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the high, fanged wall of Santa Marta, it occurred to Giulia, for the first time, that she had never asked the sorcerer how long the talisman might need to do its work.
    What if I have to spend months in this place? What…what if I have to spend years?
    She gasped. During the journey, the talisman secure around her throat and the sorcerer’s promise safe in her heart, she had never really been afraid. But now it seemed that two weeks’ worth of fear fell on her all at once. The wall leaning over her, the convent waiting to swallow her—they were no longer dreamlike, but hideously, horrifyingly real. She imagined herself turning, running, not caring where she was going, so long as she escaped that wall—
    Even if she would have done it, it was already too late. Cristina’s arm closed firmly around her waist, urging her toward a door set into the brick. The driver followed, carrying her luggage.
    Cristina pulled the bell cord. After a moment a wooden flap popped open. A woman peered through the grate that covered it, her face framed in a white wimple and a black veil.
    “Yes?”
    “I am the representative of Countess Marcelina Borromeo, late of Padua, now of Milan,” Cristina said in her most haughty voice. “She has entrusted me with the delivery of this girl, Giulia Borromeo, to be admitted into your house. I have a letter.”
    “Place it in the wheel,” said the nun, and banged the flap closed.
    To the door’s left, another grate covered an opening in the wall. Cristina slid the letter, with its big wax seal, through the bottom of the grate and into the box that waited there. A grinding sound, and the box began to rotate, delivering the letter to the nun inside.There was a pause. Giulia was aware of the noise of the street—the voices of pedestrians, the clatter of hooves, the creak and thump of the church door as it opened to let out a worshipper.
    At last a bolt scraped back and a key rattled in a lock. Christina turned to Giulia.
    “Good-bye, my dear.”
    “Don’t leave me here.” Giulia had not intended to say it. But her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t think.
    “Oh, child.” Cristina took Giulia’s hands. “Try and make the best of it. None of us can know God’s will. You may not see it now, but I’m sure this is His plan for you. I’ll pray for you.”
    She pulled Giulia into her arms. Over her shoulder, Giulia saw that the worshipper, a young man with curly hair, was staring in their direction. Wildly, she imagined struggling, screaming for help. But Cristina was already releasing her, and a hand was closing around her wrist: the nun, accustomed perhaps to reluctant novices.
    She felt herself pulled into the dark beyond the doorway. The driver set her luggage over the threshold and stepped back. Her last glimpse of the outside world, as the door swung closed, was Cristina, framed in sunlight, her hand lifted in farewell.
    With a thump and a scrape, the nun shot home the bolt and turned the key in the door’s great lock.
    The floor seemed to heave under Giulia’s feet. Her heart felt as if it might split her chest. It took all thewill she had to hold herself still, to swallow the frantic sobs that wanted to burst free.
    She stood in a vaulted chamber with a flagstone floor and whitewashed plaster walls. It was not as dark as it had seemed from the street—a candle burned on a little table, and daylight filtered through the open grate of a door opposite the one that had just shut. A large crucifix hung on the wall.
    The nun crossed the room, selecting another key from the jangling key ring at her belt.
    “This is called the saint’s door.” She fitted the key to the lock. “Many of our sisters pass through it only once, when they come to us as novices.”
    But not me
, Giulia told the chattering panic inside her.
I’ll come out again. I will
.
    On the other side of the saint’s door, another nun stood waiting. She was young, and wore a white veil rather than a black one. She