The papal procession stopped outside St. Peter’s, and the pope disembarked his carriage and trudged up broken marble steps— construction on the new church had stalled with the pope and Bramante both off to war. At the top of the stairs, His Holiness nailed a piece of paper to the door, and then, shoulders hunched, he disappeared inside, the doors of the church dropping heavily behind him. I tucked my hair nervously behind my ears as we all pressed forward to see. I feared reading a bull dictating that all subjects of the Duke of Urbino were to be hung in retribution for the death of the pope’s friend, but, instead, it was a declaration calling for a meeting to counter the schismatic cardinals; the pope may have been defeated in Bologna, but he wasn’t done fighting. Not yet.

As we courtiers walked back to the apartments to wait for the pope—uno, due, tre, quattro, uno, due, tre—Bramante grabbed my sleeve, and we dropped to the back of the pack. It wasn’t difficult to separate ourselves; no one wanted to be seen with us. “All may not be lost,” Bramante said under his breath.

“How so?”

“There are many who didn’t like Cardinal Alidosi and aren’t upset by his death. They’re helping the duke make a case that Alidosi turned traitor. If public opinion turns against Alidosi for any reason—his incompetency in Bologna, his heavy-handed influence over the pope, his”—Bramante cleared his throat—“reputation . . .” His tone made clear that I was to be thinking of the cardinal at Imperia’s, the cardinal wearing a dress, the cardinal and pope disappearing back to his bedroom . . . “And if the rumor about their . . . relationship . . . catches, then the pope will have no choice but to not only forgive the duke, but thank him for ridding the papacy of such filth.”

So, it wasn’t rumors of betrayal that were going to turn public opinion against the dead cardinal, but rumors of love? I didn’t want those of us from Urbino to be punished for the duke’s crimes, but I also didn’t want murder to be condoned as long as it was against a man like Alidosi. The other courtiers were watching, so even though I was silently rolling my wrist to counts of four, I kept my face serene as if we were talking of the weather. “If we hung every man entangled in such rumors, we’d have few men left. You don’t honestly believe that a man should be murdered for such a reputation, do you?”

“That’s the official line. Get on board or else we all hang.”