A lovely summer sunset painted the sky over Rome, laying an orange glow on the kitchen courtyard with its wheel ruts and straw-scattered stones, but all I could see was a blur. At dawn this courtyard was all abustle: carts arriving every other instant with my daily deliveries of salt pork or baskets of fruit or dew-wet herbs; harassed-looking apprentices carrying crates of hissing geese that poked their long necks through their cage slats; the occasional death squeal as a pig’s throat was briskly slashed and the carcass hauled into the kitchen for the spit. I could wring a chicken’s neck or slaughter a lamb without one drop of Madonna Giulia’s sentimentality, but now I found myself averting my eyes from the stream of dried blood between the stones where a ewe’s throat had been cut this morning for mutton chops.

I sank down on the upturned barrel beside the cistern and unwrapped the bandage, running my bleeding hand under the flow of water. Such good water they had here at the Palazzo Santa Maria, deep wells with water clean as any spring that ever welled up in Eden itself. Another reason I had so loved working here, because I didn’t have to worry about whether my water was good enough for mixing with the wine. Convents never had such good wells. I’d miss the water. Wine too—dear God, but I wanted some wine. Maybe then my hands would stop shaking. Leonello had poured half a jug of wine into me last night, and it was the only way I’d gotten to sleep.

“Carmelina?”

I started violently, erupting from my hunched seat on the barrel and whipping out the knife I’d been carrying under my apron all day. So stupid because how was I supposed to use a knife with this hand? But I still couldn’t put it down.

“I’m sorry.” Bartolomeo held out his big freckled hands, placating. “I never meant to startle you.”

“Well, you did!” I couldn’t quite put my knife down, even seeing the familiar red hair and wide shoulders of someone who was decidedly not Juan Borgia. “What are you doing here, Bartolomeo? You quit, and that was a good while ago!”