“Signorina,” he added grudgingly, and began measuring out sweet chestnut flour and sugar. I nodded, clapping my hands and concluding the menu instructions with my usual call to arms—“That’s all, now, so I want to see mouths shut and hands moving!”—and I could have sworn I saw Bartolomeo mouthing the words alongside me, but as soon as I whipped my head around at him, he gave me a look of round-eyed innocence. “All right, all right,” I called testily, and they all scattered to their tasks.

Butter sizzled as it melted into a pan, olive oil bubbled from the jar with a glug, the astringent tang of rosemary and garlic filled the air, and I moved through the bustle like a good general, tasting, sniffing, correcting. “Macerate some raspberries in wine to top those frittelle, Giuliano. The good Magnaguerra vintage, and lots of it.” This was a meal for Juan Borgia, after all; absolutely everything on the menu would be soaked in wine. “Get that useless cat out of the way, Ugo, or so help me I’m drowning it in the cistern!” I ducked under a rack of pots and gave a whack to the spit-boy’s shoulder to have him cranking faster on the capons that had just gone over the flames. “A splash more lime for those capons—”

One more sweeping glance over my well-trained team, and I began spooning out sugar and cinnamon myself for sweet tourtes of ripe blackberries and toasted walnuts. And I couldn’t help a smile, because when I’d fled the Convent of Santa Marta I’d sworn I would never cook sweets again, but somehow I was still the one who always made them. Even after all the training I’d given my apprentices and undercooks, they couldn’t equal me when it came to honeyed crostate and marzipan tourtes and sugared fruits. And no wonder, because crostate and tourtes and sugared fruits were all I’d made in my two years as a nun. Nuns were all mad for anything sweet, and I suppose it stood to reason. When two hundred women are forced to give up silk gowns and the pleasures of the flesh, marzipan was all they had to make life special.

But it was Giulia Farnese who ate my cakes and tourtes now, not my spiteful pinch-faced prioress, and I didn’t mind making them for her. At least she said thank you. Though I wondered sometimes if the woman they called the Bride of Christ would laugh if she found out she had a real bride of Christ making her meals.

“More sugar, Bartolomeo,” I called over my shoulder as my apprentice began tossing frittelle ingredients into a mortar.

“There’s enough sugar already,” he said without looking up.

“No, there is not. A large pinch more.”