Assassin's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  Parmenio and Nicolo looked at one another. The older captain shrugged. ‘If we have to carry him, I’ve got the back for it. You stay.’

  Nicolo snorted quietly. ‘With your knees? Stay here and keep the doors ready. I’ll go.’

  Ignoring the irritation in Parmenio’s glare, he crossed to the stairs. ‘Come on, then.’

  As they began the ascent, their eyes roving across the upper regions, Helwyg padded down the corridor towards the guard room and Parmenio moved to the exterior door and edged it open, wincing at the resulting creak.

  With infinite care and light steps, the four remaining men climbed the staircase, Girolamo back out ahead and cresting the landing before the others. His dagger remained in his hand, reversed to deliver a pommel-bash rather than a deadly stab. As he reached the first floor, he paused and looked around. The other three moved up behind him, and the crossbowman turned to them with a warning glare, his index finger reaching up to his mouth to shush them. As the three came to a halt, their breath held, Girolamo listened out. There was a faint rhythmic tapping from above. He turned and used his hand to mime a walking figure and then pointed up.

  Cesare nodded and the crossbowman reached to his belt, pulled two cloth pouches from it and slid one over each boot. Skiouros watched in fascination as Girolamo set off once more up towards the top floor, his passage so quiet that it sounded like the echo of a ghosts’ whisper.

  The three mercenaries remained still at the top of the first flight and waited in silence. After a protracted pause, they heard the muffled sound of a surprised indrawn breath and then a soft thump, and five heartbeats later, Girolamo appeared once more at the stairs, beckoning to them all.

  Cesare heaved in a breath and turned to Skiouros. ‘This is your post.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like Parmenio and Helwyg downstairs, you need to watch this corridor and keep the stairs clear for us.’

  ‘But this whole undertaking is for me.’

  ‘Who commands this lance? Who is the condottiere here?’

  ‘Well you are, but…’

  ‘Then do as your told, soldier,’ Cesare whispered. ‘And knock off the talking. Too dangerous.’

  Without waiting for Skiouros to argue, Cesare was already on his way up with Nicolo. As the pair reached the top, Girolamo was busy propping another unconscious guard behind a long drape, where he was not immediately visible, though he would soon be spotted with even a cursory search.

  ‘Third-to-last door on the left side,’ Cesare prompted the other two, though neither needed the reminder. Quietly, they padded along the corridor towards their goal. As they neared the other end, Girolamo danced ahead on light, silent feet, listening at doors. As he reached the target, he paused and then gestured at it, miming a sleeping man with palms pressed together beside his cheek. Cesare nodded and the crossbowman moved on to the last door, at which he listened and then repeated his mime. Girolamo took position outside, on guard with his dagger raised, the blood-and-hair smeared pommel presented to the door.

  Nicolo and Cesare moved to the third-to-last door and paused outside. Cesare tilted his head in silent question, and Nicolo nodded.

  With a tense pause, Cesare gently turned the handle and pushed the door open a short way. The room’s interior was pitch black. Swiftly, Cesare pushed the door wider and slipped inside, Nicolo following on. As soon as they were inside, the sailor closed the door behind them and there was a long, anxious moment as the pair held their breath and waited for their eyes to adjust, blinking a few times in an attempt to speed up the process.

  The room was edged with fine furnishings. A wooden horse large enough for a child to ride sat by a side door and Nicolo for the first time considered the possible age of the boy. He’d not thought to ask, and had assumed a young man of late teen years. This clearly was not the case, and he began to have serious doubts about their course of action.

  Cesare crossed the room to the large, well-appointed bed beneath the shuttered window and loomed over the figure of the sleeping boy. He was perhaps eight years old. The nobleman felt the black morass of a pit of wickedness open beneath his feet and for a moment, he paused. He would make this right in due course if Borgia did not.

  Reaching down, he placed one hand over the boy’s mouth and held him down with the other. Nicolo, himself looking far from pleased, began to bind the boy’s ankles. Suddenly the young Orsini was awake and panicked, thrashing around and trying to shout out. Nicolo forced his flailing hands together and tied them as Cesare removed his hand and gagged the boy.

  Without delay, Nicolo lifted the boy and threw him over his shoulder, where he had to hold on tight as the prisoner fought to be free. As the sailor carried his captive to the door, Cesare completed their mission, opening the shutters enough to allow a narrow strip of moon and star light to shine in across the bed. Quickly he removed two things from his pouch. He placed the jet carving of a bull - the Borgia emblem - on the pillow where the depression from the boy’s head remained. Next to it he laid the scrap of paper, carefully penned with an extract from the 141st psalm:

  Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord,

  Keep watch over the door of my lips!

  Sharing his friend’s own personal hell over what necessity had driven them to do, Cesare turned and left the clear message to await Romano’s eyes when he awoke and came looking for his son.

  Skiouros stood shivering on the landing, listening to the faintest noises above and feeling the cold draft rising from the open door below. He shuddered particularly violently and closed his eyes.

  That was not the shiver of a draft.

  ‘Now is not the best time, Lykaion,’ he whispered. Faint sounds murmured from around the house in reply. ‘No. No I am not at all happy about doing any of this, and I loathe the fact that I’ve dragged the rest of them into it too.’

  A faint whisper of air.

  ‘Yes, you are worth all this. Of course you are. Soon, brother. Soon you will rest in peace back in Istanbul, where you should be, your death avenged and everything put to rights.’

  The whispers of curtains, air and footsteps were louder.

  ‘Fear not for my soul. I have spent years preparing for this. I can do it. I am doing it.’

  Skiouros felt the atmosphere change and set his face into a resolute expression. ‘While I miss you, brother, it is no threat to me that you stop these visits. Indeed, until this is done, I could really do without them!’

  ‘Hey!’

  Skiouros frowned. Somehow Lykaion’s voice had changed.

  It took him only a dreadful heartbeat to realise that this was no longer Lykaion. His brother’s shade had evaporated into the cold air as it was wont to do on these strange occasions. By the time he was even thinking straight, Skiouros was already at a run. The man, only half-dressed and leaning out of a doorway and looking at him in anger and confusion, had only a moment to register the threat Skiouros presented before the Greek hit him at full speed, both men dropping to the ground. The man tried to shout but had been winded and his words came out as a single gasp. Desperate, Skiouros grabbed the man’s hair and gave the back of his head a smart rap against the marble floor tile, hard enough to drive the wits from him. The guard - at least he presumed that’s what he was - shook his head blearily, and Skiouros gave it another clonk on the floor, preparing for a third, but deciding it was unnecessary as the man’s eyes rolled up into his head.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ noted Nicolo, appearing on the stairwell where Skiouros had just been, the boy draped across his shoulder, struggling as they descended.

  ‘All done?’ asked Skiouros bleakly.

  Cesare, appearing behind, nodded. Girolamo came down last, and Skiouros rose from the unconscious form of his victim and followed them down the stairs and out into the night, Parmenio and Helwyg joining them as they passed.

  ‘This has been, I think, the low point of my life,’ Skiouros grumbled as they emerged into the street once more.

  Cesare levelle
d a humourless stare at him.

  ‘None of us relish this, Skiouros. But we will do what we can to make it right. And remember what I said about Rome: it seethes with evil and corruption and it gets under your skin and infects you. Why do you think I avoid the place like the plague it so clearly is? My father was a good and honest and pious man when I was a boy. A few months in this hell hole and he was unrecognisably amoral. Why do you think there’s never a worthy man in Saint Peter’s chair? Now come on.’

  Cardinal Borgia stepped into the candlelit glory of the mausoleum-church of Santa Costanza, once more in his black doublet, with the sword slung at his hip. From their position inside, the friends took note of the half dozen men awaiting him outside the door before he closed it.

  ‘You encountered no problems?’

  Cesare, stepping out from behind one of the sets of twin pillars, gave the cardinal a bitter look. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly, your Eminence, but not in the way you mean. There were no deaths or woundings. The message was left exactly as you asked.’

  And the boy?’

  Skiouros and Parmenio walked the young son of Romano Orsini out into the candlelight. The boy had been crying - every tear of which had tried to drown Skiouros’ soul - but had settled now into a defiant, proud silence, his chin high. Skiouros found himself silently willing the boy into ever more boldness. Indeed, in the few moments he’d had with young Paolo he had attempted to console the boy and promised that things would be fine. It had felt like a blatant lie, but he had felt better to witness the same promises being made to the boy by Cesare, Parmenio and Nicolo en route.

  ‘You have done a remarkable job, condottiere,’ the cardinal murmured, clearly impressed. ‘My men outside will take him from here and you may attend the guard offices just off the Piazza San Pietro two days hence to sign your contract. I believe you have earned it.’

  ‘Not quite,’ hissed Cesare, stepping into the centre of the domed room, between the cardinal and the boy. ‘We have, I hope, proved our worth and loyalty, to support my given word. However, I find myself somewhat less than comfortable with such a task. We are soldiers, as my man told you last night. Set us against any fighting man and we will put him down for you. I am flexible enough even to deal with a few less straightforward problems for you, but we are not stealers of children.’

  ‘Evidence suggests otherwise, condottiere.’

  ‘This is the last mission of this nature I and my men will perform for you. You have my loyalty, but not my soul. And before I release this boy into your custody, I demand one promise and will deliver one in return.’

  ‘Go on,’ the cardinal replied coldly.

  ‘Give me your word as a man of God and a nobleman of good family that the boy will not be harmed in your custody and will be returned to his father in due course when your issues with the man are at an end. The threat of simply having him should be enough to secure Romano’s cooperation.’

  Cardinal Borgia stood silent.

  ‘And in return,’ Cesare went on, ‘I promise you this: we are your men to the hilt for any duty that does not transcend the scope of a God-fearing man. But if a hair on this boy’s head is harmed, contract or no contract, I will hunt you down to the very gates of Hell. Are we clear?’

  Borgia narrowed his eyes and a humourless smile touched his face.

  ‘We are very clear. I feel that I should be put off - even insulted - by conditions being applied to this, and a very clear threat voiced. And yet somehow it is precisely the sort of thing I would expect from the man into whose eyes I looked last night. Very well. You have my word. Young Orsini will be treated as a guest in my palazzo and shall want for nothing as long as he remains there. And as soon as his father either gives me a bible-touched oath of fealty or his word that he will leave Rome and retire to some rural retreat, they shall be reunited. I am a political animal, condottiere, not a monster.’

  As Cesare stepped to one side, the cardinal beckoned to the defiant boy. ‘Come, Paolo Orsini. Think of this as a short-lived adventure, after which you will return to your family, safe in the knowledge that your father’s head will stay precisely where it belongs.’

  The boy strode proudly from the room in front of Cardinal Borgia, and when the doors closed, Skiouros heaved out a deep breath. ‘I feel as though I just sold my soul to a black-garbed demon.’

  ‘Not a long leap from the truth,’ muttered Cesare. ‘Rome corrupts more than any devil.’

  ‘Do you think he will keep his word?’ Parmenio asked, a hint of worry in his voice.

  ‘I believe so. He has nothing to gain from harming Paolo. And one of the reasons I was willing to deliver the boy to him in the first place is that my cousin Romano is a blabbermouth and a fool, but he is also a doting father. I am confident that he would now move the world a little to the left if Borgia asked him to. He will soon be reunited with his boy.’

  He straightened and a dark look crossed his face. ‘And if he is not, I will carry out my threat with every ounce of spirit I have.’

  Skiouros leaned towards Parmenio.

  ‘Despite my desire to see the place, I find that I am almost twitching to leave Rome now. This is a dreadful city, and as soon as I have dealt with Cem I shall seek passage for Crete once more.’

  ‘God grant that we last that long,’ mumbled Parmenio with feeling.

  CHAPTER SIX - Rome, summer 1494

  ‘It doesn’t look like the churches back home,’ muttered Skiouros, eyeing the grand façade before them. A massive monumental staircase led up from the grey dusty mess of the streets with their piles of horse muck and refuse, their beggars and cutpurses. At the top of the stairs, a piazza, surrounded by a delicate balustrade, overlooked Rome. The far side of that Piazza was dominated by a row of structures tall and elegant, their walls painted with scenes and designs in bright colours. While each of the five visible buildings butting up against one another were clearly very different, their lower levels were all arcaded with fine marble columns supporting balconies, their doors surrounded by decorative stone scrollwork, their windows grander than any he had previously seen. It was breath-taking. It was stunning. It was rich and ostentatious. It was not clearly ‘holy’.

  Cesare smiled.

  ‘That’s not it. That’s just the buildings used by various authorities, groups and commanders in the Vatican. The Piazza san Pietro and the great basilica are behind it.’

  Skiouros blinked. This was offices? No wonder the Church of Rome was ever expanding its reach and weeding out non-believers. If they had to support this sort of riches, they would never be able to rest. It was so far removed from the village church by his father’s farm outside Hadrianopolis it might as well be in another world. This unconscionable display of worldly wealth and power by the man who was supposedly God’s vicar in the world of men was yet another side of Rome he was discovering – the city seemed to be multi-faceted like a cut diamond, albeit a dark and wicked stone - but it did little to improve his opinion of the place and, in fact, added a little impetus to the waves of homesickness he was beginning to feel for the great city of Constantine.

  ‘If the Pope sold off just that one façade of buildings, he could eliminate the poverty we’ve seen in the streets,’ Skiouros grumbled with a disgruntled expression as they began to climb the staircase.

  Parmenio rolled his eyes. ‘You’re not wearing your priest’s robe now, Skiouros. Try not to be too critically pious until we’re back outside the city walls. This is not the best place to start condemning the Papacy for its riches.’

  ‘Lead on.’

  Cesare reached the top step and made for the largest of the five buildings, central in the row. Scenes of saintly piety painted in gold by Italian masters loomed jarringly above them. A painted man in ragged robes knelt in poverty at the feet of the gilt figure of a holy man. Sickening. A queue of people of all walks extended towards them from the door for which their leader was making, and two guards were checking every entrant before allowing them through the archwa
y.

  As the six men joined the back of the line, Skiouros ran over the coming meeting in his mind. They were about to sign on with the man who had kidnapped - or rather had had them kidnap - a young boy just to silence his father. Could such a man be worthy of any real level of trust? How could they agree to obey and serve such a man?

  An image of Lykaion arguing with him beside the red wall of Istanbul’s ‘bloody church’ shot into his mind. Lykaion had done just that with the Janissaries and had taken pride in that service. Of course, it had turned out that his direct commander had been a traitor, a conspirator and a murderer, but that was not the point. His oath as a Janissary had been to the Sultan Bayezid, not to Hamza Bin Murad, and Lykaion had felt true pride in his service. Could Skiouros? After all, for all Cardinal Borgia was a slightly more worthy man than Hamza Bin Murad, the Pope could hardly measure up to the Sultan.

  He was picking over the finer points of blind servitude when he realised that Cesare was speaking, and he dropped back into the real world in time to see the guards nod and gesture for them to pass. Either the queue had moved remarkably quickly or he’d been self-absorbed for quite some time with his moral quandary. Quickly, he took a last look at the façade above him. One of their prime goals today was to examine everything they could while they were here. Any inside knowledge of the Vatican and its buildings and occupants could be vital when the opportunity arose and the time finally came to hunt their quarry among these halls.

  Shuffling his feet a little, he followed the others through the arch and into the hallway within. The grand room inside occupied the entire ground floor of the building, as was evident by the sunlight shining in through the doorway opposite. A grand staircase rose at one side of the room, guarded by another soldier in the red cloak of the Vatican, with the crossed keys and papal crown livery. The walls were gold and marble and displayed more wealth than many palaces, a row of columned niches marching around the room halfway up, each containing a statue, presumably of a saint. Most of them, Skiouros noted with a huff of disdain, bore a weapon of some kind. How could a cardinal or a pope be expected to be a man of peace when even their saints were armed?