Read Color Song (A Passion Blue Novel) for Free Online

it isn’t proper for you to visit me.”
    She sounded weak and foolish, like a child. He regarded her a moment, almost with amusement. Then, without haste, he turned and strolled toward the door, darkening it briefly as he passed into the white light of the sun.

CHAPTER 5
    LETTERS FROM VENICE
    He cannot touch you inside these walls. Santa Marta will keep you safe.
    Giulia clung to Humilità’s words for the rest of the day. But sleep swept all assurances away, and she dreamed of the attic where Matteo had imprisoned her, pitch-dark and alive with menace. She woke with her blanket tangled around her legs and her pillow across her face, suffocating with dread.
    The next evening when Suor Margarita came to lock Giulia in her cell, she brought with her a cloth-wrapped package. “For you,” she said brusquely, thrusting it into Giulia’s hands. “A bequest from Maestra Humilità.”
    Another bequest? Unwrapping the cloth, Giulia found Humilità’s manuscript copy of Leon Battista Alberti’s
Delle Pittura
, a text on painting that Humilità had especially treasured,and a bundle of brushes with rosewood handles: Humilità’s own. She held them a moment, stroking the silky wood, then set them aside and picked up the last item, a fat packet of letters tied with cord. Accompanying these was a note in Humilità’s sickness-weakened hand:
    Giulia:
    I leave you my letters from my dear friend Gianfranco Ferraldi of Venice, which extend over most of the years I have been at Santa Marta. He is a painter of intelligence and worth, and it is my wish that you should write to him in your turn, not only to continue the friendship that he and I have maintained for so long, but to keep cognizant of the world that exists beyond our walls. A mind grows narrow if it cannot reach beyond itself, and art grows stale if it is not refreshed by new ideas. He may be a mentor to you, my dear Giulia, even if only from afar.
    Your devoted teacher,
    Humilità
    Giulia’s eyes filled with tears. When had Humilità written this? Perhaps she had guessed, at least a little, about Domenica.
    Giulia pulled her candle closer and began to read. She knew about Humilità’s friendship with Ferraldi, for he had sometimes sent prepared pigments from Venice, where the finest painting materials in the world were sold. He’d been an apprentice in Matteo Moretti’s workshop while Humilità was training there but had left soon after Humilità entered Santa Marta.
    Now she learned of his dissatisfaction with Matteo’s autocratic leadership, of his decision to seek his fortune in Venice, of his struggle to establish his own workshop and his eventualsuccess. The letters were full of technical details—discussions of his work, responses to Humilità’s descriptions of her own—but there were also many lively accounts of people and happenings, with deft, quick sketches to illustrate the stories.
    Ferraldi’s affection and respect for Humilità shone clearly through this one-sided conversation. Giulia could find no trace of condescension in his writing; he addressed Humilità not as a nun and a woman but as a fellow painter, as an equal. And possibly, Giulia thought, as something more.
    In the final letters Giulia found her own name. It gave her a little shock to see it, in a letter received soon after Humilità took her into the workshop: just a brief reference, Ferraldi congratulating Humilità on finding a talented apprentice. She read the subsequent letters with apprehension—would there be mention of the theft of Passion blue and her part in it? But though Ferraldi responded several times to Humilità’s reports on Giulia’s progress as a pupil, there was nothing at all about Matteo Moretti’s plot. It seemed Humilità had kept that secret even from her oldest friend.
    The last letter was dated two months before Humilità’s death.
    As for your extraordinary apprentice, Giulia, I am glad to learn that she continues to blossom. I cannot tell you how it