Really, priests. War and famine all around them; poverty and foreign armies and that dreadful disease with pustules that the French had brought with them, and somehow damnation was at hand because of naked women. Not even real naked women—naked women in paint! I ask you.

But I heard a certain subdued rustle of agreement among a few of the watching cardinals, those more straitlaced men inclined to be shocked by my Pope and the earthier of his attitudes. Perhaps Rodrigo heard that rustle too, because his heavy brows came together above his nose. “There is nothing in the beauty of the female form to offend Our eyes,” he said in a tone that brooked no discussion. “Did God not create that form with love and with reverence, just as He created the form of man?”

The straitlaced rustle died, and Maestro Botticelli retreated with a flush on his cheeks, perhaps realizing he was arguing with the Holy Father Himself. Rodrigo shrugged irritated shoulders at the whole business, and dictated a rapid response to one of his secretaries. I put the letter from Savonarola aside and read a missive from a Medici in Florence next; then another letter from Lord Sforza requesting money to pay his soldiers—“What is the man, a human drain on Our treasury?” The prioress of a local convent wrote her thanks for a recent benefice, and then there was the report of a Franciscan friar who had shown signs of the stigmata—“Bah, his order needs pilgrims to refill the coffers. That’s one way to attract them!”

My Pope kept a team of secretaries on the trot, periodically breaking his pose to sign something, and as one letter followed another my voice grew scratchy. I scanned the next missive, and shook my head. “Another complaint about Sancha, I’m afraid. This time it’s the envoy from Mantua—‘By her gestures and aspect, it seems the sheep will put herself easily at the disposal of the wolf.’” I wondered if the wolf was supposed to be Cesare or Juan. I’d seen the Tart of Aragon coming out of both bedchambers on a fairly regular basis before Juan left with his army. I wished I could show her to Fra Savonarola, as proof positive that female debauchery would not bring about the world’s end. If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could truly be summoned by lecherous women, then Sancha’s parade of lovers would have had all Rome hearing hoofbeats months ago.

“Take a sworn declaration,” Rodrigo said carelessly to one of his secretaries. “Find someone useful in her household who can testify all things are as they should be. Preferably someone elderly and male. ‘In the household of the Princess of Squillace, the government of the ladies is of such good order’ and so on. Next.”