“Why shouldn’t Laura have a wedding like this someday?” Brushing the maids aside, Giulia came to lift her daughter out of the ornately carved cradle. The baby gurgled and spit up on her mother’s shoulder, but Giulia dabbed at the silk unconcernedly. “A count or a duke is none too good for a pope’s daughter.”

“And by the time she grows old enough to think of marrying, His Holiness will be bankrupt from all the other weddings.” Thirteen-year-old Lucrezia was the first of the Borgia bastards to marry (at least the first of the bastards he had here in Rome) but there was already talk of a Spanish bride for Juan and a Neapolitan princess for little Joffre. I wasn’t supposed to know His Holiness’s ruminations, but I still liked to keep my card-play sharp, and I often played primiera with the papal secretaries. They sometimes put papal secrets in the pot instead of coin. “His Holiness should just put her in a convent to save money,” I advised.

“Nonsense; if she’s anything like me or her father, she’d be a dreadful nun. Won’t you, Lauretta mia—look, doesn’t she have Rodrigo’s nose?”

“She has exactly the same nose as any other baby.”

Giulia ignored me, blowing loud kisses all over baby Laura and finally laying her back in the carved cradle. “Oh, dear, I’m late!”

“You’re always late, madonna,” one of the maids scolded, and La Bella flew like a yellow-green bird with her entourage behind her.

I slipped down from the wall bench, shooing the white goat as it moved on from a mostly consumed slipper to a pair of embroidered gloves, and I sauntered after my mistress. I paused a moment to lean over the cradle, partly to tickle little Laura until she giggled and partly to make the superstitious nursemaid fork the sign of the devil behind her back as she always did when the little fiend—that would be me—came too close to her charge.