What does it matter? I told myself. Even if she told you Cesare Borgia likes to bruise his bedmates, it proves nothing. Even if he likes to wear a mask and take himself off alone on God knows what solitary adventures—even if his dagger was found slammed through the hand of the last girl, and he was the one to put it there—even if he confessed to you, what could you do? He is the Pope’s son; he will never be brought to justice.

But I wondered sometimes if I really gave a fig for justice either. It was knowledge I wanted: the answer to the puzzle that had filled my mind this winter. I wanted that masked man to take off his mask and show me his face, whatever face it might be, as he flicked his chessboard king on its side in defeat.

“Leonello!” Giulia had turned her little mare back to me again, trotting alongside the wagon. “Leonello, listen to this line the Count of Pesaro wrote. “‘O Primavera bright and fair—’”

“Please no more,” I begged, wrenching my mind away from its useless whirlpool of speculations. Dio, no wonder the matter of murder had been weighing so heavily on my mind this winter—otherwise, it had been nothing but bad poetry.

“Caterina Gonzaga wants to visit us in Pesaro,” Lucrezia was telling Giulia now, leaning over from her velvet saddle with a dark look. “We must be sure to have all new dresses; I will not be outshone in my own home—my new home, I mean—and you know she’s always putting herself forward as though she were a queen! I’ll bet her husband never wrote poetry to her—”

“Kill me,” I pleaded. “Please, kill me at once before you begin talking about clothes again.”

But no one ever listens to the dwarf.

Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Beside you, she is a lantern compared to the sun.

—RODRIGO BORGIA, COMPARING CATERINA GONZAGA TO GIULIA FARNESE

Carmelina

W here are we going, signorina?”

“The fish market. Hurry up, Bartolomeo!” I quickened my steps, tugging my cloak closer about me as my apprentice sped to a trot. All around us, Pesaro was just waking up to a pewter-colored dawn. Rome would have already been bustling: workers hurrying off to open their shops, drinkers staggering home from a night of revels, beggars staking out the likeliest corners to beg.

“Why are we going to the fish market, signorina?” Bartolomeo obediently toted the enormous basket I’d shoved at him as we left the palazzo kitchens. “The steward at the Palazzo Ducale said he’d order sturgeon for you, delivered fresh to the door—”