Assassin's Creed: Revelations (39 page)

Dogan, though lacking Yusuf ’s élan, made up for this by his organizational skills and his complete devotion to the Creed. He might make a Mentor one day, Ezio thought. But his own feelings seemed to have been cut adrift. He no longer knew what he believed, if he believed in anything at all, and this, with one other thing, was what had preoccupied him during the long voyage home.

Home! What could he call home? Rome? Florence? His work? But he had no real home, and he knew in his heart that his experience in Altaïr’s hidden chamber at Masyaf had marked the end of a page in his life. He had done what he could, and he had achieved peace and stability—for the time being—in Italy and in the East. Could he not afford to spend a little time on himself? His days were growing short, he knew, but there were still enough of them left to reap a harvest. If he dared take the risk.

 

 

Ezio spent his fifty-third birthday, Midsummer’s Day, 1512, with Sofia. The days permitted him by Selim’s visa were also growing short in number. His mood seemed somber. They were both apprehensive, as if some great weight were hanging over them. In his honor she had prepared a completely Florentine banquet:
salsicce di cinghiale
and
fettunta
, then
carciofini sott’olio
, followed by
spaghetti allo scoglio
and
bistecca alla fiorentina
; and afterward a good dry
pecorino
. The cake she made was a
castagnaccio
, and she threw in some
brutti ma buoni
for good measure. But the wine, she decided, should come from the Veneto.

It was all far too rich, and she’d made far too much, and he did his best, but she could see that food, even food from home, which had cost her a fortune to get, was the last thing on his mind.

“What will you do?” she asked him.

He sighed. “Go back to Rome. My work here is done.” He paused. “And you?”

“Stay here I suppose. Go on as I have always done. Though Azize is a better bookseller than I ever was.”

“Maybe you should try something new.”

“I don’t know if I’d dare to, on my own. This is what I know. Though—” she broke off.

“Though what?”

She looked at him. “I have learned that there is a life outside books.”

“All life is outside books.”

“Spoken like a true scholar!”

“Life enters books. It isn’t the other way round.”

Sofia studied him. She wondered how much longer he’d hesitate. Whether he’d ever come to the point at all. Whether he’d dare. Whether he even wanted to—though she tried to keep that thought at bay—and whether she’d dare prompt him. That trip to Adrianopolis without him had been the first time she’d realized what was happening to her, and she was pretty sure it had happened to him as well. They were lovers—of course they were lovers. But what she really longed for hadn’t happened yet.

They sat at her table for a long time in silence. A very charged silence.

“Azize, unlike you, has not sprung back from her ordeal at Ahmet’s hands,” said Ezio, finally, and slowly, pouring them both fresh glasses of Soave. “She has asked me to ask you if she may work here.”

“And what is your interest in that?”

“This place would make an excellent intelligence center for the Seljuk Assassins.” He corrected himself hastily. “As a secondary function, of course, and it would give Azize a quieter role in the Order. That is, if you . . .”

“And what will become of me?”

He swallowed hard. “I—I wondered if—”

He went down on one knee.

Her heart was going like mad.

EIGHTY

They decided it would be best to marry in Venice. Sofia’s uncle was vicar general of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in the San Polo district and had offered to officiate—as soon as he realized that Ezio’s late father had been the eminent banker Giovanni Auditore, he had given the marriage his wholehearted blessing. Ezio’s connection with Pietro Bembo didn’t do any harm, either, and though Lucrezia Borgia’s former lover couldn’t attend, being away in Urbino, the guests did include Doge Leonardo Loredan and the up-and-coming young painter Tizian Vecelli, who, smitten by Sofia’s beauty, and jealous of Dürer’s picture of her, offered, for a friendly price, to do a double portrait of them as a wedding tribute.

The Assassin Brotherhood had paid Sofia a generous price for her bookshop, and under it, in the cistern Ezio had discovered, the five keys of Masyaf were walled up and sealed. Azize, though sad to see them go, was also overjoyed at her new profession.

They stayed in Venice, allowing Sofia to acquaint herself with her scarcely known homeland and to make friends with her surviving relatives. But Ezio began to grow restless. There had been impatient letters from Claudia in Rome. Pope Julius II, long the Assassins’ protector, was approaching his sixty-ninth birthday and ailing. The succession was still in doubt, and the Brotherhood needed Ezio there to take charge of things in the interim period that would follow Julius’s death.

But Ezio, though worried, still put off making any arrangements for their departure.

“I no longer wish to be part of these things,” he told Sofia in answer to her inquiry. “I need to have time to think for myself, at last.”

“And to think of yourself, perhaps.”

“Perhaps that, too.”

“But still, you have a duty.”

“I know.”

There were other things on his mind. The leader of the North European branch of the Brotherhood, Desiderius Erasmus, had written to Claudia from Queens’ College at Cambridge, where the wandering scholar was for the present living and teaching, that there was a newly appointed
Doctor in Bible
at Wittenberg, a young man called Luther, whose religious thinking might need watching, as it seemed to be leading to something very revolutionary indeed—something that might yet again threaten the fragile stability of Europe.

He told Sofia of his concern.

“What is Erasmus doing?”

“He watches. He waits.”

“Will you recruit new men to the Order if there is a shift away from the Roman Church in the north?”

Ezio spread his hands. “I will be advised by Desiderius.” He shook his head. “Everywhere, always, there is fresh dissent and division.”

“Isn’t that a feature of life?”

He smiled. “Perhaps. And perhaps it is not my fight anymore.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” She paused. “One day, you will tell me what really happened in that vault under Masyaf.”

“One day.”

“Why not tell me now?”

He looked at her. “I will tell you this. I have come to realize that the progress of Mankind toward the goals of peace and unity will always be a journey—there will never be an arrival. It’s just like the journey through life of any man or woman. The end is always the interruption of that journey. There is no conclusion. There is always unfinished business.” Ezio was holding a book in his hands as he spoke—Petrarch’s
Canzoniere
. “It’s like this,” he continued. “Death doesn’t wait for you to finish a book.”

“Then read what you can, while you can.”

With a new determination, Ezio made arrangements for the journey back to Rome.

By that time, Sofia was pregnant.

EIGHTY-ONE

“What took you so long?” Claudia snapped, then pulled him to her and kissed him hard on both cheeks. “
Fratello mio.
You’ve put on weight. All that Venetian food. Not good for you.”

They were in the Assassins’ Headquarters on Tiber Island. It was late in February. Ezio’s arrival back in Rome had coincided with the funeral of Pope Julius.

“Some good news, I think,” Claudia went on. “Giovanni di Lorenzo de Medici is going to be elected.”

“But he’s only a deacon.”

“Since when has that stopped anyone from becoming pope?”

“Well, it would be good news if he gets it.”

“He has the backing of almost the entire College of Cardinals. He’s even chosen a name—Leo.”

“Will he remember me?”

“He could hardly forget that day back in the
duomo
in Florence when you saved his father’s life. And his own, by the way.”

“Ah,” said Ezio, remembering. “The Pazzi. It seems like a long time ago.”

“It is a long time ago. But little Giovanni is all grownup now—he’s thirty-eight, would you believe? And a tough customer.”

“As long as he remembers his friends.”

“He’s strong. That’s what counts. And he wants us on his side.”

“If he is just, we will stand by him.”

“We need him as much as he needs us.”

“That is true.” Ezio paused, looking round the old hall. So many memories. But it was almost as if they had nothing to do with him any longer. “There is something I need to discuss with you, sister.”

“Yes?”

“The question of . . . my successor.”

“As Mentor? You are giving up?” But she did not sound surprised.

“I have told you the story of Masyaf. I have done all I can.”

“Marriage has softened you up.”

“It didn’t soften you up, and you’ve done it twice.”

“I do approve of your wife, by the way. Even if she is a Venetian.”

“When’s the happy event?”

“May.”

She sighed. “It’s true. This job wears one out. The Blessed Mother knows, I’ve only been doing it in your stead for two short years, but I have come to realize what you have been carrying on your shoulders for so long. But have you thought of who might take on the mantle?”

“Yes.”

“Machiavelli?”

Ezio shook his head. “He would never accept. He is far too much of a thinker to be a leader. But the job—and I say this in all modesty—needs a strong mind. There is one of our number, never called on to assist us before in anything but his diplomatic missions, whom I have sounded out, and who, I think, is ready.”

“And do you think the others—Niccolò himself, Bartolomeo, Rosa, Paola, and Il Volpe—will they elect him?”

“I think so.”

“Who have you in mind?”

“Lodovico Ariosto.”

“He was Ferraran ambassador to the Vatican twice.”

“And Julius nearly had him killed.”

“That wasn’t his fault. Julius was in conflict with Duke Alfonso at the time.”

Claudia looked astonished. “Ezio—have you taken leave of your senses? Do you not remember who Alfonso is married to?”

“Lucrezia—yes.”

“Lucrezia
Borgia
.”

“She’s leading a quiet life these days.”

“Tell Alfonso that! Besides, A riosto’s a sick man—and, by Saint Sebastian, he’s a weekend poet! I hear he’s working on some tosh about
Sieur
Roland.”

“Dante was a poet. Being a poet doesn’t automatically emasculate you, Claudia. And Lodovico is only thirty-eight, he’s got all the right contacts, and, above all, he’s loyal to the Creed.”

Claudia looked sullen. “You might as well have asked Castiglione,” she muttered. “He’s a weekend
actor
.”

“My decision is taken,” Ezio told her, firmly. “But we will leave it to the Assassin Council to ratify it.”

She was silent a long time, then smiled, and said, “It’s true that you need a rest, Ezio. Perhaps we all do. But what are your plans?”

“I’m not sure. I think I’d like to show Sofia Florence.”

Claudia looked sad. “There’s not much left of the Auditores there to show her. A nnetta’s dead, did you know?”

“Annetta? When?”

“Two years ago. I thought I wrote to you about it.”

“No.”

They both fell silent, thinking of their old housekeeper, who had stayed loyal and helped save them after their family and their home were destroyed by Templar agents over thirty years earlier.

“Nevertheless, I’m taking her there.”

“And what will you do there? Will you stay?”

“Sister, I really don’t know. But I thought . . . If I can find the right place . . .”

“What?”

“I might grow a little wine.”

“You don’t know the first thing about it!”

“I can learn.”

“You—in a vineyard! Cutting bunches of grapes!”

“At least I know how to use a blade.”

She looked scornful. “Brunello di Auditore, I suppose! And what else? Between harvests, I mean.”

“I thought—I might try my hand at a bit of writing.”

Claudia almost exploded.

EIGHTY-TWO

But Claudia would later come to love her visits to the estate in the hills above Florence that Ezio and Sofia found, more or less falling down, but bought and, with the proceeds from the sale of the Constantinople bookshop to the Assassins, and Ezio’s own capital, restored and turned into a modest, but quite profitable, vineyard within two years.

Ezio became lean and tanned, wore workmen’s clothes during the day, and Sofia scolded him, telling him that his hands were getting too gnarled for lovemaking from working on the vines.

But that hadn’t prevented them from producing Flavia in May 1513, and Marcello arrived a year later, in October.

And Claudia loved her new niece and nephew almost more than she thought possible, though she made quite sure, given the twenty-year difference in their ages, that she never became a kind of ersatz mother-in-law to Sofia. She never interfered, and she disciplined herself to visit the Auditore estate near Fiesole no more than half the number of times she would have liked to. Besides, she had a new husband in Rome to think about as well.

But Claudia couldn’t love the children as much as Ezio did. In them, and in Sofia, Ezio had at last found the
reason
, which he had spent a lifetime seeking.

EIGHT Y-THREE

Machiavelli had had a hard time of it, politically, and even spent a while in prison, but when the white water was past, and he was able to take up the reins of his life in Florence again, he was a frequent visitor to the Villa Auditore.