Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (29 page)

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.”

Giulia felt a wave of disgust.
You can say such things, now you’ve conquered her at last. For that’s what it was always about, wasn’t it? Bringing her to heel.

She drew a breath, steadied her voice. “I’ve done what you wanted. Will you let me go now?”

“I will. But your clothes are in a dreadful state. I’ll order new garments brought up.”

“I don’t need new clothes.”

“I insist.” He looked at her with his deep-set eyes that were so much like Humilità’s. “I expect we will never meet again.”

“God willing,” she could not stop herself from saying.

He smiled. “Farewell, Giulia Borromeo.”

—

He locked her in again. She waited, her heart racing, terrified he had lied after all and the next thing she would hear was the steps of someone coming to take her back to Santa Marta. But when the door opened at last, it was only a servant—a woman this time, carrying a pile of folded garments.

“These are for you,” the servant said.

Giulia looked at what she held. “Those are women’s clothes.”

The servant shrugged.

“I don’t need new clothes. I’ll keep what I’ve got on.”

“I’m not to let you out unless you wear them. You’re to leave the ones you have.”

It was Matteo’s final demonstration of his power, stripping her of the last piece of her deception even as he let her go. Giulia struggled to contain her anger. “Can’t you just look the other way? No one will know.”

The servant said nothing, a refusal as clear as words. In her face was absolute indifference—to Giulia and her desires, and probably to Matteo’s orders also, the distinction being that Matteo was the guest of the man who paid her wages.

The garments were plain, probably a servant’s, but clean and of decent quality. Giulia peeled off her boy’s clothes and pulled on the woolen drawers, the linen chemise, and the loose-sleeved woolen dress. It all fit fairly well, though she had to lace the bodice tight. The servant watched. Who, Giulia wondered, did this woman think she was, locked up in this chamber?

She pushed her feet into her boots again and wound the final item, a thick woolen shawl, around her head and shoulders. The servant opened the door, gesturing Giulia to precede
her along the hallway to the stairs at its end. Giulia began to descend, the dress impeding her steps. Over the time of her disguise, it seemed, she’d lost the skill of walking in skirts.

The courtyard was shrouded in mist. The servant pointed Giulia toward the street door. Beyond it lay the alley on which Giulia had looked down from her prison window. When she hesitated on the threshold, the servant pushed her, hard, so that she stumbled out onto the brick paving of the street. The door slammed behind her.

Not until that moment did she truly believe Matteo had let her go.

She stood for a moment, feeling strangely light, as if she might rise up and float away. Then she began to walk. The paving was slippery underfoot; the fog was thick and wet, and with each breath, she drew its cold into her body. She didn’t know where she was going or what she meant to do. For the moment it was enough simply to put distance between herself and Matteo Moretti.

CHAPTER 22

LOST