Leonello saw my gaze and followed it. “Pantisilea will go in the river,” he said. “So will Perotto. For knowing that the Pope’s daughter gave birth when she is supposed to be a virgin.”

“Could we convince everyone it was a virgin birth?” My voice came out very high and thin.

Leonello had been far beyond jokes. I’d never thought I’d see that day, but it was here, and his face was so eerie-calm I just wanted him jesting and snapping again. I knew the old Leonello, even if he sometimes irked me to the point of madness. I didn’t know this one at all. The one who had looked at me as Pantisilea still jerked in her death throes and said flatly to Cesare Borgia, “No need to kill the cook as well, Eminence. She’s a renegade nun, run away from her convent in Venice. Lock her up here and leave her to God, and Madonna Lucrezia’s secrets will stay inside these walls with her.”

I suppose it was the only way Leonello could avoid putting a knife in me. “Hate me if you like,” he’d said as he turned to go, not sounding as though he cared much. “Just don’t think of stealing away from this convent as you did the last. Because you’ll be found—Cesare Borgia can find anyone—and he won’t send me after you, Signorina Cuoca. He’ll send Michelotto, and you know how that will end.”

Signorina Cuoca no longer, I could have reminded him. I was Suora Serafina again. But being Suora Serafina was infinitely better than being at the bottom of the Tiber with Pantisilea. More good fortune. I told myself that, as my chopped hair piled up around my knees on the floor. I was alive, and for that I could feel a dim, horror-stained gratitude toward the little dwarf who had done me one last favor as a friend. Or perhaps, a former friend. Men like Michelotto didn’t have friends—and soon, Leonello wouldn’t either.

Never mind Michelotto; I was too frightened of Leonello’s death-haunted eyes to even think about running away again.

“Our newest sister,” the prioress had greeted me brightly when I was ushered in to see her that evening, new-clothed and anonymous in my habit and veil. “His Eminence Cardinal Borgia has authorized that you are to resume your vows within our walls.” A delicate pause. “He did not mention which order in Venice previously housed you.”

I doubted Cesare Borgia knew or cared. Leonello had revealed I was a runaway nun, but he hadn’t revealed anything else.

“The Cardinal’s guardsman,” the prioress went on. “The, ah, small one. He mentioned your name in religion was Suora Serafina, but he was very unforthcoming with further details . . .”