“I’d meant to find a book,” I lied. What I hoped to do, once my mistress was safely tucked away for the night, was take myself downstairs and find a girl. A maidservant in the kitchens who hadn’t yet sneaked off with some other lover, or even that long-legged sharp-tongued Venetian cook if I could get her not to hate me for an hour or two. Some girl, anyway, willing to share a flask of wine with me and perhaps something more. No one thinks a dwarf can get a woman without paying her, but if I wanted a woman I could usually find one. It wasn’t passion that brought them to my bed; it was curiosity—but that could be as strong a force as passion, in my experience. Women looked at me and they couldn’t help wondering how a dwarf played a man’s role between the sheets. They wanted to know if I looked as odd without my doublet as I did with it. Besides, I was small and amusing and made them laugh, so where was the harm?

And as long as I left before morning, when laughter and curiosity turned to acute embarrassment—as long as we pretended it had never happened—we might have a good time of it.

“You might as well come in for a moment, since we’re both awake.” Madonna Giulia gave me a pleased look. “I’ve a present for you, and you may as well have it now.”

“A present?” I blinked, following her into the warmth of her private sala. Two more of her maids waited up for her, one dozing on the wall bench where her mistress’s night shift had been laid out in preparation for bed, the other yawning as she stirred up the brazier. They looked up with sleepy starts of surprise, but Madonna Giulia waved them back as they started to rise. “Take your ease,” she scolded. “I can unpin my own hair!”

First, however, she padded to a wall bench where a bundle sat wrapped in the immaculate linen that usually shrouded her new gowns when they came from the robe makers. “I’d meant to have this for you sooner,” she said, putting the bundle into my arms. “But the boots took longer than expected.”

“Boots?” I said, startled.

“Your new livery.” She gave me a little push toward a dressing screen at the other end of the sala, lushly painted with scenes from the Rape of the Sabines. The most beautiful of the Sabine women, as was common in this room which had been so lavishly painted and decorated specially for the Pope’s mistress, looked like Giulia. “Try it all on, I can’t wait to see how it came out.”