When Vincenzio eventually turned to pass the baby to his wife, she was already dead, one arm hanging loosely from the covers and a pool of blood spreading on the floor beneath.

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

City State of Florence

June 1496

The young woman sat as still as she could, but a tickle had started in the small of her back. It moved up her spine with the swiftness of the kitchen mouse she’d seen darting across the flagstones that morning and just when she felt some relief, it began again. She had a fierce desire to scratch the spot, but she was determined not to give the master painter any further reason to think Vincenzio Fusili’s daughter immodest. Instead, she clasped her hands together and fixed her mind on dislodging the piece of apple that was caught in her teeth. She pressed her tongue against the gap between her molars where the bit of apple was stuck and felt it move. It didn’t take much more to free the morsel and she swallowed it.

The fruit monger in the piazza had given her the apple as she passed his stall earlier that morn and she’d enjoyed its juicy sweetness as she walked on to the monastery, not thinking anything of it till she’d seen the painter’s reaction. She’d stepped into the room with the apple to her lips and halted, still as one of his painted likenesses, under the critical gaze of his artist’s eye. Her good humour had withered at the sight of his prickly brows rising. How could something that tasted so good have evoked such judgement? Of course, it wasn’t the apple—fruit of man’s downfall such as it was—that the painter had frowned upon, it was the provocation of her eating it in front of him. She’d briefly considered her options before settling on the simplest and most satisfying, and taken another bite. She ate the remainder of the apple after the painter had retreated outside to wait in the cloister whilst she changed behind the curtain. When she’d called to him to re-enter and had taken her seat in the high-fashion dress, they’d both nodded as if it were their first welcome of the day, and thereafter she’d adopted so obliging a demeanour that not even the brow of the Pope himself would have raised. The terce bells had sounded shortly thereafter and she’d not moved since.