The archbishop accompanied them to the church door, and then withdrew under pretext of visiting his mother. All the others entered the church. Within the choir, which is beneath the dome of Brunellesco, the cardinal took his place opposite the altar, his suite, the friends of the Medici, the accomplices in the plot, churchmen and laity, stood partly in the choir, partly round it. The mass and singing had already begun when the conspirators remarked that Giuliano was missing. The two who had undertaken to murder him hastened to the Medici’s house and persuaded him to follow them; taking him between them, they ascertained that he wore no shirt of mail beneath his doublet. Giuliano entered the choir, Lorenzo standing outside. The change of the wafer was said to be the signal agreed upon. As the priest elevated the host, Bernardo Bandini plunged a short sword into the breast of Giuliano, who stood together with Giovanni Tornabuoni and Francesco Nori. The wounded man made one step forward and then fell; Francesco de’ Pazzi dealt him one blow after another with a dagger in such blind fury that he severely wounded his own thigh. At the same time Stefano and Maffei attacked Lorenzo, but, unaccustomed to deeds of blood, they missed their aim. Maffei’s dagger, which was to pierce the throat of Medici, only wounded him in the neck. With swift presence of mind, the wounded man tore off his mantle, wrapped it round his left arm, seized his dagger with the right hand, sprang into the choir, and hurried past the altar to the sacristy. At the same moment Bandini, seeing what had happened, rushed to Lorenzo, threw Francesco Nori, who tried to interpose, to the ground,[231] but could not prevent others springing to the assistance of the intended victim, who hastened with him to the new sacristy, the bronze doors of which were closed by Angelo Poliziano before the pursuers. All this was the work of a moment. ‘Nothing but noise,’ writes Filippo Strozzi, ‘prevailed in the church. I was just standing in conversation with Messer Bongianni (Gianfigliazzi) when a general terror seized the knights and all present. One fled here, another there; the followers of Pazzi had all weapons in their hands.’ Only those who stood next the choir could see what passed; those more distant only saw the tumult and men running hither and thither. Some even thought that the dome was about to fall in. The truth soon became clear. While the conspirators fled in all directions, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi loudly asserting his innocence, the friends of the Medici crowded together and hastened, some to the choir, some to the sacristy, to surround Lorenzo. Several members of the families Martelli and Tornabuoni were the first who pressed into the church. Those in the sacristy were still uncertain how things stood until Sigismundo della Stufa ascended the gallery of the organ and saw their victorious friends.