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.”

“Hmph.” I eyed my apprentice, who had passed seventeen and passed me in height as well, and he stared right back instead of dropping his eyes obediently. My gawky eager-to-please apprentice boy had shot up over the past year and a half into a tall young man: standing before me with his freckled arms akimbo in their rolled-up sleeves, and his gaze near as prideful as a Borgia’s. Seventeen—a dangerous age for a young cook. It’s right about then that most apprentices decide they know better than whoever taught them to boil their first egg. Bartolomeo was showing all the usual signs lately: moving just a touch slowly when I gave him an order, slouching instead of jumping when I called his name, “forgetting” the occasional respectful signorina when he addressed me. The last thing you ever want to do is tell an arrogant young cook like Bartolomeo that he’s right about anything.

But the Duke of Gandia had bagged a stag on his hunt yesterday, and he would want to see it on the table.

“Pork shoulder with capers and a red wine glaze, and the capons with lime and rose vinegar,” I repeated finally. “And the venison, with a sauce of cream and French brandy. I was getting to that, Bartolomeo, if you hadn’t interrupted me. Perhaps you’d like to plan the rest of the menu as well, just to save me the trouble? I am all ears for your pearls of wisdom.”

“Salad of fennel and blood orange and olives,” he said, not turning a hair. “Roasted figs rolled in honey and almonds—”

I gave his shoulder a whack with my ladle. “Enough of that. You can do the chestnut-flour frittelle, and not too crisp either. Your frittelle are always on the edge of burning.”

“They are not.”

I waited.