Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

She received them in a sumptuous parlor on thepiano nobile of her large house, whose windows (on four sides) provided sublime vistas of the once-great city, now part crumbling, but also part magnificent, since the last few Popes had poured money into self-aggrandizement.

“I don’t see how I can help you,” she said after listening to them, but Ezio noticed that she didn’t meet their eyes.

“If there are pockets of diehards in the city, we need to know about them,Altezza, and we need your help,” said Machiavelli. “If we find out later that you have held out on us…”

“Don’t threaten me, young man,” retorted Vannozza. “Dio mio! Do you know how long ago it is since Rodrigo and I were lovers? Well over twenty years!”

“Perhaps your children…?” asked Ezio.

She smiled grimly. “I expect you are wondering how a woman like me could have produced such a brood,” she said. “But I tell you there is very little Cattanei blood in them. Well, in Lucrezia, perhaps; but Cesare…” She broke off, and Ezio could see the pain in her eyes.

“Do you know where he is?”

“I know no more than you do. And I don’t care to. It’s years since I’ve even seen him, though we lived in the same city. He is as one dead to me.”

Clearly the Pope was being very careful to keep Cesare’s whereabouts secret. “Perhaps your daughter knows?”

“If I don’t, why should she? She lives in Ferrara now. You could go and ask her, but it’s a long way north, and the Holy Father has forbidden her ever to return to Rome.”

“Do you see her?” asked Machiavelli.

Vannozza sighed. “As I said, Ferrara’s a long way north. I don’t care to travel much these days.”

She looked around the room, glancing at the servants who stood near the door, and occasionally at the water clock. She’d offered them no refreshment and seemed eager for them to go. She constantly kneaded her hands together. An unhappy woman, and ill at ease, but whether that was because she was concealing something, or because she was being forced to talk of people she’d clearly rather not talk about, Ezio could not say.

“I have—or, rather,had—eight grandchildren,” she said unexpectedly. Ezio and Machiavelli knew that Lucrezia had had several children by her various husbands, but few had survived childhood. People said that Lucrezia had never taken pregnancy very seriously, and indeed she had had a habit of partying and dancing right up to the moment of her accouchement. Had that alienated her from her mother? Cesare had a daughter, Louise, who was a child of four.

“Do you see any of them?” asked Machiavelli.

“No. Louise is still in Rome, I think, but her mother has made sure that she’s much more French than Italian.”

She rose then, and the servants, as if on cue, opened the room’s ornate double doors.

“I wish I could be of more assistance…”

“We thank you for your time,” said Machiavelli drily.

“There are other people you might like to talk to,” said Vannozza.

“We intend to visit thePrincesse d’Albret.”

Vannozza pressed her lips together.“Buona fortuna,” she said, without conviction. “You’d better hurry, too. I hear she’s making preparations to leave for France. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, she’ll come and say goodbye.”

Ezio and Machiavelli had risen, too, and made their farewells.

Once outside in the street, Machiavelli said, “I think we’ll have to use the Apple, Ezio.”

“Not yet.”

“Have it your own way, but I think you’re a fool. Let’s go and see the princess. Lucky we can both speak French.”

“Charlotte d’Albret won’t be leaving for France today. I’ve got men watching her palazzo, in any case. No, there’s someone else I want to see first. I’m surprised Vannozza didn’t mention her.”

“Who?”

“Giulia Farnese.”

“Doesn’t she live in Carbognano these days?”

“My spies tell me she’s in town. We have to take advantage of that.”

“What makes you think we’ll get any more out of her than we got out of Vannozza?”

Ezio smiled. “Giulia was Rodrigo’s last mistress. He was passionate about her!”

“I remember when the French captured her. He was beside himself. And then the French foolishly ransomed her for three thousand ducats. He’d have paid twenty times that amount to get her back. And he’d probably have struck any kind of deal they wanted. But I guess that’s what happens when your mistress is well over forty years younger than you are. You get besotted.”

“Didn’t stop him from dumping her when she turned twenty-five.”

“Yes. Too old for him by then! But let’s hurry.”

They made their way north through the narrow streets in the direction of the Quirinale.

On the way, Machiavelli noticed that Ezio was looking increasingly uneasy.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Have you not noticed anything?”

“What?”

“Don’t look around!” Ezio was terse.

“No.”

“Then I think we’re being followed—by a woman.”

“Since when?”

“Since we left Vannozza’s palazzo.”

“One of her people?”

“Perhaps.”

“Alone?”

“Think so.”

“Then we’d better shake her.”

Impatient though they were to get on, they slowed their pace, looking in shop windows, even pausing at a wine booth. There, over the rim of his beaker, Ezio caught sight of a tall, athletically built blond woman dressed in a good but unassuming dark green robe of some lightweight material. She’d be able to move fast in clothes like that if the need arose.

“I’ve got her,” he said.

They both scanned the wall of the building against which the booth was erected. It was a new place, constructed in the fashionably rusticated style of large roughened slabs of stone separated by sunken joints. At intervals, iron rings for tethering horses had been set into the wall.

It was perfect.

They made their way to the back of the booth but there was no way out there.

“We’ll have to be quick,” said Machiavelli.

“Watch me!” replied Ezio, putting his beaker down on a table near the entrance. A few seconds later he was halfway up the wall, with Machiavelli close behind. Bystanders gaped as the two men, their capes fluttering in the breeze, disappeared over the rooftops, leaping across alleyways and streets, and sending tiles skittering down, to smash on the cobbles or flop in the mud of unmade lanes as the people below ducked or jumped out of the way.

Even if she’d been able to, the woman couldn’t climb vertical walls, however conveniently easy they were, in a long skirt, but Ezio saw that her dress had a carefully disguised slit to the thigh on one side, enabling her to run, and she was tearing through the streets after them, thrusting aside anyone who got in her way. Whoever she was, she was well trained.

But at last they lost her. Breathing hard, they came to a halt on the roof of San Niccolo de Portiis and lay