Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (28 page)

“Very far from dead, in fact. She stands before you now, having disguised herself, betrayed her vows, and stolen a
valuable secret in the bargain. I have come to Venice to retrieve her.”

Of course.
Giulia felt a sickening despair.
Of course he found me. How could I ever have thought he wouldn’t?

Ferraldi stepped toward her. The quill and paper had slipped from his fingers. “Girolamo, is this true?”

“It’s easily proved,” Matteo said. “Order her to remove her doublet and shirt.”

Ferraldi ignored him.
“Is it true?”

She thought of denying it. But all Matteo had to do was rip away her clothing. And in Ferraldi’s face she saw unwilling comprehension, and knew that all the odd things he’d noticed about her were falling into place inside his mind. He believed Matteo already, even if he hadn’t yet admitted it. She closed her eyes.

“I’m Giulia Borromeo. That’s true.”

“Humilità’s pupil,” he whispered.

“I did run away from Santa Marta.” She opened her eyes, though she could not meet his blue-green gaze. “But it isn’t true that I’m a thief. I’ve stolen nothing.”

“She lies,” Matteo said. “She fled Padua to keep from revealing a secret to which she has no right.”

“That’s not so! The secret was mine; she gave it to me of her own free will!”

“What secret?” Ferraldi demanded. “What are you talking about?”

“Passion blue,” Giulia said. “The recipe for Passion blue.”

Once again she saw comprehension in Ferraldi’s face. “Humilità’s famous color.”

“My daughter was not in her right mind before she died,” Matteo said. “This girl, coveting the color for herself, took advantage of that to obtain the recipe. Then when my
daughter’s successor quite rightly demanded that the secret be shared with her, this girl betrayed her vows and fled. She is a viper, Gianfranco. See how she has already tricked you. She would have taken your secrets too.”

“It’s not true. None of it is true.” Giulia realized that Lauro’s hands had fallen away. She was free—but where was there to go? “He wants the color for himself. He has always wanted it. You know that, Maestro—I saw your letters, I know she wrote to you about how he coveted the recipe, how he pushed her and pushed her to give him Passion blue, though she never would. She knew what she was doing when she gave it to me. To her last breath, she knew.”

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.”