I waited upstairs at Mount Giordano. The lawyers and the wardrobe specialist had just left. It was getting late, and I was due to testify at Palazzo Madama the next morning. I was trying on a jacket they had chosen for me: a pale color, to go with the skirt.

Paolo was downstairs, showing my brother to the door. Time had passed. The investigation had been going on for almost a year.

The room had been Isabella’s once, before she’d moved into the cottage. And before that, a long time before, it had been the province of a Renaissance queen. There was a frieze along the upper wall, somewhat faded, painted with animals and mythological beasts. The panels told a story with some significance, but the fading made it hard to tell what the significance might be.

I went to the closet. It had been Isabella’s main closet—much larger than the one in the cottage—and her things still hung there. She had worn a lot of it only once or twice, or perhaps not at all.

I started to undress.

––––––––

Technically the matter before the Senate wasn’t an investigation but an inquiry, one that promised to end but never did. It had moved without resolution from the police department to the Department of Justice, only to emerge by circuitous route in the Chamber of Deputies, where it had taken on a political dimension. Officially, the question at hand was no longer the alleged murders—since the evidence couldn’t be found—but whether Paolo had used his office to suppress the initial investigations. My testimony couldn’t shed any light on this, but it didn’t matter. It was all spectacle now, and the senators wanted me on the stand.

“Your testimony tomorrow should be the end of it,” Paolo said to me. “Then we can move on.”

Johnny interrupted. “I don’t trust this.”

“I’ve been assured.”

Paolo held one of those little Italian cigars between his fingers, and the room filled with blue smoke. He had grown heavier over the last months and smoked incessantly. My brother was anxious. It was a hard situation, and the investigators were doing their best to pit us against one another.

“This is about money,” my brother said.

He was referring to Isabella’s family. They were fighting the will, and for this reason they had aligned themselves with the political opposition.

“It’s not just money,” insisted Paolo. “Some on the committee, in my own party—they’d like to force me from the Senate.”

My brother cut me a glance. Though I didn’t usually pay much attention to politics, everything was intertwined. Orsini was under pressure to abandon us, to cut loose his mistress and her troublesome brother and let them fend for themselves.

“The pope,” Orsini said. “He’s dying.”