“Next time”—I turned and flung the withered lemon at his feet—“you can leave my public humiliation out of your messages!”
My Pope looked at the lemon and then back at me, and maybe that was the beginning of chagrin forming in his eyes. But I whirled away with my gown still half unlaced and left the sala behind: the whispering cardinals, my sputtering Pope, the two painters still twittering about new techniques in plaster. A month in Florence? Maybe that wouldn’t be long enough. Maybe two months. “I need a respite.”
“A respite from what?” Leonello asked. I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud.
“The Borgias,” I said, and felt myself near tears. “All of them.”
Carmelina
There.” I hurled the little purse at him like a stone. “Eight ducats. Now get out of my chamber.”
“La Bella didn’t mind, I’ll wager.” Marco caught the pouch before it hit him, pouring the coins out into his palm. “She’s got a purse as open as her legs—”
“Don’t be vile!” I would have flown at my cousin and boxed his ears, but he saw the look on my face and hastily retreated behind my narrow bed. “I don’t care what you threaten next time. I am never begging money for you or your poxy dicing debts again.”
Marco had the grace to look shamefaced. “I wouldn’t have told, you know. Not really.”
He tried a wheedling smile, but I still had fury roiling about in my chest like a kettle about to boil over. My fool of a cousin evidently did not have enough to do in the Duke of Gandia’s half-staffed palazzo. In absence of anyone to cook for, he’d been gaming again and had lost three months’ worth of pay wagering on Cesare Borgia’s bullfights a fortnight ago. Judging from the dark bruises on his face and the puffed cut on his lip, Marco’s smile had not succeeded this time in getting him out of the debt.
We hadn’t spoken since he’d left the Palazzo Santa Maria with his pack over his shoulder, still full of sullen resentment at me for taking his position. But he’d turned up this morning, shamefaced and shuffling just outside my tiny chamber, and he hadn’t been looking for the pleasure of my company.
“Just beg the money from Madonna Giulia. She’s fond of you! Eight ducats, little cousin, it’s nothing to her. In fact, ask for ten and I’ll have a little something extra to put on a pallone match—”
“Absolutely not,” I’d stated.
He’d tried pleading, and he even tried kissing, and when neither of those worked—
“You know what they’ll do to me next?” he’d shouted, pointing at his split lip. “You’ll get me those eight ducats from La Bella, Carmelina, or maybe I’ll go to Adriana da Mila with a few stories about you! You won’t be mistress of these kitchens anymore if that old bitch finds out where you fled from!”
Now, of course, he was not wild-eyed at all. Ashamed again, and cajoling.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he insisted, as I continued to gaze at him with stony eyes. “I wouldn’t really have told that you’re—well, you know. Not really. It’s my skin too if they find out, after all. I was just desperate. I didn’t mean it!”
“Of course not,” I said. “Not now you have the coin.”
He shuffled a little behind my bed, hooking his thumbs through his belt. My big feckless cousin, so tall and strong with his curly black hair all mussed like a little boy’s. Seedy around the edges, though. His shirt was grimy, and his right eye swelled and bruised to the color of the squid ink I sometimes used as a sauce for wide ribbons of pasta.
I could not believe we had ever shared a bed.
“No harm done, is there, little cousin?” Marco continued in the face of my silence. “Madonna Giulia didn’t mind giving you the coin, did she?”
“That’s not the point.” Of course my mistress had opened her purse at once when she heard my fumbling flame-faced story about an orphaned cousin arrived from Parma. She gave money away like water, to her servants or to the beggars in the streets or to anyone who asked for it. “Madonna Giulia isn’t the point at all, Marco. You threatened me.”
“I had to get the money!”
“And now you’re leaving.” I pointed to the door. “Madonna Giulia departs for Florence tomorrow, and I’ll need to prepare her a few treats for the journey. Get out, you lying caul-brained goat turd.”
“Well, now, no need to be so hasty. I thought I’d pay a visit to my kitchens, see everyone—”
“They aren’t your kitchens, Marco!” I bundled my cousin toward the courtyard. “They haven’t been your kitchens for a very long time. So get out.”
I banged the door on his indignant face and contemplated my own imminent future with a scowl. I should have been accompanying Madonna Giulia to Florence, really. “No journey is complete without a little basket of your pastries,” she’d declared. “I always eat when I’m traveling! Especially those little kerchiefy-shaped crostata things with the honeyed strawberries . . .” But I was supposed to be tending my orphaned cousin from Parma, the fictitious one for whom I’d begged eight ducats, and of course Madonna Giulia had given me leave to stay home from her Florentine visit. She was far too generous with her servants, not just in money but in time she allowed for us to miss our work. Making up for Madonna Adriana’s stinginess with our wages and our free hours, I always thought, and the other maidservants took shameless advantage—but this was the first time I’d abused my mistress’s easy generosity. So I guiltily made an extra basketful of those little kerchiefy-shaped crostata things with honeyed strawberries for her to share with her golden gabble-head of a daughter on their journey, and went back to my kitchens alone.
The Palazzo Santa Maria seemed empty without her. Madonna Lucrezia was still dawdling in Rome, finding excuses to postpone her return to “that backwater sinkhole” that was Pesaro, but she spent more nights dancing and banqueting through the various great palazzi of the city than she did at her old girlhood home. Madonna Adriana was no longer really needed to chaperone the Pope’s daughter and had taken herself off to spend the winter with her niece in Liguria who had just delivered a baby. Without Madonna Giulia drifting about the house like a joyous bubble, playing games with her daughter and sunning her hair and singing tuneless little love songs, the loggias of the palazzo seemed cold and empty.
So when I woke one night to the delicious golden smell of something frying, at first I thought I was dreaming.
If so, it was a good dream. I’d been having the troubling kinds of dreams lately, the kind where I swam out of sleep still feeling a hard male chest against mine, seeing the loom of strong broad shoulders overhead, tasting the salty tang of a man’s sweat on smooth warm skin . . . not any man I knew, just a man with a shadow for a face. It’s the sort of dream a woman has when her life has no particular passion in it, and probably never will. It’s not a very helpful dream, either, because I’d made my choices, I’d chosen my life with clear eyes, and I’d known love would have no real part in it. So all in all, dreaming about frying food instead of shadowy lovers seemed a great improvement.
But then I sat up in bed, sniffing more strongly, and realized I was awake.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, prowling into the kitchens. “Bartolomeo, it’s past midnight!”
My apprentice turned, skillet in one hand and a broad spoon in the other, but rather than look guilty he just gave me a delirious grin. “Couldn’t sleep, signorina! Neither could you, by the look of it.”
I doubted my apprentice remained sleepless for the same reason I did. The excessive emptiness of my bed might keep me awake sometimes, but surely not Bartolomeo—he had passed his eighteenth year not long ago, and the maids who had once whacked him on the head for getting underfoot were now looking at him speculatively. And why not? A skinny, penniless pot-boy is one thing, but a promising young cook with a bright future and no mother is entirely another.
“Can’t you just steal a cask of wine to put yourself back to sleep, like all normal apprentices?” I said through a yawn. “You have to build up a fire
and start frying everything in sight? That’s good kindling you’re wasting!”
He hardly seemed to hear me. “Look, I found these at market yesterday.” He thrust some odd brown tubers at me like a bouquet of roses. “Aren’t they wonderful?”
“They look like warts.” I poked at them with a dubious finger. “What are they?”
“Some kind of root. Not so different from a turnip, but the texture has more starch to it. The vendor claimed they came clear across the ocean from those new lands the Spanish found, but I wasn’t swallowing that nonsense.” Bartolomeo snorted. “I’ve been experimenting with them all day. Boiling, chopping, spicing, and the texture wasn’t coming out how I wanted. I was just getting into bed when I thought I’d have one more try at frying them.” His eyes had a gleam of enthusiasm as he whirled back to the trestle table where a bowl of chopped tubers or whatever they were waited for him. “A little coarse salt, a little olive oil . . .” He tilted a generous splash of oil into the pan. “Is Madonna Adriana still cross with you for buying the expensive oil from Apulia? She thought she’d save money, paying you less than she did Maestro Santini, but you never skimp on ordering good supplies the way he did. Doubt she’s saved too many scudi by the end of the month after your olive oil bills—”
“Careful,” I said, as a drop of that hot oil splashed out of the pan. “You couldn’t put a shirt on, Bartolomeo? You’ll burn yourself.”
“Already have,” Bartolomeo said, unconcerned. When his urge for the frying pan had hit, he’d clearly not bothered to pull on more than a pair of worn breeches before racing for the kitchens. The flagstone floor was chilly beneath my slippers, and despite the crackling kitchen fire I still shivered in my linen shift, but Bartolomeo was evidently feeling no cold as he padded barefoot about the ovens. Feeling no heat either; among the cinnamon-dark freckles splashed over his milk-pale chest and arms I could see red splotch marks where hot olive oil had spattered, but he was whistling happily between his teeth.
“You shouldn’t be using my kitchens just to experiment on strange tubers, you know.” I hesitated, wondering if I should order him to desist, but for once my rebellious apprentice was being cheerful instead of argumentative, and that seemed like something to encourage. “You’re lucky I feel like a bit of a nibble,” I finally allowed. “Let’s have a look at these roots of yours.”
“The first batch burned,” Bartolomeo admitted, jerking his chin at the trestle table toward a plate of what appeared to be little scorched black disks. “They fry up fast, whatever they are. Sweet Santa Marta, don’t let me burn the next batch or I’ll be out of tubers—” He touched the little wooden crucifix hanging about his neck on a cord. “You think she listens?”
“Santa Marta?” I couldn’t help a little smile. “I know she does.”
“I think so, too. Not that the Heavenly Father doesn’t,” Bartolomeo allowed. “But He’s busy. He’s got His hands full finishing off the French; I’m not going to burden Him with my kitchen woes.”
“His Holiness the Pope is the one with his hands full when it comes to the French,” I pointed out. “He’s the one waging war on them.”
“It’s all the same,” Bartolomeo shrugged. “The Heavenly Father and the Holy Father—they’re both about equally far above a kitchen apprentice with a pan full of tubers, aren’t they? Pure, powerful, perfect—things I can’t ever aspire to. Except maybe in food,” he added, and gave the pan a swirl.
“I would hardly call the Holy Father pure,” I snorted. “Or are you going to tell me he loves Madonna Giulia like a daughter?”
Bartolomeo grinned. “Even the Holy Father was a man first, and Madonna Giulia would tempt God Himself. Come to think of it, God Himself was a man once, too. He’d understand.”
Belatedly, I reined myself in from further gossip. It was one thing to encourage my apprentice’s good cheer, but too much free rein was another thing entirely. Bartolomeo might be only eighteen, but the other apprentices listened to him, and so did the undercooks who should have been giving him orders rather than taking them—he’d even gotten clever lately in how he challenged me! He no longer picked open quarrels when we disagreed on what to put into a sauce or how to roll out pasta; instead, he followed me about with ostentatious humility saying, “If you please, signorina, just a touch more mint? And if you please, signorina, if we could roll out the tagliatelli with a comb to give the sauce more grip? And if you please, signorina—” Always during the busiest hour of pre-pranzo rushing. Until finally I would snap, “Oh, do what you please with the tagliatelli, Bartolomeo!” and then see his wide grin and realize I had been played like a viol. So it went against the grain to give him a free hand with anything, even just with a bunch of tubers and a line or two of conversation in the small hours of the night, because if you gave Bartolomeo one pinch of independence he’d have your whole kitchen turned upside-down in a heartbeat.
But whatever those unpromising-looking tubers were sizzling in the pan, they were just starting to turn golden about the edges and they smelled marvelous as I took a long sniff over my apprentice’s shoulder.
“Passable,” I said. “Give them a flip now—”
“No. They need a bit more browning on this side.” A drop of olive oil leaped out and sizzled on his bare arm, but he paid no attention. He flipped a slice neatly out of the pan to the notch-eared tomcat, who pounced with a rusty mrow.
“Don’t feed that beast!” I scolded. “He’s spoiled enough, the way the maids coo over him—”
“Why are you so hard on that cat, signorina?” Flipping another disk out of the pan to the floor.
“It’s no use being sentimental about animals, Bartolomeo. Either they earn their keep or we eat them. I haven’t any use for a cat that doesn’t catch mice.” I craned my neck at the pan as he gave it a shake. The little disks had gone golden all over, and my mouth was watering. “Take them off the heat!”
“All in good time . . .” He flipped them expertly, gave another swirl and a nod as the other side crisped, and turned them out into a clean bowl. I reached for one of the crisp little golden disks, but he nudged my hand away. “They’re too hot, signorina, so wait till you’re asked.”
“My kitchen, apprentice.” I gave him an absent rap on the shoulder as I always did, and it surprised me when he caught my wrist and held it.
“Stop doing that,” he said. “I am eighteen years of age, so quit whacking me like a scullion. And it’s my recipe even if it is your kitchen, so I’ll tell you when you’re allowed to taste it.”
I felt my brows fly up in surprise, and I almost told him he was an insolent lug, as I had last week when he dared add beaten mint to my dish of salted tuna belly. But his voice now was firm rather than belligerent, and his eyes were steady as they looked down at me. My apprentice was eighteen years old, and perhaps we’d been arguing too loudly for me to notice that the unsteady wobbles of his young voice had settled into a confident tenor, and his milk-pale shoulders were as broad as Marco’s. Just last week I’d watched him step between two of his fellow apprentices as they started a shoving match, haul them out in the yard, crack their heads together until they yowled, and then deliver a stern tongue-lashing that could have come straight from me. They’d listened, too, muttering and rubbing their sore heads, and it didn’t seem to occur to them that he didn’t have any real authority over them. My erstwhile pot-boy had grown up, it seemed, and I wondered if I should think about raising him from apprentice to undercook.
“Pass me the pepper,” said Bartolomeo, releasing my wrist. “If you please, signorina. And a block of the good Parmesan, and a grater.”
“Yes, maestro,” I said with just a bit of a sniff so he’d see the concession I was making, and I fetched both. Bartolomeo tossed the crisp golden disks with pepper and just a little fine-grated cheese, and popped one into his mouth. He chewed. I waited. “Well?”
“Needs more salt,” he decided. Another sprinkle, another taste, as I shifted from foot to foot. My mouth was waterin
g again, and Bartolomeo’s cheeks creased in a smile as he proffered a fried golden coin of tuber. “Here.”
Taste exploded in my mouth—the crunch of salt flakes and faint burn of fresh pepper, the crisp fried skin on the outside giving way to something mealy, mild . . . and quite wonderful.
“Hmph,” I said, swallowing the last heavenly crumb. “I’d add a dash of rosemary.”
“At least you didn’t say cinnamon,” Bartolomeo said, and then he kissed me. Not a boy’s clumsy peck but a young man’s kiss, too hard, too hungry, too eager, but I was too astounded to pull away as he cupped one big hand around the back of my neck and pulled me up against him.
I tasted flakes of salt on his lips from the fried golden disks we’d shared, tasted pepper and Parmesan and the good olive oil from Apulia. His lips parted mine hungrily, one hand sliding up into my hair and the other gripping my waist, and I didn’t pull away as fast as I should have because he tasted so good. Cooks were better for kissing than anyone else. Cooks had sweet breath from chewing mint rather than drinking rotgut beer; cooks smelled of rosemary and nutmeg rather than sweat and smoke; cooks were hard-bodied from hauling kegs and carcasses all day rather than soft-gutted from sitting about a barracks or a shop counter. A guardsman or a clerk gripped you in hairy arms, but a cook’s skin was smooth to the touch because his arms were singed hairless by hot ovens . . .
My lips parted under his before I could think of moving away. A mistake, because he lifted me to the edge of the trestle table, one hand smoothing my hip through my shift, the other still twined in my hair.
“Stop,” I managed to mutter then, though his hand moving from my hip down the outside of my thigh burned me. “Stop, we can’t—I can’t—”
“Why?” His mouth had moved to my neck, and he was drinking the skin of my shoulder where my shift had slipped down. “Why not?”
“Because—” Because he was my apprentice, because he was eighteen, because I had a position to maintain in this household, and the respect that had to be maintained with it—because—