“I hope you aren’t exhausted,” he’d said with that glint in his black eyes that never failed to put a quiver in my knees, and, winding his hands deep into my hair, he’d dragged me back to my bed and made love to me with as much energy as though he hadn’t been awake for the past day and night together. He was gone when I woke very late this morning, but then he could never stay. The Pope was always too busy to linger anywhere, even in my bed. But he’d left a new pearl bracelet on the pillow where the dent of his head had been.

“Did the Holy Father mean those pearls for the baby?” Leonello inquired as I unhooked the bracelet from my wrist and doubled it around Laura’s plump little ankle instead. “I see the Dominicans are right when they thunder on about the extravagance of upstart Spanish popes and their debauched harems, where even the babies are bejeweled.”

“I want Laura to grow up with beautiful things; she deserves it. Look at that skin, she’s made for pearls! Yes, aren’t you beautiful, Lauretta mia—” I blew kisses all over her neck, sitting up in the grass. “Do you want to hold her?”

“No.”

“Here, just support her head.”

“I don’t want to hold her!”

“Careful, she kicks.”

“Dio.” Leonello dropped his book as I deposited Laura into his stubby hands. He held her at arm’s length, making a series of ghastly leering faces like a procession of devilish Carnival masks, and Laura stared in utter fascination.

I laughed. “See? She likes you.”

“She shows a lamentable lapse of judgment.” Leonello twisted his features into a horrible gargoyle’s glower. Laura crowed, waving at him, and I smiled. You wouldn’t think a dwarf would make a good midwife, but Leonello had been such a help during the birthing two months ago. Not that he did much more than sit in the corner ignoring the various attempts to evict him and remarking that childbirth was a disgusting business—but frankly, he was right. Childbirth is disgusting, and what’s more it’s boring, all the panting and the walking up and down and the midwives telling me to breathe or push or pray (as if I could remember any prayers around the pains!). What I’d needed was distractions, not prayers, and Leonello had ignored the shooing of the midwives and set himself to distracting me, telling a rapid series of obscene jokes in that expressionless monotone of his that seemed to make everything funnier. I’d laughed helplessly around the pains, and I swear the laughter made Laura come faster.

“You’re very good with her.” I turned on my side in the grass, propping my chin on my hand. “You should get married and have some babies of your own.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”