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

delights me to know that you have found a pupil whose ability is worthy of your own—no easy feat within the walls of a convent, where you do not have the luxury of choice, as we artists do in the world outside. It is my earnest wish that she will fulfill all your ambitions for her. I hope to see her work when I visit Padua next spring. By then, God willing, you will be in good health once more.
    It seemed Humilità had not told him the truth about her illness either.
    Giulia let the letter fall into her lap. She felt closer to Humilità than she had since her teacher’s death, as if Humilità herself had spoken through the words of this man Giulia had never met. The evidence of her teacher’s faith in her was both joy and pain. For in the new world of Domenica’s workshop, she was no longer certain she could fulfill it.
    At last she wiped her eyes and placed the final letter with the others, and tied the bundle up again in its cord. She’d write soon to let Ferraldi know of Humilità’s death. It would be a sad introduction, but perhaps they could indeed become friends, as Humilità had wanted. It would be a small spark of hope to light the days ahead.
    —
    Giulia was not surprised when, a week after Humilità’s funeral, Domenica confronted her again.
    “Have you considered our discussion?” As before, Domenica had waited until after Vespers, when Giulia was alone. She stood in the workshop’s doorway, her white habit and black veil falling in perfect, sculpted folds. “Are you ready yet to do your duty?”
    Giulia clutched the broom she was holding. “You said I had until my final vows.”
    “So I did.” Domenica turned to go. “You would be well-advised not to delay so long.”
    Giulia began sweeping again, scraping the broom across the tiles, her anger burning hotter and hotter as she thought of Domenica’s ultimatum and the petty persecutions of thepast days. Yet what choice did she have? If she didn’t obey, Domenica would take everything away.
    What if I give her Passion blue and she dismisses me anyway?
    It struck her like a blow. She stood frozen, broom in hand.
    No. She wouldn’t be so faithless.
    But then she thought of how skillfully Domenica had concealed her resentment of Humilità. Of how she’d pretended to bow to Humilità’s wishes, including the bequest of Passion blue. Of the hard, flat stare she’d turned on Giulia that night in Humilità’s office, and the hatred in her final words:
She should never have let you back into the workshop . . .
    Nausea surged into Giulia’s throat. She dropped the broom and fled the workshop, ignoring the nuns’ disapproving stares as she ran through the hallways. Reaching her cell, she fell onto her bed, curling up on her side, taking deep breaths to calm her thudding heart and roiling stomach.
    After a little while she felt better. She sat up, realizing that she was still wearing her apron, which in her haste she’d forgotten to remove. She took it off, then carried her stool over to the cell’s high window and climbed up onto it. Resting her elbows on the sill, she gazed at the sky, seeking reassurance, as she’d done most of her life, in the ancient, unchanging beauty of the stars. Orion was rising, the three stars of his belt rolling up above the roofs of the convent. Taurus hung just above him.
    She’d learned the constellations from Maestro Carlo Bruni, her father’s astrologer, with whom she’d forged a secret friendship after her mother died—he a lonely man held in small regard by his employer, she a bereft child suspended between worlds: neither commoner nor noble but something awkward in between. Maestro Bruni had taught her how to read and write. He’d given her used paper to scrape clean for drawing.He’d told her the names of stars; and though he’d never shared his own art of astrology, she had absorbed some of his knowledge from the copying she’d done for him.
    On impulse she pulled the little pouch at her neck from