“Good night,” I added in the same severe tones, and turned for the door. My cold and empty bed now seemed very welcoming indeed. Though before I collapsed into it, I’d have to rush for a jar of the strongest vinegar we had, and rinse my body out with a prayer that it wasn’t too late to keep myself from quickening . . .

But even in all my confused fear, I couldn’t stop myself from hesitating as I opened the door and smelled the waft of olive oil and coarse salt from the plate of now-cold tubers in the kitchens. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that Bartolomeo had not moved, still standing beside the rumpled pallet with his arms folded across his chest and his bare feet looking rather pathetic below his flour-dusted breeches.

“Bartolomeo,” I said. “You were right about one thing. Those fried things you made, whatever that vegetable is—they’re delicious. I’ll have you cook them for Madonna Giulia as soon as she returns.”

“Go to hell,” said my apprentice, and slammed the door in my face.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Evil is often spoken of me, but I let it pass.

—RODRIGO BORGIA, POPE ALEXANDER VI

Giulia

If there’s anything you must never say to a Florentine, it’s that Florence is the little sister of Rome. Any Florentine citizen will puff up like a toad and then proceed to list all the glories of their fair city, from the enormous dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore (“Far finer than the Basilica San Pietro!”) to the bridges over the Arno (“Far fewer dead cats in our river than in your Tiber!”). So unless you have a great deal of time to spend listening to a huffy lecture on all of Florence’s admitted glories, it’s better just to keep from making any comparisons at all. But Florence is a little sister to Rome, and in more than just her size. Rome is a courtesan in her prime, ripe and perhaps decaying a little under the façade of her cosmetics, but flaunting herself in spite of it: luscious and foul-mouthed and funny, praying and swearing and laughing all at once, speaking a dozen languages and spreading her skirts and her arms wide for all the pilgrims and travelers of the world. Florence is a girl just come from a convent: beautiful but self-contained, a little wary, a little prim. Rome is the hub of all Christendom; you can see a thousand new faces a day and never repeat a one, and Romans react a thousand different ways to any dilemma. In Florence everyone seems to know each other, and whether for good or ill, they all react as one.

And in January when I went to visit my sister, Florence was not only an insular city but a frightened one. Frightened, but strangely exalted, and what a mix it was to see on people’s faces.