Then my frown faded. I was certain that Rebecca did not consider herself any man’s inferior. A large, black-browed woman of middle years with a brash grin and the familiar red-chapped hands and arms of her profession, she wore her starched white wimple proudly as if it were a crown. She’d first come to my notice several months earlier, when she had elbowed me out of the way to get a better look at a dead woman. She had later played a brief role during the Master’s investigation of that same suspicious death.

As often happened when Leonardo was involved, the unlikely pair struck up a friendship of sorts. Rebecca eventually had taken over the laundering of his clothes, while the Master had used her as a model for a series of sketches of the common folk. It had been in this capacity that I had made her acquaintance.

As for the fact that she had a daughter but no husband, I found the situation rather less scandalous than amazing. I also knew I was not the only one who secretly marveled that a woman possessed of as few physical charms as she could have found a willing bedmate, let alone produce from that coupling so lovely and graceful a child as the ethereal Novella. The man who had lain with her must have been handsome beyond belief and doubtless blinded by love. That or his sole encounters with her had been in the dark!

While I had busied myself with such thoughts, Vittorio appeared to regain his usual carefree air in the wake of my assurances. Tucking the bracelet back in his tunic, he stood. Pio, who had been distracted during the course of our conversation by a lark that had lit upon the wall, now looked eagerly at the boy.