“Full of great characters . . . So gripping, your hands are glued to the book, and so vivid it burns itself into your mind’s eye and stays with you long after you turn the final page.”

—Diana Gabaldon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series

“[A] solid debut . . . Quinn’s command of first-century Rome is matched only by her involvement with her characters; all of them, historical and invented, are compelling . . . Should make a splash among devotees of ancient Rome.”

—Publishers Weekly

“For sheer entertainment, drama, and page-turning storytelling, this tumultuous debut novel is well worth reading.”

—Library Journal

Books by Kate Quinn

Books by Kate Quinn

MISTRESS OF ROME

DAUGHTERS OF ROME

EMPRESS OF THE SEVEN HILLS

THE SERPENT AND THE PEARL

THE LION AND THE ROSE

Dedication

For another remarkable grandmother

Virginia Quinn

reader, critic, and cheerleader extraordinaire

Dedication

Special acknowledgments to my wonderful team at Berkley Books for being so willing to think outside the box in publishing Giulia Farnese’s ever-sprawling story. Further acknowledgments, thanks, and hugs to all my hardworking beta readers: Stephanie Dray, Eliza Knight, Christi Barth, and Kristen Stappenbeck-Baker, some of the smartest and most insightful readers ever to burn the midnight oil, reading this book’s rough draft pages and helping me make them better.

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

Men demonstrate their courage more often in little things than in great.

—BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE

December 1494

Leonello

This is all terribly anticlimactic,” I complained to my mistress. “Captured by enemy forces, and where are the dungeons? The torturers? The chains? At the very least, you should have been sold into the harem of a Moorish merchant prince. That would be a story worth telling.” I hurt too badly to laugh at my own joke, so I gave a shallow sigh instead. “There is no literary scope in spending a few nights drinking French wine with French generals, listening to French compliments, then being escorted back to Rome in luxury.”

“I think it was a trifle more harrowing than that.” Giulia Farnese looked across the carriage at the bandages wrapping my chest and shoulder and hip, the splints a French surgeon had strapped to my broken fingers, the black bruises that covered nearly every visible inch of my flesh like splotches of pitch. “How is the pain, Leonello? And don’t just grit your teeth at me stoically, please.”