God knows I am a man with sins on his soul. Blasphemy, fornication, theft. Avarice, when it came to things like good wine and engraved books. One or two of the milder forms of heresy. Murder, of course, and unrepentant murder at that. But surely, surely, my sins did not warrant the punishment of two days’ close confinement in a rattling carriage with Madonna Adriana, the Countess of Pesaro, the Bride of Christ, and the Bride of Christ’s baby (who cried considerably more than our Lord must have done)—as the three women discussed, for ten hours each on two consecutive days, the relative merits of fur versus velvet linings on Neapolitan overgowns and how the new slippers had a much more pointed toe.

“Blue Spanish brocade with embroidered panels,” Giulia said, jogging her baby against one shoulder. “I saw one of the Moscari girls wearing a gown just like that at Mass last month, and now I want one too. Not with those dagged sleeves, though, I don’t think you can get away with hanging sleeves like that unless you’re very tall, else you’re just dragging your cuffs on the ground—”

“No, it was one of the Mocenigo girls who had the dagged sleeves,” Lucrezia disagreed. “Luciana Moscari was wearing rose pink satin with gold embroidery. Rosy girls like that should never wear pink; she looked like a raspberry. But I liked her little marten fur collar—”

“Benedetta Bellonci had the marten fur collar,” Adriana da Mila corrected.

“No, Benedetta Bellonci had a sable hood with green velvet lining. And the most ridiculous stilt clogs you ever saw . . .”

“It’s like the Homeric catalogue of ships,” I said to one of Lord Sforza’s escorting guards when they paused to water the horses. “Only it’s dresses. And even when it’s ships, it’s still the most boring chapter in the Iliad!”

“Better than riding in the rain,” the guard pointed out to me, his livery draggled and dripping. “Safe and dry with the most beautiful women in Rome—don’t ask me to pity you, Messer Leonello! If it were me, I’d burrow into Madonna Giulia’s lap and never come up for air . . .”

Perhaps it was my fervent prayers that made the difference, but the third day of our journey from Rome to Pesaro dawned sunny and fair. I have no love for horses, but I left the carriage in a desperate lunge for the clean fresh air, the clop of hooves in the new June sunshine, and above all, the silence. “We’ll have to put you on a mule with the baggage,” one of the drovers said dubiously. “You can’t be riding, not with those short legs—horse’ll jerk you right over its head.”

“I will ride a goat,” I vowed. “I will ride the Devil Himself, as long as there are no more discussions on netted snoods or dagged sleeves.”