All-powerful. I kicked at a stone, wobbling for a moment on the tall wooden stilt clogs I wore to elevate my slippers out of the mud. Comfortable tooled-leather slippers; an old pair. In my chamber I had a prettier set, gold-buckled and brand-new, made of supple diamond-patterned snakeskin. Yet another gift that had appeared anonymously at my bedside one afternoon, all tied up with a silk ribbon the color of a cardinal’s robes. Not just any cardinal, but one of the richest and most powerful of cardinals.

Too powerful for a humble notary of twenty-four to challenge, even over such a serious matter as a sister’s virtue.

“Why the sad face, sorellina?” My brother stopped in the street, his smile disappearing from his lean handsome face. Thanks to the stilt clogs my head reached his shoulder instead of the middle of his chest, and he didn’t have to look down so far. Cardinal Borgia was tall too—I was forever craning my head up at the men in my life. “The Cardinal hasn’t been pressing you in earnest, has he?” Sandro continued. “Flirting is one thing, but if he thinks he can turn one of the Farnese into a common courtesan—” Sandro looked ominous, but he still couldn’t resist striking a pose: the noble Galahad, hand on imaginary sword. “That Borgia bull is a powerful man in Rome, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take a rapier to him! Chase him through the streets at swordpoint—”

“Oh, be sensible!” I snapped. “A notary from the provinces, taking on a cardinal of Rome? He could swat you like a fly.” That now seemed perfectly clear.

“Maybe.” Sandro dropped his theatrics. “Doesn’t mean a brother isn’t obligated to try, if someone threatens his sister’s honor.”

That’s what Orsino should have done, I couldn’t help thinking. That’s what husbands always do, brothers and fathers too. I’d grown up listening to wives whisper, complaining of strict husbands and the jealous guard they kept on their wife’s virtue—but how queerly flattening to have a husband who wasn’t jealous at all. Of course Orsino Orsini didn’t love me; I was resigned to that. We didn’t even know each other, after all. But he married me with the intention of giving me to someone else, and that I wasn’t resigned to at all.

I’d tried sending him a letter, telling him so. Telling him to come for me, telling him what the Cardinal said to me, telling him—oh, Holy Virgin knew what. But my maid Pantisilea said apologetically that she’d just have to hand the letter over to my mother-in-law. “I’m sorry, Madonna Giulia. She’s a right interferer, Madonna Adriana is, but all the servants have got their orders.” I’d yanked my letter back and burned it myself rather than give my mother-in-law the satisfaction.

“Giulia?”