‘Giulio de’ Medici, my father, was Pope Clement VII, but he did not want to know me until I was thirteen years old and he only brought poor piccolo Alessandro to Firenze to be his pawn.’ He began to whimper, not bothering to wipe his nose.

‘Stop snivelling and get on with it,’ Stanley growled. This thing was obviously no threat to him whatsoever. What an idiot he was for running away. Superwimp Stanley, you know what you are.

Alessandro began to talk again, rapidly. ‘Giulio made me live in Florence with Ippolito, his great-nephew, but we despised each other. When Giulio first proclaimed me Duke of Florence, he protested, “Why should it be him! That muulaatooo bastardooo!”’

Alessandro rocked himself back and forth.

‘I was the sole ruler of Florence and I could do what I liked. So I did. How else did I come into this world if mio padre did not do what he liked with mio madre, Simonetta, a slave girl from Africa? What about your Henry VIII, who was my peer, or all those other rulers who were so perfectly awful? O no! Blame me for everything. What if I did kill Ippolito? Was he nice to me? No! Did he insult me? Yes! O! Life was too horrible until my kinsman Lorenzaccio came to Florence. He became my friend, my saviour, my handsome lover. We dressed up in women’s clothes and charged through the city on a horse, knocking down those stupid people who got in our way. It was his idea. It was! Then the Council accused me of dishonouring women. “Women have no honour,” I explained to those imbeciles. “So I give them the benefit of mine!” They should be grateful. All those stupid Fiorentinos complained because I trained my canons on the town. You tell me this – should I let them rise up a second time against me? O, but my story has such a sad ending. My Lorenzaccio was secretly very jealous of my great power, so he and an assassin stabbed me to death while I lay in bed waiting to enjoy a girl. I was a mere boy of twenty-six. Fine di Alessandro. How terrible.’

He flung himself on the dirty cobblestones, pounding them with his fists; then, stopping as abruptly as he had started, sat upright and said calmly, ‘They were all wicked to me. No?’

Stanley’s rear end had become stiff on the chilly ground. He wanted to escape the claustrophobia of this madman’s death and despair, to venture back into daylight. Alessandro made him think of his father: although a good man, he too was bitter, self-pitying, accusatory. Clasford never rose above being a victim, one who had been betrayed by the life he had chosen to lead. ‘Once a foreigner, always a blasted foreigner’ had been his motto – tattooed on to his psyche.