“I would speak to you, Mother Prioress,” I said in bored tones after deigning to take Mass the next morning with the sisters. I hadn’t seen Carmelina in the ranks of black and white, but finding her was Leonello’s task. I rustled off after the prioress, who showed me to her private sala with great alacrity—a sala any palazzo could have boasted, with its fine woven carpets and inlaid table and carved chairs. Mother Prioress offered a velvet cushion for my back and a very unmonastic wine to sip, and I rustled my skirts and flashed my pearls and made offhand mention of a donation I had been planning to make for the sisters of San Sisto. “Or shall I say, a donation the Holy Father urged me to make? After the great care you have taken of his daughter the Duchess of Bisceglie, he is most interested in furthering the prosperity of your establishment.”

“His Holiness is too kind,” the prioress purred in her carved chair, patting her own skirts with their rustle of silk beneath and no doubt seeing new stained-glass windows for the altar and even better wine for her private stores.

“There is just one small matter he has entrusted to me first . . .”

Leonello burst in on cue, and I felt like cheering. What a picture he made! Back in his black livery I had designed with its handsome touches of white, he strode like an only slightly small colossus toward the prioress, who recoiled visibly from his steely gaze. Cesare Borgia’s notorious demon dwarf, with whispers of blood and murder and poison whispering around his footsteps . . . and right behind him, a hulking red-haired guard in Borgia livery, dragging a tall and terrified young nun.

“That’s the one,” Leonello told me, hardly bothering to glance at the prioress. “Suora Serafina, she was calling herself.”

The red-haired guard jerked to a halt, pushing Carmelina before him. Her eyes bulged over the big freckled hand that covered her mouth, and her wimple and veil had been yanked away. Holy Virgin, what had they done to her hair?

“I don’t understand,” the prioress gasped. “This is Suora Serafina, yes—a holy sister, fled from her orders in Venice. His Eminence Cardinal Borgia ordered that she resume her vows here.”

“His Eminence no longer.” Leonello took up the narrative now, as I yawned down at my nails. “Did you not hear? Cardinal Borgia renounced his red hat two days ago. He is a prince of the world now, not a prince of the church. And now that he is no longer bound by the church’s laws, he has different plans for Suora Serafina. She is no longer to remain here as nun.”

“A nun cannot be released from her vows,” the prioress began.