‘I do not wish to know of what fool’s errand you speak. Please, husband, hear me. I have always supported you but I fear for myself and our children. If the preacher’s men rout you out, what will become of us?’

The cold compress was working poorly, or perhaps it was his wife’s badgering that kept him ill. Vincenzio felt his head might split.

‘Something so simple as to cease your involvement with the Academy would be a boon. Signore Palagio says the humanists are not to be trusted.’ Lucrezia moved to stand by the window.

‘The Platonic Academy is well respected.’

‘It is still a Medici institution. Do you not see how you allow danger into our chamber like the kiss of Judas?’

He grumbled at such hysteria. Women, especially his wife, were incapable of understanding nuance and had no stomach for politics. His head hurt and he needed to close his eyes; he could not even muster more anger.

‘Cease these hysterics and let your poor husband rest, for I am sore wearied by this day and it gets no easier in my own chamber.’ He lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Away with you before I hit you on the head.’

He did not hear his wife leave the room; he was already asleep.

*

Vincenzio woke with a crushing pain across his forehead. He sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the room to stop swimming. Then he called for a restorative tonic as he dressed slowly. He’d need a cup of wine with which to wash it down and stumbled to his studiolo, where he dropped into his chair and let his arms fall slackly to either side. His back still ached from his undignified scrambling up into the choir stand and nothing he did seemed to ease the discomfort.

Sitting in the stark light of morning, he remembered his wife’s rebukes and, still groggy, wondered if there might yet be some truth in what she said. A servant interrupted his musings with the tonic and he drank it quickly, gagging at the intensity of flavour, then flushed it down with a cup of wine. By the time he’d finished the jug and eaten the bread that came with it, he felt restored, and any stirrings of self-awareness had been drowned out along with the alcohol.