“No church would have me.” Not with the sins I had on my soul, and I didn’t see how could I ever confess those sins to a priest without giving myself up to the justice of the Church. Early this morning I’d taken the withered hand of Santa Marta from the little hanging pouch I generally carried under my overskirt, and just said my prayers to her instead. It would have to be enough. Besides, I really was itching to try that new crust. If I could roll the dough out in a spiral twist without toughening the texture . . .

“Can you keep an eye on the maids when they get back from church, then? There’s, er, a shrine I want to visit across the Borgo after Mass—”

There was a primiera game he wanted to visit across the Borgo after Mass, or perhaps a cockfight.

“Enjoy your shrine,” I said, raising my eyebrows just a touch, and Marco gave me a little-boy grin and was gone in a whirl of hope. Today, today, was the day his luck would turn, after all. If not today, then certainly tomorrow.

Always tomorrow.

The maidservants were already starting to trickle back, those who hadn’t bothered to go confess their sins after Mass, and I quickly set them to work polishing silver and taking inventory in the storerooms. At least these were proper kitchens—really, I savored the chance to have them all to myself. The chief kitchen with its ovens and eternally revolving spit, separated as it should be from the scullery where the flagstones were silvery with fish scales and the pot-boys scrubbed an eternal procession of dirty dishes . . . the cold room after that, where cream tops could be whipped up in peace and the game stored away from the heat of the ovens . . . the courtyard where wagons arrived at all times of night and day with wood for the ovens and game for the spits and fish still flopping-fresh from the river.

In an ordinary kitchen I’d have to spend my free hours frantically catching up on those tasks that always seemed to pile up in a busy household: the wood ash to be removed from the ovens, the game to be vigilantly checked for the first faint signs of rot, the floors to be swept and swept and swept again. But here everything was cool and organized: the game didn’t go bad because there was room to store it properly; there was an endless succession of scullions and pot-boys to empty the ovens and keep the floors swept; loads of kindling and barrels of wine were delivered by the cartload and I never had to think about my fires dying or my household going thirsty or capons going unflavored.