“Mamma?” Laura skipped across the grass with her book. “What’s this word, Mamma?”

“You should curtsy to your mother, child,” Fra Teseo reproved. “And address her always as ‘Madam, my mother.’” But neither my daughter or I paid any attention to him.

“That word is a name,” I said, reading the word my daughter’s plump finger pointed out. “Aeneas. Remember, Laura, he founded Rome.”

“Founded? Was it losted?”

Ask Leonello, I almost said. Because Leonello had been my shadow so long, and I still wasn’t used to his absence. He was here, surely—I would only have to turn around to see him, boots propped up on the stone bench under the hazel tree as he put down his own book and explained to Laura who Aeneas was. He’d be declaiming the Aeneid any instant.

But he didn’t, because he wasn’t here. And I felt the usual keen ache in my chest as I realized it all over again.

“The festival after the hazelnut harvest,” I said to Fra Teseo, giving Laura a gentle push back to her book. “I’ve already made preparations about the wine, and I believe we should give an outdoor pranzo if the weather permits.” What I would have given for Carmelina to cook for me, but I’d not heard news of her in months. I’d written to Lucrezia, asking if Carmelina could come to serve me, but had no reply. Well, there had been a reply, but it had been page after page about the new gowns Lucrezia was planning to order from the robe makers, and what suitors were already pressing for her hand even though her marriage vows to the Count of Pesaro had yet to be annulled, and how dull the convent was. Not a word about Carmelina. “Now, I know you’ve said a bull-baiting is traditional,” I continued to Fra Teseo, “but my lord Orsino doesn’t like to risk good hunting dogs in a pointless show, and nor do I.” Orsino had said nothing of the kind, but I did try to present my decisions as our decisions. A lord should be respected by his villagers as decisive in his rulings, even if perhaps he wasn’t. “Let us hold a pallone match among the village boys instead. I’ll present prizes for the winning team . . .”

It wasn’t until the last bit of business had been dealt with and the last bit of news discussed (the innkeeper’s daughter was with child; perhaps I could do something for her) that Fra Teseo hesitated and turned pink.

“If you will pardon me,” he murmured almost inaudibly. “It arrived this morning . . .”

Reaching into his sleeve, he passed me a stamped and sealed packet of creamy paper with a very familiar seal.