She fell on him, slapping and shouting, and his servants rushed forward in their masks and her servants too. A bishop staggered back with a bloody nose, Michelotto hit the Tart of Aragon so hard her neck wrenched, one of Sancha’s guards drew his dagger, and for a moment I thought Lucrezia’s wedding would see murder. Why not?

But the Pope’s guards rushed around him with their own blades, Cesare’s voice cracked like a whip, and Alfonso of Aragon came forward to put an arm about his sister and lead her off. “He gave me the French pox,” I thought I heard Sancha snarl to her brother, but Cesare just shrugged as though he could not care less. He adjusted his horned mask, and I thought I saw the disease’s livid marks spotting his sharp handsome face. The French pox would eventually rot your nose right off, or so they said, and then it drove you mad. But Cesare Borgia was already mad, wasn’t he?

“Put up your sword, you fool,” a deep voice snapped to the last of Sancha’s Neapolitan guards, and I gazed at Leonello a long blank moment before recognizing him.

“You would not wear a costume for my masquerade,” I said.

“Because people would laugh at me.” His voice was muffled behind the huge lion mask; he wore a tawny doublet and absurd clawed gloves and an enormous furred ruff. “No one laughs at the demon dwarf now.”

“You look—” I saw Caterina Gonzaga point at him and titter, and I wanted to claw her eyes out. “You look ridiculous.”

“Indeed.” His normally precise words had a blur about the edges I didn’t recognize.

I lowered my voice. “I want very much to speak with you, Leonello. Privately.”

“Do you?” He tossed down the cup of wine in his hand. “I don’t.”

He dipped his cup into the fountain for more. “Are you drunk?” I asked. I had never seen my abstemious, fastidious, dignified bodyguard drunk in his life.

“No, but I plan to be.”

I had never seen him dance either, but he danced tonight. All the mummers in their masks danced for the Pope and the bridal pair and the laughing guests, and Leonello did a grave jig under his huge ruff that had everyone guffawing. I turned my eyes away, and promptly my hand was claimed by an eager-eyed lordling from the Piccolomini family. “Dear Giulia, your beauty dims even your black! Perhaps I can call upon you soon?”

Why did everyone want to call on me? Leonello in his lion mask was chasing after the mummer dressed as a stag now. Lucrezia giggled helplessly into her husband’s shoulder.

“Madonna Giulia, surely you will open the dancing with me?” Another shiny-eyed man, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. “I have so long admired your grace in the turns—”