Only a few candles were burning at the house of Sandro Filipepi in la Via Nuova. The artist himself had retired two hours before and even his austerely fanatical brother Simone had at last finished his prayers and was vainly attempting to sleep on his hard bed.

Donna Estasia sat brushing her luxurious chestnut hair. She sang softly to herself as she plied the brush. The tune was a languid one, sensuous, like the expression in her eyes. " 'O veramente felice e beata/ notte, che a tanto ben fusti presente; o passi ciechi, scorti dolcemente/ da quella man sauve e delicata.'" Laurenzo's poetry made her smile. She, too, anticipated a happy and well-blessed night. "'Voi, Amor e 'l mio core e la mia amata/ donna...'" She would have liked to be able to change the words so that the lover was a man, not a woman, but it would not fit the rhyme. She hummed the phrase over and went on. " 'Sapete sol, non altra gente,/ quella dolezza che ogni umana mente/ vince, da uom giamai non piu provata.'" Yes, it was true for her, too. Only her heart and her love knew the overwhelming source of her joy.

The night was warm and the air fragrant with summer. Estasia sighed and put her brush aside, looking for her jar of malmsey-am-bergris-and-musk paste so that she could massage it into her hands and face to make them soft and sweet-smelling. At last she found it by the mirror Sandro had given her and which Simone despised so much. She pulled off the ivory stopper and began to anoint her skin. When that was done, she opened her nightshift impulsively and spread the salve over her breasts. Slowly, her eyes half-closed, she worked the fragrant paste into her flesh.

She was about to rise and seek her bed when she felt two small hands brush her shoulders and pluck her nightshift away. The startled cry that rose in her throat changed to a sigh of anticipation as she turned in the circle of Ragoczy's arms.

"Francesco," she murmured, pressing her gorgeous body against him. "You frightened me." The purr in her voice belied her.

"Did I." He cupped her pointed vixen's face in his hands and drew her nearer. "And are you frightened now?" he asked when he had kissed her.

She laughed almost nervously. "No. Never that." She kicked her discarded nightshift away. "But I am anxious, Francesco. I have not been pleasured for eleven days." She touched his loose gown of Persian taffeta. "I have been too much with myself. Take me out of myself. Take me." She moved sensuously in his embrace, then stepped back and raised her breasts in her hands. "See? I have perfumed them for you. They are soft-feeling." She rose on tiptoe and stretched provocatively. "Tell me you like me. Tell me of your desire to possess me."

He laughed low in his throat. "What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you that your skin is softer and more fragrant than the finest spices of the East? Do you want me to tell you that I will roam over your body like a thirsty traveler searching for drink?"

Estasia's face was flushed and her opulent flesh was gilded in the candlelight. Her breath had quickened as he spoke to her and at last she reached out for him. "Francesco."

Clasping her outstretched hands, he gathered her close to him and lifted her easily into his arms, where she made a delicious, almost swooning burden. Her arms clung to his neck as he made his way to her bed. With an easy gesture he pulled back the sheet and stretched her beneath him.

"Do more. Say more." Her hazel eyes had darkened as her passion rose. Now she pulled urgently at his gown. "Hurry. Hurry."

But he held back. "Gently, Estasia. Slowly. Gently." As he spoke, his small hands stroked her, calming and arousing her at once. Lingeringly he sought out each sensation, now at her lips, now at her breasts, now in the petal softness of her thighs.

Estasia moaned, her head rolled back and a rapturous tension grew in her, so that her body thrummed like the plucked strings of a lute. She reached to push his hands away, but he would not be stopped. Unendurably, until it seemed that release would surely fragment her into a thousand shards of glowing light, he drew from her ever more dizzying delight until shuddering waves of fulfillment possessed her. From the penetration of his kiss to the magic in his hands, he and her sated hunger stilled the tempest in her soul.

She turned on her pillow, a strange smile in her eyes. "Will you love me again before you leave?" She reached out and ran one finger along the strong, clean-shaven jaw.

"Is that what you want?" He did not frown, although he knew that her desire for him was becoming an addiction. She needed his hands, his lips to shield her from the fear that lay coiled inside her mind. And her demand increased in intensity each time he lay with her.

"Yes. Yes. I want you to do me again and again and again until I am dissolved." She turned her pillow so that her head was lifted. "Tell me you will."

He still tasted the frenzy of her need. "Perhaps. Sleep, now, Estasia."

"Swear that you will not leave me while I sleep!" She said this more desperately, reaching out to take his hand.

"Bella mia," he said gently as he pulled away from her. "I told you when we began that I will not be your servant. If you wish that, you must find someone else."

Estasia hesitated, a kind of panic in her eyes. "But you want me. You want me."

"Of course. That was our understanding. Your widowhood makes you freer than an unmarried girl, or a matron, for that matter. It was convenient for you to take me as your lover." He had moved away from her and he spoke too coolly.

"You sound as if you are performing an act of charity."

"Hardly charity," he said, some of the humor back in his dark eyes. "It's delightful to be with you, bellina. And as long as you have desires I can satisfy, and you're willing to satisfy mine, why should either of us deny ourselves? No one expects a widow of your age to lock herself away from the company of men."

"They did in Parma," she said darkly, remembering the many stormy scenes with her husband's family after his death.

"But you are in Fiorenza," he reminded her. "Here such matters are understood, are they not?"

There was a remoteness about him that was new, and it frightened her. "You said that you needed me," she insisted. "You told me that. Before we began."

"And you had no need?" Against his best intentions he turned toward her and touched her face. "There. Do not frown, Estasia. It does not please me to see you frown." He did not say that it was the ghost of age on her face that filled him with foreboding. In so little time she would be gone. And she sensed it, fought it with abiding hatred, devouring her youth in passions of the senses. If her voracious hunger increased, she would be terribly dangerous later.

Her face glowed, but she scolded him. "It was cruel of you to speak to me that way. I have half a mind to refuse myself to you next time you come. What will you do then, Francesco? Where will you go?"

Ragoczy hated this kind of taunting and his eyes grew coldly penetrating. "You may send me away if that's what you wish." He started to rise.

She reached out quickly, holding his arm through the fine Persian cloth. "No. You mustn't go!"

"Estasia..."

Her fingers tightened. "I didn't mean it. I didn't. Francesco, I didn't mean it!"

Ragoczy stopped, neither resisting nor relenting. Then slowly he reached out to touch her splendid flesh. "Tell me, bella Estasia: do I leave or stay?"

Eagerly she guided his hand over her body. "Stay. Yes, stay." Already her breath had quickened and she moved nearer to him. "Forgive me, Francesco. Show me you forgive me."

His appetite for her was already sated, but he felt her need rising again. He leaned across her and kissed her deeply.

"That's better," she said with a knowing smile as she looked up into the handsome, irregular face above her. She touched his dark hair and tweaked one of the loose short curls that clung to his head. "I like your hair, Francesco. You scent it with sandalwood, don't you?"

"Yes." His lips lingered over the delicious softness of her breasts. Estasia sighed, but there was an air of discontent in her response. "What is it?" he asked, interrupting his expert arousal.

Estasia closed her mouth petulantly. "Oh, you will be angry if I tell you." She pressed his head to her lovely body. "Do that some more."

But Ragoczy held off. "Are you regretting our delights? Do you wish now that I were like your other lovers, and would take you as they do?" There was no accusation in his words, only a gentle inquiry. "You needn't be ashamed to say that to me, Estasia. I know you have desires I cannot meet."

Suddenly she was all contrition. "No, no. You are more than any of the others. Truly, Francesco. No one has pleasured me as much as you do. But..."

"But?" he prompted kindly.

She gathered her courage and asked in a rush, "Francesco, are you a eunuch?"

Ragoczy's laughter surprised her as much as the amusement that glowed in his dark eyes. When he could speak he said, "No, Estasia, I am not a eunuch. As you should realize."

"But I don't realize it," she objected. "You've never... never..."

"Filled you?" he suggested lightly as his small hands sought out her intimate joys.

"Filled me, pierced me. I have never had your body in me." She moved her legs to accommodate his hand. "Oh. Oh, yes. There. There."

A knowing wry smile curved Ragoczy's mouth as he explored Estasia's passion to the limits. In the last moments she was transfigured as her spasms shook her, and her face was the face of a saint in holiest ecstasy.

When she was calmer he said, "Do you still think I'm a eunuch?"

She answered slowly. "I don't know. I'd hate it if you had another woman whom you loved as other men do."

He pulled back her heavy chestnut hair. "Rest assured, I have not touched a woman in that way since I was very young. And that was a long, long time ago."

"You are not so old."

"Am I not?" He reached to the foot of the bed and pulled her sheet up to cover her.

"No older than Laurenzo, certainly, and he is little more than forty." She pulled her pillow nearer.

"I am rather more than that," he said dryly.

Estasia was drowsy now, and her hazel eyes were fuzzy with sleep. "Truly?" she mused.

He smiled in the golden gloom. "Sleep, Estasia. It is late. Already there are birds singing in the fields and there is a faint glow in the sky the color of silver." He rose and blew out the candles. A soft gray light hung beyond the window and framed him, a darker shadow in the darkened room.

"You will come again, Francesco? Say you will come again." Even half-asleep there was urgency in her words.

"If that is what you want," he said.

"Yes. It's what I want." Her voice trailed off and in a moment the window was empty and Ragoczy was gone.

A letter from Laurenzo di Piero de' Medici to the Augustinian monk Fra Mariano:

To the reverend brother of San Agostino, Fra Mariano, Laurentius Medicis sends his grateful thanks on this, the feast day of the patron saints of his house, Cosmo and Damiano.

It is with a humble heart that I write, good Brother, for you have been of so great worth to our faith and our city that I search in vain for the adequate expression of my obligation to you.

Your superb example of mercy and tolerance on the occasion of the tenth of this month, when there was that lamentable confrontation in the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, places all Fiorenza in your debt. How I wish that our other citizens had your goodness. And, though I am always a faithful and devoted son of Holy Church, I cannot help but grieve that those few overly zealous Domenicani would stray so far from their duties as to incite their congregations to battle in the streets. That you were willing to preach to the people in so dangerous a situation speaks most eloquently of your devotion both to the Words of Our Lord and to the people of Fiorenza.

I beg you will not trouble yourself over the pronouncement of the Domenicano Savonarola. It is God, and not he, who will say what time I will die. He is presumptuous to announce to the world that he knows more than his superiors. Certainly I must die, as all men, but that is the decree of Heaven, not Girolamo Savonarola.

Your prayers on my behalf during my recent indisposition are much valued by me, and I deeply appreciate your willingness to address the Mercy Seat on my behalf. Certainly such piety as yours has helped me very much in my recovery. Unfortunately, as this letter must tell you, I still have a degree of weakness, and so I have to ask you to forgive the poor quality of my hand. It is sufficiently difficult for me to hold a pen that I have yet to finish a sonetto this morning, which is a hard thing for a poet.

Most humbly and reverently I commend myself to you, good Brother, and with profoundest respect thank you for your great service.

Laurentius Medicis

In Fiorenza, on the Feast of SS. Cosmo and Damiano, September 27, 1491