He regarded me with as much horror as though I’d suggested he attend the papal wedding in the nude. “Twelve hours? You think it will all end in twelve hours? Are you mad? The evening banquet and the subsequent dancing alone . . .”

I left Burchard to his Teutonic anguish and slipped into the crowds of silk-decked wedding guests already thronging the high-ceilinged chamber. The first of the private anterooms the Pope had staked out for himself, setting the great Pinturicchio to paint them with gorgeous new frescoes. Pinturicchio worked slowly, so the frescoes were not yet near done, but the walls had been hung for the time being with silken tapestries, the floors covered with Oriental carpets deep enough to cover my boot heels, every wall bracket gleamed with fresh gilt, the ceiling arched over the guests high-carved and corniced. The Pope’s throne had been brought in to loom over the proceedings on its own dais, and he already sat ensconced: Rodrigo Borgia no more, but Pope Alexander VI. I wondered if anyone else besides myself had thought it significant that he chose not an apostle’s name or a virtuous name—no Paul or John, no Innocent or Pius—but the name of a conqueror.

Even with the welcome refuge of his seraglio to relax him, a year on the papal throne had already worn grained circles under the eyes of Pope Alexander. But his heavy-lidded gaze was alert as ever as he looked out over the wedding guests, his heavy three-tiered papal tiara pushed back as nonchalantly as a cap on his black hair, and he lounged in his white and gold robes as Alexander the Great must have lounged as he contemplated Darius and the Persian hordes.

Until his daughter entered, flanked by his mistress. Then he had only the proudest and most tender of smiles.

The procession came with great pomp: a great fanfare of music, the Duke of Gandia in all his gaudy finery slipping back into place beside his father, Cesare Borgia coming behind almost unnoticed in his churchman’s robes. Archbishop of Valencia now, not just Bishop of Pamplona, but he still looked more like a lazy leopard dozing in the sun than a churchman. The guests fluttered, craned their necks, chattered excitedly among themselves . . . and yet the moment when it came was almost quiet: a girl of thirteen, swamped in jewels, slipping through the door into the crowded sala and pausing for a moment out of sheer nerves.