Pray I don’t, I thought at her. Or I’ll ruin your life.

Carmelina

When I first came to Rome, I’d had nothing to my name but a tattered bundle of recipes and a mummified hand in a bag—and on that shaky foundation, I’d built myself a future. Cook to Madonna Giulia Farnese, feeding an entire palazzo that housed not just the Pope’s mistress but the Pope himself when he came for intimate little suppers at La Bella’s table. Well, to be fair it was my cousin Marco Santini who held the title of maestro di cucina, but Marco was a card-playing fool who would rather sweat over a zara board than an oven, and everyone in the household knew who really ran the kitchens. Me, Carmelina Mangano, the best cook in Rome even if I was a woman, and I’d earned that. I’d earned all of it, with nothing more than a little luck and the skill in my hands—and now here I was returning to Rome once again, and everything I’d built was about to crash on my head.

All because of one horrid, overobservant dwarf.

I had to stop twice and press myself against walls as the other servants in Madonna Giulia’s traveling party streamed back to their old quarters in chattering packs. Some were laughing, some bragging of the dangers they’d seen; some were still white-faced and worn from those dangers, and others declared they meant to get drunk at once. I felt numb and cold all over. All I wanted was to crawl off to the tiny chamber that used to hold spare jars of olive oil and now held my pallet and little chest of clothes. But I wouldn’t sleep, not yet. “Make him a posset,” Madonna Giulia had told me, settling her odious little bodyguard in his own chamber. And whatever happened to me tomorrow, tonight I was still the cook, and the cook stayed awake until everyone in the household was fed.

“Signorina?” A boy’s voice sounded behind me, and a hand touched my elbow. “You should sleep, signorina. I’ll make Messer Leonello’s posset for him. Make one for you too—”

“You’re the one who’s going to bed, Bartolomeo.” I summoned all the briskness I had in me, which wasn’t much after two nights in the middle of the French army, Santa Marta save me. “Off with you, now.”

Bartolomeo looked dubious: fifteen years old, freckled and red-haired, long and lanky as a basting needle, with a near-miraculous nose for cooking. My favorite apprentice, not that I’d ever tell him that. “Begging your pardon, signorina, but you haven’t slept since all this began, or eaten more than a squirrel either. I could make you a nice filling rice zuppa with some good provatura cheese—”