“There’s a lake nearby,” he continued doggedly. “Lago di Vico. Not so big as this one”—waving an arm over the blue expanse of Lake Bolsena—“but pretty. The breeze comes right off the lake and cools us in summer. And we make a very good olive oil, not to mention our production of hazelnuts.”

“Not just painted ceilings, but hazelnuts,” I commented to the air. “How is such splendor to be imagined?”

Orsino looked at me, flushing. “Look here, you can leave now.”

“Not on your orders,” I replied. “You don’t pay my wages. And if you try to force me, you’ll find me much harder to move than my size would indicate.” I hoped he’d try.

Orsino opened his mouth, but Giulia intervened. “Leonello, please don’t. He is a guest here.” She sent me a quelling look, then turned back at her husband. She looked almost encouraging. “You were saying? Lago di Vico, and Carbognano . . .”

But my scorn seemed to have taken whatever courage he had. He just gazed at her, pleading, and she gave a little sigh and dropped to her knees so she could tug the discarded shift over Laura’s blond head.

Orsino shuffled. The silence grew. Giulia drew Laura’s arms through the armholes of her shift; Laura struggled with her and scowled. “Don’ like,” she said mutinously. “Don’ like.”

“Doesn’t like what?” Orsino asked.

“Clothes.” Giulia at last wrestled her daughter’s arms into their sleeves. “No matter what I put on her, she either takes it off at once or goes plunging into the lake, clothes and all. A shame, really, because half the fun of having a daughter is dressing her up in pretty gowns, isn’t it?” Giulia straightened, taking Laura firmly by one hand.

“She’d like the lake in Carbognano,” Orsino hedged. “If she were ever to see it, that is. Good swimming there.”

“Is there?” Giulia’s flat mask softened with the faintest of smiles. “Perhaps you’d care to walk with us, then, and tell me more about it.”

He looked as though his breath had stopped in his chest.

Giulia looked back over her shoulder at me. She’d given up her elaborate coiffures here in the country; her hair was bundled at the back of her head in a net, and she had even more freckles across her nose and bosom like a dusting of gold sand. “Perhaps you could wait for us here, Leonello?”

“No,” I said, tucking Marcus Aurelius into my doublet and rising. “It’s Borgia coin that pays my wages, Madonna Giulia, and the Pope will not care to see his concubine stroll off into the sunset with her husband unchaperoned.”

I spoke deliberately, looking at Orsino. He flushed, looking at the lake again. Giulia came closer to me in a rustle of dusty woolen skirts, lowering her voice.

“What harm will it really do, Leonello? He wants only to talk.”