Well, I had books, books I would soon be teaching a little girl who was almost my daughter to read. And in Giulia’s eyes, I was tall as a giant. Oh yes, I mattered. I mattered to them, the family that by the grace of God or Fortune had become mine, and I’d already vowed that I would spend the rest of my days proving myself worthy of them both. I’d leave my teeming city of Rome for good and make my home in sleepy little Carbognano; I’d roll up my sleeves and help Giulia organize the harvest; I’d keep my lady’s accounts for her, and comb her hair at night, and write out her letters when her eyes were tired. I’d read her poetry in bed and make her laugh by poking fun at it; I’d write her more poetry of my own and maybe not tear every other sonnet to bits. I’d draw up a plan of lessons for Laura, something to get the Latin declensions and the French verbs into a child’s head without deadening her love for books. I was already thinking I’d teach Laura in the mornings, and then in the afternoons when she went off to her dancing master or her music tutor, I’d retire to the cool quietness of the little study I was already planning for myself, a study with a stone bust of Cicero and a desk fitted to my height, and work on translating The Odyssey into Italian. I’d always fancied translation work, but it would take years; it was the sort of job a scholarly nobleman took on for the sheer pleasure of it, and I’d always been too busy surviving to afford such leisurely pleasures. But now I could afford such things; I could work on Homer while Laura shrieked and giggled on the shore of the lake outside my window, and Giulia rolled through the castello laughing and chattering with her maids. And when dusk fell, we would sit at cena around the same table and tell each other of our day, and my account of the hours I’d spent would never again include women staked through the hand, or men dead under my knife, or any spilling of blood at all. That was what mattered.

Cesare Borgia would not care about any of that, either. And he was waiting for my answer.

“I have recently discovered happiness,” I said at last, flippantly. “Or perhaps God.”

He wrinkled his nose. “How commonplace.”

“Is it? I think it rather rare.” It had been enough to take me this morning from the woman I loved more than anything on this wide earth, away from her to come here. “Don’t go, Leonello,” Giulia had warned as I hopped on one foot, tugging up my boots. “Who knows what will happen if you face him? Let’s just climb into a carriage and leave.”