Whichever it was, Lord Sforza had an heir. Not that he’d ever know it, drinking bitterly in Pesaro with his manhood publicly in shreds. I took a moment to wonder what would happen to the child, if it would be sent away soon into the countryside with a wet-nurse as the midwife had suggested, or perhaps passed off as some minor sprig on another branch of the voluminous Borgia tree. I knew better than to ask.

The moon was just starting to rise, white as frost against a twilight sky. We lingered in the emptying courtyard, watching the nuns in their black and white hurry inside at the sound of the Vespers bell. I took another gulp of the fresh air, savoring the cold after the stifling chamber with its smells of blood and birth. I had a new letter from Bartolomeo, and it had the usual news about how he had packed a hamper yesterday for Madonna Giulia when she took her daughter to see a snake charmer in the Piazza Navona, and how he had really begun work upon his recipe compendium now, beginning with a section on meatless dishes since it would be Lent soon. The same sort of letter he usually wrote, but he had begun it simply Carmelina and not the formal Signorina, and I wanted to think about that, think about it and study my name as it looked in his neat back-slanting hand—but the last of the nuns disappeared inside to their prayers and soon it would be dark, and Madonna Lucrezia would be needing us.

“We should go in,” I said to Pantisilea. “As soon as that child wakes crying she’ll wake too, and she’ll be wanting warm wine and cold compresses and Santa Marta knows what else.”

“My mother birthed six children, and she never howled as much as Madonna Lucrezia did squeezing out the one,” Pantisilea groaned, and we were both laughing when hoofbeats sounded.

“My sister,” Cesare Borgia rapped out from the back of his horse, almost before it had pulled up in a clatter of hooves. Pantisilea squeaked a little at the sight of the tall dark horse and its tall dark rider, but I stepped forward.

“She is well,” I said, and no more than that. He nodded approval; this was a public place after all, even if the nuns had all gone to Vespers.

“I will remove my sister at once. She will rest tonight at the Vatican, with all the comfort she needs.”

“She’s too weak to be moved,” I began, but the young Cardinal cut me off with a twitch of one black-gloved finger.

“I have a horse-drawn litter prepared for her.” I could see it trundling into the courtyard with the rest of his men, a great cushioned thing as wide and soft as a bed. “The distance is short, and the Holy Father is eager to see her.”