“Spare me,” I said contemptuously. “The chopped hair? The way you avoid churches? The way you have no proper education but know all the prayers whenever any visiting cardinal starts spouting in Latin? You might call yourself a cook, but you swapped that cook’s apron with a nun’s veil. Some convent in Venice, I suppose, where your family disposed of their spare daughter. The one too plain and sharp-tongued to get a husband even if she does cook like an angel.” I stared her down. “You’re a nun, Carmelina. You ran away, and if you’re caught you’ll be hauled back and subjected to the bread-and-water penance by your abbess, and never allowed to cook anything again but watery communal stews.”

“No.” She shook her head, a frantic little jerk back and forth, back and forth. “No, I—”

“I’ve known for months. Why do you think I stopped baiting you? There wasn’t any point; I’d already figured it out. I wouldn’t have bothered to say anything, except that it’s your fault I hurt like this.” I threw the empty cup at her, with a gasp of pain for the stab that shot through my side. “You were so petrified of being hauled back to your convent that you threw us all into the hands of the French. Three guards murdered, half the bones in my body cracked like green sticks, and Giulia spreading her legs for the French general right now, just to keep us all safe. Congratulations on your fine escape.”

“I didn’t know the French army was on that road! I didn’t know!”

“Perhaps not, but I don’t feel very forgiving at the moment. I’m still lying here dying, you see.” Getting drunk had lost its appeal. I shoved at my pillows, struggling to lie flat again. “So now I know your secret, Signorina Cuoca. Or shall I call you Suora Carmelina?”

She gasped, and I felt a surge of savage satisfaction. I raised an eyebrow at her as I drew my blankets up to my chest. “Think on this,” I said. “I’m probably going to die in this bed. But if I don’t, and if we get back to Rome, I will turn you in and happily watch you get hauled off in chains back to your convent.”

She stared at me.

I saluted her with my right hand, the one with the broken fingers. “Good night.”

Carmelina

Signorina?” Bartolomeo’s head jerked up as I stumbled out of the vestry. He had been praying with that quiet surety of his, lips moving soundlessly as he gripped the little wooden crucifix about his neck in one freckled fist, but now he stared at me. “What’s wrong, signorina?”

“What’s wrong?” I looked around our huddled little party of maidservants and guardsmen, slumped in shock and exhaustion against the stone walls. “What’s right, Bartolomeo? Tell me that!”