Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (9 page)

He adjusted his hidden-blade and his sword and dagger, and was about to make a leap of faith down to a hay wain parked in the square below when his wound shrieked and he doubled up in pain.

“The
contessa
dressed my shoulder well, but she was right—I must see a doctor,” he said to himself.

Painfully he clambered down the tower to the street. He had no idea where to find a
medico
, so he first made his way to an inn, where he obtained directions in exchange for a couple of ducats; the money also bought him a beaker of filthy Sanguineus, which nevertheless assuaged his pain somewhat.

It was late by the time he reached the doctor’s surgery. He had to knock several times, and hard, before there was a muffled response from within. Then the door opened a crack to reveal a fat, bearded man of about sixty, wearing thick eyeglasses. He looked the worse for wear and Ezio could smell drink on his breath. One eye seemed larger than the other.

“What do you want?” said the man.

“Are you
Dottor
Antonio?”

“And if I am…?”

“I need your help.”

“It’s late,” said the doctor, but his eyes had wandered to the wound on Ezio’s shoulder, and his eyes became—cautiously—more sympathetic. “It’ll cost extra.”

“I am not in a position to argue.”

“Good. Come in.”

The doctor unchained his door and stood aside. Ezio staggered gratefully into a hallway whose beams were hung with a collection of copper pots and glass vials, dried bats and lizards, mice and snakes.

The doctor ushered him through into an inner room with a huge desk untidily covered with papers, a narrow bed in one corner, a cupboard whose open doors revealed more vials, and a leather case, also open, containing a selection of scalpels and miniature saws.

The doctor followed Ezio’s eyes and barked out a short laugh. “We
medici
are just jumped-up mechanics,” he said. “Lie down on the bed and I’ll have a look. Before you do, it’s three ducats—in advance.”

Ezio handed over the money.

The doctor undressed the wound and pushed and shoved so that Ezio virtually passed out with the pain.

“Hold still!” the doctor grumbled. He poked around some more, poured some stinging liquid from a flask over the wound, dabbed at it with a cotton wad, then produced some clean bandages and bound it back firmly.

“Someone your age cannot recover from a wound like this with medicine.” The doctor rummaged about in his cupboard and produced a vial of treacly looking stuff. “But here’s something to dull the pain. Don’t drink it all at once. It’s another three ducats, by the way. And don’t worry. You’ll heal over time.”

“Grazie, Dottore.”

“Four out of five doctors would have suggested leeches, but they haven’t proven effective against this sort of wound. What is it? If they weren’t so rare, I’d say it was from a gunshot. Come back if you need to. Or I can recommend several good colleagues around the city.”

“Do they cost as much as you do?”

Dr. Antonio sneered. “My good sir, you’ve got off lightly.”

Ezio stomped out into the street. A light rain had begun to fall, and the streets were already turning sticky and muddy.

“‘Someone your age,’” grumbled Ezio.
“Che sobbalzo!”

He made his way back to the inn. He’d seen they had rooms for rent. He’d stay there, eat something, and make his way to the mausoleum in the morning. Then he’d just have to wait for his fellow Assassin to show up. Machiavelli might at least have left some kind of rendezvous time with the
contessa
. But Ezio was aware of Machiavelli’s passion for security. He’d no doubt turn up at the appointed spot every day at regular intervals. Ezio shouldn’t have too long to wait.

Ezio picked his way through the wretched streets and alleys, darting back into the darkness of doorways whenever a Borgia patrol, easily recognized by the charging black bull device on their breastplates, passed clatteringly by.

It was midnight by the time he reached the inn again. He took a swig from the vial of dark liquid. It was good. He hammered on the inn door with the pommel of his sword.

The following day, Ezio left the inn early. His wound felt stiff but the pain was duller and he was far better able to use his arm now. Before leaving, he practiced a few strokes with the hidden-blade and found he could use it without difficulty, as well as more conventional sword-and-dagger work. It was just as well he hadn’t been shot in the shoulder of his sword arm.

Not being sure whether the Borgia and their Templar associates knew he had escaped the battle of Monteriggioni with his life, and noting the high number of soldiers armed with guns and dressed in the dark mulberry red and yellow livery of the Borgia, he took a roundabout route to the Mausoleum of Augustus. The sun was high by the time he reached it.

There were fewer people here, and after having scouted around, assuring himself that no guards were watching the place, Ezio cautiously approached it, slipping through a ruined doorway into the gloomy interior.

As his eyes quickly accustomed themselves to the darkness, he made out a figure dressed in black, leaning against a stone outcrop, and still as a statue. He glanced to each side to ascertain that there was somewhere to duck behind before the figure noticed him, but apart from tussocks of grass among the fallen stones of the ancient Roman ruin, there was nothing. He decided on the next best thing and swiftly but silently started to move toward the deeper darkness of the mausoleum’s walls.

But he was too late. Whoever it was had seen him, probably as soon as he’d entered, framed by the light from the doorway, and moved toward him. As it approached, he recognized the black-suited figure of Machiavelli, who placed a finger to his lips as he came. Beckoning him discreetly to follow, Machiavelli made his way into a deeper, darker area of the ancient Roman emperor’s tomb, built almost one and a half millennia previously.

At last he stopped and turned.

“Shh,” he said and, waiting, listened keenly.

“Wha—?”

“Voice down. Voice very low,” admonished Machiavelli, listening still.

At last he relaxed. “All right,” he continued. “There’s no one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cesare Borgia has eyes everywhere.” Machiavelli’s look softened a little. “I am glad to see you here.”

“But you left me clothes at the
contessa
‘s…”

“She had word to watch for your arrival in Rome.” Machiavelli grinned. “Oh, I knew you’d come here. Once you’d assured yourself of the safety of your mother and sister. After all, they are the last of the Auditore family.”

“I don’t like your tone,” said Ezio, bridling slightly.

Machiavelli allowed himself a thin smile. “This is no time for tact, my dear colleague. I know the guilt you feel about your lost family, even though you are not remotely to blame for that great betrayal.” He paused. “News of the attack on Monteriggioni has spread across this city. Some of us were sure that you had died there. I left the clothes with our trusted friend because I knew you better than to go and die on us at such a crucial time! Or at any rate, just in case!”

“You still have faith in me, then?”

Machiavelli shrugged. “You blundered. Once. Because fundamentally your instinct is to show mercy and trust. Those are good instincts. But now we must strike, and strike hard. Let’s hope that the Templars never know that you are still alive.”

“But they must already know!”

“Not necessarily. My spies tell me there was a lot of confusion.”

Ezio paused for thought. “Our enemies will know soon enough that I am alive—and very much so! How many do we fight?”

“Oh, Ezio—the good news is that we have narrowed the field. We have wiped out many Templars across Italy and across many of the lands beyond its boundaries. The bad news is that the Templars and the Borgia family are now one and the same thing. And they are going to fight like a cornered lion.”

“Tell me more.”

“We are too isolated here. We need to lose ourselves in the crowds in the center of town. We will go to the bullfight.”

“The bullfight?”

“Cesare excels as a bullfighter. After all, he is a Spaniard. In fact he’s not a Spaniard, but a Catalan, and that may one day prove to be to our advantage.”

“How?”

“The king and queen of Spain want to unify their country. They are from Aragon and Castile. The Catalans are a thorn in their side, though they are still a powerful nation. Come, and be cautious. We must both use the skills of blending in that Paola taught you so long ago in Venice. I hope you have not forgotten them!”

“Try me!”

They walked together through the half-ruined, once-imperial city, keeping to shadows where there was shadow, otherwise slipping in and out of crowds as fish hide in rushes. At last they reached the bullring, took seats in the more expensive and crowded shady side of it, and watched for an hour as Cesare and his many backup men dispatched three fearsome bulls. Ezio watched Cesare’s fighting technique: He used the banderilleros and the picadors to break the animal down before he himself delivered the coup de grâce, after a good deal of showing off. But there was no doubting his courage and his prowess during the grim ritual of death, despite the fact that he still had four junior matadors to support him. Ezio looked over his shoulder at the box of the
presidente
of the fight: there he recognized the harsh but compellingly beautiful face of Cesare’s sister, Lucrezia. Was it his imagination or had he seen her bite her lip until it bled?

At any rate, he had learned something of how Cesare would behave in the field of battle—and how far he could be trusted in any other kind of combat.

Everywhere there were Borgia guards, watching the throng, just as there had been in the streets before. And armed with those lethal-looking new guns.

“Leonardo…” he said involuntarily, thinking of his old friend.

Machiavelli looked at him. “Leonardo was forced to work for Cesare on pain of death—and a most painful death it would have been. It’s a detail—a terrible detail, but a detail nonetheless. The point is, his heart is not with his new master, who will never have the intelligence or the facility fully to control the Apple. Or at least I hope it isn’t. We must be patient. We will get it back—and we will get Leonardo back with it.”

“I wish I could be so sure.”

Machiavelli sighed. “Perhaps you are wise to be doubtful,” he said at last.

“Spain has taken over Italy,” said Ezio.

“Valencia has taken over the Vatican,” Machiavelli replied. “And we can change that. We have allies in the College of Cardinals, some powerful. They aren’t all lap-dogs. And Cesare, for all his vaunting, depends on his father, Rodrigo, for funds.” He gave Ezio a keen look. “That is why you should have made sure of this interloping Pope.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I’m as much to blame as you are. I should have told you. But as you said yourself, it’s the present we have to deal with, not the past.”

“Amen to that.”

“Amen.”

“But how do they afford all this?” Ezio asked, as another bull foundered and fell under Cesare’s unerring and pitiless sword.

“
Papa
Alexander is a strange mixture,” Machiavelli replied. “He’s a great administrator and he has even done the Church some good. But the evil part of him always defeats the good. He was the Vatican’s treasurer for years and found ways of amassing money—the experience has stood him in good stead. He sells cardinal’s hats, creating dozens of cardinals virtually guaranteed to be on his side. He has even pardoned murderers—provided they have enough money to buy their way off the gallows.”

“How does he justify that?”

“Very simple. He preaches that it is better for a sinner to live and repent, than to die and forgo such pain.”

Ezio couldn’t help laughing, though his laugh was a mirthless one. His own mind went back to the celebrations to mark the year 1500—the Great Year of the Half-Millennium. True, there had been flagellants roaming the country in expectation of the Last Judgment, and hadn’t the mad monk Savonarola, who’d briefly had control of the Apple, and whom he had himself defeated in Florence—not been duped by that superstition?

Fifteen hundred had been a great jubilee year. Ezio remembered that thousands of hopeful pilgrims had made their way to the Holy See from all parts of the world. The year had perhaps even been celebrated in those small outposts across the far seas to the west in the New Lands discovered by Columbus and, a few years later, by Amerigo Vespucci, who had confirmed their existence. Money had flowed into Rome as the faithful bought indulgences to redeem them from their sins in anticipation of Christ returning to Earth to judge both the quick and the dead. It had also been the time when Cesare had set out to subjugate the city-states of the Romagna, and when the king of France had taken Milan, justifying his action as being the rightful heir—the great-grandson of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.

The Pope had then made his son Cesare captain-general of the papal forces and Gonfaloniere of the Holy Roman Church in a great ceremony on the morning of the fourth Sunday of Lent. Cesare was welcomed by boys in silk gowns, and four thousand soldiers wearing his personal livery. His triumph had seemed complete: the previous year, in May, he’d married Charlotte d’Albret, sister of John, king of Navarre, and King Louis of France—with whom the Borgia were allied—gave him the Dukedom of Valence. Having already been Cardinal of Valencia, no wonder the people gave him the nickname Valentino!

And now this viper was at the peak of his power.

How could Ezio ever defeat him?

He shared these thoughts with Machiavelli.

“In the end, we will use their own vainglory to bring them down,” said Niccolò. “They have an Achilles’ heel. Everyone does. I know what yours is.”

“And that is?” snapped Ezio, needled.

“I do not need to tell you her name. Beware of her,” rejoined Machiavelli, but then, changing the subject, he continued, “Remember the orgies?”

“They continue?”

“Indeed they do. How Rodrigo—I refuse to call him Pope anymore—loves them! And you’ve got to hand it to him; he’s seventy years old.” Machiavelli laughed wryly and then suddenly became more serious. “The Borgia will drown under the weight of their own self-indulgence.”