“So it’s not enough now that we’ve been instructed to forswear sloth and luxury and idle pastimes,” Gerolama complained as she passed me a cup of warmed wine. “We’re now to be inspected, to make sure our houses contain nothing ungodly! It’s all for that wretched bonfire Fra Savonarola’s determined to build—you can already see the pyre being built in the Piazza della Signoria. We’re to toss everything vain onto it—jewels, lip rouge, perfumes, cards—”

“Then Madonna Giulia will return to Rome with no baggage at all,” remarked Leonello from his corner. It did not matter whether the room my bodyguard entered was my private chamber, the great Sala dei Santi in the Vatican, or my sister’s overdecorated little chamber with its too-ornate credenza and garishly embroidered wall hangings—Leonello’s hazel eyes always flicked briefly in each direction, measuring angles of attack in the event of any assassins lurking about, and then he took the corner with the best view of the room regardless of who might already be seated there, propped up his black boots, and took out a book. Currently the book was some salaciously illustrated volume of tales from the Orient that he had borrowed from Cesare Borgia’s collection, and Leonello flicked the pages with great interest. “Such utter rubbish,” he remarked. “I must be sure to finish it quickly, as I’m sure this city’s dirty literature will all be required as fuel for Fra Savonarola’s bonfire.”

I made a private note to keep my jewels in their boxes during this visit. I didn’t really see any reason why God would want me to burn up my teardrop pearl necklace or my diamond hair roses. Besides, according to Fra Savonarola and his ilk, a woman of my stature was thoroughly damned anyway, so why not at least go down to hell in all my finery? And how can you burn diamonds, anyway?

“I’m already storing away a few things,” my sister confided. “My better gowns, of course, and the good silver, and the pendant my husband gave me on our wedding. Though I may just let those hideous earrings from his mother get into the pile,” Gerolama added thoughtfully. “Not to mention that ghastly credenza from our great-aunt Lella . . .”

“Mamma, Mamma!” My Laura dashed into the sala in a whirl of bouncing blond curls. “Giuseppe the cook gave me a sugar lump! And he says there are angels in Florence, angels on every street corner—”

“Not the kind of angels you want to meet, Lauretta mia.” I lifted my daughter up into my lap, dabbing at the sugar on her cheeks. Nearly four years old now, plump and golden and giggling, and every time I looked at her my heart squeezed utter happiness. Even with the rest of me so unsettled.