The eclogue concluded with a flourish, and a roll of laughter and applause crossed the vast sala. Women were squealing and fighting over the passed trays of sweets, and I recognized Signorina Cuoca’s little fluted tourtes with the rosewater glaze, her stuffed and sugared figs, her colorfully dyed marzipan treats. I never understood how that unsmiling stalk of a woman with her fiery glares and dark Venetian curses could produce such airy delights in food. On the dais, Lucrezia looked far too excited to eat, but Giulia reach up to press a slice of candied pear into her papal lover’s mouth, and he unhurriedly sucked the sugar from her fingertips.

What is wrong with me? I wondered in some irritation. Everything I had ever dreamed of—money in my purse that did not depend on the fickle luck of the cards; good food when I wanted it; a soft bed; books enough to drown in; and spectacles like this for marveling and mockery. But all I felt was discontent rising in a gray tide, and I couldn’t shake the thought of Anna. I didn’t miss her—I remembered how her giggle had sometimes grated on me, how her breath was stale and how her openmouthed awe at the doings of the great had brought cutting japes out of me until her eyes welled with hurt. I didn’t miss her, not really . . . but maybe I missed the taut, focused fury of the chase I’d launched on her behalf. Fool, I mocked myself. Fool to be dissatisfied just because you’re bored.

But perhaps the soft bed and the easy money and good food wasn’t all I needed to be happy. “What is it you most wish for?” Cesare Borgia had asked me at our first interview.

Books. To be tall. To matter.

One of three, surely, was not at all bad in this unlucky world. The Borgia library was splendid. If I grew bored sometimes—and bodyguarding could be an idle, tedious business—then a good book did much to distract my restless brain.

“Little man!” The ambassador from Milan paused in a tipsy lurch across the sala. “Juggle for us, little man!”

“No.”

The ribald comedies ended as the skies outside darkened, and one by one the guests began drifting for the doors, casting longing looks behind them to where the Pope had gathered his most intimate circle of allies and enemies. A private cena, I knew; perhaps twenty or thirty guests, and every ambassador present took note of those who stayed—those who mattered. Cardinal della Rovere, spouting hatred toward the rival who had beaten him for the papal throne; Cardinal Sforza, who oozed complacency for having sold his vote in the papal Conclave for this marriage of Lucrezia Borgia into the Sforza clan; Adriana da Mila, for once just beaming instead of counting her ducats . . .