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II
The assassination attempt was a bloody and clumsy thing. But that may have been a part of the careful planning of it, to distance any suspicion from those stealthy murderers employed by the Lorraine family. If they had used poison or employed a night-creeper to enter the Medici bedrooms while they slept, suspicion would have immediately been cast upon the Lorraines. But to attempt to stab Cosimo Medici and his brother Giuliano when they were attending a service inside the Grand Cathedral of the Walled City – surely only a madman or fanatic would attempt that? If it had succeeded and the assassins had escaped into the crowds, the city would have been thrown into utter turmoil. Undoubtedly the Lorraines would have quickly produced unknown corpses to accuse of being the assailants. Foreign spies could have been blamed. The city guard would order everybody off the streets and the Lorraine family would offer to bolster the guards with their own much larger militia. The High Priests would have to support them for the sake of order and once granted military power over the city, the Lorraines would never relinquish it. But that was not quite the way things had turned out. Only