Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (22 page)

As Giulia had predicted to the color seller, the fresco was finished by the end of the week. Each morning, Ferraldi called her to position the template for the day’s work and to incise its lines into the intonaco.

Over the past three months she had worked hard to establish herself in the workshop: obeying orders without complaint, volunteering for unpleasant jobs, keeping herself in Stefano’s good graces by deference and flattery. She seized every chance to prove herself at the grinding stone, where her ability to judge her paint mixes by ear as well as by hand and eye gave her an advantage over the other apprentices. Lately, Zuane and Antonio had begun to call on her, especially when they needed one of the more valuable colors. Even taciturn
Lauro sometimes singled her out. Ferraldi, however, had never summoned her to assist him—until now.

On Friday, the last day, he allowed her to stand by him as he applied paint to the wet plaster. In his workshop, as in Humilità’s, many paintings were collaborative, with Ferraldi creating the principal figures and his assistants completing secondary figures and backgrounds; but for fresco he preferred to paint alone. He worked at speed, racing the drying of the intonaco, using broad brushstrokes and, except for a few areas of very bright or very dark, only a single layer of color.

Giulia stood spellbound as the rosy nude figure of Bathsheba bloomed beneath his expert hand. The voices of the paints dwindled almost as soon as they were laid on, swallowed by the water-hungry plaster. Never at Santa Marta would she have been permitted to view such a scene; except for the sacred body of Christ, it was considered sinful for a nun or novice to look upon the human form unclothed. She held her own hands behind her back, her fingers burning as they did when she longed to grip the brush. She was aware of Alvise’s sullen glare—and also, occasionally, of Stefano’s sharp blue gaze. She knew he would do something to humiliate her later, to remind her of her place at the bottom of the apprentice hierarchy. But it would be worth it, for this chance to stand by Ferraldi as she’d once stood by Humilità—learning, always learning.

—

Bernardo arrived on Sunday just past noon, as usual. He was dressed with his customary sober elegance, his fur-trimmed mantle the single touch of luxury. When he threw it back, he
winced, and Giulia saw that he was holding his left arm close against his side.

“What happened?” she asked.

Bernardo shrugged, which made him wince again. “I went walking the other evening. I met with a man who was unwilling to let me pass.”

He’d told her how he sometimes ventured out alone late at night, a lantern in one hand and the other on the pommel of his dagger. He liked the solitude, he said, the empty streets and deserted campi. Giulia suspected that he also liked daring the attention of thugs and footpads, the breath of danger in the dark.

“And did you persuade him?”

“Oh yes. He’s nursing more bruises than I.”

“One day you’ll get more than bruises, wandering about alone at night.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“They can chisel that on your gravestone.”

“You sound like my mother.”

He turned irritably away and began to pace, while Giulia loaded drawing supplies into a leather satchel. There was more space for him to move than the first time he’d come, for Giulia had finished her reorganization of the storeroom. The shelves were dust-free, the supplies well-ordered. The piles of rubbish she had either salvaged or dumped into the rio, and there was now a large, clear area in the center of the floor where deliveries could be received and paintings set to dry. Giulia had managed all the work herself—when she’d tried to enlist Stefano to help with the heavier items, he had rolled his eyes and told her not to bother. “It’s always been this way. If you think the Maestro will thank you, you’re mistaken.” He’d been visibly displeased when Ferraldi praised her.

“I’m ready,” she said, slinging the satchel over her shoulder and tucking her drawing board under her arm. “Are you sure you want to come with me today?”

“I’m here, am I not?”

The sky was overcast, the air raw with that penetrating Venetian cold. They headed for the Rialto on foot, then followed the twisting course of the Merceria. Usually they talked as they went, but today Bernardo was silent, preoccupied perhaps by the need to guard his injured ribs against the jostling crowds. Even on a Sunday the Merceria bustled, some shops shuttered but others open, the many taverns doing good business.

They passed through the arched gateway at the Merceria’s end, emerging from the cramped confines of the street into an enormity of light and air: the Piazza San Marco, the vast plaza on Venice’s southern waterfront. Here were no leaning housefronts, no crowding walls—only open space and soaring sky. To Giulia’s left rose the glorious bulk of the Basilica, with its shimmering mosaics and golden domes. Ahead of her lay the long loggia’d façade of the Doge’s Palace, and the twin columns that rose at the edge of the Molo, the great quayside that was the main point of arrival for trade vessels from overseas. Opposite the palace, the thrusting pillar of the Campanile, Venice’s tallest bell-tower, challenged the clouds.

As he always did when he accompanied her on these expeditions, Bernardo fell back, leaving Giulia to go on alone. The piazza heaved with activity: butchers and produce sellers and bakers at their stalls, money changers in their booths, porters lugging bales and bundles from the waterfront, beggars and black-robed nobles and young men in bright attire going about their business, with every now and then a glimpse of more exotic folk: turbaned Saracens, dark-skinned Africans, bearded Jews. Pigeons congregated on the paving, and gulls
wheeled overhead, their cries audible even above the great noise of this place. With every step Giulia breathed in a different odor, fair or foul—and beneath them all, unmistakable, the tang of the sea.

She chose a spot well away from the one she’d picked the last time, near a man who was doing a brisk business selling roasted pears from a brazier. From the satchel at her shoulder she drew a finished portrait: the face of a stranger she’d glimpsed on the street. Drawing a breath, she added her voice to the din of commerce that echoed from the ancient stones of the piazza.

“Portraits! Portraits! Drawn to the life upon the page! Buy a portrait for your wife or your mother, your sweetheart or your sister! Only a scudo!”

Three months ago, she could not have imagined herself doing what she was doing now. But from the night she had arrived in Ferraldi’s workshop, she’d known she must find a way to earn money. The coins Sofia had given her would not last forever. Selling portraits, as she had in Padua on the day of her escape, had been the only thing she could think of.

It had taken her weeks to pluck up the courage to try. The first time, she did not sell a single drawing. She forced herself to return, to shout her wares as brazenly as the vendors and stallholders did. Just as she was about to give up, a pair of tipsy youths tossed a scudo at her and demanded she draw them both for the price of one. After that a nearby meat seller offered half a dozen sausages in trade for a portrait of his young son. She’d cooked the sausages that night over her brazier in the storeroom, encouraged but knowing she must do better.

The third time, Bernardo had come with her. And that had made all the difference.

He strolled toward her now, just another well-dressed young man taking leisure on a Sunday, pretending interest in the goods displayed on the stalls nearby. His eyes slid over her as if he did not know her. Then he paused, as though his interest had suddenly been caught.

“A scudo for a portrait?” he said loudly.

“Yes, signor. Drawn to the life. Look.” Giulia held up the stranger’s face. “My uncle, a likeness so exact you might expect to hear him speak.”

“Hmmm.” Bernardo pretended to consider. “Well, why not? If it’s good, I’ll make a present of it to my sister. If it’s bad, you will get nothing. Understand?”

“Yes, signor.” From her satchel Giulia drew a charcoal stick and a clean sheet of paper, purchased with the proceeds of other expeditions like this one, and fixed it to her drawing board. “Stand just there, if you please, signor. Look a little to your right. A little more. That’s it.”

The charade had been Bernardo’s idea. “You must show them that they want what you are selling,” he’d said when she had told him what she was doing and the difficulty of it. “Men want what they think others want. Business draws business.”

And it was so. The first time he’d accompanied her, she had sold five portraits. He played his role with surprising relish, afterward making wicked fun of the fat banker who’d asked her not to draw his double chins, and the young dandy in patterned hose and an absurd feathered cap who had displayed his profile as if expecting to be cast in bronze. She would never have imagined he could take such pleasure in deception; she realized only later that what really pleased him was the opportunity to hoodwink members of Venice’s elite.

She roughed in the lines of his face, her hand flying over the paper. Already their exchange had caught the interest
of the nearby vendors, and two of the pear seller’s customers had paused to watch as well. Humilità had always insisted that her pupils think about what they drew, analyzing line and form, light and shadow, before ever setting charcoal or quill to paper; this was a very different kind of drawing, a transfer of image to page almost without thought, a lightning union of eye and hand. Bernardo’s face especially, for by now she had shaped his features at least a score of times. She imagined she could do so even if her eyes were closed.

She was finished. She detached the drawing and held it up.

“Is it satisfactory, signor?”

“By the saints!” he cried. “It is my very face, there upon the paper! Let me see it close.”

He reached for it, forgetting his injury, catching his breath as pain reminded him.

“If you take it, signor,” Giulia said, following their usual wordplay, “you keep it. And if you keep it, you must pay for it.”

“Oh, very well.” Normally he drew the bargaining out—to attract more attention and also to demonstrate, by Giulia’s refusal to lower her price, that she was not to be trifled with. But today his heart clearly wasn’t in it. “It’s a fair price for so good a likeness.”

He gave her the scudo. Moving with care, he headed as if by accident toward the men who had paused to watch. As nearly always happened, one of them, a merchant or a banker in the long black robe worn by all older Venetian men of substance, called to him. He held the portrait so the man could see. Some nodding, an exchange of words. Then Bernardo melted into the crowd, and the merchant approached.

“For my wife,” he said.

After the merchant came a young man with long blond hair who reminded her of Stefano, and after him a baker with
his new bride, and after them several others. Scudo followed scudo—except for the baker, who offered two good loaves in trade.

The afternoon was drawing on, and Giulia’s hand was tired. She packed her charcoal and papers into her satchel, which now bulged with the loaves, and went to find Bernardo at their usual meeting spot beneath the gleaming gold mosaics of one of the Basilica’s entrance porticoes. He’d brought no book with him today. Instead, he gazed out across the bustle of the piazza, his arm clamped against his side.

“Did you do well today?” he asked.

“Two loaves and six scudi. Here’s yours back.”

He took the coin and slipped it into his belt pouch. Behind him, the great doors were open on the cathedral’s interior, a well of darkness pricked in its depths with candle flames.

“I bought some roasted chestnuts.”

He offered them to her, pulling aside the cloth that wrapped them, releasing their delicious odor. Giulia took one and slit its leathery skin with her fingernail.

“I heard something from my mother yesterday,” Bernardo said. “There’s to be a painting competition, sponsored by Archimedeo Contarini. A single painting, any size or subject, on a theme of music.”

Giulia reached for another chestnut. “Music? That’s unusual.”

“Archimedeo is weary of Madonnas and Crucifixions and the agonies of saints. He wants something modern to put in his new palazzo, which by all accounts is already the very pinnacle of modernity.” Bernardo’s lips curled. “If not of good taste. There’s to be a judging on Giovedi Grasso, the last day of Carnival—it will be held at Palazzo Contarini Nuova, and the judge will be Giovanni Bellini himself. The winner will be
crowned with laurel leaves and receive a seat of honor at the banquet table. And a purse of five hundred ducats.”

“Five hundred ducats!” It was an astonishing sum. “For a single painting?”

“The only thing Archimedeo Contarini loves more than spending money is making sure that all Venice sees him spending it. It will be the event of the Carnival season, or so my mother says.”

“I’ll tell my master. He’ll surely be tempted by that purse.”

Bernardo selected a chestnut and shucked it free of its skin but did not eat it. “Are
you
not tempted by it?”

“Me?” Giulia laughed. “Bernardo, I am only an apprentice. I couldn’t enter that competition.”

“Ah, there’s where you’re wrong. Entry is open only to those who are not members of the Venetian artists’ guild. The intent, presumably, is to exclude Venetian painters, of whom Archimedeo is apparently as weary as he is of their Madonnas. But nothing has been said about Venetian
apprentices
. Who by definition are not members of the guild.”

“That’s mad.” Giulia shook her head. “It would never be allowed.”

Bernardo’s ink-dark eyes flicked to her face. “You don’t know that.”

“Even if it were—I can draw as well as anyone, but I have only a little experience of painting. The size of that purse will attract famous artists. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Why not? You have a gift, Girolamo. Even I can see it.”

It surprised her. He’d never said anything like that before. He had returned his attention to the chestnuts, which he was folding back into their cloth.

“My old teacher used to say that a gift is like a block of marble,” Giulia said. “It exists, and it is beautiful, but it
cannot shape itself. Only teaching can do that. Teaching and experience.”