The little suite of rooms in the gatehouse for illustrious travelers would have been luxurious enough sanctuary for the Countess of Pesaro all by themselves, but she had brought her own little comforts as well. Silver combs and basins for the washing of her hair, little ivory pots of rouge and hair potions, three elaborately carved and painted chests containing all the gowns and shoes and linens deemed necessary to her retreat, her own fragile Venetian goblets and majolica plates, a pearl-inlaid lute so she could practice her music . . . Just today when I brought the Countess of Pesaro her midday pranzo of pastry pasticcetti stuffed with milk-fed veal, her little sala had been a bower of silks and laughter and bunches of flowers as she read aloud from Ficino’s De Amore while Pantisilea dressed her hair. “Stupid Ficino, I’m tired of him,” Lucrezia had been complaining. “I hear there’s to be another book of sonnets from Avernus to his Aurora, but who knows when I shall get them . . .”

Now as I edged into the sala wishing I could hide behind Leonello, the bower’s peace had shattered right along with the bowl of fresh violets and lilies that now lay smashed on the floor. Cushions had been torn off the wall benches, books lay facedown on the floor, and Lucrezia Borgia’s hair stood out wildly in all directions as she sobbed in the middle of her bed.

“Lucrezia mia,” Madonna Giulia was saying vainly, trying to put her arms about the young Countess. “Don’t flail and gasp like that, you’ll make yourself ill—”

“What do you know?” Lucrezia struck her away, gasping. “Have you lost a brother you loved?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.” I thought I heard just a touch of asperity in La Bella’s normally sweet voice. “My brother Angelo, remember?”

“To a fever! You lost him to a fever, not to a murderer!” Lucrezia buried her face in a velvet cushion with another howl.

“Weeping will not bring him back. Juan is at rest now.” Giulia stroked her back, and I looked down at the bandage that still swathed my hand and made cooking so awkward and difficult. The wound beneath it was either itchy or painful in unbearable turns, and I hoped Juan Borgia was burning in the flames of hell. If I was bound for the inferno myself for all my sins, and I probably was, I hoped the Devil would let me give the Pope’s son a turn or two on his own personal spit above the infernal flames. I’d sauce him down with hot oil myself, just to hear him shriek.

“Who would dare lay a hand on him?” Lucrezia was shrieking now. “Who would dare? My father will find them, he’ll hunt them down and then Cesare will kill them all—”

I couldn’t help a glance at Leonello, who was looking nonchalantly at the ceiling.