“No more, I beg you.” Fingers in ears.

I just read louder, giggling. “‘A golden Helen for a golden war—’”

“Kill me, please. Kill me at once.”

It was all just another of my forays into the ordinary world, I suppose. And even if Florence felt small and fearful under Savonarola’s rantings and his Angels, it was a foray I enjoyed.

A respite away from my Pope.

“I shall have to give His Holiness a good excuse if I wish to stay longer,” I told Leonello one morning as I was lacing Laura’s little dress up her back.

“No, you don’t. He doesn’t own you, after all, and I’ve heard you say so yourself.”

“True,” I agreed. “But the letters are getting irate. He started out apologetic, begging me to come back soon and saying he’d die a slow and horrible death if I was still angry at him. But now he’s getting angry that I haven’t answered any of those letters, so I’m getting missives about how I’m an unfeeling minx for leaving him so long.”

“Tell him Fra Savonarola refuses to let you leave until you have given all your jewels over to his bonfire.” Leonello distracted Laura from her wriggling by picking up one of Gerolama’s prized glass ornaments from Murano and balancing it on the very tip of one finger. “You’ll get another week in Florence, and the Holy Father will finally excommunicate our good fire-and-brimstone friar.”

Laura clapped her hands at Leonello, crying, “Make it dance, Leo, make it dance!” Leonello would juggle for no one but my daughter. He set three of Gerolama’s fragile vases to whirling above his stubby hands as I recaptured Laura’s little wrist and stuffed it into her sleeve. My daughter had nursemaids, of course, but I would far rather dress her myself. Left to her own devices, Laura would beg the maids to steal my rouge for her cheeks and my pulverized malachite to smear around her eyes. Just because I was a harlot did not mean I was going to let my daughter start painting herself like one at the age of not-quite-four.

Laura squealed delight as Leonello tossed one vase high and caught it with a hand behind his back, and I tilted my head at him. “You’re so good with children, Leonello. Why on earth don’t you marry and have a few of your own?”

“What woman would have me?” His eyes followed the dance of the vases in the air. “A stunted little fellow who only comes to her waist?”