“Cards this time?” Leonello examined one of his sharp little throwing knives, balancing the damascened hilt on the very tip of one stubby finger. He wore his usual livery, which Madonna Giulia had designed especially for him—black doublet and hose and boots—and she had a clever eye because all that stark unadorned black emphasized the green in his hazel eyes, and a miracle of tailoring masked the oddities of his body, making his shoulders look broader and his head less oversized. He didn’t look like a figure of ridicule; he looked cool and remote and more than a little frightening, and I wished sometimes that my mistress had left him in the disreputable patched castoffs in which he’d first arrived in this household. “So, is our cook off playing cards again, or zara?” Leonello went on. “Zara’s a game for idiots, and that cousin of yours is a curly-haired fool.”

“Certainly not,” I lied. “He’s at the fish market, checking a new vendor who promised him a choice load of sturgeon. He is very conscientious.” I could almost hear Bartolomeo roll his eyes behind me at the other apprentices. “None of that,” I said without turning, and gave Leonello a curt nod. “Please inform Madonna Adriana we will both be along when Marco returns.”

He sheathed his throwing knife in his boot top again and sauntered out without a farewell. We never spoke one solitary word to each other beyond the necessary.

“And in the meantime,” Bartolomeo snorted, “we’ve got peasant food to make. Santa Marta bung me with a spoon.”

“None of that either,” I warned, and flapped my apron at the lazy notch-eared kitchen cat who was batting a paw up toward a kettle of chicken bones I’d set to simmering. “Now, for pranzo—”

I reeled off dishes, and they stood waiting their orders in serried rows: the undercooks, the apprentices, the carvers, the scullions, the pot-boys; all my obedient soldiers. Well, mostly obedient. Bartolomeo snorted when I gave directions for a dish of lake trout bathed in truffle sauce. “Sweet Santa Marta,” he said with a derisive shake of his head. “That is not how peasants eat. Does the Duke of Gandia really think your average Tiber fisherman slathers his trout in truffles?”

“This is how lordlings think peasants eat,” I retorted. “Alfonso, you’ll take the pork shoulder, I want a red wine glaze and plenty of capers—Giuliano, the capons, a splash of lime and rose vinegar—”

“It should be venison.” Bartolomeo interrupted me again.

I glared at him this time. “What?”

“Venison,” Bartolomeo repeated, raking an impatient hand through his red hair. “The Duke of Gandia bagged a stag yesterday. I saw when he had me bring out one of my hampers for his guardsmen on the hunt. He’ll want to see venison on the table today, not pork shoulder and capons.”