I’d copied copies of those paintings since I was an apprentice—St. Sebastian arrowed into martyrdom; St. Barbara fleeing her tower; the angel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary; Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth; the Resurrection, the Assumption—but copies couldn’t capture the originals. Those compositions were complex, the figures alive, all with their own unique expressions, gestures, and features. And, oh, those colors: emerald, ruby, and sapphire. I couldn’t believe I was walking through those rooms— the Hall of Liberal Arts, Hall of Saints, Hall of Mysteries, by goddess!—all frescoed by Pinturicchio for . . . ? You know the name of the patron now, don’t you? Go ahead. Say it. That’s right. Those were the private apartments of Pope Alexander VI.

The first time Sodoma mentioned “the accursed Spaniard” I should’ve known he was referring to the Spanish-born Borgia pope. When Pope Alexander and Pope Julius were both still cardinals, they were notorious rivals: smear tactics, death threats, assassination attempts. When Alexander was elected pope, Julius fled the peninsula, living up in France until his rival died. And once Julius himself became pope, he refused to move into his rival’s old rooms and instead moved into new apartments upstairs—the rooms I’d been hired to help paint. However, while working up in those rooms, I hadn’t considered what had happened to Pope Alexander’s old apartments. Now, I knew. Pope Julius hadn’t turned those rooms into privies for the staff. No. He’d gone further—much further—shrouding them, locking them away, burying them beneath, punishing the paintings for the patron’s trespasses. I felt a pang in my chest as I thought about Pinturicchio working alongside the rest of us in the apartments upstairs, forced to create new images for a new pope, while his old masterpieces rotted away in the cellar. How must he feel knowing he was the one buried beneath?

Sodoma was right. I shouldn’t be in those rooms. They’d been locked away for a reason, and Pope Julius would hang anyone found in enemy territory. I ran my finger along a dusty molding. Why would anyone come down here under the threat of the pope’s noose?

That afternoon, I returned to Bramante’s rooms, retrieved my few clothes out of my trunk, and gave the chest as a gift to Bramante’s maid (I couldn’t get caught bumping that trunk downstairs, could I?). Luckily, she was too intelligent to take that gift as even a hint of a proposal. I returned to the old Borgia apartments that night, wiped away dust and spiderwebs, and carefully put away my few clothes. Then, I fashioned a makeshift bed out of one of the tarps, curled in, and stared up at Pinturicchio’s paintings.