“What do you think a nun would know about any of this?” I exploded. “We do what Cardinal Borgia said. We sent Perotto for the midwife; now we wait.” I had no idea what else to do. My own mother had borne only my sister and me; I’d not helped with the birth of a dozen more little brothers and sisters as so many daughters did. And when my mother went to assist at a friend or neighbor’s childbed, well, I’d been so unnerved at all the screaming that I’d always volunteered to heat water in the kitchens or run back and forth for cloths—anything that would keep me out of the way. Now I was beginning to wish I’d stayed and watched at a few more of those childbeds.

“It all began so fast—” Pantisilea bit her lip. One moment our mistress had been lying in bed as usual, eating a plate of my burnt-sugar stars and reading the Avernus sonnets again, though mostly she leafed through them while complaining that Perotto never looked at her now that she was fat and ugly. And Pantisilea had been reassuring her that of course she was not fat, which was even true because for such a slim little thing, Lucrezia Borgia didn’t show her pregnancy near as much as she might have. A stroke of luck for her Vatican appearance, that had been. Even now at nine months it was only her face that looked any fatter, and frankly that was from too many burnt-sugar stars. But Pantisilea and I still had to spend a great deal of time assuring her that she was not at all fat or ugly, of course she wasn’t—

But this afternoon she had interrupted our reassurances with a cry, and there had been a rush of water across the sheets, and now the whole bed was soaked through. Not just from water but from sweat, and from blood.

“Benedicta tu in mulieribus—” She broke off in another cry, and I felt a stab of pity for my little mistress. I hadn’t much liked her, not since she had immured me up here just because she didn’t feel like eating convent food—I’d have given everything I had to turn my back on her and leave these walls forever. But seeing her writhing in that fouled bed, so swollen and young . . .

“Bite on the sheets, madonna,” I encouraged. “We must keep you quiet; remember what His Eminence said.” Though how Cesare Borgia thought we were going to keep the nuns from knowing their illustrious guest was giving birth in the gatehouse, sweet Santa Marta knew.