‘Deliver her to the nuns; I do not want this curse upon my family. Quickly, before my husband arrives.’ Giulia Fusili fell back against the bed. It had taken more energy than she realised to speak.

‘Hold her, signora, just for a moment, and you will surely feel her goodness. She needs her mamma.’ The wet nurse, Livia, thrust the swaddled newborn at her mother but Giulia turned her head away and dug under the coverlet, refusing to touch her baby daughter, for she knew once she had the warm, sleeping bundle in her arms, she would not be able to give her up. The baby’s smell was already more familiar than any other in the room.

‘She’s waking, mistress. Look at her little smudge of a nose and see how she searches for your milk.’ The baby had indeed begun to squirm and she let out a gentle whimper, no louder than the puff of air escaping from the pillow Giulia pressed against.

‘You will be her milk mother now, not I. Take her away.’ Giulia exhaled sharply at another wave of pain as the midwife pressed a cloth to her temple. Giving birth was a pitiable task when there was no reward. She’d thought the birthing pains would stop once the babe was out but her belly was pierced by the same excruciating tightenings as in labour. This was some trickery of the female form, kept secret from young women.

She fixed her gaze on the midwife beside her. The woman dabbed at her brow, squeezed the cloth into the rose-infused water and dabbed again, her expression unreadable. Not for the first time, Giulia wished she’d been born a man. She pushed the woman’s hand away and tried to raise herself more comfortably against the goose-feather pillows. She was not even in her own home and longed for the familiarity of her marriage bed. This room was too grand for a clothmaker’s wife but her husband had been right to insist she leave the city with so much plague about; il segno was like the Devil’s breath, dropping innocents where they stood. So many good families in Florence were suffering, but she was protected here in the hills of Careggi, within the walls of the Medici country estate. Even so, she felt ill at ease to be in this imposing home where Lorenzo de’ Medici and his wife, Clarice, spent much of their time. The open loggia on the first floor was superior to any she’d stood in and the decorated corridors were constantly busy with servants. The lady of the house had been gracious in her welcome, but Clarice was preoccupied by her own baby boy, Giuliano, still a whelp, who she was determined not to lose to an infant death like the twins.