I wasn’t really sure where home was, now that the papal seraglio had ceased to exist. But Madonna Giulia would help find a place for me, that was certain. Even in her newly virtuous turn, surely she would aid me if I asked. And of course there was Bartolomeo, cooking away in Vittorio Capece’s palazzo and writing me letters. He wrote a clear, back-slanting hand, and I smiled at the very sight of it because I’d been the one to tell him at the age of fifteen how important it was for a cook to know his letters, so he could keep his records without being cheated. I told all my apprentices that, but Bartolomeo had been the only one to listen . . . He didn’t try to woo me anymore, in all these letters he wrote me, and thank goodness for that. He was long past any calf love infatuation by now. He just wrote prosaically of the new kitchens in the Capece palazzo, of the recipes he was making and refining on his own for that book he was still determined to compile. Oh, how it squeezed my heart to open a letter and read: For a tenderloin in the Roman style, signorina, quarter the leanest part of the meat into chunks and space onto a spit with bacon and sage leaves . . .

I dredged a dreary little meal together for Madonna Lucrezia, and when dashing young Perotto swaggered away to his horse and went trotting out of the convent gates, Pantisilea and I carried everything up on trays. Lucrezia was admiring her new embroidered shawl, sitting up in bed trying various effects of draping, her cheeks pink with pleasure as they always were after a good dose of masculine admiration. “More of those blood-orange pastry things?” she said, looking up. “You can’t imagine how I’ve been craving them—”

“Yes, and pork jelly for cena.” I was really rather proud of that jelly. A very substandard pig, but I’d gotten a good flavorful jelly out of boiling the ears and snout and hooves in an even more substandard wine. “Plenty of honey and nutmeg, Madonna Lucrezia; you’ve been liking everything sweet lately, haven’t you? I could only find dandelion greens for a salad, but look how pretty I’ve made them look with these bugloss flowers . . .”

She looked down at the jelly, which I’d arranged so nicely on the plate: quivering and cold, ringed by bay leaves and slivered almonds. “The smell,” she said faintly, pink draining out of her cheeks, and then my jelly went smash all over the floor as the little Countess of Pesaro lunged out of bed, stumbled across her chamber, and vomited just in time into the silver basin she normally saved for washing her hands.