“Nine?” I whispered, but my feet were moving, everyone’s feet moved, and papal guards closed about the whole party of us as we followed the Holy Father to the Castel Sant’Angelo. I had been inside that gloomy papal fortress before, looking down from its great crenellated walls over the lake of surcoats and pike points and lily-strewn flags that had been the French army—but my Pope had been laughing then, making nothing of the trials ahead of him and scheming with great good cheer how he would make this army melt away, bend to his bidding, wish they had never crossed him. Now there was no laughter—only the Holy Father’s piercing cry again, followed by hoarse, wailing sobs as I crossed into the chapel where the servants had laid out the corpse of the Duke of Gandia. I could not see Juan’s face, or his terrible mutilated body—only one limp white arm, trailing loose from its bier as my weeping Pope gathered his son up into his arms and rocked him like a child.

“Rodrigo—” I did not try to touch him, but he still struck at me as I approached, burying his head in Juan’s torn and waterlogged chest. Juan’s limp hand brushed my skirt, and I stepped back with a cry of my own. The palm had been torn open, pierced through by a dagger, leaving a great jagged wound. The river had washed it clean and bloodless, or else it could have been the hand of Christ upon His cross.

I became dimly aware that Cesare was ordering everyone out in a voice like ice. I cast a look at Rodrigo, but he was still weeping, still cradling his dead son tenderly to his chest, and I felt my eyes sting. I turned to go, but Cesare stopped me on the threshold of the chapel, waving the others on. “Giulia,” he said, “I have a task for you.”

I nodded dumbly, still deaf to anything but those terrible sobs in the chapel.

“I ask you to tend my sister,” Cesare said, and I saw the softening in his face that I always saw when he mentioned Lucrezia. No wonder the nasty-minded gossips of Rome thought the love he bore her was some perverse thing—he had no love for anyone but Lucrezia, and love in a man as cold as Cesare was such a miracle that surely people would think it a profaned miracle. “I won’t have her hearing of our brother’s death from strangers,” Cesare continued. “Will you travel to the Convent of San Sisto, to give her the news?”

“But His Holiness . . .”

“His Holiness will not want you for now,” said Cesare. “He will not want anyone.”