Passion Blue by Victoria Strauss

along in your drawing skills, I see no reason why you shouldn’tstart to work with paint in, oh…” She considered. “Two years, perhaps.”
    “Two
years
?” The words were out before Giulia could stop them. Humilità’s eyebrows rose.
    “That’s not long, child, did you but know it. Perpetua was four years just learning color. Angela has been with me three years, and is still not ready to put her brush to a commission.”
    “I’m sorry, Maestra.” Giulia knew it was foolish to be disappointed. “It’s just that it seems like such a long time.”
    “You’ve much to learn, and about much more than color.” Humilità’s dark eyes bored uncomfortably into Giulia’s. “Now go sit by Angela, and do as she’s doing, and I will be with you both in a little while. Oh, and I’ve arranged for you to accompany us to Lucida’s supper on Thursday.”
    “Thank you, Maestra.”
    Angela had nearly finished her drawing—a very good drawing, Giulia noted—and soon put down her charcoal. She sat watching as Giulia, working quickly, roughed in the objects on the table and began to add detail.
    “You’re awfully good, Giulia. I can see why the Maestra was so excited when she found out about you.”
    Giulia looked up. “Was she really?”
    “Oh my goodness, yes. She showed us all your drawing. You’re the first novice she’s ever taken as an apprentice, did you know?”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “Well, it’s true. I’m one of the youngest she’s chosen, but I’d made my final vows almost a year before she took me on.”
    Humilità returned from speaking to Domenica and Benedicta at their lecterns, and for the next hour the girls drew under her supervision. She was a challenging teacher, able with a single question or observation to turn an assumption inside out or flip a perception on its head. Maestro, too, had been that way, though he’d been gentler with it.
    Later, while Angela prepared yet more tempera, Giulia knelt again at the washtub. The egg mixture spoiled quickly in the heat, and the clotted yolk smelled foul as she scraped it down the drain beside the fountain. Yet she felt none of the discontent of the morning. Perhaps it was being able to draw again. Perhaps it was
what
she had drawn. In her mind’s eye, she saw her sketch of the man who was her heart’s desire, wearing a borrowed face—imaginary now, but soon to be real.
    “This is the beginning, Mama,” she breathed to the dirty water, the egg-crusted bowls. “This is how I will get free.”

C HAPTER 9
The Repairer of Frescoes
    There were several things, Giulia realized, that she should have asked the sorcerer on the night he made the talisman. How long the spirit would take to find her husband, of course—but also how she would recognize him when he arrived, and whether she should wait for him to find her or make some kind of effort to seek him out. Since she had no answers, it seemed to her that taking action was better than waiting. Surely it made sense to give the spirit as many opportunities as possible.
    So the moment she learned about the young craftsman who was repairing the fresco, she was determined to find a way to visit him.
    Her chance came three days after she became part of the workshop, on the morning of Lucida’s dinner party. The evening before, she and Angela had sealed twenty slender twigs into a clay pot and placed the pot in one of the kitchen bread ovens, so the twigs could bake into charcoal overnight. When she arrived at the workshop the following morning, she volunteered to fetch the pot.
    “Can you find the kitchen on your own?” Angela, tying on her apron, sounded distracted.
    “I think so.”
    “Well, don’t take too long. I’m going to show you how to make gesso today. We must get a start on the panels for the San Giustina commission.”
    Santa Marta’s main building was shaped like a long narrow box, with the kitchen and the refectory and the living quarters ranged along the south side, and the