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his heel and was gone, leaving nothing behind but a light scent of the ambergris he used to keep his beard glossy.
    I took off my christening garments and laid them on top of the travel chest which would be carried in the morning to the palace of Santa Maria. It was a fine chest, new for the occasion, covered with red Spanish leather and bound with brass. It contained special, cedar-lined compartments for small linen, hair brushes, girdles and shoes, and two trays for gowns. Somewhere in this mix of practical planning and careful craftsmanship lay the soul of Donata Spagnola.
    ***
    Christian baptism is a strange rite. We Jews place a great emphasis on food in the celebration of our faith. We eat our roast lamb with garlic and rosemary and matzoh cakes at Passover, our red eggs and saffron rice on the eve of Shabbat and—my favourite, these, because of their association with Queen Esther—the syrupy orejas de Haman at Purim, their sweetness almost unbearably intense after the three days of fasting. But we do know they are simply made of dough, rolled and curled to resemble a human ear; we do not believe they are somehow magically transformed into Haman’s ears as we eat them. How many ears can one man have, even if he is the most devious and scheming of courtiers who ever listened outside a king’s chamber?
    Yet here I was, dizzy from the thick scent of incense and the sickly soprano voices of the boy choristers, washed, oiled, and salted as though ready for the spit. Garish, bleeding saints were everywhere, on walls and ceilings, atop plinths or looming from alcoves. Kneeling before the altar, flanked by Donna Lucrezia and a bishop whose name I cannot now remember, acting as proxy for my other sponsor, Donna Lucrezia’s brother-in-law, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, I was now expected to consume bread and wine and believe they had been transformed into the body and blood of Christ by some sleight of hand of the priest. I, a Jewess, who had only ever consumed flesh from which all the blood had been washed, who was forbidden even to eat an egg which had blood spots in it. I prayed, not for the Holy Spirit, but that my throat would not contract and cause me to choke.
    It was a morning of driving rain and bitter wind, so Cardinal Vera, who was to preside over the service, was content for the ceremony to be held inside the church door rather than outside as laid down. Perhaps that is why the Holy Spirit decided to stay away. Once the Cardinal had pronounced the exorcism and placed the veil on my head, all I knew as I approached the altar, Donna Lucrezia and the nameless bishop each holding me by the hand, was that the salt on my tongue was making my stomach cry out for its breakfast. Water dripped from the ends of my loose hair, soaking through my clothes on to the backs of my thighs. I shivered. Donna Lucrezia squeezed my hand and smiled in the direction of the altar; perhaps she thought my shivering was a sign of divine intervention, the wings of the dove fluttering across my skin.
    I knelt, on a white silk cushion. I recited the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, then Cardinal Vera himself, the cords in his weathered neck reminding me of well-hung venison, administered the Sacrament. Bread and wine I told myself, just bread and wine, and neither of them very good at that, as I swallowed the little disc which tasted like paper and the wine which left a fiery aftertaste in my throat. How did Donna Lucrezia manage this every morning on an empty stomach? I wondered. I glanced at her, kneeling beside me, head bowed, lips moving in silent and seemingly impassioned prayer, then took my cue from her to rise and process back towards the door as the clergy pronounced various blessings and graces.
    I noticed Battista Farignola and Isotta de Mantova among the congregation, but they were too busy trying to catch the eye of a group of fashionably dressed young men lounging against a pillar and chatting in loud whispers to return my smile. This