She saw the rider already far ahead, a lone traveller and not a person of note. A man stood at the corner of one of the smaller alleys, shouting and gesticulating. Luna spied men in the cloth of the preacher moving a group of older boys away from a doorway that had a sign above its entry, which she’d seen a few times in passing. She strained to make it out. It was definitely the one her step-mamma referred to as the mark of disrepute, though the gentleman who slipped out after the boys left appeared respectable enough. Luna knew it had something to do with the women whose powdered faces appeared in the windows on the upper floors. As the boys hurried away, the preacher’s men slapped them about the legs with sticks and joked with others of their pack who were going into a home two doors down. Luna felt her cheeks burn with the words they used. A woman cried out from a window as someone threw out a richly worked tapestry. It ballooned a moment as the air caught beneath it before plummeting to the ground with a heavy thump. Like a beautiful gown, Luna thought. The men were throwing objects into the wagon below. Luna saw the broken wood of a painting, a pile of books left where they had fallen, pages open and flapping, and a bronze urn already discarded. The group of older boys slunk past the carriage as they retreated and Luna could see where the sticks had left red welts across their calves.

‘Move on,’ Mamma Lucrezia ordered the driver and Luna settled once more. Her step-mamma rolled her ring round and round her knuckle. ‘I pity the Canturi family. Friar Savonarola and his children now govern Florence.’

‘Did you know that house?’ Luna asked.

‘We were often guests together at the Medici palazzo on Via Larga, but I have not seen the lady for some time.’

Her step-mamma’s tone made Luna reach over and take her hand. ‘We will send them some chicken soup when we get home. Yes, Mamma?’ She squeezed encouragingly.