Free Passion Blue by Victoria Strauss

habit covered by a bibbed apron. She wore a white
conversa’s
veil.
    Giulia’s escort continued into the chamber, but Giulia stopped short at the threshold. The bright space smelled of dust and raw wood and plaster, and of other things, musty and unfamiliar. What kind of place was this?
    The nun at the mortar put down her pestle and came forward, cleaning her hands on her apron.
    “Angela, you may go back to work.” The young nun dipped her head in acknowledgment and limped toward the table. “Giulia, welcome! I’m Suor Humilità, the mistress of this workshop. Come, let’s talk.”
    She led the way toward a door on the chamber’s far side. Giulia followed, more confused than ever. A workshop? With a
conversa
as its mistress?
    Beyond the door lay a small chamber furnished with another paper-strewn table, a large cabinet, and a pair of chairs.
    “Sit,” Suor Humilità said. Giulia obeyed. The nun rummaged among the documents on the table. She was a short, stocky woman, not young but not old either, with a wide mouth, apple-pink cheeks, and deep-set eyes as dark as olive pits.
    “Ah!” she exclaimed, extracting a sheet of paper. She held it out. “Is this yours?”
    It was one of the drawings Giulia had brought with her from Milan: the
cortile
of Palazzo Borromeo, looking down from Maestro’s window. She stared at it, shocked. Had they discovered her mattress hiding place?
    “Child.” The nun sat down beside her. “You have done nothing wrong. I just need to be sure that this is from your hand.” She touched the initials at the bottom of the sketch. “G.B. Giulia Borromeo. Yes?”
    There was no point denying it. Giulia nodded. “Where…how did you find it?”
    “It was in the box you brought with you.”
    “The box?” She’d been sure she had removed all her drawings.
    “The abbess herself discovered it. Who taught you to draw?”
    “No one, Suor.”
    “No one?” The small dark eyes were uncomfortably keen. “You had no painters in your family? No drawing master?”
    “No, Suor. I’ve always just…drawn, ever since I can remember.”
    “Well, God has given you talent, and I’d like to have the use of it. I want you to become an apprentice in my workshop, to train to be a painter.”
    “A painter? But women can’t be painters!” Giulia caught herself. “I’m sorry. It’s just that—I mean, I’ve never heard—”
    “Ah, child. Women can be many things—if only in the convent.” Suor Humilità rose and took Giulia’s arm. “Come, I’ll show you.”
    She led Giulia back into the big room and over to the drafting table.
    “Lucida and Perpetua, my journeymen. They are well beyond their apprenticeships, but not yet masters.” Suor Perpetua, white-veiled, nodded; Suor Lucida, in choir-nun black, flashed a dimpled smile. “Many of the paintings we make here are for the glory and beauty of Santa Marta. But we’re in demand elsewhere as well, God be praised. Paintings from my workshop hang in holy places all over Padua, and beyond it too.”
    Giulia heard the pride in Suor Humilità’s voice—the sort of pride nuns were not supposed to have, at least according to Suor Margarita.
    “Lucida and Perpetua are making studies for an altarpiece for the monastery of San Giustina. And over here”—she drew Giulia toward the lecterns—“are my two master painters, Domenica and Benedicta. They are working on a private commission, six paintings of scenes from the life of Santa Barbara.”
    The two artists—one tall and stern, the other tiny and ancient—were working on wood panels. On each of these, a scene had been drawn in ink or charcoal and overlaid with shadows and highlights in shades of brown. The painters were layering color atop this monochrome, fleshing out the figures and the background around the saint, who was already complete. The saint was slender, with elegant hands and long golden hair, clad in a dress of profound, glowing blue.
    “Oh!” Giulia exclaimed. “The blue!