I saw the captain of the guard where he had been riding alongside the carriage, bending down in his saddle as he attempted to flirt with Madonna Giulia—he jerked upright, head twisting wildly in all directions. He began to shout orders, but two more men were already toppling from their saddles in the rear, and inside the carriage I heard Madonna Giulia’s sister begin to shriek. The maids were shrieking too in the wagon behind, and I saw a foreign sergeant with a grizzled face and a missing ear reach grinning into the wagon and drag one of Giulia’s maids out by the hair. Her scream spiked my ears, and then I was knocked back into the wagon as Bartolomeo vaulted up, pushing me out of sight. Not before I’d seen the banners, though; banners flapping on the morning breeze as the soldiers closed around us like a vise. Banners flying the lilies of France.

“Stay down,” Bartolomeo shouted, “stay down, signorina, stay out of sight!” But he was ripping the nearest crate open, pawing for the knives we’d packed away so carefully, and I clawed right along with him. I could hear more women screaming, and French voices cawing in that revolting flat language of theirs that grated the ear like a wire, and I wanted a knife in my hand. I heard the captain of Madonna Giulia’s guard still shouting orders, and then his voice choked off in a rattle and I didn’t know if it was a blade or a blow that had silenced him, but without seeing I knew he was choking on his own blood. “Get down!” Bartolomeo shouted again, shoving at me, but the wagon darkened suddenly and I saw a French soldier clambering over the tailboard like an ape.

He grinned, seeing me, saying something in that horrible French tongue, his own tongue lolling like a serpent, and all the panicked voices outside were shrieking in my head now, mixed up with all the rumors I’d ever heard of the French army. How they burned churches full of praying nuns, how they dashed the infant brains of babies out on altars, how they raped women and then cut off their fingers to pry the rings away from their hands—