Authors: Victoria Strauss
And according to her horoscope, Giulia might not even be able to do that.
Shaking off thoughts of the past, Giulia knocked at Maestro’s door, then, as always, slipped inside without waiting for a response.
Maestro’s study was as familiar to her as any room in the palazzo, with its red marble floor and its smell of dust, leather-bound books, and incense. Pedestals under the windows supported an armillary sphere and a celestial globe; alcoves along the inner wall held books and astrological instruments. Another wall was almost entirely covered by a tapestry depicting the universe—Earth at the center, surrounded by the spheres of the sun, the moon, the planets, and the higher spheres of the heavens. Angels with golden wings ringed the outermost sphere, where God sat on His throne, His hand outstretched to show that it was by His will the cosmos moved.
Maestro was sitting at his cluttered desk.
He half-rose when he saw Giulia, his welcoming smile disappearing.
“Merciful saints, Giulia! What happened to your face?”
“It was an accident.” Giulia raised her hand to her cheek, still throbbing from the Countess’s blows. “It doesn’t matter. But Maestro, the Countess is sending me to Padua to be a nun. I must leave tomorrow.”
“Ah.” Maestro sat down again.
“Did you…did you know?”
“No. But change is afoot in this house. I fear none of us will escape it.”
“I don’t want to be a nun.” Just saying it made Giulia breathless. “I don’t mind if she sends me away—just not to a convent. Could you talk to her? Please?”
“Me?” Maestro drew back. “My dear, she would not hear me. I had the Count’s favor, but not hers. Between you and me, I’ve begun looking for a new patron.”
“But if you knew someone who would give me a position—there’s your cousin in Vicenza, perhaps his household needs a seamstress—”
“No, no, no. I care nothing for the Countess’s displeasure, but I can’t make that choice for my cousin.” Maestro shook his head. “I’m sorry, Giulia. For your sake, I wish I were a man of influence, but I am not.”
He is kind
, Giulia thought.
But not brave
. She hadn’t really expected he could help, but she’d had to ask, just to make sure all other roads were barred to her.
“Ah, Giulia, how I will miss you. A pox upon that woman and her stupid pride.”
Giulia felt her throat tighten. She would miss
him too, this gentle man whom she loved almost as a father. She’d miss him terribly. But she couldn’t let herself be distracted by that now.
“Maestro, do you remember telling me about your friend, the astrologer who makes talismans? Maestro Bastone, wasn’t it?”
“Barbaro. Francisco Barbaro. My
former
friend, Giulia, as you know well.”
“Didn’t you say he lived in Porta Nuova, on Via…Via…”
“Via Sette Coltelli in Porta Orientale.” Maestro caught himself. “Giulia. What are you up to?”
“I can’t be a nun, Maestro. I have to do something.”
“What, get Barbaro to make you a talisman to save you from the convent? Sorcery is a sin, Giulia, an invention of the devil, not just for those who practice it but for those who seek it.”
“It’d just be one talisman. And I’d never want another.”
“One talisman or a hundred, it’s all the same. My dear, this is not the way for you.”
“But I can’t think of anything else! You can’t help me—I can’t run away—I’ve no one to take me in. I don’t want to wind up a beggar or…or a whore, I don’t want to be called a thief because I stole my own self and cheated the Countess of her cruelty!” She caught her breath in a sob. “If this…sorcerer can help me—”
“Giulia.” Maestro got to his feet. He was as stern as Giulia had ever seen him. “You wouldn’t even know about Barbaro had you not found his letter hidden in
that book years ago. I never would have told you. I said as much as I did only to make clear to you the evil of the path he chose.”
“But Maestro—”
“I would like to claim that it was he who corrupted me.” Maestro raised his voice to carry over hers. “But I cannot. He and I succumbed together as apprentices, and continued as astrologers. For me, the small magics that were our first passion were enough, but he was always drawn to darker things. When he began to study the daemonic spirits, crafting incantations to summon them and rituals to bind them, I saw that we were meddling with powers God does not mean us to possess. In fear of damnation, I renounced all magic and left the house we shared. He sent me that letter, cursing me for what he called my betrayal. As corrupt as he was when I left him, I cannot imagine the depth of his depravity now. I forbid you to go to him. By the duty you owe me as your tutor,
I forbid it
.”
For a moment Giulia held his gaze. Then she bowed her head, as if in defeat. “Yes, Maestro.”
“Good girl.”
She felt wretched to deceive him. But like the Countess, he had left her no choice. In her mind, as she often did, she heard her mother’s voice:
In the end, the only person you can rely on is yourself
.
“You should have presents to go away with.” Maestro left his desk and began to move around the room, reaching up to shelves, opening chests. “A supply of paper, for your drawing. A quill and an inkpot—with a cap, so you won’t have to worry about spills.
Ink powder that you can mix as you need. And Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
. I know how you love them.”
“Oh, Maestro, thank you. But I don’t know if they’ll let me keep such things.”
“We shall hope they will. Ah, Giulia. If you were a boy, I’d have made you my apprentice long ago.”
Giulia looked at him—his clothes always a little shabby, his fingers always stained with ink, his papers always in disarray, his mind always on his books or in the stars. Normally she didn’t notice, but just now she could see it clearly:
He’s getting old
. A great surge of grief and affection rose up in her. She stepped forward and flung her arms around his neck.
“I’ll never forget you,” she whispered fiercely. “Thank you for your kindness, for everything you’ve taught me.”
“There, there.” He patted her awkwardly on the back. “God keep you safe, my dearest girl. Remember that in Milan, there is one who loves you.”
“I love you too.” She stepped away. “Good-bye, Maestro.”
She carried his gifts up to the attic, then pried up the loose floorboard that hid her mother’s topaz necklace and pouch of coins. All the while, she repeated the address Maestro had given her, so she would not forget:
Maestro Francisco Barbaro. Via Sette Coltelli. Porta Orientale
.
God, if this is a sin, forgive me. But I don’t know what else to do
.
The afternoon was almost gone by the time Giulia reached the sorcerer’s house.
She’d known where Porta Orientale was, at least in theory—Maestro had showed her plans of Milan, with its six neighborhoods, or
portes
, arranged like pie slices around the central piazza that housed the Duomo, the city’s vast cathedral. But finding her way through the streets was not the same as poring over maps. She’d quickly become lost, and the conflicting directions she had begged from passersby had taken her far out of her way. She’d begun to worry that she would still be wandering the city when night fell, at the mercy of cutpurses
or worse.
But finally, like a miracle, there it was—a pillar painted with seven stilettos, marking the entrance to the Via Sette Coltelli, the Street of Seven Knives.
The sorcerer’s house was protected by a stucco wall. An iron gate allowed glimpses of a garden full of overgrown yews and cypresses, through whose twisted branches Giulia could just see the house itself. Perhaps because of all the heavy vegetation, the garden seemed much darker than the avenue outside, as if night had already fallen there. A bell rope hung beside the gate.
Giulia had wondered what a sorcerer’s home might look like. This gloomy place fulfilled all her expectations.
For just a moment, the fear she’d fought as she trudged the city rose up and overwhelmed her, and Maestro’s words of warning sounded in her mind. She pushed them away.
I’ve come this far. I cannot turn back
.
She drew a deep breath. She stepped forward and rang the bell.
Clang
. The sound echoed back into the shadowed garden. For a long moment nothing happened. Then she heard a creak, as of a door opening, and saw someone coming toward her—a woman, bent with age, her head wrapped in a kerchief. The woman shuffled up to the gates and peered through the bars.
“What d’you want?”
“I’ve come…” Giulia cleared her throat. “I’ve come to see Maestro Francisco Barbaro, the sor—the
astrologer. It’s urgent.”
“It always is. Can you pay?”
“Yes.”
The crone lifted the bar that secured the gates. She dragged at one of them, pulling it back a little way. “Well?” Impatiently, she beckoned. “Don’t be all day.”
Giulia slipped through the narrow gap. The crone heaved the gate closed and reset the bar, then led the way along the wide stone path that split the tangled garden, beneath the dimness of the trees. She hurried Giulia through the house’s great oaken door and down a magnificent candle-lit corridor whose elaborate frescos and polished marble were the very opposite of the garden’s neglect. An enormous, high-ceilinged room lay at the corridor’s end.
“Wait here,” the crone instructed, pointing to a spot by the door. “I’ll see if he’ll receive you. He may not. He doesn’t see everyone.”
She hurried toward the room’s other side, where a curtain hung across an opening.
“Tell him Maestro Carlo Bruni gave me his name,” Giulia called after her. “They were friends once.”
The old woman gave no sign that she had heard. She lifted the curtain and vanished.
The blue gray twilight admitted by the windows did little to relieve the chamber’s gloom. Her back against the door, her teeth chattering with chill and fright, Giulia could almost imagine that the old woman had been a ghost, that there were no living beings in this place besides herself. For courage, she rested her hand on her mother’s topaz necklace, hidden under
the neck of her gown.
The curtain swept aside. A man came through, clad in a flowing robe and carrying a branch of candles.
“You say you come from Carlo Bruni, girl?”
Giulia had to try twice to find her voice. “Yes, sir.”
“Who are you?” The sorcerer approached, holding up the candles. “Why has he sent you?”
“My name is Giulia, sir. I’m his pupil.”
“His pupil?” He sounded skeptical.
“Yes, sir. And he didn’t send me. That is, he told me your name…but I’m here…I’m here on my own.”
“Ah.”
Was it disappointment in his voice? He set the candles on a table and began to move around the room, lighting more candles in sconces on the walls. Giulia couldn’t tell how he accomplished this—it looked as if the flame sprang directly from his fingers. The rising illumination revealed the magnificent zodiac wheel inlaid upon the marble floor, showing the twelve signs, their associated houses, and their ruling planets. As the candle flames flared up, points of light seemed to kindle on the ceiling as well. With astonishment, Giulia recognized the zodiac constellations, arranged in a ring that exactly matched the circle on the floor. Awed, she gazed upward. Scorpio glittered directly overhead; to the left was Pisces, under which she had been born.
“Carlo Bruni and I were friends, years ago.”
The sorcerer stood before her. She had imagined someone crabbed and stooped, made ugly by his
outlaw pursuits, but this man was well-formed and straight, with a handsome face and large, calm eyes of crystalline blue. The silk of his robe was a deeper blue. His hair was entirely covered by a close-fitting cap that appeared, strangely, to be made of polished metal.
“The best of friends,” he continued. “Did he tell you that?”
Giulia nodded. She’d assumed that Maestro and the sorcerer were of an age, but this man looked at least twenty years younger. She felt a thrill of fear.
If he can light candles with his fingers and make stars shine on his ceiling, what else can he do?
“Did he tell you why we are friends no longer?”
“He said you quarreled, sir.”
“It was the magic. It destroyed our friendship. When I heard you were here, I thought…” The sorcerer paused. “No matter. I was angry when we parted, but I’ve come to understand the choice he made. Will you tell him that for me?”
“Yes, sir,” Giulia said, though she knew that if she ever saw Maestro again, she could never admit she had come here.
“What is it you want of me?”
“Sir, Maestro Bruni told me you can make talismans that influence the stars. I need a talisman so I can get married.”
“I take it the young man isn’t willing?”
“Oh, no, sir!” Giulia felt a blush rising in her cheeks. “It’s not like that!”
“What is it like, then?”
“Sir, my natal horoscope says that my stars are…
unfavorable for marriage. But I want to marry. I want children and a home of my own. I’ve always meant to find a way. But now I’m being sent to a convent against my will. I must marry soon, before it’s too late.”
“Our lives are written in the stars of our birth, by the very hand of God,” the sorcerer said. “It is no light matter to try to change that. What you want from me is dangerous.”
“But we can resist the influence of our stars.” It was the first lesson Maestro had ever taught her. “With the free will God gave us. We can change our fates by our own actions.”
“Perhaps. But if your actions change your fate, then that change too was written for you. A talisman is different. It will bring about the change by force. The consequences of that can be…unexpected.”
“I’m willing to take the risk, sir.”
“Marriage has its risks as well. Husbands beat their wives. Women die in childbirth.”
He didn’t understand. How could he? He was a man. He was his own master. Giulia hadn’t understood either, when she had first learned what her horoscope fragment said—she’d been too young to know how terrible life could be for an unmarried servant woman. Her mother had known, from bitter experience—a nobleman’s commoner mistress with a bastard daughter, despised by her fellow servants, dependent on her lover’s favor for the roof over her head and the food in her own mouth and that of her child. The older Giulia grew, the more she learned about the world, the more clearly she saw why her mother had
been so determined that Giulia must marry.