The French forced their way into houses, driving out the inhabitants and then burning their firewood, eating and drinking all they could find without paying for anything.

—JOHANN BURCHARD, “AT THE COURT OF THE BORGIA”

Carmelina

We’re safe!” Bartolomeo scrambled up into the wagon after me, toting his bundle of clothes and a huge hamper. “He was starting to stir so I gave him another whack with the skillet.”

“Tell me you didn’t kill him!” I whimpered. My eventual berth in hell was already probable; I had no desire to make it inevitable by adding my father’s murder to the weight of my sins.

“Not dead, but he’s down like an ox at the slaughter yard. He won’t stir for hours.” Bartolomeo’s eyes sparkled in the gray of dawn. “He won’t be found either, not with all this bustle of Madonna Giulia leaving. Everyone’s far too busy to notice that some guest’s private cook is missing.” My apprentice gave a flap of his hand at the throng in the courtyard: thirty guardsmen clattering about on their horses, maids carrying out one last bundle of clothing or casket of letters, Madonna Adriana climbing wearily into the carriage that had brought her here only yesterday afternoon. With all the racket my apprentice could have shouted his words and not been overheard, but he kept his voice to a dramatic whisper and leaned his head close to mine in the packed confines of the wagon. “By the time that Venetian whoreson wakes up or gets found, or someone goes looking for him, we’ll be long gone, signorina. And in the opposite direction, too.”

He grinned at me, alight with adventure, and I envied him his high spirits. I just felt ill. “Not a word about any of this,” I warned him for at least the fourth time, settling my small bundle of clothes more firmly between the chests I’d loaded with the skillets, pots, spices, and other cooking essentials I’d brought for what had originally supposed to be a short summer trip away from Rome. “Not a word to Maestro Santini when we get back to Rome, or to Ottaviano or any of the other apprentices. Not to the fishmonger when I send you to the market for sturgeon, or your confessor when you go to Mass. I know it goes against the grain for a good, honest boy like you, not telling your priest something like this—”

“I’m up to my neck in this too, signorina,” he cut me off. “I don’t want trouble any more than you do. I won’t be telling my confessor or anyone else.”

“Swear it,” I insisted.

“On Santa Marta’s head.”

“Swear on her hand.” I produced the little bag from where it hung at my waist again. He peered inside and recoiled.

“That’s what you’ve got in there, signorina? A saint’s hand?”