“No, only the best ones do.” She gave a little bounce on her stool. “Oh, I wish Cesare and Juan would come tell us what’s happening! Cesare always knows everything.”

Frankly, I was glad neither of Rodrigo’s elder sons were underfoot. I’d finally met Juan’s elder brother when he came to visit his sister just after Pope Innocent died: Cesare Borgia, auburn-haired like Juan, but taller and more self-possessed. He’d looked me over once and dismissed me from mind. Just another of my father’s whores, he might as well have said, before disappearing with Juan on some mysterious business of Rodrigo’s. The Pope hadn’t been dead even a day before Juan was bragging of the urgent services he would be performing for his father during the Conclave, but Cesare told him to hold his tongue and dragged him out on some doubtless-illicit errand.

The night dragged on. I sat working my silver comb through Lucrezia’s curls, Adriana began to doze in her chair, and Joffre had fallen asleep entirely with his head on the chessboard. Leonello examined the game around the boy’s head and moved one or two pieces—“twelve moves to the win, starting with the knight to here”—and Lucrezia chattered to me with all her breathless unconcern.

“My father says that when he’s Pope I’ll have princes begging for my hand in marriage! Don Gaspare won’t be good enough for me then, my father says, though I don’t know if I want to break the betrothal. I’ve had one broken betrothal already, last year to Juan de Centenelles—”

When her father was Pope. When, not if. I sighed, stroking the comb through Lucrezia’s hair.

“More chestnuts, Madonna Giulia?” A voice sounded from the door to the loggia, and I twisted my head to see Carmelina the cook standing with a plate in hand. She wore a robe over her night shift, like me.

“We did get you out of bed,” I said ruefully. “Go back to sleep after this! We can fetch our own wine and sweets if we want more.”

“Nonsense, I’m always up before dawn.” She came forward and set down the plate beside the chessboard, her Venetian accents as crystal-sharp as the glass they produced. “If you’ll just— Oh, Santa Marta save me!”

I heard a mournful baaaa, and looked to see a baby goat come pushing its way around Carmelina’s skirt. Huge-eared, woolly-white, he looked around him and gave a pitiful bleat that woke Madonna Adriana with a snort.

“What’s that?” she demanded as I giggled.