Giulia’s guards braced, and I let my hands drift down toward the daggers at my belt as three swaggering young men in dirty-hemmed white robes approached us. Murkier tales of Savonarola’s Angels were told besides their devotion to their master and their singing of hymns—whispers of women harassed, of drunks and gamblers or simply those marked as “sinners” found beaten in the streets. I crooked my wrist at the angle that would bring my finger knife slipping into my hand with another twitch, but Giulia merely bowed her head in deepest greeting as the Angels arrayed themselves before her. “Good sirs,” she said, casting her lashes down piously. “I would not have strayed from the protection of my home at this time, but my sister took to her sickbed and required my care. I am only now hastening home.”

Apparently Savonarola’s Angels were no more immune to a woman’s beauty than any common guardsman. Their eyes flicked over her, and she stood meekly with her head bowed. I wondered what they might have said if she’d admitted she was returning from a failed rendezvous with an artist who had reneged on his promise to paint her as a naked, pagan goddess. I suppose there would have been a fight. Maybe my mistress was wise in her pious lies, but I wished she’d told the truth because I could have used a fight. First I’d take on the one in the middle, the stocky leader with his thumbs hooked into his belt and the rash of blemishes on his chin.

He was eyeing Giulia now, and with an interest that I doubt would have pleased the good Dominican friar he served. “I think we have a lady here who has missed contributing her due to the bonfire,” he told his fellow Angels, who both laughed. “That’s a fur collar I see, madonna—”

“Signora Gerolama,” Giulia said instantly, clever girl. “Wife to Signore Puccio Pucci, may God keep him always.”

“Well, Signora, that’s a fur collar I see, and stilt clogs under that hem. You think God does not see vanity, just because it’s hidden under your skirts?”

“I wear them only to keep my shoes from the mud—”

“Our Lord walked in mud. You are too good to follow in His footsteps?”

Giulia let her lashes drop over her eyes again and stepped out of her tall stilt clogs. “A donation,” she murmured, proffering them with a gesture and then detaching the fur collar from her robe. “I shall feed my womanly vanity into the flames.”