Brotherhood

FIFTY-TWO

“Ezio, you must put Micheletto out of your mind,” Leonardo told him, as they sat in the former’s studio in Rome. “Rome is at peace. This Pope is strong. He has subdued the Romagna. He is a soldier as much as he’s a man of God and perhaps under him all Italy will find peace at last. And although Spain controls the south, Ferdinand and Isabella are our friends.”

Ezio knew that Leonardo was happy in his work. Pope Julius had employed him as a military engineer and he was tinkering with a host of new projects, though he sometimes pined for his beloved Milan, still in French hands, and talked in his more depressed moments of going to Amboise, where he had been offered all the facilities he needed whenever he wanted them. He frequently said he might go, when he had finished Julius’s commissions.

And as for the Romagna, Ezio’s thoughts turned often to Caterina Sforza, whom he still loved. The letter he’d received from her told him that she was now involved with someone else, the Florentine ambassador. Ezio knew her life remained in turmoil and that, despite Julius’s support, she’d been dismissed from her city by her own populace on account of her former cruelties in putting down their rebellion when they rose up against her late and intractable second husband, Giacomo Feo, and that she was now growing old in retirement in Florence. His letters in reply to her were at first angry, then remonstrative, then pleading; but she replied to none of them, and he knew that she had used him and that he would never see her again.

Thus it was with relationships between men and women. The lucky ones last; but too often when they end, they end for good, and deep intimacy is replaced by a desert.

He was hurt and humiliated, but he didn’t have time to deal with his misery. His work in Rome consolidating the Brotherhood and above all holding it in readiness kept him busy.

“I believe that as long as Micheletto lives, he will do his best to escape, free Cesare Borgia, and help him rebuild his forces.”

Leonardo was having his own problems with his feckless boyfriend, Salai, and barely listened to his old friend. “No one has ever escaped from the prison in Florence,” he said. “Not from those cells.”

“Why don’t they kill him?”

“They still think they might get something out of him, though personally I doubt it,” said Leonardo. “But in any case, the Borgia are finished. You should rest. Why don’t you take your poor sister and return to Monteriggioni?”

“She has grown to love Rome and would never return to such a small place now, and in any case the Brotherhood’s new home is here.”

This was another sadness in Ezio’s life. After an illness, his mother, Maria, had died; Claudia, after her abduction by the Borgia diehards, had given up the Rosa in Fiore. It was now controlled by Julius’s own spy network, using different girls, and La Volpe negotiated with his colleague Antonio in Venice to send Rosa, now older and statelier but no less fiery than she had been when Ezio had known her in La Serenissima, to Rome to run it.

And there was the problem of the Apple.

So much had changed. When Ezio was summoned to the Vatican for another interview with the Pope, he was unprepared for what he was to hear.

“I’m intrigued by this device you’ve got,” said Julius, coming as always straight to the point.

“What do you mean, Your Holiness?”

The Pope smiled. “Don’t prevaricate with me, my dear Ezio. I have my own sources and they tell me you have something you call the Apple, which you found under the Sistine Chapel some years ago. It seems to have great power.”

Ezio’s brain raced. How had Julius found out about it? Had Leonardo told him? Leonardo could be curiously innocent at times, and he had wanted a new patron very badly. “It was vouchsafed to me, in a manner I find hard to explain to you, by a force from an antique world to help us. And it has, but I fear its potential. I cannot think that the hands of Man are ready for such a thing, but it is known as a Piece of Eden. There are other Pieces, some lost to us, and others perhaps left hidden.”

“Sounds very useful. What does it do?”

“It has the ability to control men’s thoughts and desires. But that is not all: It is able to reveal things undreamed of.”

Julius pondered this. “It sounds as if it might be very useful to me. Very useful indeed. But it could also be turned against me in the wrong hands.”

“It is what the Borgia were misusing to try to gain total ascendancy. Luckily, Leonardo, to whom they gave it to research, kept its darkest secrets from them.”

The Pope paused once again in thought. “Then I think it better if we leave it in your care,” he said at last. “If it was vouchsafed to you by such a power as you describe, it would be rash to take it away from you.” He paused again. “But it seems to me that, after all, when you feel that you have no further use for it, you should hide it in a safe place, and maybe, if you wish, leave some kind of clue for any worthy successor—who knows, possibly some descendant of yours—who perhaps alone will be able to understand it, so that it may once more have a true use in the world, in future generations. But I do somehow believe this, Ezio Auditore, and perhaps I am truly being guided by God, that in our time no one but you should have custody of it; for perhaps there is some unique quality, some unique sense that enables you to withstand any irresponsible use of it.”

Ezio bowed and said nothing; but in his heart he acknowledged Julius’s wisdom, and he couldn’t have agreed more with his judgment.

“By the way,” Julius said, “I don’t care for Leonardo’s boyfriend—what’s his name? Salai? Seems very shifty to me. I wouldn’t trust him, and it’s a pity Leo seems to. But apart from that one little weakness, the man is a genius. Do you know, he’s developing some kind of lightweight, bulletproof armor for me? Don’t know where he gets his ideas from.”

Ezio thought of the bracer Leonardo had managed to re-create for him and smiled to himself. Well, why not? But now he could guess the source of the Pope’s information about the Apple, and he knew Julius had revealed it deliberately. Fortunately Salai was more of a fool than a knave, but he’d have to be watched and, if necessary, removed.

After all, he knew what the nickname Salai meant—little Satan.