 Penguin Random House audio presents in the name of the family by Sarah Dunant Read for you by Nicholas Bolton As an eagle may fly carrying a tortoise in his mouth then drop it to the ground so that the fall smashes open its shell Niccolo Machiavelli on the vagaries of fortune history's third dimension is always fiction Herman Hesse the glass bead game prologue Florence January 1502 You couldn't call him tall He was barely an inch bigger than her and wiry in stature His soot black hair was cut unfashionably close to his head and his face broad at the eyes Tapered via a thin nose to a sharp clean shaven chin The word weasel had come to mind when they first met But strangely it hadn't put her off Marietta Corsini had known already that her future husband was clever He had a job in government and everyone knew men like that needed a wheelbarrow to carry their thoughts And within a few minutes it made her laugh He had also made her blush For there had been something in his bright-eyed concentration his almost animal quiver of energy that seemed to be half undressing her By the time they had said their goodbyes She was smitten and six months of marriage has done nothing to change that He leaves for work each day at dawn in The beginning she had hoped that her nest right body might tempt him to linger a while Florence is rife with stories of married men who use early risings as excuses to visit their mistresses And he had come with a reputation for enjoying life But even if that were the case There's nothing she can do about it not least because wherever he is going This husband of hers has already gone from her long before he gets out of the door In fact Niccolò Machiavelli doesn't leave the warmth of his marriage bed for any other woman He can do that easily enough on his way home But because the day's dispatches arrive at the Palazzo della Signoria early And it is his greatest pleasure as well as his duty to be among the first to read them His journey takes him down via Gucciadini on the south side of the city and across the river Arno via the Ponte Vecchio a Maverick winter snowfall has turned into a grimy frost and the ground cracks like small animal bones under his feet on The bridge fresh carcasses are being unloaded into the butcher's shops Through the open shutters he catches glimpses of the river its surface a silvery apricot under the rising Sun a Feral dog streaks across his path going for a goblet of awful near the wheel of a Sample complete ready to continue