Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

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.

FIFTY-THREE

Ezio made his way back to Leonardo’s studio soon afterward, but he failed to find Salai at home, and Leonardo was almost shamefaced about him. He’d sent him into the country and no amount of persuasion would get him to reveal where. This would have to be a problem for La Volpe and his Thieves’ Guild to deal with, but it was clear that Leonardo was embarrassed. Perhaps he would learn to keep his mouth shut in front of the boy in the future, for he knew that Ezio could place Leonardo himself in trouble. But fortunately Leonardo was still more of a help than a hindrance, and a good friend, as Ezio made very clear to him. But if there were any more breaches of security—well, no one was indispensable.

Leonardo was eager to make it up to Ezio, apparently.

“I’ve been thinking about Cesare,” he said, with his usual eagerness.

“Oh?”

“In fact, I’m very glad you’ve come. I’ve found someone I think you should meet.”

“Does he know where Cesare is?” asked Ezio.

If he did, thought Ezio, Micheletto would cease to matter. If he didn’t, Ezio might even consider letting Micheletto escape from his prison—for Ezio knew the Signoria well—and using the man to lead him to his master. A dangerous plan, he knew, but he wasn’t going to use the Apple…

But in the last resort, he wouldhave to use the Apple again; but it disturbed him increasingly. Ezio had been having strange dreams, of countries and buildings and technology that couldn’t possibly exist…

Then he remembered that vision of the castle, the remote castle in a foreign land. That was at least a recognizable building of his own time. But where could it be?

Leonardo brought him back from his musings.

“I don’t know if he knows where Cesare is. But he’s called Gaspar Torella, and he was Cesare’s personal physician. He’s got some ideas I think are interesting. Shall we go and see him?”

“Any lead is a good one.”

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?”