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across stone floor.
    His wide-eyed expectancy sagged, mouth pursing. “It is in Latin.”
    Without a word, Giovanni raised himself up and reached across the wide expanse of polished cherrywood, pulling the pages from Battista’s hand and his reluctant grasp.
    With deep sighs of disappointment, the others stood and set themselves away ... some to cards, some to more drink ... leaving Giovanni to his work. All save Battista.
     
    “I can’t do this if you keep hovering,” Giovanni grumbled without looking at the man pacing behind him.
    Battista’s broad shoulders slumped as he raised his dark eyes heavenward. “But you are taking so very long.”
    “Well, it is a very long message.” Giovanni did turn then, his own impatience in the set of his jaw. “And it is strangely wrought. Please, a few moments of stillness and it will be done.”
    Battista looked as if he would argue, but thought better of it. Stomping to a chair in the front room, he flounced into it like a denied child on the cusp of a tantrum. His thoughts churned in turmoil, tossed about on the turbulent ocean of this message. The king must be riled indeed, to send a message directly. Only something so grave or of such dire consequence would impel him to forgo their usual and multibranched routes of communication. Battista envisaged plans to capture Florence or perhaps the imperative for Battista to return to France.
    The years he had spent at the French court were some of the dearest in Battista’s memory, especially the time in the company of the king’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre. Their discussions on the fanatical friar Savonarola and his teachings were among the most stimulating of the young man’s life. If not for Marguerite and her brother, he would be dead by now, at the least imprisoned. When first he’d arrived in France, when his name or allegedly words by his hand were linked with an assassination attempt on the then Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, it was only by the protection of François that he had been spared prosecution. In a printed declaration, the king of France had placed the property of the della Palla family, and those of other families indicted as rebels, under the official protection of the French Crown. Such aegis included Battista himself and, with the act, the king had secured the young man’s lifelong loyalty.
    Battista did not know his own mind should the missive call him once more to the king’s side. He would do whatever François asked, except, perhaps, turn his back on Florence when she needed him most.
    The anxiety of his thoughts propelled him to his feet once more. He spun toward Giovanni, only to flinch away again for fear of halting the man’s progress.
    “I believe I have it now.”
    The call found him like a beacon through a dense fog, and Battista clung to it, rushing to Giovanni’s side.
    “As I said, it was strangely formed. My translation is but the gist of it, as opposed to word for word.” Giovanni offered the parchment filled on two sides with his own pretty hand, and Battista grabbed it.
    A deep furrow formed on his smooth ruddy brow as he read it, sat, and read it again. The men around the table inched closer, each looking for the opportunity to grab the missive from his hands.
    “Tell us, Battista,” Frado encouraged with soft persistence.
    “It is bad news.” Ercole’s fatality revealed itself, refuted quickly by a shake of Battista’s head.
    “Not bad news, no. A request.” He spoke with a peculiar inflection, confusion and hesitance in the indistinct diction. “But it is very strange indeed.”
    Frado snatched at the paper, the others crushing around him to spy the words over his round pate and around his chubby form. Battista watched their faces, saw their bewilderment dawn.
    “There is a dire insistence in his words, if I am reading this correctly.” Frado spoke first, looking to Giovanni for consensus.
    “ Sì, sì. It is there. But I couldn’t be certain if I conveyed it