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to be.
    “You have heard France and Spain battle once more for control of Italian lands?” Bernardino leaned his horselike face toward Battista, urgency in his hushed question.
    Battista smacked his lips, removing with his tongue a piece of food stuck between his teeth. “Of course I have, Bernardino. It is all anyone has spoken of for days.”
    “It is a sign, do you not think?” Cecchino asked the table at large, round puppy eyes blinking rapidly, not as reluctant as his companion to tender his words publicly. “The Medici days are numbered, I tell you. This action portends it for certain.”
    The other men at the table greeted his pronouncement with hopeful nods and grunts of agreement. None here backed the Medici, including Battista. He, and his family of apothecaries, had been loyal to the Medici, but after the death of Giovanni de’ Medici—who had died as Pope Leo X—and the influence of the teachings of Savonarola, the Dominican friar outspoken against moral corruption, Battista’s beliefs and loyalties had shifted, like most in Florence.
    All here were old enough to remember the benevolent rule of a signori, a republican body of government, functioning with the complete support and endorsement of its citizens. The taste of the returned Signore, a ruling family—one whose concerns did not often align with its citizenry—had turned bitter indeed over the last decade.
    The glory of the Medici rule had reached its peak half a century ago, under the administration of banker Cosimo and his grandson, Lorenzo, Il Magnifico. Though they took no title, their furtively wielded power bestowed them with despotic power, authority equal to that of the gonfaloniere, the head executive office of the signori . Cosimo had expanded their reach to Rome, Milan, Venice, and beyond. Under Lorenzo’s diplomacy, Florence dismantled dangerous alliances, creating his own and ensuring the peace of the land.
    But everything had changed under the rule of Piero, Lorenzo’s son, a feckless man who had fled when Charles VIII of France marched on Florence. The Republic rule that followed lasted only eight years—but few Florentines had forgotten the sweetness of it—before the Medici returned, under the power of Giulio, Lorenzo’s nephew. The man who was now Pope Clement VII had appointed Cardinal Passerini of Cortona as his administrator, and with him the citizens’ dissatisfaction grew sharper with each passing day.
    “Passerini is a crude and greedy foreigner,” Cecchino spat, “with no respect for our elected officials.”
    “You speak the truth there,” Battista joined in, as always pushed to anger at the mention of the contemptuous man. “Florence should be ruled by Florentines.”
    The grumbling of agreement whirled about the table, an opinion festering throughout the city.
    “I have heard he sends part of our taxes back to Arezzo, that sewer he crawled out from,” Ercole sniped.
    “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Bernardino agreed. “But Clement does not seem to care. We have appealed to him over and over to replace the man, but every request has been dismissed or ignored.”
    “And the bastard, Ippolito,” Frado grumbled in his cup, cursing the sixteen-year-old illegitimate nephew of the pope. “Already he swaggers with obnoxious cruel power. They are born to their evil.”
    “And the pope allows it,” Bernardino quipped.
    “He is leaving us no choice,” Cecchino riled them all further.
    “And now a French king comes once more.” Bernardino clasped his hands together as if in prayer and leaned forward. Every man at the table focused upon the message he had come to deliver. “A French king has freed us from tyranny once before. I believe with all my heart he will do it again.”
    Battista held firm to that hope, ever more resolute as François I had made the same intimation himself when last they had been together, when the king had made it clear that Battista, and Florence, could count on his support in return