Perugino wasn’t the only one who lied. Signorelli, Lorenzo Lotto, and even Pinturicchio (too old for such antics in my estimation) all repeated, “Florentine.”

Frescoing. The technical process is straightforward enough, isn’t it? Clear the wall of previous decoration. Sand down any irregularities. Lay a foundation of plaster. Let it dry, sand it again. Then, mix the final layer of plaster from lime, sand, and water. Apply a small patch to the wall, enough to be completed in one day and one day only, and paint your water-based pigments—no need for a binding agent when frescoing—directly into that wet plaster. Finish that section in a single day before the plaster dries and start again the next day with a new patch of intonaco . . . So on and so forth until completion. The difficult part should be determining how much of the picture you can complete in a single day. The difficult part should be painting so seamlessly that the viewer doesn’t notice the divisions between each giornata. The difficult part should be painting directly into wet plaster—quickly, yet confidently. The difficult part should be in creating the design, perfecting the perspective, balance, harmony. The difficult part should be painting.

Not mixing the plaster.

And then things got even worse when I spotted her. Same dark hair, same black widow’s weeds, same pregnant belly, she was definitely the same woman who’d stolen Michelangelo’s drawings and tried to dagger me off that scaffolding. She was leaning in the doorway, staring at me with her obsidian eyes. What was she doing in the pope’s apartments? She crossed to me and said in a voice sweet as struffoli, “And who is this new addition to our apartments?”

The tip of my nose went cold. Our apartments? I bent my head and, with the calm of Jonah, replied, “Raphael Santi of Urbino. Newly appointed painter in the Holy Apartments.”

She did not curtsey.

I found the fortitude to spread a smile across shaking lips and say, “So rarely do great virtue and great beauty dwell so well together, my lady.”

“Lord in Heaven and Lucifer in Hell, only courtiers”—she spit the word as if she’d called me a cavolo or worse—“quote Petrarch.”

“Come, my lady,” called Pope Julius from the next room.

She leaned over as if to kiss my cheek but instead whispered, “You’re too nice for Rome.”

“How can I be too nice for Rome?” I whispered back. “Rome is a city of saints.”

She looked me in the eye and said, “How boring that would be.”

“Felice!” the pope called again.

She curled her lip and then strode after him.

Felice? That’s a man’s name—isn’t it?—and yet, I’d heard the name applied to a woman once before . . . Hadn’t I?

Face gray as winter, Sodoma sidled up and whispered, “Do you know her?”

“I . . . I . . . No?”