While Leonardo remained unconscious, word spread in Milan’s many basilicas that on the second Mass of the forthcoming Sunday, Alessandro would be blessed before the people on the steps of the Duomo.
The elderly matriarch of the Gonzaga family hung her head in shame that her nephew Il Moro had endorsed such a farce.
‘It is all the doing of that Florentine bastard,’ she complained. ‘He has bewitched your uncle.’
‘It is the Devil in him, or so the Lazerines would have you believe,’ said her granddaughter Bianca.
‘Perhaps there is more truth in the minds of the ignorant than we give them credit for,’ remarked her stern-faced grandmother.
In the home of Maria, family and neighbours crowded into her parent’s hovel to gossip.
‘My mistress is most upset over the maestro’s condition. The Duke
