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While I thought that I was learning how to live,
I have been learning how to die
- Leonardo da Vinci
1
Torches gleah on the towers of the Palazzo Vecchio and the Bargello, and just a few lanterns shimmered in the cathedral square a little way to the north So the banks of the River Arno, where, late as it was for a city where ht, a few sailors and stevedores could be seen through the gloo to their ships and boats, hastened toand to coil rope neatly on the dark, scrubbed decks, while the stevedores hurried to haul or carry cargo to the safety of the nearby warehouses
Lights also glimmered in the winehouses and the brothels, but very few people walked the streets It had been seven years since the then twenty-year-old Lorenzo de’ Medici had been elected to the leadership of the city, bringing with him at least a sense of order and cal international banking and merchant families who had made Florence one of the wealthiest cities in the world Despite this, the city had never ceased to simmer, and occasionally boil over, as each faction strove for control, so permanent and implacable enemies
Florence, in the Year of Our Lord 1476, even on a jaset the stench froht direction, wasn’t the safest place to be out in the open, after the sun had gone down
Theit over a host of attendant stars Its light fell on the open square where the Ponte Vecchio, its crowded shops dark and silent now, joined the north bank of the river Its light also found out a figure clad in black, standing on the roof of the church of Santo Stefano al Ponte A youngthe neighbourhood below keenly, he put a hand to his lips and whistled, a low but penetrating sound In response, as he watched, first one, then three, then a dozen, and at last twentylike hireen or azure cowls or hats, all with swords and daggers at their belts, eang of dangerous-looking youths fanned out, a cocky assuredness in their movements
The young azing up at him He raised his fist above his head in a defiant salute
‘We stand together!’ he cried, as they too raised their fists, so theether!’
The young man quickly climbed, catlike, down the unfinished façade from the roof to the church’s portico, and fro, to land in a crouch, safely in their athered round, expectantly