Belatedly, I reined myself in from further gossip. It was one thing to encourage my apprentice’s good cheer, but too much free rein was another thing entirely. Bartolomeo might be only eighteen, but the other apprentices listened to him, and so did the undercooks who should have been giving him orders rather than taking them—he’d even gotten clever lately in how he challenged me! He no longer picked open quarrels when we disagreed on what to put into a sauce or how to roll out pasta; instead, he followed me about with ostentatious humility saying, “If you please, signorina, just a touch more mint? And if you please, signorina, if we could roll out the tagliatelli with a comb to give the sauce more grip? And if you please, signorina—” Always during the busiest hour of pre-pranzo rushing. Until finally I would snap, “Oh, do what you please with the tagliatelli, Bartolomeo!” and then see his wide grin and realize I had been played like a viol. So it went against the grain to give him a free hand with anything, even just with a bunch of tubers and a line or two of conversation in the small hours of the night, because if you gave Bartolomeo one pinch of independence he’d have your whole kitchen turned upside-down in a heartbeat.

But whatever those unpromising-looking tubers were sizzling in the pan, they were just starting to turn golden about the edges and they smelled marvelous as I took a long sniff over my apprentice’s shoulder.

“Passable,” I said. “Give them a flip now—”

“No. They need a bit more browning on this side.” A drop of olive oil leaped out and sizzled on his bare arm, but he paid no attention. He flipped a slice neatly out of the pan to the notch-eared tomcat, who pounced with a rusty mrow.

“Don’t feed that beast!” I scolded. “He’s spoiled enough, the way the maids coo over him—”

“Why are you so hard on that cat, signorina?” Flipping another disk out of the pan to the floor.

“It’s no use being sentimental about animals, Bartolomeo. Either they earn their keep or we eat them. I haven’t any use for a cat that doesn’t catch mice.” I craned my neck at the pan as he gave it a shake. The little disks had gone golden all over, and my mouth was watering. “Take them off the heat!”

“All in good time . . .” He flipped them expertly, gave another swirl and a nod as the other side crisped, and turned them out into a clean bowl. I reached for one of the crisp little golden disks, but he nudged my hand away. “They’re too hot, signorina, so wait till you’re asked.”

“My kitchen, apprentice.” I gave him an absent rap on the shoulder as I always did, and it surprised me when he caught my wrist and held it.