Felice shoved me out of the way and yanked the door closed behind us. As the marauders paused a beat to exchange confused glances—violent men don’t need to be clever, do they?—Felice fumbled with her key. Protecting the Vatican—her father—from those thieves was her primary motivation. Mine was getting out of that workshop alive so I could save my Margherita, so you’d think that I would’ve ducked under the table or slid for the door, letting the men have Felice and the corridor and the pope and anything else they wanted, but for some half-stewed reason I stepped in front of the lady, grabbed a chair, and pointed its legs toward the men as if taming a wild boar. Yes, one of them laughed; can I blame him? I’m wiry, at best, and was gripping my “weapon” no firmer than a paintbrush. One of them swiped a paw, and the wooden chair flew out of my hands and shattered against a wall. He grinned—in my mind he only had half-a-mouth of teeth, but that may only be my prejudices about men of such a sort—and spit. The lock clicked behind me—thank Mary—and then Felice said, “Why are you just standing here? Hoping to paint your way out of the situation?” She stepped in front of me and said in this silky tone, “Gentlemen.”

Felice must be accustomed to men pausing anytime the veil of her widow’s weeds accidentally drops off her shoulders, because as those men stood there ogling a bit of her bare flesh, she kicked one of them off his feet, swiped a torch, and lit one of their jackets on fire before any of them even made a move toward her. One stumbled backward and fell, and she lit his boot on fire. Then, she screeched and squawked in the most discordant manner—like a bird of prey swooping in on a scavenger attacking her nest—and lit papers, chairs, and beards on fire. As the men scrambled away, one threw his torch at her, and it caught her skirt, but that only seemed to drive her forward faster. The men climbed over each other, fighting to see who could make it out the front door first.