“Good sir,” I said, addressing the stocky Angel with all the bland politeness I could muster as he scraped himself off the stones with a very red face. “I do apologize for any pain we have caused your fellows. Be assured we will be on our way, and my mistress will keep to her household in future like a modest and decent woman.”

“She kissed me!” the stocky Angel shouted, pointing at my mistress, who was speedily bundling her hair back into its net. “She kissed me, that foul harlot—”

“And this foul harlot has the French pox,” Giulia said sweetly. “Enjoy the pustules!”

They started for her again, and I showed them the knives in my hands. “Come one step closer and I will spear your eyes in their sockets like grapes,” I said. “I suggest you be on your way. Plenty of sinners in this city, after all, and we have already made our donations to Fra Savonarola’s fire. Good day, and God keep you.”

The stocky Angel scowled, looking more than ready to continue the quarrel, and part of me hoped he would. But the other two looked bruised and embarrassed, already edging back down the street, and their leader seemed to realize he stood alone now against Giulia, me, and both of our large, grinning, and truculent guards. “Be on your way, madonna,” he warned her with a dark look, rubbing ostentatiously at his lips where she had glued hers. Somehow I doubted he was truly as sorry about that kiss as he pretended. Sorry, perhaps, that it had not been one whit sincere. “And meditate on your sins! Vanity, pride, and unbridled lust. We put women in the stocks for less in Florence!”

He strode to catch up with his fellows and they regained something of their swagger as they retreated from us, taking up three quarters of the street and forcing the few cloaked and hurrying passersby to squeeze out of their way. I didn’t sheathe the knife in my hand until they were out of sight, and only then did I let out the breath I had been holding. “Madonna Giulia,” I said, “we go home at once.”

She nodded, and we set a swift pace back toward her sister’s house.

“Clever trick, that kiss,” I said. “Very quick of you.”

“You were about to kill him,” she said, and quoted my own words at me from just before I had vaulted into the bullring. “‘If a man’s about to die, he should get to kiss a beautiful woman first.’”