The Pope presided at his high table, watching with benevolent fondness. He was supposed to sit alone in his papal splendor, but Caterina Gonzaga perched on his knee playing with his hair and feeding him tidbits. I was surprised he didn’t spit them out, because the food from the apathetic Vatican cooks was as terrible as ever—tough stringy capons and leathery oysters drying on their shells and oversugared biscotti—but Rodrigo seemed to enjoy licking the sugary crumbs off Caterina Gonzaga’s neck as she tittered. His dark eyes found mine, dwelling for a moment’s bitter satisfaction before he pulled Caterina into his lap and began fishing idly under her skirts with his ringed hand. Not my Pope anymore, not ever, and he hardly had a glance for me since I had been widowed. Why would he? I had insulted him; Orsino had cuckolded him; we had both been appropriately punished and were now dismissed from the Holy Father’s notice. Borgia efficiency.

Lucrezia sent me a dish of sugared almonds with a queenly wave, a sign of the new Duchess’s favor, but I waved them away.

“—a pleasure to see your radiant smile again, Madonna Giulia! You have been too long from our court!” A red beaming face bobbing before me at the table, one of the Colonna lordlings. I watched his mouth move, not listening to his words. “My deepest regrets for your lord husband, but so fair a woman cannot be allowed to molder in her grief. Perhaps you will allow me to call upon you soon—”

More dishes, more overbaked haunches of boar and sour greasy cheeses. Oh, but my head ached. “Madonna Giulia, perhaps you will allow me to meet that little daughter of yours? As beautiful as her mother, they say, and I have a young son of my own. Tell me, she is heiress to Bassanello as well as Carbognano, is she not?”

Cesare, ghosting about the tables like a black bat. Pulling all the strings for tonight’s celebration, conjuring magic for his preening little sister, whom he watched with such fondness. Michelotto trailed behind, his usual colorless shadow, but I did not see Leonello. I had not seen my former bodyguard at all since the burning of Fra Savonarola. Cesare had sent Leonello away from Rome, some dark business in Romagna, where people whispered of deaths in the night among the Borgia enemies. “Cardinal Borgia’s demon dwarf,” people whispered, crossing themselves when they spoke Leonello’s name. “They say he grows wings and slips through cracks in walls to do his master’s bidding!” The demon dwarf had returned to Rome, or so rumor had it, but who knew for certain?