The senator gloated, thinking he had me, no matter my answer. Because if I was not with Paolo, then I was with someone else, and I was a whore either way. I saw more clearly the bargain that had been made. It wasn’t justice these men wanted. They wanted a devil to blame. A whore, a slut. I wondered if Paolo had sold me out.

“There was no one.”

“Mrs. Paris, it’s quite obvious you are lying. This woman and her husband will both testify to the fact that there were footsteps on the stairs that evening.”

“Footsteps?”

“Yes, footsteps.”

“What is it you want me to say—that I spread my legs and by this power bewitched Isabella to her death? And likewise knocked my husband from his horse?”

The chamber rattled again, filling with hoots and cackles and a noise like the Italian boys’ hissing on a street corner.

“I ask you not to defile these proceedings with such crudity,” said Secca.

“Yet it’s fine for you to defile me.”

“I’ll hold you in contempt.”

“And I’ll hold you the same way.”

“Mrs. Paris—” One of the other senators tried to intervene, maybe a member of Orsini’s party, or even Il Primo himself, the faction leader, hoping to get things under control. The men were indistinguishable in their gray suits. I challenged him as well.

“Is this the bargain you have settled on?”

“Mrs. Paris—”

“If you could have this bit of spectacle at my expense, then whatever corruption lies beneath the surface—”

“Mrs. Paris—”

The special investigator snapped the gavel . . . but something had been unleashed inside me. They were hypocrites . . . they were fools . . . they engaged in every petty vice imaginable, and some not so petty . . . Their country was going down the drain . . . and all they could focus on was whether some young woman . . . a nobody . . . an orphan . . . a widow . . . All they could focus on was whether she had lifted her skirts in an apartment hallway . . .

The audience whistled and stomped. The gavel snapped again. I heard catcalls, I heard applause. My lawyer put his hand on my shoulder, urging me down, and somewhere inside me a curtain fluttered, and I watched shadows move on that curtain.

“Order!” cried the special investigator. “Order!”

No one paid him any mind. The committee was divided. While they debated among themselves, the chamber grew more restless. Things were getting out of control. One of the senators took the microphone—a friend of Orsini’s or one of the opposition trying to save face, I couldn’t tell. He scolded my outburst but at the same time asked the committee to withhold, for the time being, an order of contempt. “I think, given the hour of the day and the emotional nature of the proceedings, it might be wise to reconvene—and allow the witness counsel with her attorney in this difficult matter.” The crowd hooted.