There was, of course, no answer.
It was time to go. She raised her hand to cross herself, to say a prayer for the journey. But could she pray to God, now that she wore a celestial spirit around her neck, bound to defy God’s will for her?
For a moment she hesitated. Then she lowered her hand.
“Forgive me,” she murmured.
The weight of the box pulled at her arms as she descended the back stairs to the ground floor, where the kitchens and workshops and servants’ quarters were.
Since her meeting with the Countess, she’d thought only about the sorcerer and the talisman. But now, for the first time, she felt the weight of what was about to happen to her. By the end of this day, she would have passed beyond the walls of Milan, beyond the only home she had ever known, beyond all that was familiar. The dim, spice-scented attic, the orchard in the spring, the serenity of the cortile, the way the kitchens smelled on feast days, Maestro’s rooms, his books, her studies—she would never experience those things again. She would never see Maestro again, or Annalena.
And what of her mother? Palazzo Borromeo held all the memories of her mother that she had. Would the memories fade, once she was gone? Would she begin to forget her mother’s face?
As long as I have my drawings, I can’t forget, she reminded herself. I’ll never have to listen to Clara’s taunting again. I’ll never have to hide in the pantry to avoid Piero. I’ll actually see some of the world I’ve been reading about for all these years.
It didn’t help. Fear sat in her stomach. It fluttered in her throat.
In the room she shared with Annalena and Clara—Piero had moved into the stables years ago, with the other grooms—Giulia made a bundle of her possessions: two chemises, a spare dress, her sewing kit. She left the box and bundle in the hall, and went to the kitchen to say good-bye to Annalena.
Annalena had been good to Giulia—better than she needed to be, with two children of her own. She’d cried yesterday when Giulia told her about the Countess’s decree. Today they both wept, embracing amid the noise and bustle of the kitchen.
“’Tisn’t right, you being sent off this way.” Annalena pulled away, scrubbing at her cheeks, then using a corner of her apron to dry Giulia’s eyes. “You never said nothing about wanting to be a nun.”
“Don’t worry.” Giulia tried to sound confident. “I’ll be all right.”
“Maybe you can write a letter. I can get one of the clerks to read it for me.”
“I will if I can, I promise. Thank you, Annalena. For all you’ve done for me.”
“’Twasn’t so much. You’re a good girl.” Annalena crossed herself. “I’ll pray to the Blessed Virgin to keep you safe. Now go, before we both start bawling again.”
There was no one else Giulia cared to say goodbye to. Though it was not yet noon, she retrieved her bundle and box and went out to the cortile. She set the box in the sun and sat down on it to wait.
“I’m frightened, Mama,” she whispered.
To stop herself from crying again, she summoned her favorite daydream: the dream she turned to whenever she needed strength or comfort, the dream that was also a promise—her own promise, to herself, that she would never give up her fight against her stars. In the dream, the difficulties of her horoscope had been solved, and she was at home in her own house, awaiting her husband’s return. Sometimes her husband was a notary or a clerk. Sometimes he was a scholar—someone who would not object to an educated wife, a wife who drew pictures. Sometimes her house was within city walls, sometimes it was outside, surrounded by orchards and fields. Sometimes children tumbled at her feet, and sometimes it was just the two of them. But always, she had a place of her own. Always, she had someone who belonged to her, and to whom she belonged.
Always, she was free.
“Anasurymboriel,” she whispered. It was already easier to say.
Part 2
The Workshop of Women
CHAPTER 5
Santa Marta
The carriage door sprang wide, admitting an incandescent blast of sunlight. Framed in the opening, Giulia saw an expanse of cobbled street, a slice of red brick wall.
They had arrived at Santa Marta.
In the seat opposite, Giulia’s chaperone, Cristina, checked one last time to make sure the Countess’s letter was safe inside its leather case. Cristina was the Countess’s second cousin, and her choice as Giulia’s escort was meant to reflect the Countess’s high position, not to suggest that Giulia herself had any value. The same was true of the nun’s trousseau the Countess had provided—a set of sheets, a pair of sandals, white woolen fabric for the habit Giulia would wear once she took final vows, lengths of linen for undergarments, and a daily prayer book, all packed into a chest of walnut wood, with a metal clasp to hold it closed.
“Come, Giulia.”
Cristina gathered her skirts and let the driver assist her to the ground. With an effort of will, Giulia followed.
It was unseasonably warm for the end of April, but after the carriage’s ovenlike interior the air seemed almost cool. On one side of the street, a long block of houses rose four stories high, with an arcaded walkway running along their fronts. On the other side stood an imposing red brick church, with a double-arched doorway and a huge rose window. The wall Giulia had glimpsed from the carriage began where the church ended, extending along the street as far as she could see, flat and featureless and half as high as the church itself. The wall of Santa Marta.
She tilted back her head. She could just see that shards of stone were set into its top, jutting like teeth against the cloudless sky.
I’m not really standing here. Surely this is a dream.
The journey from Milan had taken a little over two weeks. The carriage was cramped and hot; dust came through the windows, and water when it rained, and even with cushions, the seats were hard enough to make Giulia’s back ache by the end of each day. But the discomforts faded beside the pleasure of watching the countryside scroll past the windows, of picnicking in olive groves, of sleeping each night in a different inn—or, if no inn were near, on bedrolls under the stars. Best of all, for the first time in her life she was able to draw to her heart’s content, for there was nothing else she had to do and no one to tell her not to do it.
It had been eerie at first to wear the talisman. Giulia couldn’t forget the living spirit trapped inside—a little spark of the heavens, compelled into service on the Earth. But it was so much like an ordinary necklace. As day followed day, Anasurymboriel’s presence ceased to trouble her.
She’d hoped the spirit’s magic would take hold before they reached Santa Marta, and she did what she could to help—dawdling in the courtyards of inns, persuading Cristina to take meals in public dining rooms rather than privately in their lodgings, braiding her hair into becoming styles and belting her dress extra tight. She was still afraid to pray to God, Whose will she had undertaken to defy; she could not pray to the spirit of the talisman, for that would be blasphemous. Sometimes, though, she couldn’t help resting her hand on the place where the talisman lay beneath her clothes, and longing with all her strength for her heart’s desire.
And now they were in Padua, and her heart’s desire had not yet arrived. Staring up at 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 a
rm 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 the will 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 took the Countess’s letter. Beckoning Giulia to follow, she led the way briskly along a wide loggia, its tiled floor bright with the sun that slanted between its columns. Beyond lay a formal garden, with velvety lawns and a reflecting pool flanked by dark cypresses. Giulia stared. She hadn’t expected to see anything beautiful in this place.
They entered torchlit corridors. The young nun stopped at last in front of one of the many closed doors that lined the halls. She held up her hand to indicate that Giulia should wait, then knocked and slipped inside. After a few minutes she returned and gestured for Giulia to enter.
The room had the same whitewashed walls and flagstone floor as the first chamber, and was bare of furnishing except for two wooden chests pushed against one wall and a long table by the window. Behind the table sat an elderly woman, dressed in a white wimple, a black veil, and a wide-sleeved white gown. Over the gown she wore a white scapular sewn with a black cross. Another cross shone at her throat, this one of heavy gold. She was as still as an image in an illuminated manuscript, and her gaze was like the gaze of a queen: calm, commanding, unreadable.
Giulia stepped forward. Her heart was beating too fast, but the panic that had overwhelmed her in the antechamber had receded. She could still feel it, ready to rise up again if she wasn’t careful—but for now, she was in control.
“My lady.” She curtsied deeply.
“We don’t use such earthly titles here.” The old woman’s voice was deep and slow. She had a proud, aristocratic face, with skin like creased linen. On her left hand she wore a broad gold wedding ring. On the first finger of her right gleamed a signet set with a dark gemstone. “I am Santa Marta’s abbess. You may call me Madre Damiana.”
“Yes, Madre Damiana.”
“I understand there has been flooding in Vicenza. Hopefully it did not delay you too greatly.”
“Only a day, Madre Damiana.” Giulia was surprised. She’d imagined the nuns living in a world no bigger than their walls, unaware of what went on outside. “The waters had mostly receded by the time we passed through.”
“God be thanked for that,” Madre Damiana said. “We are a family at Santa Marta, Giulia. As the mother of that family, it is my duty to greet each of my daughters as she arrives, to tell her what the family expects of her, and to learn what she expects of the family. Tell me, why have you come to us?”
“I…” Giulia hesitated, confused. “I was sent. By Countess Marcelina Borromeo.”
“Yes, child, I know it is the Countess’s will that you be here.” Breaking her stillness, the abbess picked up the Countess’s letter, where it lay on top of the ledger she must have been reading before Giulia entered. “I do not approve of forced vocations, though it’s impossible to prevent them. Illegitimate daughters, troublesome sisters, unmarriageable nieces, women who are dishonored or crippled or demented—all are pushed through the convent door by fathers and brothers and uncles who do not want the trouble of their care, and care not what trouble they may give to others. Such women bring bitterness and anguish to a community that should include only willing souls.” She set the letter aside. “That is why I ask this question of every novice who enters here. Do you truly wish to give your life to God?”
Her eyes were as sharp, as unblinking, as a hawk’s. For one wild second, Giulia considered telling the truth. But what good would it do? Santa Marta had already accepted her dowry. The abbess would never set her free. And what was the punishment for being an unwilling nun? Less than five minutes in Madre Damiana’s presence was enough to make Giulia sure that she did not want to find out.
She looked down at the floor so her face would not betray her. “I do.”
A pause. Then, unexpectedly, Madre Damiana sighed.
“So be it, child. Now, to what the family of Santa Marta expects of you. Prayer and work are our duties here, and those who work give no less honor to God than those who pray. I understand you have skill with a needle.”
“I was a seamstress in Count Borromeo’s household.”
“You’ll work in the sewing room, then. I will send word to Suor Columba. For all else, the novice mistress will have charge of you. Her name is Suor Margarita. She will see that you learn our ways.”
“Yes, Madre Damiana.”
“And I have scheduled your vestition ceremony for this afternoon, so you may become one of us as soon as possible.”
“My…vestition ceremony?”
“The ceremony of your transition into the novitiate. The moment in which you abandon the profane world of men and embrace the sacred space within these walls. You will make your novice vows and exchange your secular garments for the clothing of our community.”
“I have to ... take off my clothes?”
“How else would you be able to put on your novice habit, child? The clothes you wear now will be given to the poor.”
�
��I had a box—”
“That too.”
“But—please, Madre Damiana, there were some things that were my mother’s, all I have of her—if I could just keep—”
“No, no, child.” The abbess shook her head. “When we enter this house we must renounce the temptations of the world. We must all become the same, rich or poor, noble or commoner. It is a rule I enforce for my novices, and…recommend…for my nuns.”
Giulia stared fiercely at the edge of the table. She had known this might happen, and had taken what steps she could against it. Even so, she’d allowed herself to hope she could keep everything.
“Is there anything else you wish to ask?”
“No, Madre Damiana.”
“Then I will escort you to the novice wing.”
The abbess led Giulia through a maze of corridors. She walked the way she spoke, slowly and with firm dignity, her tall crook-necked staff tapping in counterpoint to her steps. The nuns they met—young and old, pretty and plain, a few with white veils, most with black—bowed and crossed themselves as she approached. Giulia thought again that she was like a queen, serenely in command of all within her realm.
The novice wing lay on the other side of another garden court, this one a simple rectangle of clipped grass with a sundial in the middle. There was a schoolroom, a chapel, and a dormitory with a double row of beds and a fireplace at one end. Several windows, their shutters drawn against the heat, faced out onto the court.
“This is yours,” the abbess said, stopping before a bed beneath one of the windows. A pile of clothing and a blanket lay folded on the mattress. “There is your nun’s trousseau chest that you brought with you. Make up the bed with your own sheets, then wait here for Suor Margarita.” She dipped her staff toward the pile of clothes. “That is your novice habit. It is not to be put on before the ceremony.”
“Yes, Madre Damiana.”
“Fear not, child. What is strange to you now will soon become familiar. Our walls are high, but there’s freedom to be found here, if you are willing to seek it.”
Passion Blue Page 4
