The Lion and the Rose

The second novel in Kate Quinn's Borgias duology, following The Serpent and the Pearl, unfolds in late 15th-century Rome through three alternating narrators entangled with history's most notorious papal family: Giulia Farnese, the beautiful young mistress of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia); Leonello, her sharp-tongued dwarf bodyguard; and Carmelina Mangano, the household cook hiding a dangerous secret.

The story opens in December 1494 as Giulia's party returns to Rome after being held captive by French scouts during the French invasion of Italy. Leonello, severely wounded defending Giulia and her toddler daughter Laura, narrates from a carriage. In the palazzo, he confronts Carmelina, whom he has discovered to be a runaway nun called Suora Serafina who fled her Venetian convent with the mummified hand of her patron saint, Santa Marta. Carmelina counters his threat of exposure: If he turns her in, she will claim he knowingly harbored a desecrator, costing him his hands. Their standoff remains unresolved, but Leonello keeps her secret.

Nearly two years later, the Borgia family reunites for a dinner celebrating Juan Borgia's return from Spain. Giulia observes the volatile dynamics with growing alarm. Juan, the Pope's favorite son and newly appointed Gonfalonier, or commander of the papal armies, is arrogant and lecherous. Cesare Borgia, the Pope's eldest son and a cardinal forced into the Church against his will, seethes with resentment. Sancha of Aragon, wife of the youngest Borgia son Joffre, flirts openly with both older brothers, while Lucrezia Borgia, the Pope's 16-year-old daughter, has grown sharp-edged and competitive. Rodrigo dismisses Giulia's warnings about his children's rivalries.

Carmelina is promoted to the unprecedented title of maestra di cucina, or female chief cook, after her cousin Marco Santini is reassigned for neglecting his duties. In her kitchens, she clashes with Bartolomeo, a talented 17-year-old apprentice whose instinct for cooking rivals her own.

Leonello pursues his years-long hunt for a masked killer who murdered his friend Anna, a tavern maid, four years earlier by staking her hands to a table and cutting her throat. Several more women have died the same way. Leonello has long suspected Cesare, and at a public bullfight, he accuses the young cardinal directly. Cesare denies it convincingly but whispers a revelation: He did not kill those women, but he knows who did.

The Pope commissions the painter Sandro Botticelli to depict Giulia naked as the goddess Persephone. When a cardinal objects, Rodrigo orders Giulia stripped and posed before the assembled churchmen to assert his authority. The humiliation marks a turning point; Giulia begins to see Rodrigo as a man who will use her as a tool of power. She escapes to Florence, where followers of the Dominican friar Savonarola accost her. A pamphlet of accusations forces Giulia to confront the Borgias' sinister reputation, and Leonello tells her bluntly that many of the charges are true.

Back in Rome, Carmelina and Bartolomeo grow closer through late-night cooking experiments. One evening they end up in bed together, and he proposes marriage. Carmelina rejects him: As a secret nun, she can never marry without endangering any husband with charges of desecration. At a masked Menagerie Ball, Juan corners Carmelina, and Leonello intervenes by dropping his goblet on Juan's foot to let her escape. The ball descends into violence when the Pope orders a guest hanged for insulting Juan. Bartolomeo, misreading Carmelina's relationship with Marco, punches the older man and quits the household.

The crisis peaks when Juan lures Carmelina to the wine cellar through a forged note from Marco, who arranged the trap to settle a gambling debt. Juan attacks her, stabbing a dagger through her palm to pin her hand to the table. Leonello arrives and drives Juan off at knifepoint. Seeing the signature staking, he realizes that Juan is the serial killer he has been hunting for four years. Cesare knew all along but protected his brother as leverage.

Giulia arranges for Carmelina to flee to the Convent of San Sisto, where Lucrezia has retreated during annulment proceedings. Carmelina reveals her secret to Bartolomeo, who promises to wait. Leonello plans Juan's murder with Bartolomeo as his unwitting accomplice and uses a love note that Giulia writes at his request to lure Juan to a false assignation. On a June night, they ambush the Duke. Leonello interrogates him, and Juan confesses to murdering Anna and at least six other women, describing a compulsion to kill when drunk or humiliated. He cannot remember Anna's name. Leonello tells him, then cuts his throat. The body is dumped in the Tiber.

The Pope is devastated. Giulia suspects Leonello but says nothing. Rodrigo vows to reform the Church, and Giulia, recognizing a potentially transformative moment, departs Rome with Laura for Carbognano, her husband Orsino Orsini's country estate.

Months pass. Leonello, consumed by self-loathing, accepts employment from Cesare as an enforcer alongside Michelotto, Cesare's personal assassin. Carmelina endures convent life, reciting recipes to stay sane. Lucrezia's annulment from her husband Lord Sforza proceeds through the humiliating pretext that Sforza is impotent, and during her convent stay she secretly gives birth to a child conceived during a final meeting with him. Cesare orders everyone who knows eliminated: Michelotto kills the maid Pantisilea, and the envoy Perotto, wounded by Leonello's thrown knife, staggers into the papal apartments and is run through by Cesare before the Pope's eyes. To save Carmelina, Leonello proposes she be imprisoned permanently under her nun's identity. Cesare agrees, and Carmelina's secular self is erased.

Giulia returns to Rome when the Pope demands Laura's presence to arrange a betrothal. Rodrigo proposes that Giulia raise Lucrezia's secret baby while Laura is sent to France for a grand marriage. Giulia refuses, lying that Laura is Orsino's daughter to sever the Pope's claim on her child. Shortly afterward, Orsino is killed in a suspicious accident that Giulia believes is Borgia retribution.

At Lucrezia's wedding to Alfonso of Aragon, Giulia finds Leonello debasing himself as a costumed fool and drags him away. She reveals that during the French captivity, she prostituted herself to a general to obtain a surgeon for Leonello's wounds. She declares her love, telling him he has been the truest companion of her life. Leonello weeps for the first time in anyone's presence, and they come together at last.

Leonello resigns from Cesare's service, surrendering the 10 Toledo blades Cesare once gave him to sever his identity as a killer. Then Giulia, Leonello, and Bartolomeo execute a plan to free Carmelina from the convent, posing as emissaries of Cesare, who has renounced his cardinalate and taken the ducal title Valentino. They convince the prioress to declare Suora Serafina dead and release her. In a hired coach leaving Rome, the four companions share wine, food, and laughter. Bartolomeo gives Carmelina a ring from Santa Marta's mummified hand as a wedding band, and Giulia gives her the Pope's teardrop pearl to fund a new career. Carmelina and Bartolomeo plan to cook their way through Milan, while Giulia will return to Carbognano with Leonello and Laura. The Borgias and their intrigues recede behind them.