While Bramante found his courtly instincts and began to cheer, waving up at the pope as though he’d plotted for this outcome all along, I stood there feeling numb because Michelangelo’s ceiling had been strong enough to bend the vote his way. Because the Florentine ally of my rival was now pope. Because Michelangelo’s victory was sealed.

Chapter LX

Chapter LX

God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it,” cried the new Florentine pope, and with that, I left the celebration in the square—songs, banners, ribbons, fireworks—and returned to the papal apartments alone. Soon, the new pope would move in with his brother Michelangelo, and my frescoes would be . . . I sank to the floor in the middle of my room of miracles.

“Here to say good-bye, too?” came a familiar voice. I looked up to see Felice della Rovere standing in the doorway. She wore the same black widow’s weeds as always, but now they felt weightier. “A Medici pope,” she said, kneeling beside me. “I’ll never be allowed in these rooms again.”

“Salute,” I said, raising an imaginary jug of wine. She raised one, too, and we “clinked.”

“At least part of you will always be here,” she said, pointing to my portrait, staring out of the crowd off to the right side of my Mass at Bolsena fresco.

I nodded but said, “Ah, but so shall you.”

She gave me that look—why are you such a fool?—and I pointed to the crowd of faithful gathered at the left side of that same fresco. She followed my finger and . . . “No. No.” She got up and crossed to stand under that fresco. She looked back at me. “No.”

“Sì.”

She looked back up, into her own face in the crowd—painted in profile, dark hair, honey skin, dressed in black, sì certo. Felice’s hand went up to her chest; was it was an intentional mimic of her gesture in the painting or . . . “My father didn’t ask you to include me, did he?”

I wish the truth had been different. “No. He didn’t.”

Her shoulders dropped. “He used me for negotiations, but heaven forbid he embrace me as his daughter. He encouraged them to call me ‘niece,’ did you know that? Didn’t want to be like his rival, the Borgia pope, flaunting his bastard offspring.”

“Your devotion was—is—beautiful. That’s where you belong. Looking up at him, looking after him. The world as it is and as it should be.”

“After all I did to you, and yet . . .” She shook her head. “I was only trying to protect him.”

“If I could’ve protected my parents, I would’ve done anything, too.”

“Thank you.” She crossed back and sat back down on the floor next to me. “Now, I can be with him. Forever.”

I shook my head. “Don’t delude yourself. You and I will both be wiped from history.”