“Indeed,” he said, looking fond through the eye slits of his mask. “And I do believe you have my nose, little one.”

“Are you the Devil?” Laura said interestedly, still looking at the horns.

I laid my hand on Rodrigo’s arm as he roared with laughter. “Shall we?”

The guests made a great roar as the Bull and the Unicorn descended the steps into the throng. The spring nights had grown warm and so the Menagerie Ball had been cast outside, in the Palazzo Santa Maria’s largest garden. An Eden for the night: all green moss and starry flowers underfoot, tiny twinkling candles scattered below to echo the scatter of stars above. Small tables and sideboards brought outside and draped with mosses and garlands; food laid out on broad vine leaves rather than silver trays; wine circulated not by servants but flowing freely from the fountain where anyone might dip a cup—or simply lap it up on hands and knees, as I saw one young fellow in a hawk mask doing. Eden, but an Eden peopled with beasts rather than Adam and his Eve. I saw bird masks with huge cockades of feathers; panthers and cheetahs with fanged masks; fantastical masks in the shapes of griffons and manticores and dragons. I saw Sancha in red satin trimmed with fox fur, avid-eyed behind a vixen mask with pointed ears and laughing muzzle. Juan as a tiger, all orange and black stripes across his tight doublet with ivory fangs framing his own mouth, whispering in Sancha’s vixen ear.

“Too many of Juan’s soldiers here tonight,” I whispered to Rodrigo as he led me down into the throng of beasts.

“How can you tell?” The Holy Father lifted his goblet in greeting to someone in a maned horse’s mask across the garden.

“Juan’s men are the ones who are drunk already.” Juan had brought far too many soldiers back from his supposed victory at Ostia. They’d swarmed all over Rome, drinking and whoring and smashing windows—“celebrating their victory,” people said at first, but then it had been “celebrating Carnivale.” And then it had been “celebrating Lent,” even though you weren’t supposed to celebrate Lent with anything more showy than a fish bake, and now Lent was done and people were inclined to mutter and hasten across the piazza if they saw any of Juan’s men approaching. Or anyone in the Borgia colors either, for that matter, but Rodrigo only laughed. As he was laughing now, behind his bull mask.

“Bah,” my bull said. “High spirits!” And I could have mouthed the words right along with him, so often did he trot them out in Juan’s defense. “They’ll liven up the masquerade, mark my words. Ah, is that Cardinal Zeno behind that cockerel mask? Excellent costume for him; I really must have a word about those letters to the Florentines he thinks I don’t know about . . .”