Another long and grueling hour passed before the midwife arrived. A plump little woman with a basket over her arm, hustled along by a white-faced Perotto. “No need to hurry me, young man,” she clucked. “First babies never come quickly, plenty of time yet, and you did say this was a first—ah, yes, we’re well in time.” A pat to Lucrezia’s sweating forehead. “Best get you up out of that bed, my dear, up and walking. Lean on the maid, that’s it—and if the other maid can fetch us hot water, and perhaps a store of cool wet cloths for her face—”

“I’ll go,” I said, abandoning Pantisilea, who gave me a dirty look as she helped the midwife haul Lucrezia Borgia gasping out of bed. Perotto had already fled the scene, lucky man.

Lucrezia’s voice trailed after me toward the stairs, half shriek and half whine: “I don’t want to get out of bed and walk! I don’t want to, I’m telling my brother—”

“Sweet Santa Marta,” I muttered. “Let me never have a child.” If I couldn’t have been born a man, at least make me barren. I flew down the steps, away from the sound of the midwife’s cajoling, and I nearly fell over the convent’s prioress.

“Pardon, Mother Prioress—” I curtsied hastily.

“There appeared to be some disturbance in the gatehouse,” she said in her smooth voice that whispered of being reared in a palazzo somewhere herself, just as her gliding steps whispered of silk shifts under her black convent skirts. “Is our honored guest quite well?”

“She has fallen on the stairs.” I trotted out the lie Cesare Borgia had prepared for us all. “It seems her arm is broken. We sent Messer Perotto for a wise-woman to tend her.”

“Our infirmarian here could have seen to her—”

“Cardinal Borgia will have none but the best physicians tend his sister.” A little head bob of apology. “It seems this woman is versed in the setting of bones. I imagine it will be painful, however—please do not be disturbed if you should hear our mistress cry out.”

“Of course,” the prioress said smoothly, and I could see not a ripple on her face. Well, if she suspected anything, who was to say otherwise? And where would a nun even take her suspicions? Besides, I would have laid good odds that these walls had seen babies born before. Nuns break their vows too, after all, and erring wives retire behind convent walls in sudden fits of piety when they need to wait out inconveniently swollen bellies in private. I didn’t think this elegant prioress would blink at one single thing that was going on in Madonna Lucrezia’s chamber right now.