I looked at her a moment, hoping she might be jesting. But no, Vannozza dei Cattanei was utterly, appallingly serious. “You know, my brother Sandro just fathered his first child,” I said finally. “A girl, and a sweet little thing too. She has black hair, just like him, and he thinks she’s perfection. I thought my Laura was perfection too—I still do. But she’s not above rules, Vannozza, nor is Sandro’s daughter, nor is yours. Where do you get this idea, you and Rodrigo, that your children are above rules?”

She smiled at me pityingly. “If your Laura were of Rodrigo’s getting, Giulia Farnese, then you’d understand.”

“My Laura is of Rodrigo’s getting, Vannozza dei Cattanei. And I understand that she will soon be her father’s favorite daughter, if you allow her sister to turn into a spoiled little tart.”

“—Ulysses from the bed of home beguiled.”

The song ended, and a smattering of applause broke out. My Pope looked around for me and had a beam when he saw his old mistress sitting with the new. So amicably too, smiling at each other with such great sweetness. Rodrigo couldn’t see that I was gripping my roses so hard that my fingers welled blood from half a dozen thorn pricks. How I longed to cram those roses up Vannozza dei Cattanei’s nose. “My dears,” Rodrigo called, oblivious. “You must both come sit with me! Those new sonnets everyone’s talking of, which shall we hear next?”

“I prefer Sonnet VII,” Vannozza said, claiming her place at the Pope’s other side with great smugness. “The sonnet comparing the poet’s beloved to Leda. Such a maternal figure, Leda—she produced such beautiful sons, didn’t she, alongside Helen of Troy?”

“Of course, of course. And which do you prefer, Giulia?” A papal tweak to my cheek. “You’re my Persephone, surely you like Sonnet IX. Aurora as Persephone—”

“They both belong at the bottom of the Tiber,” Leonello muttered behind me.

“So does Vannozza dei Cattanei,” I muttered back at him, and settled for a grim afternoon of laughter, music, and grave doubts.

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

Nor can the father force his daughter to become a nun without the cooperation of her free will!

—SUORA ARCANGELA TARABOTTI, “L’INFERNO MONACALE”

Carmelina

Aren’t you coming with us?” the maids asked me as we left the palazzo and I split left instead of right on reaching the street. “It’s bound to be splendid, all those handsome soldiers on parade!”