Not a necklace this time. No rubies or pearls; no gilt-buckled snakeskin slippers or enameled hand mirrors or silver nets for my hair: the gifts that had been turning up in my chamber nearly every day, wrapped in cardinal-scarlet ribbons.

A pomegranate.

Carmelina

M y cousin surprised me that Sunday by looking me in the eye as he reached for his hat and cloak. “Er—” he began, and stopped. He cleared his throat. We had the kitchens to ourselves for once—most of the cooks and maidservants had already gone to Mass. The flagstones gleamed, the trestle tables were scrubbed white, sun poured through the small leaded windowpanes, and I’d been looking forward to a little quiet. I had a crostata of summer peaches to make, and I was itching to try a new idea I’d had for the crust: a sort of ribboned twist of flaky pastry layered about the top in a spiral. But Marco still lingered, twisting his cap between his hands and looking more than a bit shamefaced. He’d be late to Mass. “Um,” he said at last. “Many thanks, Carmelina. For, er, yesterday.”

“I’m the one who owes you thanks, Marco.” It wouldn’t hurt to remind him of his generosity in sheltering me here. I looked down again at the bowl of peaches I was sorting for the crostata, separating the ripe from the bruised. “I’m glad to help any way I can.”

Marco hadn’t lost himself at the gaming tables quite as thoroughly as he had the day of Madonna Giulia’s wedding . . . but I’d still had to cover for him when the hour for cena approached and he hadn’t returned in time to begin preparations. I’d taken charge: supervising the rack of ribs onto its spit for the Borgia children, checking the tourtes as the apprentices filled the crusts, seasoning the salads before the maids carried them out, overseeing the decanting of the wine. Marco had returned, flushed with embarrassment, sometime after the rack of ribs had come back from the sala as a pile of picked bones.

“I couldn’t leave,” he insisted to me now, as though I’d argued with him. I remembered him saying just the same thing to my father, in the same tone of voice. “My luck was just starting to turn—one more hand and I’d have made it all back!”

“Yes, Marco,” I sighed into the bowl of peaches. As master cook to a cardinal’s cousin and his treasured bastards, my cousin brought home twenty-five ducats a year—and how much of it went to dice, to cards and bull-baitings and bets on when the Pope would die and who would be Pope next? I’d seen Marco lay a week’s wages on whether one roach would cross a floor faster than another.