Friar Bartolomeo visited and Mamma Lucrezia allowed him to sit with Luna. He spoke of the state of the city and she was patient and didn’t interrupt with the questions she wanted to ask: if he’d seen her papa and heard talk of the lecture at the Academy, and then, more intimately, about the portrait and what he knew. He spoke to her of the preacher’s boys who walked the streets with the confidence of the mob and acted with force before principle, of the noise of their escapades loud as an invading army, without melody, of goodly people enfeebled and degraded, and of the crypt of his church and the catacombs too, full now with books and the precious belongings of her family. He spoke passionately and Luna listened like she used to when just a child. When he began to talk of the professor’s lecture without mentioning her or her papa, she wondered if he was just being kind, but she didn’t have the energy to press him and chose instead to change the subject.

‘Friar, did you know the true purpose of the portrait I sat for in your rooms?’

He looked at her with guilt and pity and it stoked Luna’s outrage so she lifted her chin and said, ‘I did not expect you to lie to me. I put my faith in you.’

‘I am sorry, Leonarda. Keeping the truth from you did not sit well with me. I did not agree with your father’s decision to court the Spinelli family, but I could not refuse him.’

Luna’s anger evaporated as quickly as it had flared. She understood her father’s wrath. ‘Thank you for answering honestly.’

They turned to the open shutters at the sound of Pippo laughing outdoors. ‘I do not know how long Papa intends on keeping me confined to this room. I gulp in the breeze when it wafts up from the garden.’

‘You’ve been kept from your family and your church for a lengthy time,’ the friar agreed.

‘His punishment is unjust, for all I have done is defend my honour and speak on subjects as he taught me.’ Luna paused, thinking that her father kept her hidden to avoid the reminder of his humiliation at the Academy.

The friar nodded as though he were listening to her confession and indeed, Luna felt some relief at speaking the words out loud.

‘He would rather I had been born a boy,’ she said bitterly.