Claudia.
'The Borgia will not rest and the evil spirit of the Templars rides within them,' rejoined Ezio drily. 'No one will be able to sleep easily until their power is broken.'
'What if it never is?'
'We must never give up the fight. The minute we do that, we have lost.'
'E vero.' His sister's shoulders slumped, but then she straightened them again. 'The fight must never be given up,' she said firmly.
'Until death,' said Ezio.
'Until death.'
'Take care on the road.'
'Take care on the road.'
Ezio leaned down from the saddle to kiss his mother and his sister before wheeling the horse around and onto the road south. His head was pounding with the pain of his wound and the exertions of battle. More than this was the aching of his heart and soul at the loss of Mario and the capture of Caterina. He shuddered at the thought of her in the clutches of the evil Borgia family-he knew all too well what fate might befall her in their hands. But Ezio also knew that if ever a person would go down fighting, she was that person. He'd have to skirt the Borgia troops but his heart told him that, now that his main objective had been achieved, to break the Assassins' stronghold, Cesare would head home.
But the most important thing was to lance the boil that was infecting Italy, and lance it soon, before it could infect the whole body of the land.
He dug his heels hard into the horse's flanks and galloped south down the dusty road.
His head was swimming with exhaustion but he willed himself to keep awake. He vowed he would not rest until he arrived in the broken-down capital of his beleaguered country. But he had miles to go before he would be able to sleep.
THIRTEEN
How stupid had he been…to ride for so long, wounded; and so far-only breaking the ride for the horse's sake and then impatiently flogging the poor beast on before he was properly rested. Post-horses would have been a more sensible choice, but Campione was his last link with Mario.
Now-where was he? He remembered a crumbling, dingy suburb and then, rising out of it, a once-majestic yellow stone arch, an erstwhile gateway that pierced a formerly magnificent city's walls.
Ezio's impulse had been to rejoin Machiavelli-to right the wrong he had committed by not making sure that Rodrigo Borgia, the Spaniard, was dead.
But by God, he was tired!
He lay back on the pallet. He could smell the dry straw, its odor carrying with it a hint of cow dung.
Where was he?
An image of Caterina came suddenly and strongly into his mind. He must free her! They had to be together at last!
But perhaps he should also free himself from her-though part of his heart still told him that this was not what he really wanted. How could he trust her? How could a simple man ever understand the subtle labyrinths of a woman's mind? And, alas, the torture of love didn't get any less acute with age.
Was she using him?
Ezio had always maintained an inner room within his heart, where he was himself alone, where he had his sanctum sanctorum; it was kept locked, even to his most intimate friends, to his mother (who knew of it and respected it), to his sister, and, formerly, to his late brothers and father.
Had Caterina broken in? He hadn't been able to prevent the killing of his father and brothers, and by Christ and the Cross he had done his best to protect Maria and Claudia.
Caterina could look after herself-she was a book that kept its covers closed-and yet-and yet-how he longed to read it!
'I love you!'-his heart cried out to Caterina, despite himself. The woman of his dreams at last-at last, this late in life. But his duty, he told himself, came first-and Caterina-Caterina!-never truly showed her cards. Her brown, enigmatic eyes, her smile, the way she could twist him around her little finger. Her long, expert fingers. The closeness. The closeness. But also the keen silence of her hair, which always smelled of vanilla and roses…
How could he ever trust her, even when he laid his head on her breast after they had made passionate love and wanted-wanted so much-to feel secure?
No! The Brotherhood. The Brotherhood. The Brotherhood! His mission and his destiny.
I am dead, Ezio said to himself. I am already dead inside. But I will finish what I have to do.
The dream dissolved and his eyelids flickered open. They bestowed a view of an ample but elderly cleavage descending toward him, the chemise the woman was wearing parting like the Red Sea.
Ezio sat up rapidly in the straw he'd been lying on. His wound was properly dressed now, and the pain was so dull as to be almost negligible. As his eyes focused, they took in a small room with walls of rough-hewn stone. Calico curtains were drawn across the small windows, and in a corner an iron stove burned, the embers from its open door giving the place its only light. Then the door was shut, but whoever it was with him in the room lit the stump of a candle.
A middle-aged woman, who looked like a peasant, knelt beside him, came within the frame of his vision. Her face was kindly as she tended to his wound, rearranging the poultice and bandage.
It was sore! Ezio winced in pain.
'Calmatevi,' said the woman. 'The pain will end soon.'
'Where's my horse? Where's Campione?'
'Safe. Resting. God knows he deserves it. He was bleeding from the mouth. A good horse like that. What were you doing to him?'
The woman put down the bowl of water she was holding and stood.
'Where am I?'
'In Rome, my dear. Messer Machiavelli found you fainting in your saddle, your horse frothing, and brought you both here. And don't worry, he's paid me and my husband well to look after you and your horse. And a few more coins for our discretion. But you know Messer Machiavelli-cross him at your peril. Anyway, we've done this kind of job for your organization before.'
'Did he leave me any message?'
'Oh, yes. You're to meet him as soon as you're fit at the Mausoleum of Augustus. Know where that is?'
'One of the ruins, isn't it?'
'Dead right. Not that it's much more of a ruin than most of this awful city is nowadays. To think it was once the center of the world! Look at it now-smaller than Florence, half the size of Venice. But we do have one boast.' She cackled.
'And that is?'
'Only fifty thousand poor souls live in this shanty-town of a city that once was proud to call itself Rome; and seven thousand of them are prostitutes! That's got to be a record!' She cackled some more. 'No wonder everyone's riddled with the New Disease. Don't sleep with anyone here,' she added, 'if you don't want to fall apart with the pox. Even cardinals have got it-and they say the Pope himself, and his son, are sufferers.'
Ezio remembered Rome as if in a dream. A bizarre place now, whose ancient, rotting walls had been designed to encompass a population of one million. Now most of the area was given over to peasant farming.
He remembered, too, the ruined wasteland of what had once been the Great Forum in ancient times, where sheep and goats grazed now. People stole the ancient carved marble and porphyry stones, which lay higgledy- piggledy in the grass, to build pigsties with or to grind down for lime. And out of the desolation of slums and crooked, filthy streets, the great new buildings of Pope Sixtus IV and Pope Alexander VI rose obscenely, like
