“Do you want a look at his cock too, Giulia?” Caterina Gonzaga giggled, and I slapped the bitch so hard she sat down on her proud rump in the middle of the carpet. The Neapolitan nobleman who had emptied his wine over Leonello’s head gave a hiccup and tried to kiss me, and I slapped him too. My hand stung, and so did my eyes. “Giulia, you’re spoiling our fun,” Lucrezia protested, but I ignored her. Leonello’s wrist was boneless in my hand, and his head lolled on his shoulders, but he was not nearly as drunk as he was pretending to be. His eyes glittered at me, and his feet were perfectly steady as I hauled him behind me for the doors. Cesare Borgia blocked my path with arms folded across his chest. “Where are you taking my dwarf?” he drawled.

“Do you think any of them will be afraid of your pet assassin if they see him like this?” My teeth gritted on hatred as I clenched them together, but coming fast behind me I heard my brother’s charming voice. “Cardinal Borgia, if I might question you a moment about some consistory business?” Cesare shrugged, willing to be distracted, and opened his hand to gesture me past. Behind him I saw Rodrigo tugging Caterina Gonzaga back onto his lap with a bull’s roar, Lucrezia clapping her hands for the masked elephant and the masked stag who were now wrestling about the room in mock combat, Joffre and Sancha quarreling drunkenly. One last image of them all, and I dragged my little lion away on a stream of drunken laughter.

I never saw Rodrigo Borgia or any of his children again.

Leonello

You’re a meddling bitch,” I told my former mistress as she hauled me through the private passage from the Vatican to the Palazzo Santa Maria, the passage the Pope had taken so often to visit her bed. “Go away and leave me in peace.” But Giulia ignored me utterly, dragging me along like a sack of laundry to the chamber that she had been lent for the wedding festivities, and barking orders at the sleepy maids in such thunderous tones that they went fleeing before her like frightened birds.

“Get undressed,” she ordered, rounding on me, and when I stood swaying and blinking mutinously, she stripped the doublet off me with her own hands as the maids brought water, towels, refreshments. In the past I might have conjured up a few idle daydreams in which she undressed me, but with tenderness rather than this brusque angry efficiency. Who would have guessed that the former Bride of Christ was such a bully? “Burn these,” she ordered, dropping the lion mask and the huge furred ruff into the nearest maid’s hands. “Burn them at once.”

“I liked that mask,” I said.