I’d left my own daughter in Carbognano with Adriana da Mila, after returning there with Orsino’s crushed body for burial. “We must arrange the funeral rites together, Giulia.” My mother-in-law had greeted me with a brave face, but her eyes were deep red wells and she peered out of them like a bewildered animal hiding in the underbrush.

“Of course.” Orsino would have wanted me there: his little rose weeping behind black veils at his graveside. It was the last duty I owed him. But I let Adriana da Mila take chief place among the mourners, regardless of what her son would have wanted. He was dead, and his mother and I were alive, and of the two of us I knew who had loved him best. It was only after the last clod of earth had fallen that Adriana asked the question I dreaded. “Giulia, you never said—the accident . . .”

“A tragic accident.” I cut her off firmly. “Rain had weakened the ceiling. Poor Vittorio Capece is beside himself with guilt over it all. Orsino was lingering beneath the archway when it fell—he would have known nothing.”

Her eyes puddled with relief, and as I put my consoling arms around her, I bit down on the memory of Orsino’s lean body crumpled among the fallen plasterwork. His blue eyes had been knocked clear out of his crushed skull—I’d seen that very clearly, before Vittorio led me away. Did a few falling stones from a collapsing archway really crush a skull like that? I thought not. His head had been beaten in by a sword hilt, I guessed, or a cudgel. Easy enough to smash loose the plasterwork above afterward, to make it all look an accident. Hadn’t Leonello said something about that, a long time ago? Ways to murder without really murdering.

But I said nothing of my dark private convictions to Madonna Adriana, who had served Rodrigo Borgia with such long and faithful affection. My reckless words to Rodrigo had gotten her son killed—but she wouldn’t know it. Let her have her grief and her peace of mind. I didn’t deserve either.

My fault. My fault that my husband had died. Leonello had seen Rodrigo more clearly than I: Women and children are not fitting objects for vengeance. The Holy Father may find some way to punish you, but it will not come at the end of Michelotto’s knife.