Juan would suffer no justice for Anna’s death either, or the string of women who followed her. What were a few low women, against a pope’s son? He will never pay for killing them. What a waste, finding my long-sought murderer only to discover he couldn’t be punished. But I banished that thought for another day. Carmelina came first—surely the first of Juan’s victims to escape him alive. That at least was no waste.

“The Duke of Gandia, you may be assured, will not forget you.” I addressed the words to the cook’s lowered head, as she would not look at me. “He will not forget how well you looked in that giraffe costume, and he will certainly not forget how you marked his pretty face with your nails tonight.”

“He won’t forget you either,” she managed to say. “Running him off like that.”

“But I have the Pope’s other son as my protector, and Cesare would like nothing better than to irritate his brother with my presence.” I didn’t really know if I could rely on Cesare for protection, but Carmelina had her own future to agonize over. It seemed unfair to burden her with mine, too. “Unless you want to risk rape or worse, you will have to leave here. And very soon.”

“Leave?” She looked around the rows of wine casks, but I didn’t think she was seeing them. I saw the scrubbed cheer of the palazzo kitchens in Carmelina’s big tear-filled eyes, with her bustling scullions and obedient apprentices and Madonna Giulia tripping down the steps calling “Tourtes! Biscotti! I always eat when I’m happy!”

“Leave,” I repeated. “You must.”

Leave everything she’d built here, all because of a Pope’s lecherous, murderous son.

“I know,” she said, and began to cry.

I dared to hop up onto the trestle table beside her then, my boots swinging freely above the floor. I took the jug of wine from her hand and tugged her head down on my shoulder.

“I don’t have anywhere to go.” Her hand clutched my sleeve as she wept into the black wool of my doublet. “Not anywhere. Not in this wide world.”

I thought of Anna, of a fruit seller named Eleonora, of the other women whom I had not been able to save. The ones who had died in agony. But not this one—not this one.

My voice came out somber and measured, echoing off the cold stone of the cellar. “I swear I will see you safe.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

In the affairs of this world, misery alone is without envy.

—BOCCACCIO

Carmelina

Are you sure it’s enough?” Madonna Giulia looked anxious as I weighed the purse she’d given me.

“More than enough.” Close to a year’s wages, by the feel of it. “Thank you, Madonna Giulia.”