“She needs reining in,” I warned, as I had been warning him for quite some time now, but of course he just chuckled and shook his head.

“Bah!”

“Madonna Giulia,” Maestro Pinturicchio called to me plaintively. “Can you please stop the goat from eating my supplies!”

I rescued a paintbrush from my pet goat, and Rodrigo had already moved on to the next bit of business. “What of it if Juan’s troops are a little wild? Success will do that to a man! Ten castles taken from the Orsini, that’s cause to celebrate.”

“And Bracciano?” I couldn’t help but ask. That could not in any way be qualified a success.

“If Juan couldn’t take Bracciano, it couldn’t be taken.” Dictating blithely. “It is Our decision that the Gonfalonier shall mount the attack at Ostia next—”

Ha. Juan had made much this past fall of his rapid capture of ten Orsini castles—but they had been small castles, and I’d heard whispers that Juan’s part had involved prancing about at the army’s head adjusting his banners and plumes while his generals got on with the work of the matter. Bracciano had been a disaster, whether Rodrigo admitted it or not. And as far as Juan’s troops went, well, if I’d been a lordling or a farmer anywhere near Ostia, I’d have been decidedly worried to see the young Gonfalonier and his troops pointed my direction.

“‘Rapine and plunder are regrettable things,’” Rodrigo was dictating to another secretary, answering some lord near Bracciano who had written a protest to how his lands had been treated. “‘But necessary evils when war raises its banners’—couch that a bit more artfully, will you? Next—”

I sighed. Lucrezia flirting her way through the papal court, Sancha sleeping with both her brothers-in-law, Juan raping his way toward Ostia—“Maybe there’s a reason popes aren’t supposed to have children,” I couldn’t help saying, but Rodrigo didn’t hear me and it was just as well.

“My deepest thanks, Your Holiness.” Pinturicchio was bowing now, relieved and eager. “I assure you the figure will be finished in all speed—the final touch upon the Resurrection—”

Rodrigo rose, dropping his hands from their pose of prayer and flicking the secretaries back. “Let’s have a look,” he said, and shrugged his priceless jeweled cope from his heavy shoulders to the floor. “Hm. Does my chin really droop that way?”

“Of course not, this is a hasty sketch only. I assure Your Holiness that he will be pleased with the final result.”

“A very fine work,” Maestro Botticelli smiled. Apparently Resurrections met with his approval where goddesses of love did not.

“We would have a portrait from your hands as well, Maestro Botticelli.” Rodrigo’s gaze found me, and he held out his hand. I twined my fingers with his. “A portrait of La Bella, as We had mentioned previously.”