Imagine a spacious villa on the Esquiline Hill. One of the fabled seven hills of Rome; Nero built his Golden House here, and another emperor built a bathhouse where the likes of Marcus Aurelius later sat in the steam and quipped in Latin. Today there were churches and shrines instead, and the bathhouses and Roman villas were all in ruins, but the hill was still a pleasant place with enough open spaces to build vineyards and rambling houses for those who didn’t quite wish to leave Rome in order to get a taste of the country. Nothing but the best for Vannozza dei Cattanei, the Pope’s thrifty former mistress, who knew that if she wished to scold her two eldest sons, she must promise to wine and dine them first. One or two other guests came to her pretty little villa near the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, but why bother listing them? They would not be important tonight.

Vannozza’s sons: the swaggering young Duke of Gandia and the even more elegant young Cardinal Borgia, not trading much beyond sharp-edged pleasantries and dark looks, I imagined, but managing enough courtesy to please their mother. Vannozza herself: sleek and self-satisfied, if not as lovely as her successor, and she presided over her guests like one of those Roman matrons must have done in their own villas when Marcus Aurelius ruled this city rather than Rodrigo Borgia. An evening cena eaten outside in the summery green warmth of her little vineyard; elegant low tables and servants with flagons of wine; sweet music and low conversation among the guests; salads of endives and edible flowers, cold ox tongue laid in tissue-thin slices over vine leaves, grapes and melons and ices of the kind Carmelina would describe in loving detail.

Pay attention, now.