your workshop.”

  Ferraldi stood motionless. He was looking neither at Giulia nor Matteo, but staring down at the paint-stained floor. His silver hair had fallen across his face.

  “I know your feelings for my daughter. Would you wish her reputation to be tarnished by such shameful intrigue if this scandal were to become known? Not to mention the damage to your own reputation if it were revealed that you have harbored, even unwittingly, a fugitive novice in illegal disguise.” Matteo’s voice fell even further. His face might have been carved from stone but for the living jewels of his eyes. “Don’t oppose me in this, Gianfranco. Truly, it will not serve you.”

  Slowly, Ferraldi turned to Matteo.

  “If you carry . . . her . . . back to Santa Marta, will she be taken into the workshop again?”

  Giulia knew then that she was lost.

  “Certainly.” Matteo did not lose a beat. “She owes her labor to the convent, and the workshop is where she labors best. It is another reason they want her back.”

  “Her talent will not go to waste, then. That is good.”

  “Don’t believe him,” Giulia said, though she had no hope it would make a difference. “If I go back there, I’ll never hold a brush again.”

  “I’m sorry, Girolamo.” Ferraldi shook his head. “Giulia, I mean. For Humilità’s sake, I would help you if I could. But what he says is true. I have no choice.”

  “Maestro, please—”

  “I have no choice.” This time it was he who could not look her in the eyes.

  “Good man.” Matteo clapped his hands. “Dario!”

  Matteo’s henchman came to take hold of Giulia’s arm. His grip was like a manacle; she knew it would be useless to resist.

  “Farewell, Gianfranco,” Matteo said. “You have my gratitude for your assistance. God grant that we may see each other soon in better circumstances.”

  Ferraldi folded his arms. He did not reply.

  Dario urged Giulia forward. She went, stumbling, her eyes cast down, for she could not bear to see how the other members of the workshop would be watching her. She nearly fell as Dario pushed her onto the stairs; as he caught her, her head flew up, and for an instant she glimpsed the shocked face of Alvise, who was still standing in the doorway.

  Then they were in the storeroom, twilight-dark with the water door closed, and then in the street, where the rain still poured down. It soaked her instantly, streaming from her hair and clothes, running into her nose and mouth until she thought she would drown. And indeed, she half hoped she would, for to die in the freezing rain in the streets of Venice might well be better than what she would face now.

  CHAPTER 21

  SURRENDER

  A gondola was waiting, the gondolier standing like a statue in the downpour. Matteo took the seat under shelter of the felze. Dario shoved Giulia down in the bow, keeping a hold on her all the while.

  The gondolier pushed smoothly away from the landing. Giulia paid no attention to where they were going. What did it matter? It was over. Her escape, her deception, her dream of painting. What kind of fool had she been to imagine it could end any other way?

  The rain had stopped by the time they drew up before the water steps of a palazzo—not as large as the great palazzi along the Grand Canal, but very grand all the same. Lanterns lit the alcoves by the water door, haloed by the mist that had begun to rise off the rio.

  Matteo disembarked and pounded on the door, which was opened after a few moments by a servant with a candle. Matteo beckoned; Dario hauled Giulia onto the slippery landing and hustled her up the steps. They followed Matteo along a dim passage, into a courtyard, and up the stairs to the piano nobile. There Matteo turned aside. Dario pushed Giulia up another flight of stairs. He shoved her into a room and locked her in.

  The room was small, with no furnishings at all. Giulia stood dripping on the floor like laundry hung to dry, unable to summon the will to move. At last, slowly, she crossed to the single window, which looked out across an alley onto the side of the house next door. The fog was thickening, blurring the world away. She loosed the catch and pulled the window inward, and leaned out over the sill. There were no balconies. The stuccoed walls were smooth, bare of any ornamentation that might have provided handholds. The alley below was much too far to jump, unless she wanted to break her legs or crush her skull.

  Trapped.

  She closed the window and rested her forehead against the cold glass. Even now that the first shock had passed, she found it hard to believe what had happened.

  How on earth had Matteo found her? He could not have learned from anyone at Santa Marta, for she’d never yielded to temptation and written to Angela. What about Ferraldi? She’d told him that story about being her own cousin; she supposed he might have tried to confirm it and somehow guessed the truth. But he’d been truly shocked by her unmasking. And why would he have told Matteo? She’d seen his displeasure at Matteo’s abrupt appearance. No. It could not have been Ferraldi.

  Stefano, then, wanting to rid himself of a rival? Alvise, who believed she was a threat to him? Bernardo, who’d been so angry with her, whose mother knew her secret? But she’d never told Sofia her name. And even if the others had guessed her sex, how would they have discovered who she really was, or connected her with Matteo?

  In the end it hardly mattered. Once again she was Matteo’s prisoner. She knew what he wanted; she knew he would come for it. Her despair was so great that she did not even feel afraid.

  She was freezing in her soaking clothes. Stepping away from the window, she twisted her hair to wring out the water, then did the same with her garments. She crouched down in a corner, her teeth chattering, to wait.

  —

  It was full dark when he arrived.

  A line of light appeared beneath the door. The lock rattled and the door swung open. Matteo entered, accompanied by a servant with a lantern and a chair. Matteo seated himself; the servant set down the lantern and departed, closing the door but not turning the lock. Involuntarily, Giulia’s eyes followed him.

  “He has instructions to wait outside,” Matteo said. “If you are thinking of attempting to escape.”

  She looked at him across her drawn-up legs. He sat easily in the chair, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, his arms folded on his chest. His mane of gray curls was dry, and he had put on dry clothes; but he hadn’t changed his boots. She could still see the marks of water on them.

  “Are you aware,” he said conversationally, “that in Venice it is forbidden by law for a woman to wear men’s clothing? Of course, that is a rule meant for whores, who costume themselves for the entertainment of their clients. But I imagine it could be considered to apply to you as well.”

  “Where am I?” Giulia could hear her own heartbeat. “Where have you brought me?”

  “This is the house of a patron, who has kindly offered hospitality for my stay.”

  “Does he know how you’re using his generosity?”

  Matteo smiled. The lantern illuminated him from below like an image on an altar, casting strange shadows on his face, hooding his eyes and throwing his cheekbones into sharp relief.

  “I imagine you are curious to know how I found you. It was the man you hoodwinked. My former pupil, Gianfranco Ferraldi.”

  Giulia sucked in her breath. Matteo’s smile widened.

  “Not deliberately, you understand. You
deceived him most thoroughly; he did not realize what he was telling me. He wrote to me, you see, with condolences on the death of my dear daughter, and mentioned also that he was sorry for the equally untimely death”—he paused—“of her most promising pupil, Giulia Borromeo. And that, by chance, young Giulia’s cousin, a talented artist in his own right, had come to him on my daughter’s recommendation and was now employed in his workshop.”

  Giulia closed her eyes. My fault, she thought. It was my own fault.

  “Well, as you can imagine, I found this curious since I knew from my daughter that young Giulia had no family in all the world. Nor was she dead, unless she’d perished in a ditch after her escape from Santa Marta—of which I was kindly informed by a very apologetic abbess. And if she hadn’t perished . . . well, I had good cause to recall what an enterprising girl she was. Might she not have disguised herself as a boy, and taken the name Girolamo Landriani, and run off to Venice to pretend to be her own cousin and trick her teacher’s dearest friend into apprenticing her?”

  He shifted in his chair, reversing the position of his legs.

  “Of course, I knew this was the merest speculation. I was quite prepared to reach Venice and discover that young Giulia had a cousin after all. But I thought it worth the chance. And so it proved. I would have come more promptly,” he added. “But Ferraldi’s letter was delayed.”

  “I won’t give you what you want,” Giulia said.

  “I have not yet asked you for anything.”

  “You know what I mean. You can beat me or starve me. You can do anything you like. I won’t tell you.”

  “What sort of man do you think I am?” He sounded genuinely affronted. “I would not beat or starve a young woman, no matter how she vexed me.”

  She stared up at him. The light of the lantern did not reach the ceiling; the darkness above him seemed infinite, like the vault of the cosmos robbed of stars.

  “What I will do,” he said, “is offer you a bargain. Give me Passion blue and I will set you free, to live or die as you may. Refuse, and I will return you to Santa Marta, where you will be imprisoned as fast as in any dungeon and never draw so much as a line for the rest of your life. Those are your choices.”

  “I don’t believe you. You came all this way to find me on nothing but a suspicion. You’ll never let go of me until you get Passion blue, and if you get it you will never set me free.”

  “Such mistrust! Think about it, girl. Why would I put myself to the trouble of dragging you back to Padua if I am not forced to do so? I’ve no doubt those holy virgins would like to sink their claws into you, but I have no interest in serving their purposes, or in putting Passion blue back into their hands. I am a determined man, young Giulia, but I am not a vengeful one. Surrender my daughter’s secret, and you have my oath on my own secrets that you will go free.”

  He leaned down to take the lantern, then got to his feet.

  “I will give you time to consider. I’ll come again to hear your answer.”

  He departed, the lantern swinging from his hand. Its light trembled under the door as the lock turned, then dwindled, fading to nothing along with the sound of his footsteps. The dark closed round again, so smothering and complete that there might have been no light left anywhere in the world.

  —

  Some time later a servant—Giulia couldn’t tell if it was the same one—came with a blanket, a bucket, and bread and cheese and a jug of water on a tray. He deposited everything by the door and locked her in again.

  Giulia could not bring herself to eat, but she drank from the jug and made use of the bucket. Then she wrapped herself in the blanket and huddled against the wall, staring at the faint gray rectangle of the window.

  She felt too many emotions to sort them out—despair, fear, anger—but most of all a kind of numb disbelief. How could she be here again, at the exact same point of choice that had driven her from Santa Marta? She could almost imagine that the nearly five intervening months had never happened.

  What an idiot she had been to tell Ferraldi that stupid, complicated story. Yet if she hadn’t, would he have invited her to stay? What would she have done if he’d turned her away?

  I wouldn’t be here now, though. At least I wouldn’t be here.

  Had Matteo told the truth when he promised to set her free? She had no reason to believe him. But she did not doubt for a moment that he would send her back to Santa Marta if she defied him—a fate she feared more than any physical pain, as she was sure he well knew.

  Nor did she doubt that Santa Marta would take her. Perhaps it would not want her—but it would take her, for the sake of the secret she had withheld and to make her pay for her defiance. At Santa Marta she would be starved and beaten, punished without mercy until she surrendered Passion blue. And then she would become a conversa, a servant nun, scrubbing floors, washing the sisters’ laundry, darning their sheets, keeping the Little Silence during the day and the Great Silence at night until, perhaps, she forgot how to speak at all. She would never again set foot in the workshop. She would never again hold a brush. She would never again hear the voices of the colors singing the songs of their creation.

  Not just loveless and nameless, but passionless. That’s how I will live at Santa Marta. That is how I’ll die.

  And outside the convent, where the only certainty was that terrible things existed and were bound to happen—how would she live there? She didn’t know. But she’d survived before; perhaps she could again. She’d followed her gift before; perhaps she could again. And if she could not . . . to die alone in some back alley, or on the roadside, still seemed a better fate than the living death of Santa Marta.

  It came to her, with a shock of recognition colder than the air of the dark little room, that she was thinking of giving Matteo what he wanted.

  Horror swept her. No. I can’t betray my promise to the Maestra. But she could see the high brick walls of Santa Marta, the grim gray stone of the punishment cells. She could feel the emptiness of the life she would live within them, a void into which all the fire that burned in her would fall and be extinguished.

  Would Humilità demand that she pay such a price? That she consign her gift, for which Humilità had hoped so much, to certain oblivion just to keep the secret of Passion blue?

  She recalled the intensity with which Humilità had demanded her promise. In truth, she did not know.

  She buried her face in icy fingers, wretched before the vista of her own cowardice. But I never asked for this. She’d wanted Passion blue—of course she had. She’d loved knowing that she held the secret—hers alone, no one else’s. But she was tired of running, of hiding, of resisting. Nothing was worth so much. Nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Maestra,” she whispered. “This was your burden. You had no right to make it mine. I can’t carry it any longer.”

  The blanket was damp, moistened by her still-wet clothes. She was colder than ever. Miserably she huddled against the wall, waiting for the long night to end.

  —

  In spite of her discomfort, she fell asleep. She woke to light and the sound of church bells. It was Sunday, less than a day since her capture, yet looking back at the day before was like looking across a gulf of years.

  The hours dragged by. Matteo did not return. Servants arrived at intervals with food—not just bread and water, but full meals, as if Matteo meant to prove his promise about not starving her. She had no appetite but she ate anyway, and paced back and forth across the floor to try and warm herself. Anticipation was a wire inside her, twisting tighter with every breath. Come back, she urged Matteo silently. Come back, come back, come back. Let me get it over with.

  He came at last on Monday morning, accompanied by a servant carrying paper and an ink pot.

  “Well?” he said, after the servant had laid the materials on the floor and left the room. “I’ve brought you the means to write, if you need it.”

  “I don’t.” Standing by the window, Giulia reached into her sleeve and drew
out Humilità’s recipe, which she’d taken yesterday from the pouch at her neck. She crossed the room, surprised at the steadiness of her footsteps, and placed the paper in Matteo’s outstretched hand.

  He unfolded it, his rings catching the light. She waited, every muscle tense. She understood the risk of what she’d just done: He might indeed have lied about setting her free. But only by gambling that he’d told the truth did she have any chance at all.

  “My daughter’s hand.” He brushed his fingers across the page, almost a caress. “Good. Now I need not wonder whether you have tried to trick me.”

  It hadn’t occurred to her to trick him. Her face must have showed this, for he smiled.

  “Just as well, young Giulia. I’d only have had to find you again.” He returned his attention to the recipe. “Hm. Not just ingredients, but a procedure. Ah! Alabaster.” He sounded like a man reading a letter from a lover. “And ground glass. Glass! Of course. Yes. Yes, I see.”

  Giulia had wondered what she would feel in this moment. Now she knew: shame and anger. But also a secret understanding. He believed he had the key. She thought—she hoped—that she knew better.

  He looked up. She dropped her eyes.

  “I suppose you’ve memorized it.”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t lie. It’s nothing to me—what use can you make of it, a girl like you?”

  “I might surprise you,” she said, and immediately regretted it.

  He laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself. Even if the world does not eat you up, you have not a fraction of my daughter’s genius.”

  Carefully he folded the recipe again and placed it in his belt pouch.

  “My daughter did you a disservice, young Giulia. She should have known she could not keep this from me.” He shook his head. “We shared a heart, she and I, though she forgot that at the end.”