“No, you didn’t. I know you.” That didn’t please him, I could see. Men like Leonello want to be inscrutable; mysteries unto themselves. It irritated him no end to think that I might have him figured out. But he didn’t have that look of cynical anger anymore, so I hid my smile as I went on. “So, I’d like to have you at my second sitting too. Lounging there with your book, making caustic comments about Maestro Botticelli’s use of proportion. Because I still don’t really want to do this painting, after all, and it will go easier if I have a friend in attendance.”

Leonello looked at me for a moment, and then he picked up my hand and kissed it rather carelessly before tossing it back into my lap like a discarded glove. And that was how I found myself braving the streets of Florence with a pair of guards at my back and my friend at my side, making for Maestro Botticelli’s studio.

Leonello

Let my mistress tease the Florentines all she liked, telling them their great city was a little sister in Rome’s shadow—I did not like Florence at all. I didn’t like the furtive scurry of so many of its citizens as they hastened through the streets; I didn’t like the fervent gleam in so many eyes as they spoke of Savonarola and his latest dictates; I didn’t like the strange, heated excitement that perfumed the air like smoke: excitement laced with fear.

Maestro Botticelli’s face as he stood before my mistress in the door to his humble apartments could have been a sketch standing for all Florence: fervent and furtive, exalted and afraid.

“I am most sorry, Madonna Giulia.” He spoke brusquely in his rough Florentine accents, avoiding her eyes. “There will be no further sittings.”

“Are you ill?” Her eyes traveled behind the painter to his apartments. Normally any artist would have done my mistress the honor of calling upon her, but Giulia put no one out of his way if she could help it and had insisted on coming herself to Maestro Botticelli’s lodgings. A shabby little room or two in one of the seedier quarters of the city, stale-smelling and almost bare of furnishings. Maestro Botticelli’s lush Venuses of old might have earned him renown, but his new prim Madonnas were clearly not supporting him in comfort. “I can return on your convenience,” Giulia said. “Perhaps bring you a hot posset; this cold weather has been—”