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joined in, announcing the hour of noon. Soon everyone in Rome would be going home for dinner and the afternoon’s rest. Nicholas broke into a trot to pass the haywain and went down the far slope.
    In the warren of streets on the flat ground he lost his way, turning here and there among the vineyards and crumbling houses. The streets filled rapidly with people hurrying along, women coming from the baker’s with loaves under their arms, and men carrying their hoes and rakes. The street led him into a piazza where an old dry fountain stood, shaped like a scallop shell, and there he asked more directions of the idlers.
    The taverna was only three streets distant. Nicholas started off at a brisk walk. There was much yet to do today. The official letter to Florence, the secret letter that must accompany it, of which Bruni would know nothing, were still to be written and encoded. The Signory expected Nicholas to report independently, reviewing every act of Bruni’s. Of course Bruni acted very seldom, since the stars were always against him. Nicholas realized that he was yearning toward the Fox and Grapes, not for any good reason, but to see Stefano Baglione again.
    He slowed. In the rutted street ahead were children playing with a ball. On either side, the buildings rose in honey-colored stone, echoing the children’s voices. When he reached the end of the street, he stopped.
    A flight of brisk steps led down to the next street. At the bottom a priest was riding by on a donkey. The Fox and Grapes was in the piazza just beyond. Nicholas flexed his fingers around the knob of his walking stick. He had no business here. Even if Stefano were a cousin of Gianpaolo Baglione’s, he could know nothing of the mighty condottiere’s thoughts and moves. He had said as much; he knew nothing. Nicholas swallowed. He wondered what he was doing here, when he had so much important work to do. He hurried away up the street, back in the direction he had come.
    The permanent legation from the Republic of Florence to the Court of the Pope rented office rooms in a palace of the Savelli family, in the Banchi quarter of Rome. From the building’s second story Nicholas could see across the tiled roofs of the neighborhood to the Tiber, and beyond the strip of water the long, protected corridor that the Pope was having built from the palace of the Vatican to the Fortress of Sant’ Angelo. The round building within its crenelated wall had, like other places in Rome, served a variety of purposes, being once the tomb of an early Emperor. During the great plague of a few centuries before Nicholas’s time, the angel Gabriel had appeared on the squat peak of the roof to signal God’s mercy: hence the current name.
    Nicholas walked along the loggia, his face turned outward toward the city, trying to compose himself after the long meaningless walk. At the far end of the loggia he came on Bruni, in his shirt, stooping to pour water from a can into one of the potted plants that grew in the open archways. A trickle of water ran from the bottom of the next pot on in the line.
    â€œWhat did you find out?” Bruni said.
    â€œNothing. Have you written the letter?”
    â€œIt is on my desk. You may use your judgment, of course—the phrasing might be inelegant. Perhaps too blunt. I’ll expect the final draft before five.” Bruni set down the can of water. “You’ll notice that I’ve indicated our difference of opinion.”
    â€œThank you,” Nicholas said.
    â€œI will be in my chamber if you require me.”
    Nicholas withdrew into the next room, which was the main workroom of the legation. Usually the scribes were busy at work, bent over the long tables where they wrote out the documents and copies that kept the trash gatherers of the quarter well stocked with paper. The scribes were gone now, until the late afternoon when the workday resumed. Stacks of books and papers crowded the back ledges