Lucrezia’s first wedding had been a vast affair: hundreds of guests milling about the papal apartments, all the ladies going into raptures over Carmelina’s sweets. I still remembered those little sugared strawberry cakelets shaped like roses . . . a formal occasion, that first wedding, at least until wine loosened inhibitions at dawn and squealing ladies had tossed all those cakelets out the windows to the watching crowds and Rodrigo had begun dropping candied cherries down my bodice. This wedding was no formal occasion at all, or perhaps it only seemed that way to me. There had been feasting and laughing and dancing much of the day, and the guests were already merry with wine as the bride made her way into the Sala dei Pontifici, where her papal father sat enthroned. Joffre lounged at his feet, trying to look languid and merely looking sulky, and Alfonso of Aragon stood at the ready in black brocade, with eyes only for his Borgia wife. He wore a black velvet cap with a brooch like a fat gold cherub that Lucrezia had given him, and I had to admit he was a handsome youth: dark and slender, with a narrow sensitive face.

They will eat you alive, I thought as we paced across the sala.

But young Alfonso had only smiles as he took Lucrezia’s hand and bowed over it, and she smoldered at him through her darkened lashes. What a pretty pair they made as the viols struck up a lively tune and they danced for the Pope’s smiles. Orsino and I had danced to viols at our wedding. A sedate tune, dipping and turning palm to palm as I prayed silently for him to love me, and he couldn’t even summon the courage to look me in the eye. Regretting his devil’s bargain already, perhaps. His whole blighted life had run aground after that dance like a cursed ship.