Mason came every Sunday after. Mostly, he and Henry went off to help Mason’s father get ready for winter. The old man’s cough was getting worse. But always, as he left, Mason nodded and smiled at me—mocking me, I was sure, the way they all did—but my whole body filled red as cherries anyway. It took me three weeks, but I finally got the courage:
Right, I told myself. I may as well smile back.
* * *
—
It’s just past noon, and the sun starts to drop toward the treetops up on the priory hill. Alice climbs a little ahead.
“Mason, you’ll need to go separately from us,” she calls over her shoulder. “Wait until we’ve gone in, and come later. If the guards see us all together, there will be talk, or worse.”
“I’ll avoid all appearance of evil,” he pledges cheerfully. But as we approach the bridge, he suddenly takes my hand and leads me quickly down to the riverbank. He looks up to make sure Alice can’t see—and wraps his arms around my waist completely, kissing me hard. Months of longing and grief fill our mouths, like we could resurrect everyone we loved with this kiss, like we’re swaddled in blue velvet.
“I have to see you,” he says. “Edyth.”
“It won’t be easy,” I whisper, and kiss his cheek. “But we’ll find ways. We just have to be careful.”
“It’s not an accident that we’re both here.”
“How could it possibly be?” Maybe I haven’t been tossed to fate, after all. For the first time in months, true hope wells up in me.
I squeeze Mason’s hand and run back up the hill to meet up with Alice.
Under her veil, she’s grinning. “Not exactly one of the Pitiful now, are you?”
— 12 —
Can a room be alive, alert?
The scriptorium feels carved with eyes, in the walls, the books, the magnifying globes. Everything must know what happened under the bridge. The tingle of Mason’s kiss still on my lips, my body all secrets, and that’s how it must stay if he and I are to meet again.
I’ll go straight to the grinding room, give Bridgit her wares and make some excuse to leave early and find Mason. Potato-peeling duty, something like that.
But no luck—Brother Timothy says hello and waves me over.
“Good morning, little sister!”
“Good morning, Brother Timothy!”
“Fine job on the paints yesterday.” He leans in and whispers, “I like yours better than Bridgit’s. Hers can be rather gritty.”
“Let’s not hurt her Scottish pride,” I chuckle.
“She’s had too much experience. There’s the zeal of youth in you, little sister. You haven’t yet learned where to cut corners.”
“I can hear you, Timothy,” Bridgit chides, emerging from the pigment room. I give her the bag from the marketplace, and she hands me a list of the afternoon’s orders.
My hopes of leaving early are dashed. I just pray she can’t see my annoyance, so I feign a good attitude. “Thanks. I’ll get started right away.”
Muriel: Terre verte and ochre, each 30 grains. Azurite, coarse dark, 12 grains.
Anne: Vermillion ink, 4 drams.
Timothy: Sinopia, 20 grains. Ultramarine, 2 grains.
“Bridgit, it says ultramarine on my list. I think you meant to put it on yours.”
“No, it’s no mistake. I was thinking to myself, Now, that Edyth, she’s a bright girl. What would happen if I gave her just a little bit more? So today, I’m going to show you how to extract the lapis lazuli. You can do the other pigments afterward.”
I gasp. Lapis lazuli? Me?
“But, Bridgit,” I protest, “I shouldn’t do it. I haven’t even mastered the other recipes—”
“Oh, come on,” she coaxes, a cheeky twinkle in her eyes. “You’ll see. It’s a bit of magic.”
There’s no debating her; Bridgit’s already set up. She’s got lapis stones in several stages of grinding: a little drawer of raw stones streaked grayish white; brighter little blue pebbles; a light blue powder the color of a summer sky.
“These are the raw lapis stones, very hard and worth their weight in gold. We’ll leave off grinding them for another time, and just make the pigment with some I’ve already done.” She melts beeswax and resin in a brazier and adds the powdered lapis. When it’s done, she pours the grayish-blue slurry out on a slab.
“You make it into wax sticks and let it dry for three days. Here’s a piece that’s done, see? Soften it in that warm water there and knead it like bread dough. Go ahead.
“Now put the dough into this bowl of lye. Careful, don’t touch the liquid or it’ll burn your skin clear away. Take these wooden sticks, and pound the dough into the lye. There, do you see how the liquid turns blue? That’s the pure pigment coming out. It’ll settle at the bottom.”
Bridgit taught me to say a prayer before I work on each pigment. Because lapis is used to paint Our Lady’s clothes, Bridgit prefers the Magnificat. So we recite as I begin kneading—
Magnificat anima mea Dominum
Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salutari meo
Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae.
My soul magnifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
For He has looked on the humble estate of His servant.
“Here’s a bowl I did yesterday,” says Bridgit. “Take a spoon to the bottom, and see what you pull up.”
“My God,” I gasp. A warm glow climbs the back of my neck as I draw up a spoonful of vivid violet-blue.
The color completely takes me over, like I’m living inside a memory.
Or kissing Mason. The same feeling.
I’m inside color itself, inside purity, inside nothing and everything at the same time.
Before I know what’s happening, I hear Bridgit chiding me—
Wake up, girl, wake up! What’s wrong with you?
—and she’s patting my cheek. Hard.
The cloud of outrageous blue before my eyes dissipates into soft paleness and clears away. I’ve been staring at the ultramarine, frozen and holding the spoon, dripping vivid puddles of blue soup on the table around the bowl. A total waste.