I’d retreated to my room the instant the carriage returned from the Convent of San Sisto. The carriage wheels had hardly stopped rolling before I was swinging down into the courtyard and making for the doors. I’d elected to ride on the jolting seat with the driver rather than inside with La Bella as I usually did; I’d been perched up high and staring ahead between the horses’ ears by the time she left Lucrezia Borgia in her chambers and come back to the carriage. “Leonello?” she’d said, looking up at me, but I stared straight ahead and she sighed and climbed in.

I’d known, however, that I would not be able to avoid my mistress entirely.

“You’re leaving us.” Her voice was quiet.

“Your powers of perception are absolutely breathtaking,” I said, and rolled up the last of my spare shirts.

“Why?” The rustle of her skirts again as she came closer. I still didn’t turn. “Because Lucrezia said—”

“That I allowed her brother to die?” I cut her off. My head was still throbbing, no longer just from the wine I’d drunk with Bartolomeo. “That it was all my fault, due to some astoundingly fuzzy logic? Well, logic is not our little Countess of Pesaro’s strongest suit, but she is correct in one particular. It is my fault her brother is dead.” I slammed the lid down on the now-empty chest. “Because I murdered him.”

I hoped for an outburst or a denial or a cry of horror—anything to make her recoil, rush away in tears, leave. But Giulia Farnese only said quietly, “I know.”

She sank to her knees beside the pile of my discarded livery. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, waiting for her to intone some platitude about Juan’s soul being at rest, but she was silent as she folded my black doublet.

“You know, I’m disappointed you figured it out,” I said, stuffing the last rolled-up shirt into my old pack. “I covered my tracks so carefully.” Even at the end, when I’d had Bartolomeo put on his mask and hire a few street drunks to help us load Juan’s swaddled corpse onto the horse and then into the river, I’d kept myself anonymous. The men had been drunk, and to disguise my height I’d swung myself into the horse’s saddle in front of Juan’s corpse, and wrapped myself well in a cloak to hide my short legs. Neither the men we’d paid nor the wood seller who saw us toss the body into the river could have recognized the man on the horse for a dwarf. “How did you know it was me, Madonna Giulia? The note I had you write?”

“Of course.” There was anger in her voice, muted but powerful like a deep-flowing stream. “You involved me in the murder of my lover’s son, Leonello.”