‘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 that they would not meet again.
Ezio took his leave and, seeing that the day was drawing in, directed his walk back towards the citadel. As he was approaching the stables he noticed 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 horse’s hooves. Quicker than thought, he snatched up the child and moved her to the shelter of a doorway. He was in the nick of time, too, as around the corner galloped a powerful war horse, 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 favourite steed. I was just about to unsaddle and groom him but something must have scared him; he’s very highly strung.’
‘Don’t worry, 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 grazing on some hay that had been loaded onto a parked wagon. It baulked slightly when Ezio approached, but then recognized him and didn’t run. Ezio 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 when he encountered a young woman, frantic with anxiety, who turned out to be the mother of the lost little girl. Ezio explained what had happened, taking care to tone down the degree of danger the little girl had been in. Once he’d told her where the girl was, she ran ahead of him, calling out her child’s name – ‘Sophia! Sophia!’ – 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 and Ezio turned to them with a smile.
‘She wants to say thank you,’ said the mother.
‘Thank you,’ said Sophia 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 like that, capisco?’
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 wasn’t looking forward to his encounter with Machiavelli.
*
There was still time enough before the meeting, so to avoid brooding on the course it might take, and from natural curiosity, Ezio climbed the ramparts to take a closer look at the new cannon Mario had installed and of which he was so proud. There were several of them, all beautifully chased in cast bronze and each with a pile of iron cannonballs neatly stacked beside its wheels. The biggest cannon had barrels ten feet long, and Mario had told him that these weighed as much as 20,000 pounds, but there were also lighter, more easily manoeuvrable culverins interspersed with them. In the towers that punctuated the walls were saker cannon on cast-iron mounts, as well as lightweight falconets on wooden trolleys.
Ezio approached a group of gunners who were clustered round one of the bigger guns.
‘Handsome beasts,’ he said, running a hand over the elaborately chased decoration around the touch hole.
‘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 practising earlier. May I try firing one of these?’
‘You can 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 armourer 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 round, 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 by, outside, lay a box of tools, and 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 spreadeagled on a pile of straw. He gave the man a gentle kick, but its only effect was to make the man splutter, come half awake, 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.
The man twisted his head round 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 a hand 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. New-fangled 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 armourer continued, ‘these things we’ve got here, 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 hand-held gun. They call it a wrought-iron murderer. Very clever. Just think, hand-held cannon. That’s the future, chum.’
By now they were approaching the group surrounding the cannon.
‘You can call off the hunt,’ said Ezio cheerfully. ‘Here he is.’
The master sergeant eyed the armourer narrowly. ‘Up to it, is he?’
‘I may be a little the worse for wear,’ retorted the armourer, ‘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, the master-armourer 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 no
t 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 armourer was busy with a cleaning rod and wads of coarse, oily cotton. When he’d finished, he stood up and eased his back.
‘There, that’s done it,’ he said. Turning to Ezio, he continued, ‘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 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, Messer. Here’s the fuse.’
Ezio placed the slow match on the touch hole. 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 armourer. ‘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 armourer. ‘Come back at dawn. We’ll be practising 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.
5
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 sombre mood as the hour of the meeting approached.
So wrapped up in his own thoughts was he that he didn’t at first notice the person hovering by the massive fireplace, her slight but strong figure dwarfed by the giant caryatids that flanked the chimney. So he was startled when the woman approached him and touched his arm. As soon as he recognized her, his features softened into an expression of pure pleasure.
‘Buonasera, Ezio,’ she said, a little shyly for her, he thought.
‘Buonasera, 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’d touched his arm, both of them, 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. It was then he realized 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 whomever controls it.’
‘And you desire my help?’
‘My forces on their own are weak – your condottieri 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 against which we have always been united.’
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 which my uncle has convened. I am expected to explain myself, I think. But let us arrange to see each other afterwards.’
‘The meeting concerns me, too,’ said Caterina. ‘Shall we go in?’
6
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 Assassin 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 the sober, dark-suited man, still young looking, but with deep lines of thought etched into his forehead, who had become one of Ezio’s closest associates, as well as one of his most unremitting critics: Niccolò Machiavelli. The two men nodded guardedly at one another as Ezio greeted 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 in 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 analyse what happened there. Mario has given us his account, but yours alone can be the full one.’
Ezio rose and spoke simply and directly. ‘I entered the Vatican, where I 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 dreamt 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 which may, when found, aid us and lead us to a kind of redemption. She appeared to invoke a phantom, which had some close connection with me, but what that was I cannot tell. After her warning and predictions, she vanished. I emerged to see the Pope dying – or so it seemed; he appeared to have taken poison. Later something compelled me to return. I seized the Apple, but the Staff, which may have been another Piece of Eden, was swallowed up by the earth. 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.’
‘Amazing!’ cried Caterina.
‘I cannot imagine such wonders,’ added Claudia.
‘So the vault did not house the terrible weapon we feared – or at any rate, the Templars did not gain control of it. This at least is good news,’ said Machiavelli evenly.
‘What of this goddess – Minerva?’ Claudia asked. ‘Did she appear … like us?’
‘Her appearance was human, and also superhuman,’ Ezio said. ‘Her words proved that she belonged to a race far older and greater than ours. The rest of her kind died many centuries ago. She had been waiting for that moment for a long time. I wish I had the words to describe the magic she performed.’
‘What are these temples she spoke of?’ put in Mario.
‘I know not.’
‘Did she say we should search for them? How do we know what to look for?’
‘Perhaps we should … perhaps the quest will show us the way.’
‘The quest must be undertaken,’ said Machiavelli crisply. ‘But we must clear the path for it first. Tell us of the Pope. H
e did not die, you say?’
‘When I returned to the vault, his cope lay on the chapel floor. He himself had disappeared.’
‘Had he made any promises? Had he shown repentance?’
‘Neither. He was bent on gaining the Power. When he saw he was not going to get it, he collapsed.’
‘And you left him to die.’
‘I would not be the one to kill him.’
‘You should have done so.’
‘I am not here to debate the past. I stand by my decision. Now, we should discuss the future. What we are to do.’
‘What we are to do is made all the more urgent by your failure to finish off the Templar leader when you had the chance.’ Machiavelli breathed hard, but then relaxed a little. ‘All right, Ezio. You know in what high esteem we all hold you. We would not have got anything like this far without the twenty years’ devotion you have shown to the Assassin Brotherhood and our Creed. And a part of me applauds you for not having killed when you deemed it unnecessary to do so. That is also in keeping with our code of honour. But you misjudged, my friend, and that means we have an immediate and dangerous task ahead of us.’ He paused, scanning the assembled company with eagle eyes. ‘Our spies in Rome report that Rodrigo is indeed a reduced threat. He is at least somewhat broken in spirit. There is a saying that it is less dangerous to do battle with a lion’s whelp than with an old, dying lion; but in the case of the Borgia the position is quite otherwise. Rodrigo’s son, Cesare, is the man we must match ourselves against now. Armed with the vast fortune the Borgia have amassed by fair means and foul – but mostly foul’ – here Machiavelli allowed himself a wry smile – ‘he heads a large army of highly trained troops, and with it he intends to take over all Italy – the whole peninsula – and he does not intend to stop at the borders of the Kingdom of Naples.’
‘He would never dare – he could never do it!’ Mario roared.
‘He would and he could,’ snapped Machiavelli. ‘He is evil through and through, and as dedicated a Templar as his father the Pope ever was, but he is also a fine though utterly ruthless soldier. He always wanted to be a soldier, even after his father made him Cardinal of Valencia when he was only seventeen years old. As we all know he resigned from that post, making him the first cardinal in the Church’s history to do so. The Borgia treat our country and the Vatican as if they were their own private fiefdom. Cesare’s plan now is to crush the north first, to subdue the Romagna and isolate Venice. He also intends to extirpate and destroy all of us remaining Assassins, since he knows that in the end we are the only people who can stop him. “Aut Cesar, Aut Nihil” – that’s his motto – “either you’re with me or you’re dead”. And do you know I think the madman actually believes it.’
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