Maddalena went on to say a good deal more—a great many warnings that I was not by any means to come back to Venice to bring shame upon the family by appearing at the burial, and after that followed a whole self-congratulatory paragraph on how virtuous she had been for taking our mother into her home. I suppose she will be fit to look after the children; at least it will save me the need for a nursemaid. Naturally I have not told our mother anything of you, she would hardly approve of my writing, but I have far too forgiving a heart—my husband says I am a perfect saint . . .

But all I really bothered to read was a fever took Father to God.

“Where should I go to, to pray for his soul?” I asked Santa Marta, who was as usual tied up securely in my pouch. “I thought I should go to the Basilica San Pietro, but perhaps Father would think that sacrilegious?”

It might seem silly to talk to a hand, even Santa Marta’s, but I always had the feeling she was listening. I wasn’t entirely convinced she didn’t move sometimes—back in the days when she’d been a proper relic in a seemly reliquary with a viewing window, people used to whisper that the hand would make the sign of the cross if Santa Marta had answered your prayers. I never saw that hand make the sign of the cross, but she did have a habit of falling out of her pouch if she didn’t have a good enough view of what went on around her.

“Now that I think on it, Father will be utterly furious if I go pray for him. Even if he’s dead,” I added to Santa Marta’s listening ears (well, fingers). “He’ll be up there in heaven stamping and roaring that he has no need for worthless prayers from a runaway nun, and he’d be right.”

On the other hand . . . I’m maestra di cucina now, Father. I’d been told all my life that a woman could never have a position like my father’s, yet now I did. I owed my rise to Adriana da Mila’s tight grip on her purse rather than my own skills, of course, but I wasn’t going to quibble with my luck. I looked up at the gray heavens. “Are you proud of me, Father?”