“Now you can get me a cloth to wipe that up,” I ordered, and he looked at me resentfully. Half the apprentices already loathed me, and the maidservants only grudgingly followed my orders. I had saved Madonna Giulia’s wedding banquet, and perhaps their positions along with it, but what did that matter? Kitchens have a hierarchy as rigid as any royal court, after all, and I was an interloper: not quite cook, not quite scullion, not quite servant. Someone Marco had brought in personally but clearly disapproved of; someone who gave orders but took them too; someone trusted with the delicate pastries for the daughter of the house, but who also pitched in with the scouring and cleaning fit only for the lowest pot-boys. I was an unknown quantity, and no kitchen likes an unknown quantity of anything, be it spices or servants. Marco really would have to make my place clear if he wanted peace in his kitchens, but for the time being he preferred not to look at me, and I’d have to carve out whatever authority for myself that I could.

“Piero?” I said, making my voice a whip. “A cloth.”

“Yes, signorina,” he said, insolently polite, and took his time with that too.

“Thank you,” I told him, aware the others were listening, and turned back to my work. Only to see the cat wandering across the table, tracking his paws through my neat spread of flour.

“Out!” I brandished the cloth at him, but the lazy bastard just hissed at me. As far as I was concerned, a cat who didn’t earn his keep by mousing might as well be drowned under the cistern. “One of these days I will turn you into sausage,” I warned. “With a little garlic and fennel and splodges of pork fat, and then I’ll eat you with a smile, just you wait.”

The cat miaowed at me insolently and managed to knock over a jug of cream I was saving for whipping as he jumped to the floor. The cream went all over my skirt, and I could hear the maids giggling as I rushed back into my little chamber for a fresh apron.

I stopped there, closing the door behind me and folding my floured arms across my breasts. “I thought I’d left you well hidden,” I said finally.

A withered and mummified hand lay half exposed in the nest of my clothes inside my small chest. I suppose I’d uncovered it in the dawn darkness this morning when I’d been hurriedly rummaging for a clean shift.