Bitter greens. Kate Forsyth. 2019.

Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. She is comforted by an old nun, Soeur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens………

After Margherita’s father steals a handful of parsley, watercress and Rapp zeal from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off…..unless he and his wife give away their little girl.

Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Titian’s, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death, sixty-four years later. Called La Strega Bella, Selena is at the centre of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.

Locked away in a tower, growing to womanhood, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does……….