“I promised I wouldn’t leave the palazzo.” She made a face. “Lucrezia and Madonna Adriana and I are to stay inside until the funeral and the Conclave are done. We’re not even to go to confession. Rodrigo says it won’t be safe.”

She said the all-powerful Cardinal Borgia’s name quite unselfconsciously, I noticed. The servants were running a collection on how long it would take Madonna Adriana’s daughter-in-law to succumb to him—Marco had lost a week’s salary when a month passed and she still hadn’t (to anyone’s knowledge) given in. Maybe I should put a bet in myself that the castello Farnese had fallen at last . . .

Madonna Giulia picked a strawberry out of the flaky tourte crust to pop into her mouth whole. “What’s that you’re making there?”

“Part of your midday meal, madonna.” I added a few pinches of sugar and began cracking eggs into the mix. “Elderflower frittelle.”

“I don’t see any elderflowers. Just cheese.”

“The elderflowers are soaking in cold milk. I’ll add them with a little saffron, then roll the dough out into balls and fry them in butter. Right now it needs more sugar.”

“How do you know? You didn’t even taste it.”

“I just know.” Adding a pinch more.

“Don’t you even have to measure it?”

“It only needed a pinch.”

“And that’s something else you just know?”

“Yes, madonna.”

“Can you show me how to do that? When Rodrigo comes back I can give him a plate of frittelle I made with my own hands. He’d like that, I think.”

“His Eminence doesn’t care for delicacies. Very plain tastes in food, he has.” Perhaps the only thing he liked plain—his taste in wine, decor, and mistresses was certainly luxurious enough.

“Teach me?” She made a tragic face. “Please?”

I relented, and my mistress soon stood before me giggling and ready to work, her silks wrapped with one of my aprons. What a strange household I had landed in, where the mistress of the house presented herself not only to a possible pope as bedmate, but to her own cook as apprentice. “Combine those two creamy cheeses there into the mortar,” I instructed, and began showing her how to knead them together.

“I’m not getting in the way, am I?” She already had a dribble of cheese down her apron. “I’d hate to put you behind on your work . . .”

“No work to do, not with such a reduced household. More of a kneading motion, Madonna Giulia, you’re just poking at that cheese—” I reached for a crock of grated bread. “I’ve been sitting about all morning planning what I’d serve the cardinals if I were summoned to cook for the Conclave instead of my cousin. It’s a dicey business, dishing up cena for a college of nervous old men plotting the day round.”