A memory flashed: Felice hanging off that scaffolding, mouth open, face white, belly swaying above the marble floor. How careful had I been when I pulled her back up onto that platform? Did the wood scrape her stomach? Had her breathing come too quick? Did her heart beat too fast? I accidentally caught her dark gaze. Her eyebrow arched. If she’d hated me before . . .

“We shall begin in this room,” said the pope, banging his walking stick.

I reminded myself to breathe.

Bramante called out, “Masters stand under your sections,” and Bramantino, Lorenzo Lotto, Luca Signorelli, and Pinturicchio moved to four separate corners of the first room.

The first ceiling was a staid design of geometric shapes, flowered spirals, cherubs, and grotesques. No story, no grace, no inventiveness. Their sections had clearly been dictated, too. However, despite the prosaic designs, Bramantino’s figures were quite good—even the cherubs’ hands and feet were realistic, and you know how difficult hands and feet can be. I expected to find the pope nodding, but instead, he was frowning as that mysterious cardinal whispered in his ear. The pope said, “We declare it unremarkable.”

Unremarkable? I blushed on behalf of Bramantino, who dropped his head.

The pope flicked a ringed finger at the next artist. “And you are?”

“Lorenzo Lotto from Venice, Your Holiness,” he replied, hairline damp with sweat.

Lotto’s colors were the best of the four—not surprising for a Venetian—but again, the mysterious cardinal whispered, and the pope frowned. What was going on? His Holiness said, “I agree with Cardinal Alidosi: satisfactory.”

Cardinal Alidosi, Cardinal Alidosi, I silently repeated, committing that name to memory.

“Grazie mille,” Lotto said, bowing several times. “Your Holiness does me much honor.”

I tucked my hair behind my ears. Were we expected to grovel at such . . . could you even call that praise?

“Now for the Tuscan.” The pope moved under Luca Signorelli’s section of ceiling. I looked up. Signorelli was a talented painter, but his section was far too cluttered to be confused with perfect. Yes, his foreshortening was genial, but his brushwork and features were—I hate to say it—dated. Signorelli was what? Nearly sixty by that time? The pope would be well within his rights to excoriate him. However, after that cardinal whispered—this time with smiling eyes—the pope declared, “Now this makes a pontiff proud!”

Who was this Cardinal Alidosi who held so much sway over the pope?