“It is unwise to approach an armed man while wearing a mask, Your Excellency,” I said, and heard my voice come cool and remote into the odd echoes of the arched windowless chamber. “Your Eminence, that is. My apologies; I’m not yet used to the red hat.” Nor was Rome. The Pope had elevated a batch of his supporters to cardinals in order to bolster his votes in the College; that was business as usual in papal politics—but for one of those cardinals to be his own bastard son, and a boy of a mere eighteen years . . .

And when there were such strange and violent rumors beginning to circulate through the city about that same boy.

“I’m not used to the red hat myself, yet.” The new Cardinal Borgia looked around the stone vaults, lit by long beeswax tapers and casting odd flickering shadows over the wall benches. “And I come masked because I like a long lone ride from time to time. Better if my father’s enemies don’t know they can find me unattended.”

“What about your own enemies?” The question came unbidden.

He smiled. “I have no enemies.”

Of course not. “You’ve just come from Rome, Your Eminence?”

“Yes. Some news for my father, from the French and Spanish ambassadors.”

“Miles on a horse, just to give some news?”

“I did say I liked a long lone ride.”

Yes, he did. He was frequently alone, Cesare Borgia, taking only Michelotto for a guard when he went out. Unlike his brother who had never gone anywhere without a pack of thugs and toadies, and young Lucrezia who was always surrounded by Giulia Farnese and Madonna Adriana and a half-dozen other giggling women in the papal seraglio. But the Pope’s eldest son seemed to prefer his own company.

So did I, of course. But if there was anything I knew about the solitary men of the world, being one myself, it was that they kept their own company so they would not have to explain their actions to others.

What do you do in all those lone hours, Your Eminence?

He was stripping his riding gloves off now, tossing them down on the wall bench as he dismissed Michelotto. “Is His Holiness within?”

“With Madonna Giulia. He complained it was too hot, but she persuaded him to take the waters for his health, to ease his humours. They may be . . . some time.”