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Passion Blue

CHAPTER 1
THE SUMMONS

Milan, Italy, Anno Domini 1487

The massed clouds broke apart and sunlight flooded down, burnishing the rough bark of the apple trees and tossing their shadows across the grass. Giulia caught her breath at the sudden beauty of it, her charcoal stick racing across the paper on her knee as she tried to capture the moment before it vanished.

"Giulia!" The shrill call was as sudden as a slap. Giulia jumped; the charcoal slipped, botching the line.

"Giuuuuuulia!"

Giulia pressed closer to the tree she was leaning against, hoping it would hide her, but it was already too late. She could see Clara stomping toward her across the grass, her fat moon-face flushed with exertion and annoyance.

"What are you doing out here?" Clara planted her hands on her hips, scowling.

"What does it look as if I'm doing?" Clara was the daughter of the cooking woman who had taken Giulia in after Giulia's own mother died. She took every chance she could to make Giulia's life miserable.

"I've got better things to do than chase around trying to find you, you know," Clara said. "You're s'posed to be in the sewing room making shirts, not outside with your stupid pictures."

Giulia sighed and closed her sketchbook on the spoiled drawing. She'd finished her sewing quota early and had slipped away to the orchard, braving the chill of the mid-April day for the pleasure of some uninterrupted sketching time. At least, that had been the plan.

"What do you want, Clara?"

"I don't want anything." Clara looked smug. "I've been sent to fetch you. The Countess's maid is waiting in the cortile. She says the Countess wants to see you."

It took all Giulia's self-control to keep expression off her face. For weeks she'd been dreading this summons--ever since her father, Count Federico di Assulo Borromeo, died of a fall from his horse, plunging the whole of the household into mourning.

"Well? Don't just sit there like a lump. She's been waiting nearly half an hour, that's how long it took to find you."

The sun had gone in again and the grayness had returned. Carefully, for she didn't want to give Clara the satisfaction of seeing her hands shake, Giulia stowed her sketchbook and her charcoal stick in the pouch at her belt, then got to her feet and shook out her skirts. She began to make her way back through the orchard, toward the great bulk of Palazzo Borromeo that rose beyond.

"Are you scared, Giulia?" Clara trotted along beside her. "I'd be, if I was you. Everyone knows the Countess hates the sight of you. Think she means to throw you out, now the master's gone?"

Giulia, who feared exactly that, did not reply.

"I hope she does. I can't wait to have the bed all to myself."

"You'll need it, as fat as you're getting."

"I'd rather be fat than a bean pole like you! A man likes something he can get hold of."

"Yes, but he also likes his hands to meet round the back."

Clara hissed. "I hate you, Giulia. Always so high and mighty, with your nose in the air and your stupid drawings, like being the Count's bastard makes you better than the rest of us. Well, you're a servant just the same as we are, and your ten drops of noble blood won't fill your stomach when you're on the street begging for pennies, or maybe doing other things to stay alive. And it will serve you right!"

Clara stopped following when they reached the cortile, the paved court at the heart of the palazzo, but Giulia could feel the other girl's malevolent gaze as she went to meet the Countess’s maid, who was waiting by the fountain. The maid led her toward the marble stairs that rose to the palazzo's upper floors, where the Borromeo family lived in a series of magnificent suites and chambers. The stairs were for the household and its guests, not for servants or for bastards. Never before had Giulia set foot on them.

The maid left Giulia in an unfurnished anteroom, with faded frescoes of hunting scenes on the walls. It seemed a very long time before the Countess entered, in a swirl of velvet and brocade.

"My lady." Giulia dropped a low curtsey. Too late, she realized that her fingers were stained with charcoal. Rising, she tried to hide them in her skirt.

"My husband made me the executor of his estate and will." The Countess's voice was as icy as the marble of the antechamber’s floor. "It is my word that rules here now."

"Yes, my lady." Giulia had felt this woman's hatred many times over the years, but she could count on the fingers of both hands the number of sentences the Countess had ever addressed to her.

"You are--what, sixteen?"

"I turned seventeen in March, my lady."

"My husband made provision for you in his will. Three hundred ducats, to be used for a dowry."

Giulia gasped. She looked up before she could stop herself, into the Countess's hard dark eyes. Hastily she looked down again.

"I see you are surprised. As was I. My husband did not share this intent with me."

“My lady--I never knew--that is, I never expected--”

"No matter." The Countess waved Giulia's words away with one ring-heavy hand. "I have arranged a chaperone, as is proper. At noon tomorrow you will leave for Padua, where you will begin your novitiate at the convent of Santa Marta."

Convent? "My lady...I don't understand."

"It's quite simple. My husband intended that you marry. Well, I have arranged for you to become the bride of our Savior Jesus Christ. Your dowry is small, but even so the nuns have accepted it, as a favor to my family. For as you know, Padua is where I was born."

"But--" Giulia couldn’t seem to get her breath. "My lady, I don't want to be a nun."

"And what possible difference could you imagine that makes to me? This is my house now. And I say: Leave my house!" The Countess’s rigid self-control cracked. Rage strained her voice. "Did you think this day would not come? Did you think, when he died, you would continue as before?"

Of course Giulia hadn't been so foolish. Her mother, the most skilled of the household's seamstresses, had also been the Count's favorite mistress, and he had protected Giulia for her sake--arranging for Annalena, the cooking woman, to take Giulia in after Giulia's mother died, seeing that Giulia had her mother's place in the sewing room when she grew old enough, summoning Giulia every year to ask if she was content. Giulia knew well that his protection ended at the instant of his death. Even so, she'd hoped she would be allowed to stay. Life in Palazzo Borromeo wasn't always easy, but it was the only home she knew.

She'd tried to prepare herself for the worst. But never, in her most awful fantasies, had she imagined this. Not the Count's bequest. Not the fate the Countess had just decreed for her.

"Now thank me, girl," the Countess said. "For I am giving you a better place in life than ever you could have gotten on your own, and an opportunity to save your miserable soul in the bargain."

Giulia raised her chin. She no longer had anything to lose. Even so, she couldn't keep her voice from shaking, as she defied this woman who had absolute power over her, body and soul. "I will not thank you," she said. "I will never thank you."

Color flooded the Countess’s pale cheeks. She stepped across the space between them and slapped Giulia’s face--once, twice, three times, her rings adding weight to the blows.

"You go tomorrow," she said, biting off each word. "Now get out of my sight. Never let me see you again."

Head high, face throbbing, Giulia obeyed. She didn’t curtsey, a disrespect she never would have dared show before. But what difference did it make now?
#

She couldn't face going downstairs, where Clara would be waiting to gloat. Instead, she climbed to the storerooms in the attic. She'd often hidden there as a child, to escape the unfriendliness of the other servants or the bullying of Clara's brother Piero, and it was still where she went when she wanted to be alone. She found her favorite nook among the bags of grain and crates of spices and dusty furniture, and huddled there, breathing hard with horror and with rage.

I can’t be a nun. I can’t! She was as devout as anyone, but to be locked away from the world in a cold cloister, dressed in a heavy habit, fasting and praying and doing penance day after day...even to imagine it made her feel as if she were being sealed inside a coffin, or falling down a well that had no bottom.

But what could she do? Run away? She had some money, and the topaz and silver necklace that had been her mother's and was meant to be her dowry. But how far would those things take her? There was no one she could go to--her mother’s parents were long dead, and her mother’s brother, a soldier, had perished in an epidemic of fever. Survival would be hard enough for a grown woman with no relatives to depend on, no household to be part of, no village to take shelter in. For a girl of seventeen, it would be all but impossible.

Giulia had been brave enough, a few minutes ago, to look the Countess in the eye. But right now, this instant, she knew she was not brave enough to run away.

I wouldn't escape even if I did. She'd do everything in her power to see me caught and punished, in return for all the years my father sheltered me.

Giulia bowed her head onto her drawn-up knees, feeling the pain in her cheeks where the Countess's rings had bruised her. The Count had left her a dowry. A dowry! It was as unexpected as snow in June. She hadn't loved him; it was impossible to love a man she saw so rarely, a man she could never quite convince herself not to be afraid of. But he had been her protector, and she'd always been grateful to him--now more than ever, knowing he had tried to extend that protection beyond his death.

The Countess had cheated him. She'd cheated Giulia as well, as thoroughly as if she'd kept the dowry for herself. It wasn't just the money. It was Giulia's whole future the Countess had snatched away--the dream Giulia had cherished since childhood, of a husband, children, a house of her own. A place where she belonged. None of those were possible for a nun.

It's as if she knew the prediction of my horoscope. In the chill of the attic, Giulia felt a deeper cold. Short of killing me, what could be a more perfect way of making it come true?

"Oh Mama," she whispered. "What shall I do?"

She'd been only seven when her mother died. It had comforted her, then, to imagine her mother looking down from heaven, like someone leaning over a high balcony. She'd long ago left that literal image behind, but she still spoke to her mother sometimes, half-hoping, half-pretending, she was close enough to hear.

And all at once, like an answer, Giulia saw what might save her.

She caught her breath. It was not a new idea. She’d first conceived it years ago. But it was frightening and risky, and she had always held it at the back of her mind, saving it for a last resort.

Everything had changed today. Last resorts were all she had.

She wiped her eyes. With new purpose she got to her feet, and went in search of Maestro Carlo Bruni, the Count's astrologer.