“The only woman Marco keeps is Lady Fortuna,” I dismissed, “and he only wants her when he’s playing zara.”

I couldn’t help but be pleased, though—the first time the maids had even unbent enough to call me by name.

“So Maestro Santini’s a fool,” the pockmarked maid shrugged. “He’s still a handsome one.”

Nods all around, and I couldn’t help but shrug in agreement. Handsome my cousin mostly certainly was, and one of the few men I could look up at; so pleasant for a girl like me who had grown long as a kitchen spit by the time she was fourteen. “How about that inventory, now?” I said briskly to the maids. “And the silver. You know what I always say: mouths shut—”

“‘—and hands moving,’” they chorused.

“Exactly. And afterward, maybe I can show you all a few tricks with a knife that might help fend off il Duche in future.”

They went back to their work with good-humored complaints. I smiled, going back to my recipes. Perhaps I’d found a foothold in Marco’s kitchens after all—my own place in the hierarchy of the kitchens.

The peach still sat on the trestle table where I’d quartered it, oozing juice, and I popped a chunk into my mouth. “Add cherries to the peach crostata,” I mused. “In a lemon pastry shell brushed with a little sugar and rosewater, and that spiral twist on top . . .” I looked around to be sure the maids had retreated out of earshot, and brought out the little bundle of Santa Marta’s hand, opening the bag’s drawstrings.

“What do you think?” I asked it. “Peaches and cherries? Or peaches and blueberries?”

The hand remained still. Of course it did; it was a dead hand. It didn’t move, no matter what greedy nuns said. I shrugged, tucking the bundle back inside my overskirt. “Cherries,” I decided, and popped another slice of peach into my mouth. But I couldn’t help wondering, as I cleaned the knife on my apron, if I’d need it again to deal with Juan Borgia.

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

Benefits should be conferred gradually; that way they will taste better.

—MACHIAVELLI

Giulia

T he mare had cardinal-red ribbons braided in her silvery mane, and a placard round her neck. She was waiting for me in the stable yard when Madonna Adriana sent me down.

“Oh—” I picked my way across the straw-scattered cobbles in my tall stilt clogs, as grinning stable boys and guardsmen fell back before me. The dapple-gray mare pawed the ground, and I bent forward to read the placard hung about her slender neck.

To carry my Persephone out of the underworld if she chooses. The words were written in the bold slashing hand I was coming to know very well. Or for a pleasure ride beside her lord of the underworld, should she choose to stay.