“Now, I heard this direct from the Holy Father—I wouldn’t be telling you, but it’s going to be all over the city in a week anyway.” Madonna Giulia snuggled baby Laura closer, as though suddenly feeling a draft. “His Holiness had the papal guards clear that poor girl’s body away, since there was so much uproar. And one of the blades through the girl’s hand was just a common kitchen knife, but the other was a good dagger. Toledo steel, with a filigreed hilt and a sapphire the size of a pigeon’s egg.”

We looked at each other, blank. There wasn’t a one of us who didn’t know that dagger by sight. We’d all seen it with our own eyes, resting on Cesaer Borgia’s hip whenever he abandoned his ecclesiastical robes.

The day was still warm, but suddenly I felt chilled.

Little Pia said what we were all thinking. “Well, surely it doesn’t mean . . .”

“Of course not.” Madonna Giulia waved the uneasy unspoken suggestion away. “Someone stole it to slander him; I don’t doubt that. But it was his reaction to it all. Any man would be furious, wouldn’t he, if he thought someone was spreading such foul implications? The Holy Father was certainly angry—he doesn’t care if anyone starts nasty rumors about him, but let anyone make an attack against his children—” Giulia shook her head. “Even Juan was raging up and down, swearing vengeance on whoever had done it. But Cesare, he just smiled and put the dagger back at his belt. And when Juan asked him how he’d lost it, you know that snide way he likes jabbing people, Cesare just said, ‘I didn’t lose it.’”

We looked at each other again. The cold little chill spread to my stomach and sank in. I could just hear the young Archbishop’s cool voice, the way it never held any emotion at all.

“So what kind of man doesn’t care if the whole city thinks he’s a murderer?” Madonna Giulia asked. “His Holiness wanted to cover everything up—as much as you can ever cover up something like this, anyway—and Cesare just said, ‘Let them talk.’ It’ll be all over Rome in a week, the news about the dagger, and Cesare doesn’t care. He’s handsome,” Giulia concluded, “but he’s a snake.”

“About as limber as one,” Pantisilea agreed. “I don’t mind telling you, he likes some very odd things. Between the sheets, I mean. Not that there were sheets involved, with me. It wasn’t anything I’d really want to do again, truth be told. You can’t imagine the places I got bruised—”

Giulia covered her ears. “No more details, please!”