I tripped over a loose stone in the courtyard and fell with a gasp that was half shriek, but Cesare Borgia was already moving past me, toward the stairs that would take him to his sister. “Silence that one too,” he said over his shoulder at me, and was gone.

Gone. Pantisilea gone, the midwife gone, Perotto gone. No one left to know that the Pope’s daughter had given birth tonight.

The other guardsman swung off his horse, and I felt a squeeze of relief so violent that my heart almost burst from my chest. “Leonello, you’re here, I—”

But his eyes were cold this time, cold under the moon, cold, cold. And the knife in his hand was not for my attackers, but for me.

Giulia

Mamma, Mamma!” My daughter looked up at me in glee as I entered the kitchens, her little nose smudged with flour. “I can make frittelle!”

“More than I could ever do.” I smiled at the sight of her: sitting on the trestle table swaddled in an oversized apron, assiduously rolling out misshapen little balls of dough. “How did you get down here, Lauretta mia?”

“Il Signore was turning white every time the little one here went careening past his precious statues.” Bartolomeo deftly whisked something in a bowl with one hand and pushed a lump of butter around a hot skillet with the other, but he still managed a bow. “The nursemaids had the bright idea of bringing her down here.”

“I hope she is not keeping you from your work.” I rescued a bowl of flour before it could tumble out of Laura’s hands.