Assassin's Creed: Renaissance (41 page)

‘And then?’

The Abbot shrugged. ‘We suggested he take a nice long rest at a hermitage in the mountains. He didn’t quite… fit in here…’

‘It seems to me,
Abate
, that his time as a hermit may be over. Do you know where he may have gone now?’

‘Oh dear me…’ The Abbot searched his mind. ‘If he’s left the hermitage, it may be that he has returned to Santa Maria del Carmine, in Florence. It’s where he studied. Perhaps that’s where he’d go back to.’

Ezio breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Abbot. Go with God.’

It was strange for Ezio to be in his home town again, after so long. There were many memories to deal with. But circumstances dictated that he work alone. He could not contact even old friends or allies, lest the enemy were alerted.

It was also clear that even if the city remained stable, the church, at least, which he sought, was in turmoil. A monk came running from it in fear.

He accosted the monk. ‘Whoa, there, Brother. It’s all right!’

The monk looked at him, wild-eyed. ‘Stay away, my friend. If you value your life!’

‘What’s happened here?’

‘Soldiers from Rome have seized our church! They’ve scattered my brothers, asking questions that make no sense. They keep demanding that we give them
fruit
!’

‘What kind of fruit?’

‘Apples!’

‘Apples?
Diavolo!
Rodrigo has got here before me!’ hissed Ezio to himself.

‘They’ve dragged one of my fellow Carmelites behind the church! I’m sure they’re going to kill him!’

‘Carmelites? You are not
Dominicans
?’ Ezio left the man, and made his way carefully round the outer walls of Santa Maria, hugging them. He moved as stealthily as a mongoose confronting a cobra. When he reached the walls of the church’s garden, he skimmed to the roof. What he saw below him took even his experienced breath away. Several Borgia guards were beating the shit out of a tall young monk. He looked about thirty-five years old.

‘Tell us!’ cried the leader of the guards. ‘Tell us, or I will make you hurt so badly you’ll wish you’d never been born.
Where is the Apple
?’

‘Please! I don’t know! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

The lead guard leaned in close. ‘Confess! Your name is Savonarola!’

‘Yes! I told you! But you beat the name out of me!’

‘Then tell us and your suffering will cease. Where the fuck is
the Apple
?’ The interrogator kicked the monk savagely in the crotch. The monk howled in pain. ‘Not that
that’ll
make much difference to a man in your
missionary
position,’ jeered the guard.

Ezio watched, deeply concerned. If this monk was indeed Savonarola, the Borgia thugs might kill him before he himself got the truth out of the man.

‘Why do you keep lying to me?’ sneered the guard. ‘My Master will not be pleased to hear you made me torture you to death! Do you want to get me into
trouble
?’

‘I don’t have any apple,’ sobbed the monk. ‘I’m just a simple friar.
Please
let me go!’

‘In a pig’s eye!’

‘I know
nothing
!’ the monk cried piteously.

‘If you want me to stop,’ shouted the guard, kicking him again in the same place, ‘then tell me the truth, Brother Girolamo –
Savonarola
!’

The monk bit his lip, but stubbornly replied, ‘I’ve told you everything I know!’

The guard kicked him again, and had his henchmen grab his ankles and drag the man mercilessly along the cobbled ground, his head bouncing painfully on the hard stone. The monk screamed, and struggled in vain.

‘Had enough, you
abominato
?’ The lead guard held his face close again. ‘Are you so ready to meet your Maker, that you would lie again and again, just to see Him?’

‘I am a plain monk,’ wept the Carmelite, whose robes were dangerously similar in cut and colour to that of the Dominicans. ‘I have no
fruit
of any kind! Please…’

The guard kicked him. In the same place. Again. The monk’s body twisted in an agony beyond tears.

Ezio had had enough. He sprang down, a phantom of vengeance, slicing for once in pure rage with poison-dagger and double-blade. Within a minute of sheer slaughter, the Borgia thugs, all of them, lay either dead or groaning in the same agony they’d inflicted, on the flagstones of the courtyard.

The monk, weeping, clung to Ezio’s knees: ‘
Grazie, grazie, Salvatore
.’

Ezio stroked his head. ‘
Calma, calma
. It will be all right now, my Brother.’ But Ezio also looked at the monk’s fingers.

All ten were intact.

‘You have ten fingers,’ he murmured, disappointed despite himself.

‘Yes,’ cried the monk. ‘I have ten fingers. And I don’t have any other apples than those that come to the monastery from the market every Thursday!’ He stood up, shook himself down, tenderly readjusted himself, and swore. ‘In the name of God! Has the whole world stopped making
sense
?’

‘Who are you? Why did they take you?’ asked Ezio.

‘Because they found out that indeed my family name is Savonarola! But why should I betray my cousin to those thugs?’

‘Do you know what he’s done?’

‘I know nothing! He is a monk, like me. He chose the harsher Order of the Dominicans, it is true, but -‘

‘He has lost a finger?’

‘Yes, but how could anyone – ?’ A kind of light was dawning in the monk’s eyes.

‘Who is Girolamo Savonarola?’ persisted Ezio.

‘My cousin, and a devoted man of God. And who, may I ask, are you, though I thank you humbly for my rescue, and owe you whatever favour you may ask?’

‘I am… nameless,’ said Ezio. ‘But do me the favour of telling your name.’

‘Fra’
Marcello
Savonarola,’ the monk replied meekly.

Ezio took that in. His mind raced. ‘Where is your cousin Girolamo?’

Fra’ Marcello thought, struggling with his conscience. ‘It is true that my cousin… has a singular view of how to serve God… He is spreading a doctrine of his own… You may find him now in Venice.’

‘And what does he do there?’

Marcello straightened his shoulders. ‘I think he has set off on the wrong path. He preaches fire and brimstone. He claims to see the future.’ Marcello looked at Ezio through red-rimmed eyes, eyes full of agony. ‘If you really want my opinion, he spews
madness
!’

Ezio felt that he had spent too long on what seemed to be a fruitless quest. Chasing Savonarola seemed like chasing a will o’ the wisp, or a chimera, or your own tail. But the search had to continue, remorselessly, for the nine-fingered man of God held the Apple – the key to more than he could imagine possible, and he was a dangerous religious maniac, a loose cannon potentially less controllable than the Master, Rodrigo Borgia, himself.

It was Teodora who met him as he disembarked from the Ravenna galley at the Venice docks.

Venice in 1492 was still under the relatively honest rule of Doge Agostino Barbarigo. The city was abuzz with talk of how a Genoese seaman called Christoffa Corombo, whose mad plans to sail westwards across the Ocean Sea had been turned down by Venice, had got funding from Spain, and was about to set out. Had Venice itself been mad not to fund the expedition? If Corombo succeeded, a safe sea passage to the Indies might be established, side-stepping the old land route now blocked by the Ottoman Turks. But Ezio’s mind was far too full of other matters to pay much attention to these matters of politics and trade.

‘We have your news,’ Teodora said. ‘But are you certain?’

‘It’s the only lead I’ve got, and it seems a good one. I am certain that the Apple is here again, in the hands of the monk, Savonarola. I hear he preaches to the masses of the hell and fire to come.’

‘I have heard of this man.’

‘Do you know where he can be found, Teodora?’

‘No. But I’ve seen a Herald drawing crowds in the industrial district, preaching the kind of fire-and-brimstone stuff-and-nonsense you speak of. Perhaps he is a disciple of your monk. Come with me. You will certainly be my guest while you are here, and once you are settled we will go straight to where this man delivers his sermons.’

Both Ezio and Teodora, and indeed all intelligent and rational people, knew why a kind of blood-and-thunder hysteria was beginning to grip the people. The half-millennium year of 1500 was not far off, and many believed that that year would mark the Second Coming, when the Lord would ‘
come with clouds, in his own glory, and the glory of his Father, with ten thousand of his saints, even myriads of angels, and shall sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, and shall set the sheep, the Saved, on his right hand, and the goats, the Damned, upon the left
‘.

San Matteo’s description of the Last Judgement reverberated through the imaginations of many.

‘This Herald and his boss are really cashing in on the
febbre di fine secolo
,’ said Teodora. ‘For all I know, they believe in it themselves.’

‘I think they must do,’ said Ezio. ‘The danger is, that with the Apple in their hands, they may actually bring about a world disaster that has nothing to do with God, and everything to do with the Devil.’ He paused. ‘But for the moment they have not unleashed the power they have, and thank God for that, for I doubt if they would know how to control it. For the moment at least they seem content to foretell the Apocalypse – and that
‘ he laughed bitterly, ‘
has always been an easy sell.’

‘But it gets worse,’ said Teodora. ‘Indeed, you might almost believe that the Apocalypse were really at hand. Have you heard the bad news?’

‘I have heard none since I left Forlì.’

‘Lorenzo de’ Medici has died at his villa in Careggi.’

Ezio looked grim. ‘That is indeed a tragedy. Lorenzo was a true friend to my family and without his protecting hand I fear I may never recover the Palazzo Auditore. But that is as nothing compared with what his death may mean to the peace he maintained between the city-states. It was always fragile at the best of times.’

‘There is more,’ said Teodora, ‘And it is, if anything, worse news even than Lorenzo’s death.’ She paused. ‘You must brace yourself for this, Ezio. The Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia, has been elected Pope. He rules the Vatican and Rome as the Supreme Pontiff, Alexander VI!’

‘
What!
By what devilry – ?’

‘The Conclave of Rome has only just ended – this month. The rumour is that Rodrigo simply bought most of the votes. Even Ascanio Sforza, who was the most likely candidate standing against him, voted for him! Four mule-loads of silver was his bribe, they say.’

‘What profits him to be Pope? What is it he seeks?’

‘Is such great influence not enough?’ Teodora looked at him. ‘Now we are in the power of a wolf, Ezio. The most rapacious, perhaps, the world has ever seen.’

‘What you say is true, Teodora. But the power he seeks is even greater than that which the Papacy will give him. If he controls the Vatican, he is that much closer to gaining access to the Vault; and he is still on the trail of the Apple, the “Piece of Eden” he needs to give him – the power of God Himself!’

‘Let us pray that you get it back into the hands of the Assassins – Rodrigo as Pope and Master of the Templars is dangerous enough. Once he has the Apple as well…’ She broke off. ‘As you say, he will be indestructible.’

‘It’s odd,’ said Ezio.

‘What is?’

‘Our friend Savonarola doesn’t know it, but he has two huntsmen chasing him.’

Teodora conducted Ezio to the large open square in the industrial quarter of Venice where the Herald was wont to conduct his sermons, and left him there. Ezio, his hood up and his face lowered but watchful, blended in with the crowd that was already gathering. It wasn’t long before the square was packed, the mob thronging around a small wooden stage on to which a man now stepped, an ascetic-looking man with cold blue eyes and hollow cheeks, iron-grey hair and gnarled hands, dressed in a plain grey woollen robe. He started to speak, pausing only when the mad cheers of the crowd obliged him to. Ezio saw how skilfully one man could work hundreds into a state of blind hysteria.

‘Gather, children, and hear my cry! For the End of Days draws nigh. Are you ready for what is to come? Are you ready to see the Light my brother Savonarola has blessed us with?’ He raised his hands, and Ezio, who knew exactly what light the Herald was referring to, listened soberly. ‘Dark days are upon us,’ continued the Herald, ‘But my brother has shown me the path forward unto salvation, unto the heavenly light that awaits us. But only if we are ready, only if we embrace him. Let Savonarola be our guide, for he alone knows what is to come. He shall not lead us astray.’ Now the Herald leant forward earnestly on the lectern before him. ‘Are you ready for the final reckoning, brothers and sisters? Whom shall you follow when the time comes?’ He paused again for effect. ‘There are many in the churches who claim to offer salvation, the summoners, the pardoners, the scatterbrained slaves of superstition… But nay, my children! They are all in thrall to the Borgia pope, all in thrall to “Pope” Alexander, the sixth and most mortgaged of that name!’

The crowd screamed. Ezio, inwardly, winced. He remembered the apparent prophecies he had seen the Apple project in Leonardo’s workshop. Somewhere in the distant future: a time when hell would
truly
be unleashed upon the earth – unless he could stop it.

‘Our new Pope Alexander is not a spiritual man; he is not a man of the soul. Men like him buy your prayers and sell your benefices for profit. All the priests of our churches are ecclesiastical merchants! Only one among us is a true man of the spirit, only one among us has seen the future, and spoken with the Lord! My brother, Savonarola! He shall lead us!’

Ezio thought: had that mad monk
opened
the Apple, as he had himself? Had he unleashed the same visions? What was it Leonardo had said about the Apple
- unsafe for weaker brains
?

‘Savonarola shall lead us to the light,’ the Herald was concluding. ‘Savonarola shall tell us what is to come! Savonarola shall carry us to the front door of heaven itself! We shall not want in the new world that Savonarola has borne witness to. Brother Savonarola walks the very path to God we have been seeking!’