“My husband wanted to lead the papal forces, you know.” Lucrezia laughed. “Can you imagine? He has trouble enough with those Pesarese captains of his, and now he wants papal soldiers! He thinks he’s Alexander the Great, you know; too ridiculous—”

Sancha tittered and Juan guffawed; even Rodrigo had a chuckle at his son-in-law’s expense, and I couldn’t blame him either because Lord Sforza had gotten very sour this past year and spent most of his last visit pestering my Pope for money. But I couldn’t help looking at Lucrezia—sixteen years old now but as poised as a woman of twice as many years, wearing a purple-and-crimson gown cut as low as Sancha’s, rubies in her ears and rouge patted on her cheeks and a ring on every finger. She looked eager and glittering, greedy for every eye to be on her, and I thought back to the gently glowing girl who had first blushed at her new husband over my cena table.

Well, such girls grew up. And Lucrezia had acted alongside me as her father’s hostess this past winter, finally old enough to take her place as the star of the papal court—perhaps it had gone to her head just a little. It certainly would have gone to mine at her age. I had only twenty-two years to my name, but sometimes I felt distinctly world-weary.

They were talking of that mad priest Fra Savonarola now, the one preaching and frothing at the mouth in Florence and getting everyone to give up their cards and their fine clothes and all their other luxuries. “Only in Florence,” Juan snickered. “That would never happen in Rome!”

“My Giulia might give up cards,” Rodrigo said, giving my cheek an affectionate tweak. “But never her pearls!”

“As if anyone would go about in sackcloth just because one sour old man said puffed sleeves were heretical!” Lucrezia laughed.

“I don’t know about heretical,” I said, sipping my sour wine. The vintage wasn’t up to Carmelina’s standards, either. “But puffed sleeves are certainly unflattering. And really, what’s more heretical than that?”

Sancha plucked at her puffed sleeves, shooting me a nasty look.

“You’d be the only one safe under Savonarola, eh, brother?” Juan cast an eye over the unadorned black that Cesare usually wore instead of his red cardinal’s robes. “Maybe you should have been a Dominican! I’ll fight the French and you’ll preach hellfire.”

“Careful, brother,” said Cesare. “Or you might taste it.”