You mean the pope who might be coughing his last at this very moment, I thought, but didn’t say, because who wants to hang for such careless treason?

Every door was guarded the same, except for the secret door leading to Michelangelo’s workshop, but it was locked firm. I yanked on the handle, kicked and pounded, but that door didn’t open and no one came to help. I tried to work my brush in the lock but couldn’t make it click. I had to get to Margherita, help her, save her, protect her. Uno, due, tre, quattro, there had to be a way out.

When I was a child, my mother taught me that whenever I was feeling hopeless, I should close my eyes and let my mind wander: “You already know the answer,” she would tell me. “You only have to show yourself the way.”

So, that day, twirling my father’s paintbrush, I followed her orders and closed my eyes, letting my imagination bob through that locked door and down that dark corridor and then come to Michelangelo’s studio, where I remembered back to that day when I’d first arrived in Rome, when I was up in that workshop, and Michelangelo’s clunky work boots were mounting the stairs, and I was searching desperately for an escape, an escape, an escape . . .

My eyes flew open. Yes. Yes, there was a way out. Like that long-ago day, the only thing I needed was a key. And I knew just where to find one.

“Leave me alone. I’m tending to my father,” barked Felice, waving me away.

“But I’m here to beseech you to save your father, my lady, as only you can.”

She used a rag dipped in wine to blot his holy lips. The pope’s eyes were closed. His breath rattled. “If you’ll leave me alone, then I can tend to it.”

Any other man, I suppose, might’ve grabbed her arm and dragged her from the room—it’s not as if the cardinals holding vigil would’ve questioned me if I’d told them she was having a “moment”—but I never take something from a woman that she doesn’t want to give. “This building is shaking; don’t you feel it?” I said in a pleading tone with nary a finger on her elbow. “The rioters are trying to get inside, and your father isn’t strong enough to withstand an attack. If you stay here, you might as well tell St. Peter to open the gates for a new resident.”

Her eyes blazed. “You want me to go outside and fight off the rioters with a stick?”

“Your father didn’t marry you to an Orsini only to keep you in Rome, did he?”

Her hands paused over his damp forehead.