“I heard Cardinal Michiel say it’s all to be expected, Sancha acting like a tart, because she’s bastard-born!” I gave an indignant sniff of my sweet-scented little roses, watching Sancha wind her arm through a young bishop’s. “‘Born in lust means lust in the blood’—have you ever heard such rubbish? Lucrezia’s bastard-born too, and she’s always been such a sweet little thing.” At least, she had been. “And if anyone ever said my Laura had lust in the blood—”

“Or my Costanza!” Sandro clapped an outraged hand to the place he would have been wearing a sword if he’d been a condottiere rather than a cardinal, with a flourish because even when he was being outraged he had more flourishes in him than a pantomime actor. Really, he should have been a pantomime actor rather than a cardinal. “Did you know Costanza’s learning to move about already? Not crawling, exactly; more like rotating herself across the floor like a little rolling pin—”

I listened for a while to my brother’s recitations of Costanza’s latest achievements—his first child from his much-adored mistress, so naturally she was perfection embodied. She really was a little dear, if not quite the miracle that was my Laura, but proud fathers must be allowed to gush. I did wish sometimes that Rodrigo would gush a little more about Laura . . .

My Pope made his appearance then, followed by a flock of bad-tempered cardinals. They must be fuming over the notion of Juan leading the papal armies as Gonfalonier, not that I blamed them. Cardinal Zeno stamped off without even the pretense of a courteous exit, and Ascanio Sforza would have too if I had not accosted him. “Cardinal Sforza, I will need you desperately once the music begins, for it’s all in French and you know how wretched my French is. Perhaps you will translate for me?” I smiled and charmed until he thawed, and then I nodded sympathetically as he muttered veiled complaints about these consistories where one’s opinions weren’t even consulted, and had anyone listened to his proposal that one of the Sforza clan be considered as Gonfalonier? Perhaps even the absent Count of Pesaro; he was the Pope’s son-in-law, after all, yet had anyone even pretended to consider his name when Cardinal Sforza suggested it?