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plucked from his threadbare jacket a silver coin, which his visitor snatched eagerly before running out the way he had come.
    “Madonna?” Camilla said.
    I clutched her hand but said nothing.

    On the third day after our arrival in Imola, I still had heard nothing from the pope. That morning, when Camilla went out to secure our necessities, she had found the Imolese similarly uncertain of their own fates. “They tell me that Vitellozzo Vitelli took Fossombrone on All Saints’ Day,” Camilla reported, this being more than a month past and Fossombrone a fortress of considerable importance, though some distance south of here. “They say Valentino’s garrison was slaughtered to a man. But since then, Madonna, it is the living truth that no one has heard a thing, though they all fear that the condottieri will soon march on Imola, and put this city under siege.”
    I could presume that Vitellozzo Vitelli’s attack on Fossombrone was one of the traitorous acts His Holiness had reported to me in the Hall of Saints, the condottieri having wrested from Valentino’s loyal troops a fortress they had no doubt assisted the duke in securing only months previously. And like the Imolese, I could only guess what progress the rebel condottieri had achieved since then, an uncertaintythat made the pope’s silence all the more unsettling. I peered anxiously through the shutters, almost expecting to find the invaders in the courtyard.
    Having no other occupation, I continued my vigil at the window, after a while observing the mule keeper begin his circuits, just as he had the previous day. But several times when he was opposite our rooms, he glanced up, as if he knew we were watching him.
    “Do you think we are spying on the pope’s spy?” I asked Camilla. “Perhaps His Holiness has withheld his ‘instruction’ because he expects that some accomplice will call on me, thus establishing my guilt.” I caught myself gnawing at my lower lip. “Darling, go down there and get his accent and try to make some sense of him. But don’t provide him any of our particulars. See what he is willing to give up.”
    Upon exiting our stairwell, Camilla stopped the mule keeper just after he had passed beneath our window; he was not much taller than she was and nearly as lithe. When she spoke, his dark eyes shined at her and his thin lips drew a smile across his narrow face. I was scarcely surprised that he found her agreeable; for her part, Camilla tilted her head in a fashion she has, as he replied to her with lively gestures.
    After a little while Camilla came back up, saying, “You were correct in believing he is Florentine, and a learned man—he speaks well-lettered Tuscan. He had a thousand questions about us, but I did not offer him anything, even when he gave me his name. Messer Niccolò. He thinks you are here to do business. Or so he implies.” She shook her head. “Madonna, on my oath I don’t think he knows enough about you to be the pope’s spy.”
    Here Camilla’s smile, which never remained long, fled her face. “But he told me something you will want to know. He wondered if we are staying in because of the murder ten days after All Saints’. When I asked what he was talking about, he said the peasants are still chattering about it, full of rumors of every sort. Madonna, this woman was … cut … She was cut into quarters.” Camilla’s eyes were wide. “And these pieces of her were scattered about the countryside. But her head has never been found.”
    “Ten days after All Saints’,” I said numbly, trying to escape the pictures in my mind. “That would be three weeks ago. Sufficient time forthe pope to have been informed, to have dispatched me on this errand, and for us to arrive here. God’s Cross. She has to be the same woman who had Juan’s amulet in her charm bag.”
    I closed my eyes, to no avail, because the images were still waiting for me in the darkness. Perhaps there had been reason to take off this