Dottor Torella received them in a spacious surgery on the Aventine, whose ceiling was hung with herbs but also with strange creatures—dried bats, the little corpses of desiccated toads, and a small crocodile. He was wizened, and a little bent in the shoulders, but he was younger than he looked, his movements were quick, almost lizardlike, and his eyes behind his spectacles were bright. He was also another Spanish expatriate, but he was reputed to be brilliant and Pope Julius had spared him—he was, after all, a scientist with no interest in politics.
What he was interested in, and talked about at length, was the New Disease.
“You know, both my former master and his father, Rodrigo, had it. It’s very ugly indeed in its final stages, and I believe it affects the mind and may have left both Cesare and the former Pope affected in the brain. Neither had any sense of proportion, and it may still be strong in Cesare—wherever they’ve put him.”
“Do you have any idea?”
“My guess is somewhere as far away as possible, and in a place he could never escape from.”
Ezio sighed. So much was surely obvious.
“I have called the disease themorbus gallicus—the French disease,” Dr. Torella plunged on enthusiastically. “Even the present Pope has it in the first stage and I am treating him. It’s an epidemic, of course. We think it came from Columbus’s sailors and probably Vespucci’s, too, when they came back from the New World—they brought it with them.”
“Why call it the French disease, then?” asked Leonardo.
“Well, I certainly don’t want to insult the Italians, and the Portuguese and the Spanish are our friends. But it broke out first among French soldiers in Naples. It starts with lesions on the genitals and it can deform the hands, the back, and the face, indeed the whole head. I’m treating it with mercury, to be drunk or rubbed on the skin, but I don’t think I’ve found a cure.”
“That is certainly interesting,” said Ezio. “But will it kill Cesare?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I must still find him.”
“Fascinating,” said Leonardo, excited by yet a new discovery.
“There is something else I’ve been working on,” said Torella, “which I think is even more interesting.”
“What is it?” asked his fellow scientist.
“It’s this: that people’s memories can be passed down—preserved—from generation to generationin the bloodline. Rather like some diseases. I’d like to think I’d find a cure for my morbus gallicus; but I feel it may be with us for centuries.”
“What makes you say that?” said Ezio, strangely disturbed by the man’s remark about memories being passed on through many years.
“Because I believe it’s transmitted, in the first instance, through sex—and we’d all die out if we had to do without that.”
Ezio grew impatient. “Thank you for your time,” he said.
“Don’t mention it,” replied Torella. “And by the way, if you really want to find my former master, I think you could do worse than looking in Spain.”
“In Spain? Where in Spain?”
The doctor spread his hands. “I’m a Spaniard; so is Cesare. Why not send him home? It’s just a hunch. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific.”
Ezio thought,It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack…But it may be a start.
FIFTY-FOUR
Ezio no longer kept the location of his lodgings secret. But only a few knew where they were. One of them was Machiavelli.
Ezio was awakened by him at four in the morning. A deliberate, urgent knocking at the door.
“Niccolò! What are you doing here?” Ezio was instantly alert, like a cat.
“I have been a fool.”
“What’s happened? You were working in Florence! You can’t be back so soon.” But Ezio already knew something grave had happened.
“I have been a fool,” said Machiavelli.
“What’s going on?”
“In my arrogance, I kept Micheletto alive.” Machiavelli sighed. “In a secure cell, to question him.”
“You’d better tell me what’s going on.”
“He has escaped! On the eve of his execution!”
“From that place? How?”
“Over the roof. Borgia diehards climbed to it in the night and killed the guards. They lowered a rope. The priest who confessed him was a Borgia sympathizer—he is being burned at the stake today—and smuggled a file into his cell. He sawed through just one bar on the window. He’s a big man, but it was enough for him to squeeze out and climb up. You know how strong he is. By the time the alarm was raised, he was nowhere to be found in the city.”
“Then we must seek him out, and”—Ezio paused, suddenly seeing an advantage even in this adversity—“having found him, see where he runs. He may yet lead us to Cesare. He is insanely loyal, and without Cesare’s support his own power is worthless.”
“I have light cavalry scouring the countryside even now, trying to hunt him down.”
“But there are certainly small pockets of Borgia diehards—like those who rescued him—willing to shelter him.”
“I think he’s in Rome. That’s why I’ve come here.”
“Why Rome?”
“We have been too complacent. There are Borgia supporters here, too. He will use them to make for Ostia, and try to get a ship there.”
“Bartolomeo is in Ostia. He’s fed up, but no one will escape him and hiscondottieri there. I’ll send a rider to alert him.”
“But where will Micheletto go?”
“Where else but Valencia—his hometown.”
“Ezio—we must be sure. We must use the Apple, now, this minute, to see if we can locate him.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Ezio turned and, in the bedroom of his lodgings, out of sight of Machiavelli, drew the Apple from its secret hiding place and brought the box that contained it back to his principal chamber.
Carefully he drew it out of its container with gloved hands and placed it on the table there.
He concentrated. The Apple began, very slowly at first, to glow, and then its light brightened until the room was filled with a cold illumination. Next, images, dim at first and indistinct, flickered onto the wall and resolved themselves into something the Apple had shown Ezio before—the strange, remote castle in a brown, barren landscape, very old, with a massive outer barbican, four main towers, and an impregnable-looking square keep at its center.
“Where is thatrocca? What is the Apple telling us?”
“It could be anywhere,” said Machiavelli. “From the landscape, Syria perhaps?”
“Or,” said Ezio as, with a sudden rush of excitement, he remembered Dr. Torella’s words, “Spain.”
“Micheletto can’t be in Spain.”
“I am certain he plans to go there!”
“Even so, we don’t know where this place is. There are many, many castles in Spain, and many similar to this one. Consult the Apple again.”
But when Ezio once more consulted the Apple, the image remained unchanged: a solidly built castle on a hill, a good three hundred years old, surrounded by a little town. The image was monochrome. All the houses, the fortress, and the countryside were an almost uniform brown. There was only one spot of color, a bright flag on a pole on the very top of the keep.
Ezio squinted at it.
A white flag with a red, ragged cross in the form of anX.
His excitement mounted. “The military standard of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella—of Spain!”
“Yes,” said Machiavelli. “Good. Now we know what country. But we still don’t know where itis. Or why we’re being shown it. Is Micheletto on his way there? Ask the Apple again.”
But the vision faded, to be replaced by a fortified hill town, from whose fort a white flag crisscrossed with red chains, their links filled with yellow, which Ezio recognized as the flag of Navarre. And then a third and final picture: a massive, wealthy seaport, with ships drawn up on a glittering sea and an
army gathering. But no clue about the exact location of any of these places.
FIFTY-SIX
Everyone was in place. Couriers rode daily between the points where the Brotherhood had set up bases. Bartolomeo was beginning to enjoy Ostia, and Pantasilea loved it. Antonio de Magianis still held down the fort in Venice. Claudia had returned for the time being to Florence to stay with her old friend Paola, who kept an expensive house of pleasure on which the Rosa in Fiore had been modeled, and La Volpe and Rosa watched over Rome.
It was time for Machiavelli and Ezio to go hunting.
FIFTY-SEVEN
“Leo, we need your help,” Ezio said, coming straight to the point as soon as his friend had, slightly reluctantly, allowed them into his studio.
“You weren’t very pleased with me last time we met.”
“Salai shouldn’t have told anyone about the Apple.”
“I told him in confidence.”
Machiavelli gave a sharp laugh. “In confidence?!”
“He got drunk in a wine booth and blurted it out to impress. Most of the people around him didn’t know what he was talking about but there was an agent of Pope Julius within earshot. He is very contrite.”
“Where is he now?” asked Ezio.
Leonardo squared his shoulders. “If you want my help, I want payment.”
“What kind of payment?”
“I want you to leave him alone. He means a lot to me; he is young, with time he will improve.”
“He’s a little sewer rat,” said Machiavelli.
“Do you want my help or don’t you?”
Ezio and Machiavelli looked at each other.
“All right, Leo—but keep him under a very close rein or by God we’ll show no mercy next time.”
“All right. Now, what do you want me to do?”
“We are having problems with the Apple. It seems not as acute as it was. Could there be something wrong with it mechanically?” asked Machiavelli.
Leonardo stroked his beard. “You have it with you?”
Ezio produced the box. “Here.” He took it out and placed it carefully on Leonardo’s large worktable.
Leonardo examined it with equal care. “I don’t know what this thing really is,” he conceded finally. “It’s dangerous, it’s a mystery, and it’s very, very powerful. And yet only Ezio seems able fully to control it. God knows, when it was in my power in the old days under Cesare, I tried. But I only partially succeeded.” He paused. “No, I don’t think the word ‘mechanical’ actually describes this thing. If I weren’t more of a scientist than an artist, I’d say this thing had a mind of its own.”
Ezio remembered the voice that had come from the Apple. What if Leonardo were unconsciously telling the precise truth?
“Micheletto is on the run,” said Ezio urgently. “We need to locate him, and fast. We need to pick up his trail before it’s too late!”
“What do you think he’s planning?”
“Ezio has convinced me that Micheletto has decided to go—we are almost certain—to Spain and there locate and liberate his master Cesare. They will then attempt to return to power. We will stop them,” said Machiavelli.
“And the Apple?”
“Shows an image of a castle, somewhere in Spain, it must be; it flies the Spanish flag, but doesn’t, or won’t, or can’t give its location. We also saw an image of a town flying the Navarrese flag. And a seaport with an army gathering to embark there. But the Apple gave us nothing on Micheletto at all,” said Ezio.
“Well,” said Leonardo, “Cesare can’t have jinxed it because no one’s that clever, so it must—how can I put this?—havedecided not to be helpful.”
“But why would it do that?”
“Why don’t we ask it?”
Ezio once again concentrated, and this time a most divine music, sweet and high, came to his ears. “Can you hear it?” he asked.
“Hear what?” replied the others.
Through the music came the voice he had heard before: “Ezio Auditore, you have done well. But I have more than played my part in your career and you must now return me. Take me to a vault you will find under the Capitoline, and leave me there to be found by future members of your Brotherhood. But be quick! You must then ride posthaste to Naples, where Micheletto is embarking for Valencia! This knowledge is my last gift to you. You have more than enough power of your own now to have no further need of me. But I will lie in the ground until future generations do have need of me. So you must leave a sign to indicate my burial place. Farewell, Mentor of the Brotherhood! Farewell! Farewell!”
The Apple ceased to glow and looked dead, like an old leather-bound ball.
Swiftly, Ezio told his friends what had been imparted to him.
“Naples? Why Naples?” Leonardo asked.
“Because it’s in Spanish territory. We have no jurisdiction there.”
“And because he knows—somehow—that Bartolomeo is policing Ostia,” said Ezio. “But we must make all speed. Come!”
Dusk was falling as Machiavelli and Ezio carried the Apple in its box down into the catacombs below the Colosseum and, passing through the dreadful gloomy rooms of the remains of Nero’s Golden House, carried torches before them as they made their way through a maze of tunnels under the old Roman Forum to a spot near the church of San Nicola in Carcere, where they found a secret door within the crypt. Behind it was a small, vaulted room, in the center of which stood a plinth. On this they placed the Apple in its box and withdrew. Once closed, the door ceased as if by magic to be visible even to them, but they knew where it was and near it drew the sacred, secret symbols that only a member of the Brotherhood would understand. The same symbols they inscribed at regular intervals along their way back, and again at the mouth of the entrance near the Colosseum from which they emerged.
Then, after meeting Leonardo again, who had insisted on joining them, they rode hard to Ostia, where they took a ship for the long coastal journey south to Naples. They arrived on Midsummer Day, 1505—Ezio’s forty-sixth birthday.
They didn’t go into the teeming, hilly town, but remained among the fortified docks, splitting up to search among the sailors, tradesmen, and travelers busy about their fishing smacks, their shallops, and their caravels, carracks, and cogs, visiting the taverns and brothels, and all in frantic haste, for no one, Spanish, Italian, or Arab, seemed to have an answer to their question:
“Have you seen a big man, with huge hands, scars on his face, thin, seeking passage to Valencia?”
After an hour of this, they regrouped on the main quay.
“He’s going to Valencia. He must be!” said Ezio through gritted teeth.
“But if he isn’t?” put in Leonardo. “And we charter a ship and sail to Valencia anyway—we might lose days and even weeks, and so lose Micheletto altogether.”
“You’re right.”
“The Apple didn’t lie to you. He was—or, if we’re lucky—is here. We just have to find somebody who knows for sure.”
A whore sidled up. “We’re not interested,” snapped Machiavelli.
She grinned. She was a pretty blond woman, tall and slim, with dark brown eyes, long, shapely legs, small breasts, broad shoulders, and narrow hips, maybe forty years old. “But youare interested in Micheletto Corella.”
Ezio swung around on her. She looked so like Caterina that for a moment his head swam. “What do you know?”
She snapped back with all the hardness of a whore: “What’s it worth to you?” Then came the professional smile again. “I’m Camilla, by the way.”
“Ten ducats.”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty! You’d earn less than that in a week on your back!” snarled Machiavelli.
“Charmer! Do you want the information or not? I can see you’re in a hurry.”
“Fifteen, then,” said Ezio, pulling out his purse.
“That’s better,tesoro.”
“Information first,” said Machiavelli as Camilla held out her hand for the money.
“Half first.”
Ezio handed over eight ducats.
“Generous with it,” said the woman. “All right. Micheletto was here last night. He spent it with me, and I’ve never earned my money harder. He was drunk, he abused me, he half strangled me while we were fucking, and he ran off at dawn without paying. Pistol in his belt, sword, ugly-looking dagger. Smelled pretty bad, too, but I know he had money because I guessed what he’d do and took my fee out of his purse when he finally fell asleep. Of course the bouncers from the brothel followed him, though I think they were a little scared, and kept their distance a bit.”
“And?” said Machiavelli. “None of this is of any use to us so far.”
“But they kept him in sight. He must have chartered a ship the night before because he went straight to a carrack called theMarea di Alba, and it sailed on the dawn tide.”
“Describe him,” said Ezio.
“Big, huge hands—I had them around my neck so I should know—broken nose, scarred face; some of the scars seemed to make him look like he had a permanent grin. Didn’t talk much.”
“How do you know his name?”
“I asked, just to make conversation, and he told me,” she answered, simply.
“And where was he going?”
“One of the bouncers knew one of the seamen, and asked him, as they were casting off.”
“Where?”
“Valencia.”
Valencia. Micheletto was going back to his birth-place—also the hometown of a family called Borgia.
Ezio handed her twelve more ducats. “I’ll remember you,” he said. “If we find you’re lying, you’ll regret it.”
It was already midday. It took them another hour to find a fast caravel available for charter and agree on the price. Another two hours were needed to victual and prepare the ship. Then they had to wait for the next tide. A caravel is a faster ship than a carrack. Even so, it was early evening before the sails were raised. And the sea was choppy and the wind against them.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Page 32
