Gifts for Lucrezia—silver platters, credenza services of solid gold, frail blown glass, jewels. A necklace of rubies and wrought gold from her father, and Lucrezia squealed as Alfonso of Aragon hooked it about her neck for her. “You did not bring my daughter a gift, Giulia Farnese?” a supercilious voice sniffed behind me, and I smiled at Vannozza dei Cattanei because I knew it would annoy her.

“Lucrezia said my mere presence was a gift, since I am still in mourning and would not otherwise make an appearance in public.”

“I don’t suppose you had anything suitable to offer the Duchess of Bisceglie, anyway. Not from that little hole you live in now—Viterbo?”

“Carbognano.”

“Yes, Carbognano. Dull little place. Your daughter’s inheritance, I understand.” Vannozza smiled, her feathered fan twitching like a cat’s tail. “Well, not all our daughters can be duchesses.”

“No,” I agreed. “Not all our daughters are divorced, disgraced, and rumored to whore for their brothers, either. Whom do you count the luckier, Vannozza?”

Her smile disappeared, and since the guests were rising now to stream into the papal apartments, I found it a good note on which to leave her.

Cesare had worked his sorcery on his father’s private papal apartments as well. Tableaux in every chamber: a sala turned into a garden with real apple blossoms scattered underfoot and vines twined over the walls and serving girls dressed as nymphs in transparent gauzes; another sala transformed into a forest with green boughs hanging from the ceiling and fresh leaves covering the carpets, a fountain taking up the whole of another chamber and splashing wine instead of water. The fountain writhed for a moment as I looked at it, and I saw it had been twined all over with vipers, empty scaly skins stretched and stuffed to look alive. All those jet-bead eyes and ivory fangs seemed to coil in my fevered eyes and I turned away, flinching.

Cesare stood beckoning the guests: master of revels in his black velvet. The servants were masked and costumed like mummers; nymphs and satyrs and beasts, and Cesare wore a mask with a single twisted black horn: a dark unicorn. I’d been the unicorn at the last masquerade, where Rodrigo had ordered a guest hanged for daring to insult Juan. Why had I not realized such a man would take revenge on Orsino, for the supposed crime of cuckolding him?

My fault. My fault.

“Snakes,” a voice slurred, and Sancha of Aragon trailed forward with her reddened eyes fixated on the writhing fountain behind Cesare. “Snakes, snakes, you Borgia snake—” She hissed at Cesare, her little pointed tongue flickering, not unlike a snake herself, and she raised an unsteady hand to slap at him. She had been glaring at him all night, and she was drunker than a dockside slattern. “Borgia snake, you know what you’ve done to me—”