Passion Blue (12 page)

“Welcome!” Lucida cried. Over her white habit she had thrown a sleeveless mantle of shimmering bronze brocade, lined with copper-colored silk. “Come in! Everything’s ready.”

Standing candelabra illuminated the interior of the little house. The floor was plain terracotta, the walls of undressed stone, but exotic rugs cushioned the tiles, and rich-hued tapestries softened the walls. Small footstools and dainty tables flanked pillow-piled benches. An exquisite painting of Madonna and Child stood on a shelf in a corner, with a cushioned kneeler underneath.

“Come.” Lucida took Giulia’s arm. “You must sit by me.”

Opposite the door stood a dining table, its polished boards set with glass goblets and gleaming plates. More candles burned in holders at the table’s center. Lucida pulled out a chair for Giulia, then seated herself at the table’s head.

“Maestra,” she said. “Will you give us a blessing?”

Lucida extended her hands. Gems winked on her
fingers—Giulia didn’t remember, earlier, that she had been wearing rings. Around the table the women joined hands and bowed their heads.

“Almighty God,” Humilità said, “who redeemed the world through Your Son, Jesus Christ, bless us as we partake of Your bounty this night. Make us always mindful of Your glory, which speaks to us in all things. Amen.”

“Amen,” the others chorused.

Lucida clapped her hands. Through a door at one side of the room came a middle-aged
conversa
, carrying a tray laden with steaming bowls.

“It’s chestnut soup,” Lucida said, taking up her spoon. “Made to a family recipe. I hope you enjoy it.”

The soup was delicious, savory with spice and thick with cream. The mixed salad with green onions, roast pigeon in puff pastry, and pasta dressed with garlic and butter were delicious too. To drink there was wine, poured by Lucida’s
conversa
from dusty bottles. Giulia had sampled leftovers from her father’s table, courtesy of Annalena, but she’d never consumed an entire meal of such delicacy. Nor had she known that nuns were allowed to drink wine.
But then
, she thought,
almost everything in this house is something I thought nuns weren’t allowed
. From the talk she had heard in the novice dormitory, she knew that choir nuns lived more comfortably than
conversae
—much more comfortably, in many cases—but she had never imagined such opulence.

Lucida clearly enjoyed the role of hostess and
was attentive to her guests’ comfort. For Benedicta, who with her missing teeth could not chew, she had arranged a special dish of mashed artichoke hearts in citron sauce. As they ate, the women talked—about the completion of the Santa Barbara commission, about upcoming feast days and other convent affairs. Giulia knew nothing of these goings-on; amid this intimate little group, with its web of established relationships, she was an outsider. Yet, somehow, she did not feel excluded. Lucida smiled often in her direction, and Angela and Humilità broke off what they were saying to explain things for her. The wine helped too. She was only sipping, but even so she could feel it going to her head, making the strange, golden evening more than ever like a dream.

The
conversa
cleared away the main course and brought in plates of apricots, grapes, cheeses, and little cakes. For Benedicta, there was a bowl of stewed figs in honey.

“I’ll wager Domenica is fasting tonight, to make up for our gluttony.” Lucida selected an apricot. “I wish her joy in it, the sour old crow.”

“You should be kinder, Lucida,” Perpetua said. The light of the candles flattered her homely features, masking the disfiguring pockmarks on her cheeks. “She’s had a hard time of it.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Lucida finished her apricot and licked her fingers. “But just because she was made to suffer doesn’t give her the right to make others miserable.”

“It’s a sad story.” Angela turned to Giulia. “She was
engaged to a young man, but then her father died and her uncle inherited the estate. He had daughters of his own to dower, and decided Domenica should go to Santa Marta instead of marrying. She ran away to her fiancé, but he was afraid and returned her to her uncle, who sent her here.”

Giulia, listening, felt a shudder of recognition.

“She made her vows.” Perpetua took up the story. “Not long after, she got permission to go to her nephew’s christening, with her sisters as chaperones. Somehow, she managed to escape. Her uncle’s sons went after her and brought her back. She got sick after that. Nearly died.” Perpetua shook her head. “When she was well again, she was the opposite of what she’d been. A conversion. Few now are more devoted.”

“Devoted?” Lucida made a face. “With her hair shirts and her self-flagellation and her fasting—really, it’s distasteful. Do you know, Giulia, Domenica puts bitter aloe in her food so she won’t enjoy it? My aunt Damiana has had to reprimand her for her excesses. And she’s not the only one. There’s Claudia, who sleeps without blankets in the winter, and Felicita, who puts pebbles in her shoes, and Innocentia, who wears a studded chain around her waist. Sometimes she gets infections, and Madonna, how she smells! God has given us this beautiful world for our use and enjoyment. I don’t see how it honors Him to be miserable on purpose.”

“Are there many like Domenica?” Giulia asked.
“Brought here against their will, I mean?”

“Oh yes,” Lucida said. “There are too many women in the world, and what can families do with those they cannot marry off, except send them to a convent? Take me, for instance. My father was able to dower my two older sisters for noble marriages, but for me he could afford only a nun’s dowry. All my life I’ve known I must be a nun.” She pulled a grape off its stem and popped it into her mouth. “Though to be fair, I am not like some others who are put here by their families’ decree, for I never wanted to be subject to a husband’s authority. Besides, who knows what kind of odious idiot my father would have chosen for me?”

“He might have chosen a handsome idiot,” Humilità said, smiling.

“Ha! You should see my poor sisters’ husbands. One is as fat as a goose and just as stupid, and the other’s twenty years older with warts all over his face. No. I am where I was meant to be. Thanks to my father’s indulgence in hiring a drawing master for my sisters and me when we were children, I have work that delights me. My family may visit me as often as they choose, or”—she slanted a smile in Giulia’s direction—“as often as
I
choose. I live my own life in my own house, and need not bow to the will of my father or the whims of my brothers or the desires of a husband. I am Christ’s bride, and no human man may command me!” For an instant, her bright face was fierce. “Nor do I need to fear dying in childbed, as my mother did. I am not one of those
who sees Santa Marta as a prison.” She bit into one of the little cakes. “For me, it is the greatest freedom a woman can possess.”

There is freedom here, if you are willing to seek it
. Madre Damiana had said that, on Giulia’s first day.

“My mother died in childbirth too,” Perpetua said. “I always had a mortal fear of it.”

“Is that why you became a nun?” Giulia asked.

“Bless you, no.” Perpetua’s smile showed her crooked teeth. “My father was a tailor, but his shop burned down in a fire and he couldn’t support us all. He brought me to be a
conversa
here at Santa Marta. They needed seamstresses, so they were willing to take me without a dowry.”

“So it wasn’t your choice?”

“Choice didn’t come into it, dear. It was the convent or starve. I was grateful for the shelter, and for the work that gave it to me. I’d be grateful still, even if it hadn’t been God’s plan for me to serve Him in another way. My father taught me to make pictures of the clothes he made, so patrons could see them and choose, and the Maestra who was here before our Maestra discovered I could draw. That’s how I came into the workshop.”

“I never wanted to be anything but a nun,” said Angela softly. “To give myself to God, safe and apart from the temptations of the world. Besides.” She gave a small, self-conscious laugh. “What man would want a wife with a withered leg?”

Giulia looked at Angela. She had been impressed by how little Angela’s limp impeded her, and had
assumed she must not mind it. But that laugh said something quite different.

“What about you, Benedicta?” Lucida turned to the elderly nun. “What brought you to Santa Marta?”

“Oh, my dear,” Benedicta replied in her cracked old voice, “it’s been so long I’ve quite forgotten. After so many years, anyway, what does it matter?” She cackled. “That’s God’s little joke. We all come in differently, but we all go out the same.”

“That leaves you, Maestra,” Lucida said. “Tell Giulia why you became a nun.”

“My father is a painter—”

“A
famous
painter,” Lucida interrupted.

“He has a workshop here in Padua. He saw my ability and couldn’t bear to waste it, so he trained me like an apprentice, for all I was a girl. When I was fourteen, he arranged for me to join the workshop here. I could not have become a painter otherwise. The world does not allow such things for women. Like Lucida, I always knew I would go to Santa Marta.”

“And it’s our good fortune that you did,” Angela said.

“By God’s grace,” Humilità replied.

“And your hard work,” said Perpetua.

“
All
our hard work.” Humilità smiled at Lucida. “Even yours, my willful butterfly.”

Lucida laughed. “What about you, Giulia?” She turned her dancing smile Giulia’s way. “Don’t be afraid to tell the truth. It won’t go farther than this room.”

“My father died,” Giulia said—careful, aware of the loosening influence of the wine and the danger of saying too much. “And his wife wanted me gone. I’m illegitimate, you see, and he gave me his protection, but she had no reason to continue that. So she arranged for me to be sent here.”

“To become a painter,” Angela said.

“No. She meant me to be a seamstress, the way I was at home. She hated me. She’d never have done anything to benefit me.” With effort, Giulia stopped herself.
Careful, careful
.

“Well, whatever her intent, God guided her choice,” Humilità said. “There is nowhere better in the world you could have come. You are meant to be here, my dear. I have no doubt of it.”

The candle flames glinted in her small dark eyes, and on the wine goblet she held. Giulia felt a chill, as if a cold hand had been laid above her heart.

From elsewhere in the convent, bells began to ring.

“Compline,” Humilità said. “We must return Giulia to her dormitory.”

“How quickly the time has passed!” Lucida exclaimed.

“Angela, would you escort Giulia, please?”

“Of course, Maestra.”

Angela got to her feet, her shoulder dipping. Giulia pushed back her chair and stood. The wine rushed to her head; she had to catch at the edge of the table to steady herself.

“Thank you so much for inviting me.”

“It was entirely my pleasure!” Lucida jumped up
and came around the table to kiss Giulia on both cheeks. “We shall have many such suppers!”

Giulia looked back as she and Angela passed through the door. The candle-lit table was a heart of brightness in a room whose edges shaded into shadow. Humilità and Perpetua still sat, for
conversae
did not sing Vespers, while Lucida bent toward old Benedicta, helping her to her feet, her face as lovely as a Madonna’s in the golden light.

It was a painting. Giulia knew this, with a soul-deep thrill that set her fingers burning. And she knew, against all odds or certainties, that she would one day paint this scene—these women, this light, this moment—and preserve it forever.

Outside, stars winked down from an inky sky. As they crossed the court, Angela linked her arm through Giulia’s, making Giulia jump.

“I’m sorry,” Angela said, withdrawing.

“You startled me, that’s all.”

“Oh. Well, then.”

Angela put her arm back. Giulia could feel the dip and halt of her limp.

“I’m glad you’ve come, Giulia. I think we’re going to be good friends, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Giulia said, because it was the only way to answer such a question. It wasn’t the truth—how could it be? She would be gone soon. But it wasn’t a lie either. She liked Angela. For someone who had never had friends her own age, it was a feeling as unaccustomed as the pressure of Angela’s arm against her own.

Angela left her at the entrance to the novice wing.
Suor Margarita was waiting in the dormitory doorway, her hands hidden in her sleeves as usual.

“Good,” she said when she saw Giulia. “You’re back on time.”

“Yes, Suor Margarita. Thank you for allowing me to go.”

Suor Margarita pursed her lips. “I did
not
allow it. My girls receive no special privileges. But I was overruled.”

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

“Well.” The novice mistress softened a little. “I know it was not your doing.” She turned abruptly toward the dormitory. “Girls! Girls!” She clapped her hands for attention. “Quiet now, I have something to say to you!” They obeyed, setting down their games, turning from their conversations. “You may have noticed that Giulia was not with us tonight. She has been chosen for a special honor—she has joined the workshop of Suor Humilità, where she will learn to be a painter, to the glory of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Her duties may sometimes take her away from us, so if you do not always see her at table in the refectory, or during recreation hour, that is why.”

“But, Suor Margarita!” Alessia, standing by the window with her clique as usual, stepped forward, an expression of outrage on her face. “She’s a
conversa
!”

“Yes, Alessia, that fact is known to me.”

“Why should a commoner get such favor, when there are noble girls who could be chosen?”

“Perhaps,” said Suor Margarita in an icy tone, “because Giulia has abilities they do not.”

“But Suor Margarita—”

“That is enough, Alessia. I believe it would be instructive for you to contemplate the sin of envy tomorrow, while working with Bice in the kitchen.”

Alessia’s mouth opened; for a moment Giulia thought she would defy the novice mistress. But then she clamped her lips together and was silent.