“Lucrezia!” I yelled, not caring who in the palazzo heard me. She had gone in from sunning her hair, leaving her sun hat and her fan and her missal on the grass for the maids to retrieve, and evidently she had decided on a cool bath after the heat of the afternoon sun because I found the Countess of Pesaro lounging in the huge marble bath with its mosaic mermaids and trays of fragrant oils, her newly sunned and dried hair pinned very carefully on top of her head. The Tart of Aragon had evidently flitted off to her latest lover or had perhaps just gone to find a dockside tavern to hawk her wares. All in all that was a good thing because I had a quarrel to pick with Lucrezia, but Sancha I only wanted to murder. If I murdered her, then there went the alliance with Naples and my Pope would not have been pleased.

“Giulia?” Lucrezia looked up as I stormed into the bagno. “Whatever are you shouting about?”

I seized the water jug one of the maids had left after filling the bath and upended it over Lucrezia’s head.

“You look like a drowned rat,” I told her as she spluttered and coughed and tried to rescue her drenched hair. “Your eyes are all red and squinchy, and your hair is getting overbleached and nasty, and that horrid lip rouge you wear has smeared all around your mouth so you look like you’ve been drinking blood. And now that I’ve been as thoroughly horrid to you as you just were to poor Adriana, perhaps you will feel moved to creep up to her chamber like the nasty little rat you’ve become, and make your apologies for being so cruel.”

“Giulia!” Lucrezia gasped.

I folded my arms across my breasts, scowling down at her. The maids had all fled, though they were probably eavesdropping just outside the door, and I had no mind to lower my voice and spare the Pope’s daughter her dignity. “How could you?” I demanded. “Adriana da Mila raised you.”

“She is not my mother,” Lucrezia muttered. “And neither are you!”

“No, the mother who birthed you was only too happy to give you up, and don’t pretend any fondness there because I see the sighs of relief you always heave as soon as her visits are done.” Vannozza dei Cattanei did not visit often, thank the Holy Virgin, and when she did we spoke with icy courtesy. I was too angry to summon ice now with her daughter. “Madonna Adriana raised you in her household, and you owe her the respect of any daughter. Just as I owe her the respect of a daughter-in-law.” I thought of Lucrezia’s little envies this past year whenever she compared our gowns, our jewels, our hair. Our anything, really. “Adriana and I both deserve better from you.”