“Can it be ready by tonight?”
The tailor smiled. “Not if you want me to do a good job on it,signore. But we can try for a fitting toward midday tomorrow.”
“Very well,” replied Ezio, hoping that the meeting he was to attend that evening would not result in his having to leave Monteriggioni immediately.
He was making his way across the main square of the town when he noticed an attractive woman who was struggling with an unwieldy box of red and yellow flowers—clearly too heavy for her to lift. At that time of day there were few people around, and Ezio had always found it difficult to resist a damsel in distress.
“Can I lend you a hand?” he asked, coming up to her.
She smiled at him. “Yes, you’re just the man I need. My gardener was supposed to pick these up for me but his wife’s sick so he had to go home and as I was passing this way in any case I said I’d fetch them—but this box is far too heavy for me. Do you think you could—?”
“Of course.” Ezio stooped and hefted the box onto his shoulder. “So many flowers! You’re a lucky woman.”
“Even luckier now that I’ve run into you.”
There was no doubt that she was flirting with him. “You could have asked your husband to fetch them for you—or one of your other servants,” he said.
“I only have one other servant and she isn’t half as strong as I am,” replied the woman. “And as for a husband—I have none.”
“I see.”
“I ordered these flowers for Claudia Auditore’s birthday.” The woman looked at him.
“That sounds like fun.”
“It will be.” She paused. “In fact, if you’d like to help me out some more, I am rather looking for someone with a bit of class to escort me to it.”
“Do you think I have enough class?”
She was bolder now. “Yes! No one in this entire town walks with greater bearing than you, sir. I am sure Claudia’s brother, Ezio himself, would be impressed.”
Ezio smiled. “You flatter me. But what do you know of this Ezio?”
“Claudia—who is a particular friend of mine—thinks the world of him. But he rarely visits her, and from what I can gather, he’s rather distant.”
Ezio decided it was time to come clean. “It’s true, alas—I have been…distant.”
The woman gasped. “Oh, no!You are Ezio! I don’t believe it. Claudia did say you were expected back. The party’s supposed to be a surprise for her. Promise you won’t say a word.”
“You’d better tell me who you are now.”
“Oh, of course. I am Angelina Ceresa. Now promise!”
“What will you do to keep me quiet?”
She looked at him archly. “Oh, I am sure I can think of several things.”
“I’m longing to hear what they are.”
They had reached the door of Angelina’s house by this time. Angelina’s elderly housekeeper opened it to them and Ezio placed the box of flowers on a stone bench in the courtyard. He faced Angelina and smiled.
“Now are you going to tell me?”
“Later.”
“Why not now?”
“Signore, I assure you it will be worth the wait.”
Little did either of them know that events would overtake them and they would not meet again.
Ezio took his leave and, seeing that the day was drawing in, directed his walk back toward the citadel. As he was approaching the stables, he noticed a child—a little girl—wandering down the middle of the street, apparently alone. He was about to speak to her when he was interrupted by the sound of frantic shouting and the thunder of a horse’s hooves. Quicker than thought, he snatched up the child and moved her to the shelter of a doorway. He’d been in the nick of time. Around the corner a powerful warhorse came at a gallop, fully harnessed but riderless. In less than hot pursuit, and on foot, came Mario’s stable-master, an elderly man called Federico, whom Ezio recognized.
“Torna qui, maledetto cavallo!” yelled Federico helplessly after the disappearing horse. Seeing Ezio, he said, “Can you help me, please, sir? It’s your uncle’s favorite steed. I was just about to unsaddle and groom him—something must have scared him—he’s highly strung as it is.”
“Don’t worry, father—I’ll try and get him back for you.”
“Thank you—thank you.” Federico mopped his brow. “I’m getting too old for this.”
“Don’t worry. Just stay here and keep an eye on this child—I think she’s lost.”
“Surely.”
Ezio raced off after the horse, which he found without difficulty. It had calmed down and was even grazing some hay that was loaded onto a parked wagon. It balked slightly when Ezio approached, but then recognized him and did not run. He laid a comforting hand on its neck and patted it reassuringly before taking its bridle and leading it gently back the way they had come.
On the way, he had the opportunity to do another good deed. He encountered a young woman, frantic with anxiety, who turned out to be the mother of the lost child. Ezio explained what had happened, taking care to tone down the degree of danger the little girl had actually been in. Once he’d told her where the girl was, she ran ahead of him, calling out her child’s name—“Sofia! Sofia!”—and Ezio heard an answering cry of “Mamma!” Minutes later he had rejoined the little group and handed the reins over to Federico, who, thanking him again, begged him not to say anything to Mario. Ezio promised not to, and Federico led the horse back to the stables.
The mother was still waiting with her daughter. Ezio turned to them with a smile.
“She wants to say a thank-you,” said the mother.
“Thank you,” said Sofia dutifully, looking up at him with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
“Stay with your mother in future,” said Ezio kindly. “Don’t leave her alone like that,capisci?”
The little girl nodded mutely.
“We’d be lost without you and your family to watch over us,signore,” said the mother.
“We do what we can,” Ezio said, but his thoughts were troubled as he entered the citadel. Even though he was pretty sure he could stand his ground, he was not looking forward to his encounter with Machiavelli.
But there was still time enough before the meeting, and to avoid brooding on the course it might take, but also from natural curiosity, Ezio first climbed the ramparts to have a closer look at the new cannon Mario had installed and was so proud of. There were several of them, each with a pile of iron cannonballs neatly stacked by their wheels, beautifully chased in cast bronze. The biggest had barrels ten feet long, and Mario had told him that these weighed as much as twenty thousand pounds, but there were also lighter and more easily maneuverable culverins interspersed with them. In the towers that punctuated the walls were saker cannon on cast-iron mounts and lightweight falconets on wooden trolleys.
Ezio approached a group of gunners clustered around one of the bigger guns.
“Handsome beasts,” he said, running a hand over the elaborately chased decoration around the touchhole.
“Indeed they are,Messer Ezio,” said the leader of the group, a rough-hewn master-sergeant whom Ezio remembered from his first visit to Monteriggioni as a young man.
“I heard you practicing earlier. May I try firing one of these?”
“You could indeed, but we were firing the smaller cannon earlier. These big ’uns are brand-new. We don’t seem to have got the trick of loading ’em yet and the master-armorer who’s supposed to be installing them seems to have taken off.”
“Have you got people looking for him?”
“Indeed we have, sir, but no luck so far.”
“I’ll have a look around, too—after all, these things aren’t here for decoration and you never know how soon we’ll need them.”
Ezio set off, continuing his rounds of the ramparts. He hadn’t gone more than another twenty or thirty yards when he heard a loud grunting from a wooden shed that had been erected on the top of one of the towers. Near it, outsid
e, lay a box of tools. As he approached, the grunts resolved themselves into snores.
It was dark and hot inside the shed and smelled appallingly of stale wine. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Ezio quickly made out the form of a large man in his none-too-clean shirtsleeves spread-eagled on a pile of straw. He gave the man a gentle kick, but its only effect was for the man to splutter, half awake, and then turn over with his face to the wall.
“Salve, Messere,” Ezio said, jostling the man again, less gently this time, with the toe of his boot.
This time the man twisted his head around to look at him and opened one eye. “What is it, friend?”
“We need you to fix the new cannon on the battlements.”
“Not today, chum. First thing.”
“Are you too drunk to do your job? I don’t think Captain Mario would be very happy if he got wind of that.”
“No more work today.”
“But it’s not that late. Do you know what time it is?”
“No. Don’t care, either. Make cannon, not clocks.”
Ezio had squatted down to speak to the man, who in turn had pulled himself into a sitting position and was treating Ezio to a gale of his breath, pungent with garlic and cheap Montalcino, as he belched luxuriously. Ezio drew himself to his feet.
“We need those cannon ready to be fired, and we need them ready now,” he said. “Do you want me to find someone else who’s more capable than you?”
The man scrambled to his feet. “Not so fast, friend—no other man’s going to lay hands on my guns.” He leaned on Ezio as he got his breath back. “You don’t know what it’s like—some of these soldiers, they got no respect for artillery. Newfangled stuff for a lot of ’em, of course, grant you that—but I ask you! They expect a gun to work like magic, just like that! No sense of coaxing a good performance out of ’em.”
“Can we talk as we walk?” said Ezio. “Time isn’t standing still, you know.”
“Mind you,” the master-armorer continued, “these things we’ve got here, and I mean they’re in a class of their own—nothing but the best for Captain Mario—but they’re still pretty simple. I’ve got hold of a French design for a handheld gun. They call it a ‘wrought-iron murderer.’ Very clever. Just think—handheld cannon. That’s the future, chum.”
By now they were approaching the group around the cannon.
“You can call off the hunt,” said Ezio cheerfully. “Here he is.”
The master-sergeant eyed the armorer narrowly. “Up to it, is he?”
“I may be a little the worse for wear,” retorted the armorer, “but I am a peaceful man at heart. In these times, encouraging the sleeping warrior in my gut is the only way to stay alive. Therefore, it is my duty to drink.” He pushed the sergeant aside. “Let’s see what we’ve got here…”
After examining the cannon for a few moments, however, he rounded on the soldiers. “What have you been doing? You’ve been tampering with them, haven’t you? Thank God you didn’t fire one—you could have got us all killed. They’re not ready yet. Got to give the bores a good clean first.”
“Perhaps with you around we won’t need cannon after all,” the sergeant told him. “We’ll just get you to breathe on the enemy!”
But the armorer was busy with a cleaning rod and wads of coarse, oily cotton. When he’d finished, he stood up, easing his back.
“There, that’s done it,” he said. Turning to Ezio, he went on, “Just get these fellows to load her—that’s something they can do, though God knows it took ’em long enough to learn—and you can have a go. Look, over there on the hill. We set some targets up there on a level with this gun. Start by aiming at something on the same level; that way, if the cannon explodes, at least it won’t take your head off with it.”
“Sounds reassuring,” said Ezio.
“Just try it,Messere. Here’s the fuse.”
Ezio placed the slow match on the touchhole. For a long moment, nothing happened, then he sprang back as the cannon bucked and roared. Looking across to the targets, he could see that his ball had shattered one of them.
“Well done,” said the armorer. “Perfetto! At least one person here apart from me knows how to shoot.”
Ezio had the men reload and fired again. But this time he missed.
“Can’t win ’em all,” said the armorer. “But come back at dawn. We’ll be practicing again then and it’ll give you a chance to get your eye in.”
“I will,” said Ezio, little realizing that when he next fired a cannon, it would be in deadly earnest.
FIVE
When Ezio entered the great hall of Mario’s citadel, the shadows of evening were already gathering, and servants were beginning to light torches and candles to dispel the gloom. The gloom accorded with Ezio’s increasingly somber mood as the hour of the meeting approached.
So wrapped up in his own thoughts was he that he did not at first notice the person hovering by the massive fireplace, her slight but strong figure dwarfed by the giant caryatids that flanked the chimney, and so was startled when the woman approached him, touching his arm. Immediately he recognized her, and his features softened into an expression of pure pleasure.
“Buona sera, Ezio,” she said—for her, a little shyly, he thought.
“Buona sera, Caterina,” he replied, bowing to the Countess of Forlì. Their former intimacy was some way in the past, though neither of them had forgotten it, and when she had touched his arm, both—Ezio thought—had felt the chemistry of the moment. “Claudia told me you were here, and I have been looking forward to seeing you. But”—he hesitated—“Monteriggioni is far from Forlì, and—”
“You needn’t flatter yourself that I have come all this way just on your account,” she said with a trace of her former sharpness, though he could see by her smile that she was not entirely serious, and, for himself, he knew that he was still drawn to this fiercely independent and dangerous woman.
“I am always willing to be of service to you, Madonna—in any way I can.” He meant it.
“Some ways are harder than others,” she countered, and now there was a tough note in her voice.
“What is it?”
“It is not a simple matter,” continued Caterina Sforza. “I come in search of an alliance.”
“Tell me more.”
“I am afraid your work is not over yet, Ezio. The papal armies are marching on Forlì. My dominion is small, but fortunately or unfortunately for me it lies in an area of the utmost strategic importance to whoever controls it.”
“And you desire my help?”
“My forces on their own are weak—yourcondottieri would be a great asset to my cause.”
“This is something I will have to discuss with Mario.”
“He will not refuse me.”
“And nor will I.”
“By helping me, you will not just be doing me a good deed. You will be taking a stand against the forces of evil we have always been united against.”
As they spoke, Mario appeared. “Ezio,Contessa, we are gathered and await you,” he said, his face unusually serious.
“We will talk more of this,” Ezio told her. “I am bidden to a meeting that my uncle has convened. I am expected to explain myself, I think. But afterward—let us arrange to see each other afterward.”
“The meeting concerns me, too,” said Caterina. “Shall we go in?”
SIX
The room was very familiar to Ezio. There, on the now-exposed inner wall, the pages of the Great Codex were arranged in order. The desk, usually littered with maps, was cleared and around it, on severe straight-backed chairs of dark wood, sat those members of the Assassins’ Brotherhood who had gathered at Monteriggioni, together with those of the Auditore family who were privy to its cause. Mario sat behind his desk, and at one end sat a sober, dark-suited man, still young-looking, though with deep lines of thought now etched into his forehead, who had become one of Ezio’s closest associates, but also one of his most unremitting crit
ics—Niccolò Machiavelli. The two men nodded guardedly at each other as Ezio went over to greet Claudia and his mother, Maria Auditore, matriarch of the family since his father’s death. Maria hugged her only surviving son hard, as if her life depended on it, and looked at him with shining eyes as he broke free and took a seat near Caterina and opposite Machiavelli, who now rose and looked questioningly at him. Clearly there was going to be no polite prologue to the matter at hand.
“First, perhaps, I owe you an apology,” began Machiavelli. “I was not present in the Vault and urgent business took me to Florence before I could truly analyze what happened there. Mario has given us his account, but yours alone can be the full one.”
Ezio rose in his turn and spoke simply and directly. “I entered the Vatican and encountered Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, and confronted him. He was in possession of one of the Pieces of Eden, the Staff, and used it against me. I managed to defeat him and, using the combined powers of the Apple and the Staff, gained access to the Secret Vault, leaving him outside. He was in despair and begged me to kill him. I would not.” Ezio paused.
“What then?” prompted Machiavelli, as the others watched silently.
“Within the Vault were many strange things—things not dreamed of in our world.” Visibly moved, Ezio forced himself to continue in level tones. “A vision of the goddess Minerva appeared to me. She told of a terrible tragedy that would befall mankind at some future time. But she also spoke of lost temples that may, when found, lead us to a kind of redemption and aid us. She appeared to invoke a phantom that had some close connection with me, but what that was, I cannot tell. And after her warning and her predictions, she vanished. I emerged to see the Pope dying—or so it seemed; he told me he appeared to have taken poison. But then something compelled me to return. I seized the Apple, but the Staff and a great Sword, which may have been another Piece of Eden, were swallowed up by the earth, and I am glad of it. The Apple alone, which I have given in custody to Mario, is already more than I personally wish to have responsibility for.”
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Page 3