“You question my methods?” I pointed at the door toward the kitchen yard. “If so, you are free to leave now, Bartolomeo. Back to your uncle’s tannery yard and the smell of piss. Is that what you want?”

He set his jaw at me in a resentful look. “No, signorina.”

A little defiance—good. Cooks with pepper in the soul fared better than those without. “Boil another egg,” I told him, “and kindly do not question my instructions again.”

“Yes, signorina.”

I gave his knuckles another whack and moved on, barely hiding my grin as I heard a steely, determined mutter of “Credo in unum Deum” start up again behind me. I do like breaking in a good apprentice! It cleanses the palate, like chewing mint leaves in between courses of a long banquet.

The kitchens hummed today at a lower key, half the volume of any normal afternoon. Madonna Adriana had announced last week that Rome was still far too sultry for October, and she intended to retire to take the waters in Viterbo for a few weeks until this unseasonable heat finally broke. Madonna Giulia had pouted her cherry mouth at the Pope until he agreed a week in the country at her side would be most agreeable, and the whole household had been thrown into a frenzy. Marco had already gone ahead to Viterbo with half the scullions, maidservants, and pastry cooks and the lightest of the essential cooking equipment: skillets and mortars and cauldrons loaded into wagons or lashed to mules as he called back at me to bring those copper oil bottles or the straining cloths. I was to follow with the rest when Madonna Giulia and her mother-in-law and young Lucrezia finally set out. I was already fantasizing about the cool green quietness of Viterbo: fresh breezes to wash away the city’s stinking-summer smell of dead cats and baking bricks and sweating bodies. Lighter summer menus would be called on, to cool the blood and tempt heat-dulled appetites: snow-chilled wine and fresh-pressed infusions of mulberry or tart peach; salads of endives and caper flowers; chicken served cold with limes and just a splash of rose vinegar; featherlight omelets with goat’s milk and chopped truffles . . .

“Signorina?” One of the stewards paused in the archway, not quite putting foot into my kitchens. I had them all well trained now, ever since an understeward had jostled me as I was shifting a kettle off the fire and spilled a very nice pottage all over the floor. I’d chased the man out, whacking him over the head with a salted tench at every step, and I hadn’t had any trouble with the lot of them ever since. “Signorina, Madonna Giulia has sent down for you—she needs a packet of saffron for her hair rinse.”