Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) (32 page)

The latch rattled. She turned, expecting Sofia—but it was Bernardo.

She froze. So did he. An endless moment passed: he with his fingers still on the latch, she by the window. Then she gasped. Her hands flew to her face. She whirled away from him, as if that could conceal her.

Silence. Then the door closed. Had he gone? No: She heard his footsteps. Then silence again. She stood rigid, her heart beating wildly, her face still bowed into her hands.
If I wait, if I don’t move, surely he’ll go away again.

He did not stir. The situation began to seem ridiculous. She was in his mother’s house—she couldn’t avoid him forever. Better to get it over with.

She forced her hands to fall. She straightened her shoulders. She turned.

He stood a few paces away, achingly familiar: his strong features, his sleek black hair, his elegant, impeccable clothing. His eyes were nailed to hers. Never in her life had she felt so exposed. The skin above the band of her chemise, where the tops of her breasts swelled over the tight lacing of the underdress, seemed to burn. It took all the will she had not to raise her arms and cover herself.

“My mother guessed the truth about you.” His voice was harsh in the silence of the room. “I never did.”

“I’m sorry” was all she could think to say.

“I always suspected you were hiding something. But this—” He bit off the words. “I imagine you found my stupidity amusing. Were you laughing at me the entire time?”

“No! No, never!”

“Did you really think you would get away with it? That you’d never be found out?”

“Of course I knew I might be caught. I thought about it every day. But no master painter would apprentice a girl. I
had
to become a boy. You know—I know you know—what it’s like to want something more than anything else, to fear you may never have it—”

“What
I
want is reasonable at least.” His eyes were like black ice. “And I didn’t have to build a tower of lies to achieve it.”

“No.” Anger flashed through her, sudden as a lightning bolt. “You only kept silent for years on end because you were afraid of what might happen if you spoke. Yes, I deceived you. Why would I not? I don’t owe you anything. You have no special claim on the truth. I never sought you out—all I wanted was to be left alone, but you came to me, and you kept coming back, and that was
your
choice, just as it was your choice to tell me it was your mother who sent you when really you were coming on your own. So I’m not the only liar, am I? And why
did
you lie? Why did you need an excuse to see me? Why would you even want to have anything to do with someone like me, with the person you thought I was? You have no right to be angry. None at all.”

She stopped, breathing hard. He was staring at her, his lips a little parted. She waited for him to respond, to flash back. But he said nothing.

“I wanted to tell you,” she went on, more quietly. “I did. But I was afraid you’d be angry or . . . or disgusted if you knew the truth. So I said nothing. And with every day that passed it became more impossible to speak.”

“Why did you come here, then?” He gestured to the clothes she wore. “Without . . . your disguise?”

“I was discovered. Didn’t your mother tell you?”

Bernardo looked down at the cat, which had woken from its sunny nap and was twining around his ankles. “She said I must ask you.”

He’d inquired about her, then. There was no way to know what that meant, or if it meant anything.

“I told you the truth about my childhood,” she said. “About my father and my mother and how I grew up. But I was a seamstress, not a scullion. And I’m eighteen.” She felt a blush rising to her cheeks. “I thought it would better explain my voice and my lack of beard if I pretended to be younger. My father’s wife did banish me from the household after my father died, and I did apprentice in a painter’s workshop—except the workshop was in Padua, in the Convent of Santa Marta.”

“A painter’s workshop?” His eyes flicked up, then down again. “In a convent?”

“Yes. Perhaps the only one of its kind in all the world. My teacher was Maestra Humilità Moretti, and she was a genius . . .”

She told him what she’d told Sofia, leaving out the same details. She hadn’t realized until she began to speak how much of her story he already knew, though she’d reshaped its bones to fit inside the skin of her disguise. Only Santa Marta was new to him, and Matteo, and Passion blue. She expected him to interrupt, to ask questions, but he heard her out in silence, standing very still. The sun inched across the shining marble of the floor; the cat tired of Bernardo’s ankles and curled up to sleep again. Outside, life went on, but in this room the world had narrowed to the two of them.

At last Giulia was finished. She could not read Bernardo’s expression. But at least he had listened.

“I would have left you by the side of the road,” he said. “The night you found us. I would have sent you off into the dark.”

“I know.”

“What would you have done if I had? If my mother hadn’t taken pity on you?”

“I would have gotten to Venice. Somehow.”

He moved closer to the windows, gazing across the canal at the houses opposite.

“I hardly know what to say to you. What you did—running away, disguising yourself . . .” He touched the glass, tracing the lattice that held it. “It’s like one of the tales my mother made up for me when I was a child.” He paused. “I don’t know if I could have done as much.”

It surprised her that he would say such a thing.

“What if he hadn’t found you? This Matteo Moretti. How long would you have continued in disguise?”

“For as long as I could.”

“Truly? To be . . . what you are not? For months or years, perhaps for all your life? Could you have borne that?”

“I’m not certain,” Giulia said honestly. “But I would have tried.”

He turned his head. He’d looked at her now and then while she spoke—brief, wary glances that skated swiftly across her face and then away. This time he did not drop his eyes. They moved on her mouth, her neck and bosom, slipped down to her waist and up again. Heat rose through her body, kindling her skin. Did he find her pleasing? Wasn’t this what she’d wished for—for him to see her, finally, as a man sees a woman?
Yet all she wanted now was to twist away, to hide from that dark, searching gaze.

He turned away at last, back to the vista beyond the window. “Will you try again?”

“I don’t know.” The words were heavy in her mouth. “Your mother says I may stay here for a little while. I . . . I hope you don’t mind.”

A pause. Then: “No.”

One word, quietly spoken. Giulia felt something loosen inside her.

“Did you ever finish your competition painting?”

“I did. It’s still at Maestro Ferraldi’s.” Giulia thought of the painting, of her sketches and the small amount of blue pigment she had not used. “I’d like to have it back.”

“My mother can send one of the servants to fetch it.”

“That would be kind.” Giulia sighed. “I’m not sorry I painted it, even if it can’t be part of the competition now.”

“Why not? You’ve time. It’s only midafternoon.”

Giulia shook her head. “Please don’t make fun of me.”

“I am not making fun of you. The painting is finished, and it is by your hand. Why should you not enter it?”

“My disguise is lost.”

“The rules don’t exclude women.”

“They don’t include them either, which is as good as the same thing.”

“Now you sound like my mother.”

“I’d never be allowed to present it.” Giulia felt disbelief; were they really discussing this? “No one would even believe I’d painted it.”

“I’ll vouch for you.”

She turned on him. “Why? Why would you do that?”

He met her gaze. The corners of his lips lifted in what was almost a smile. “To see the scandal it will cause.”

“That’s truly your reason?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again. “It is part of the reason.”

She stared at him. It was impossible. Or was it? She felt the idea taking hold of her, like the forbidden thing to which one cannot help but yield.

“I don’t know if I can go back there. To Maestro Ferraldi’s.”

“I’ll go with you.”

It’s mad. Absurd.
With complete clarity, Giulia saw all the reasons she must fail: Ferraldi would turn her away. Palazzo Contarini Nuova would deny her entry. Even if she were allowed in, what could possibly come of attempting to present her work as if it—as if
she
—were worthy of consideration alongside the other painters gathered there? Professional painters.
Male
painters. At best she’d be treated as a curiosity. At worst she’d be ridiculed and censured. Bernardo might really get the scandal he wished for.

And yet . . . isn’t it at least possible that if my work draws Giovanni Bellini’s eye, it will speak for itself?

“You know they may not even admit me,” she said.

“Then that,” Bernardo said, “will be that.”

Giulia felt as if she were balanced on a ledge, with air on both sides. She could fall either way.

Do I really have anything to lose?

“The competition begins at dusk,” she said. “If we are to go, we must go now.”

Bernardo smiled—a real smile, quick and fierce. “You’ll need a mantle. I know where my mother keeps them.”

He went into Sofia’s bedchamber and returned with a cloak of grass-green wool, its hood lined with ermine. It was a
garment any noblewoman might have envied, and Giulia felt like an imposter as she put it on.

Her breath came quick with fear as they left the sunny sitting room. But as on the night she had run away from Santa Marta, she could no more have turned back than she could have stopped her heart from beating.

CHAPTER 24

A SOUND OF BELLS

Getting into the gondola was a challenge, for Giulia had to manage four layers of clothing—chemise, underdress, overdress, and mantle. She felt a sharp nostalgia for the ease of hose and boots, for a boy’s long, unencumbered stride. Bernardo, already on the pilot’s platform, made no move to assist her.

It was the last day of celebration before the prayer and fasting of Lent, and the city had gone mad. The Grand Canal teemed with gondolas ferrying Carnival revelers of all classes. On the quays of the Rialto, masked men and women danced to the music of horns and drums; and at the highest point of the Rialto Bridge, a gang of boys leaned down to toss objects at the boats below: eggs, Giulia realized as Bernardo steered toward the bridge’s pilings, filled with scented water.

They reached the Campo San Lio, where a whole pig was being roasted and the entire neighborhood had turned out to celebrate. In the Salizzada San Lio, the shops were closed but the taverns were jammed, the noise of merriment spilling from open doors as Giulia and Bernardo passed. The Calle del Fruttariol, however, was deserted. They made their way to its end, Giulia holding her skirts off the grimy paving.

“Go on,” Bernardo said when she did not raise her hand at once to knock at Ferraldi’s door.

She looked up at the plaque of the Lion of San Marco. How many times had she seen it over the past months, going in and out on Ferraldi’s business and her own? Yet in this moment it seemed completely unfamiliar. What had seemed possible in Sofia’s sitting room suddenly felt as unlikely as flying to the moon. The thought of coming face-to-face with Ferraldi made her feel sick.

She might have stepped away. She might have turned to Bernardo and said, “I’ve changed my mind.” But before she could do either, he leaned past her and knocked, three hard blows with the side of his fist.

Almost at once there were footsteps. The door opened to reveal the skinny form of Alvise. Expressions chased rapidly across his face when he saw Giulia: puzzlement, suspicion, shocked recognition, hardening into the familiar hostility.

“You’ve got a nerve,” he said. “Coming back here after what happened.”

“She has come for her possessions.” The pronoun left Bernardo’s lips without the slightest awkwardness. “Let her in.”

Alvise scowled. “None of that’s here anymore. We got rid of it.”

Giulia found her voice. “You won’t have found my drawings or my painting. It’s those I’ve come for.”