“In any case,” Madonna Giulia concluded, tossing the unicorn mask aside and picking up a silver-white swan mask with an ivory beak and a cockade of white feathers, “we’re to design a menu for the masquerade. I’m not sure what to serve a lot of wild beasts, or guests dressed as wild beasts. I suggest we don’t serve it in a trough. The last thing we need to do is give Juan ideas.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wonder if he’ll come dressed as a jackass.”

“He wouldn’t need a costume.” I moved a death’s-head mask from a stool to sit down. Unlike the little Countess of Pesaro, Madonna Giulia did not keep her servants standing during long interviews. “We’ll serve a collatione, lots of small dishes served on vine leaves, since beasts don’t eat off plates. And tiny one-bite sort of nibbles, since beasts don’t use spoons either.” A great many cold thin-shaved slivers of fine meats; salted nuts and candied curls of citron; endives stuffed with cheese and drizzled with oil; olives and Spanish mustard and a great blood-rare roast of ox shoulder for all the masked predators . . . “And sugar subtleties,” I decided. “Molded and dyed in the shape of beasts. I can make a spun-sugar unicorn with a gilded horn for you, Madonna Giulia.”

“And a red sugar bull for His Holiness.” La Bella’s dimple flashed. “He’s to come as the Borgia bull, of course.” The dimple disappeared. “Oh, dear.”

“Madonna?” I ventured.

She gestured at the roomful of masks. Three of her maids were giggling and trying on feathered harlequin half masks before her mirror, but their mistress looked somber. “It’s not really a good idea, is it? Everyone at each other’s throats as it is, and then put them all in masks and tell them to behave like beasts?”

I shrugged, uncomfortable. My mistress had been very sober-faced since her return from Florence, distracted and more inclined to curl up in her chamber playing with Laura rather than join the hilarious evenings of games and cards and song that Madonna Lucrezia and Sancha of Aragon planned every night. It was Lent, the time for somber reflection rather than raucous play, but that had certainly not slowed them down. Whenever Sancha of Aragon visited the Palazzo Santa Maria, she always had some whine for the steward about “Carp again?” If she even bothered to come to cena at all, with all her bed-hopping. It wasn’t long before all the maids had picked up Madonna Giulia’s name for her, and I had to remind them that they could not go about referring to the Princess of Squillace as “the Tart of Aragon,” at least not where anyone could hear them.