Carmelina! Carmelina, listen to this.” Water splashed from the huge blue-veined marble bath as Madonna Giulia beckoned me into the hot bagno. I set down the dish of tourtes I’d brought for the Pope’s mistress to nibble as she had her hair washed. She sat alone in the enormous marble bath, half visible in the clouds of steam that filled the little blue-and-green marble chamber, wet tendrils of golden hair floating on the surface of the hot water like blond seaweed. Her naked shoulders gleamed pink above the water, and a maid stood behind with rolled-up sleeves, scrubbing at her scalp. I approached the bath carefully, watching my step on the steam-slick floor with its Roman-style mosaic of twining fish and mermaids, and Madonna Giulia beamed at me. “I’ve had a letter from His Holiness.” Waving a very thick packet of pages. “Just listen to this!”

She cleared her throat, dropping her voice to an imposing bass and imitating the Pope’s Spanish burr. “‘Everyone says that when you stood beside her’—he means that nose-in-the-air tart Caterina Gonzaga—‘she was nothing but a lantern to your sun.’”

“Very good,” I approved, trading a grin with the maid massaging Madonna Giulia’s hair. Podgy Count Ottaviano da Montevegio had offended nobody during his brief stay at the Palazzo Ducale, but his wife was another matter entirely. Madonna Caterina Gonzaga had turned up her nose at the palazzo, complained that my lemon-fried sardines were too salty, and left her chamber a sty. Had she not rustled north with her husband for their estates in San Lorenzo, the maids would have begun spitting in her wine. “I praised her to the skies when I wrote Rodrigo about her,” Giulia said with relish. “It doesn’t do to look too envious of other women. Men are already quite vain enough thinking we fight each other like cats for their attention, aren’t they? Even if we are fighting like cats for their attention. Goodness, but love is complicated. If it weren’t so enjoyable, no one would do it at all.” Giulia kissed her letter, heedless of the water splashing from her bath to smear the ink. “I got a letter back, very next messenger. He calls himself ‘the person who loves you more than anybody in the world.’ Isn’t that lovely?”

“His Holiness turns a pretty phrase.” A year or two ago I’d have been shocked to my bones at the thought of discussing the style and content of the Holy Father’s love letters. Somehow, the shock had worn off. “He doesn’t mince his affections, does he, Madonna Giulia?”