“Don’t tell me Spain wants Naples now.” I made a face. “You just gave them a continent!” It had been all the talk that spring: the new Eden discovered by that Genoese sailor whose name I could never remember, an Eden Rodrigo had ceded mostly to Spain. I’d been less interested in the maps and treaties of it all than the strange things brought back from this new world: odd plants and dusky-skinned slaves in manacles, and strange bright-colored birds that were supposed to talk. Rodrigo had obtained one of the birds as a present for Lucrezia, but so far it refused to say anything, just sat sullenly on its perch and tried to take the fingers off anyone who fed it. Privately I’d named it Vannozza.

I dandled my fingers along Rodrigo’s chest. “So, Joffre ropes in Naples, through a Neapolitan princess. Lucrezia ropes in Milan, through a Sforza husband. What fish are you going to catch with Laura?”

“I don’t know. France, perhaps? They’re starting to make trouble.”

I smiled. Vannozza had been entirely wrong—Rodrigo was already making plans for Laura, plans every bit as grand as for any of her children. “A French duke,” I began, envisioning my daughter’s rosy future, but Rodrigo had already moved on.

“France will have to wait for the moment. Naples comes first.” His fingers drummed mine decisively, all his pensive silence gone in the fire of decision making. I’d never yet seen my Pope tired. “And the College of Cardinals—it needs a batch of young blood to shake up those old ganders in their red hats. It’s time Cesare was a cardinal, anyway. And what about your brother—does he fancy a red hat?”

I picked my head up off the papal shoulder. “Sandro?”

“Yes, why not? He’s a jokester and he’ll never amount to much, but he’s amusing. Besides, I like offering him favors.” Rodrigo grinned. “He rather likes me, you see, or he would if I weren’t bedding his sister”—leaning down to lay kisses along the line of my shoulder—“so I get to watch him wishing he could hit me, and wishing he could accept whatever I’m offering, all as he’s saying no with exquisite coldness. Refreshing, after all the slithering sycophants I usually deal with.”

“If you really do want to offer him a red hat, I’ll make him say yes.” My brother had turned down several lucrative favors offered by my Pope, despite all my pleading and persuading. To be made cardinal, though . . . it would be the making of my big brother. He’d be secure for life, a great man, and I wanted that for him: success, happiness, everything in the world. Maybe because he was the only one of my family who didn’t hold out a greedy hand to me now that I was in a position to grant favors.