I liked him for it, and I felt sorry because I could see the revulsion in his eyes when he looked at me, me and my bloody hands, and I could tell he wouldn’t forgive me at the end of this night’s grisly work. He might well hate me.

“So be it.”

I turned back to the sobbing, bleeding wreck that was the Duke of Gandia, the Gonfalonier of the papal forces, Pope Alexander VI’s most beloved son. “Juan Borgia,” I said quietly, “look at me.”

He lifted his head, sobbing. He had been handsome, but he was not handsome now, blood on his cheek mingling with sweat and tears, his auburn hair hanging in limp strings over his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he choked. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry you were caught,” I said. “And her name was Anna.”

With that, I cut his throat.

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

The Pope is a carnal man

and very loving of his flesh and blood.

—CARDINAL ASCANIO SFORZA

Giulia

I had never seen my Pope more frightened. In fact, I had never seen him frightened at all. I had seen him raging, passionate, frustrated, amused—but never one whit terrified by anything that God or Fortune had ever thrown into his path.

“Juan would have sent word by now.” Rodrigo could not keep still. He flung himself into his carved chair; he rose again to pace across the Sala dei Santi, he paused with a jerk to finger an exquisitely engraved astrolabe in brass and gold sitting on a small table, and then he was pacing again. But over and over his eyes went to Pinturicchio’s fresco on the wall overhead—the disputation of Santa Caterina, where a grandly turbaned figure on a horse oversaw the saint’s pleading with the fixed and arrogant face of Juan Borgia. “He would have returned by now, or he would have sent word! To have him disappear like this, and not one of his men knowing where—”

“It wouldn’t be the first time Juan lost himself sporting all night, and then slept all the next day.” I reached up from my chair to touch Rudrigo’s arm. “Cesare did say Juan was going to some woman after leaving Vannozza’s cena. Isn’t he very taken with that new Milanese girl, Damiata?” I tried to coax a smile. “You should be glad he’s developed enough sense not to be seen leaving a courtesan’s house in the middle of the afternoon! He was just waiting for night to fall, for discretion’s sake.” As though Juan were ever discreet, I thought, but did not say it. My Pope needed soothing, not more causes to worry. I couldn’t really manage to worry about Juan, but this absence was rather strange.

“But his horse—”