The Abbey of San Benedetto in Polirone, the commune of San Benedetto Po in Northern Italy

July 24, 1115

It was late at night. A lone candle burned softly by the end table of palace bedroom. The elderly woman, propped up in bed a few hours beforehand by her attendants stopped writing on the wooden plank that she had over her legs. To stop working- it was an unusual moment for her. For her entire life, Matilda of Canossa had spent battling one fight after another. Accused of adultery and matricide at the age of 30. Forced to repel an invasion from the Holy Roman Emperor and guard the Holy Father Himself during the Investiture Controversy. Through her cunning and courage she, the youngest of the Tuscan Prince Boniface III and a woman above all would see an Emperor laid defeated at her feet.

She was the most accomplished woman in the world since Cleopatra, and she managed to do it without spreading her legs to greater men than her. She was Hera incarnate, Sisera with her peg and hammer over the corrupt influences of Emperor Henry IV. Yet age had made a decrepit ruin of the heroine's strength. She would leave with God soon, for Matilda of Canossa at the age of 69 laid motionless in bed, her legs purple, red and swollen with gout. She didn't have so much time any longer.

Which meant this that this little hooded harlot had better have a good reason for this interruption.

"Well?" Maltilda demanded to the shadows. The aged queen sighed with impatience, dipping her quill back into the inkpot and continued writing. "Get on with it."

The hooded girl dropped out of the rafters, a disgustingly sunny smile on her face.

"Sei Magnifiqo, Matilde di Canossa." The hooded girl gave a bow. "How long did you know?"

"Long enough." Matilda snapped. She didn't have time for these games. "What do you want, girl?"

The girl shuffled and smiled awkwardly, as if embarrassed. She turned her arm out and clenched her fist, and from behind a hand with its ring finger missing on it a blade slid smoothly out from under her wrist. Perhaps a lesser woman would have felt fear, but Matilda of Canossa had long since accepted her death. Instead, she felt relief. So it was all finally going to end tonight.

"Hmph. So you are one of those Assassino I have heard so much about. Have your band of drug addicts finally established a guild in my kingdom? My spies should have told me if so."

"Eheheh." The girl put her arms behind her back, the dagger sliding back into her sleeve. "Nope, La signora. I've come from Siria, from the Brotherhood in the Levant. While travelling, I learned all about you- I'm a big fan, Signoria. Did you really rally your troops against the Imperials and fight on the front lines in Val d'Enza?"

"When the historians finish write my tale," Matilda said through gritted teeth, "You can read all about it." The girl's face fell and for an insane moment, Matilda almost felt bad for treating her so harshly. Despite the girl's air-headed disposition, she didn't seem all that different from when Matilda was her age. The elderly woman had to specifically remind herself that this little bird was her to kill her.

Ha. Kill a dying old woman. What a joke.

Matilda of Canossa sighed, reaching out to dip her quill and scratch out a mistake she made. "Well, if you're going to kill me, little nightingale, do it after I finish my work."

"...And that day will never come, Signoria, will it?" The assassin said softly, approaching with muted footsteps.

"Aye, for those of import like I," Matilda replied, writing furiously. The aching in her joints was getting worse. Death would be a sweet release at this point. "Have a duty to God and kingdom. A little songbird like yourself could scarcely understand."

The hooded girl smiled. Leaning in, the girl pointed out a word scrawled in ink. "You misspelled, 'Rapacious' in 'rapacious peasantry', Signoria."

The elderly woman gave the girl a cold glare, before going back and crossing out the word.

"Signoria... it is true that I'm no great queen like yourself. You lord over the entirety of Tuscany answering only to God and the Emperor. I was not even lord over myself when I was born. Nor was my mother. I was a slave." The girl tilted her head, letting her dark hair cross over her eyes. "But surely you know that anyone- even the youngest daughter of a vassal prince- can bring down cities, kingdoms and empires."

"The 'Youngest daughter of a vassal prince', " Matilda repeated. That was referring to her, of course. "Is a far cry from a daughter of a slave, little songbird."

"Sì, Signoria." The girl smiled, cocking her head to the side in what the girl must have thought was cute. "I would never dream of laying an empire low like yourself. But a medium sized kingdom like your own... would be more fitting to my station, no?"

Matilda of Canossa turned to glare at the hooded girl, the fury that was missing from her heart for so long, rising up in her gut in a familiar heat. The elderly woman, with trembling hands, grabbed the assassin girl as hard as she could by the forearm, drawing the younger girl closer in.

"My death will not be the end of March of Tuscany, little bird." The Countess uttered, shaking. "Tell your paymasters, be it the Spaniards or the Patriarchs of Anatolia that Tuscany- will not fall!"

At this, the girl reached out, gently prying off Matilda's hands and embraced the elderly woman. Matilda couldn't help but notice the soft floral notes weaved into the girl's clothes. A Syrian flower. Hibiscus. She reminded- the songbird reminded her of her very own Beatrice, dead at childbirth. The Tuscan princess who was never to be. Ah! God! Ah, Beatrice! A lone tear ran down the widow's face. She sunk back into her silks, letting the fabrics caress her old, wrinkled flesh. The wetness she felt at her back must have meant that the assassin had done her deed. It was finally over.

"Sadly, Signoria... that is precisely why I am here. The Kingdom of Tuscany will fall, and the Assassini del Levante will make sure of it."

"W..." Matilda felt a great, sudden weakness wash over her, like she had never felt before. Blood rose to her throat instead of words. Is this what ordinary people felt? Powerlessness? "..hy?"

"I... my master, believes that the seeds of freedom are here, Signoria. That the people of Tuscany are ready to seize their destinies with their own hands."

"Their... destinies?" Matilda croaked out.

"Like you, Signoria. Like I." The girl sighed. "We all know that the Muslims will take Konstantine eventually. They cannot be stopped. So when all of the knowledge of the Greeks and all of the lofty ideas of the republic of Roma flee to Italia- greatness from freedom will be borne."

"A... republic." Matilda finished, closing her eyes.

"Yes, Signoria. A country for its people."

"A disaster... or... a fraud." Matlida coughed out. It was getting harder to breathe. But somehow... she felt better. Like a great blockage in her veins had been removed. "You think a drawing... a few lots... makes a country for its people? What a joke... what a..."

"Yes, it will fail." The girl nodded solemnly. "The powerful will stay powerful. The weak will be weak. And eventually a few men will rule over this beautiful country once more. But it must be done, my master says. It must be tried. For freedom. For truth."

The girl reached out and grasped Matilda's shirveled, cooling hands within her warm, petite ones. After a tight squeeze, the girl turned her hands down to take the wooden pallet from Matilda. On it, the letter that Matilda was writing to the Holy Roman Emperor concerning her successor upon her death. "I will change your letter here to recommend Count Radobo the German as your successor for steward of Florence instead of whoever this is."

"Dio ci aiuti... Radobo... is a fool. "

"Yes, he will fail." The hooded girl replied, reaching out with the quill to carefully cross out the first name and start writing in the incompetent count's name instead. "And a new Republic of Tuscany will rise in place."

The girl turned to Matilda of Canossa with a start, reaching out to pat her over the hands. "Ah, your part is done, Signoria. Thank you for all of you have done for Italy. For everything that you have done for the world, Grazie." The songbird's eyes grew ever softer. "Rest now, Matilda."

Matilda closed her eyes.

A destiny for her people...

She suddenly lunged out and gripping the girl's arms as tightly as she could with her failing hands. The abrupt motion was a bit too much for her and she lurched forwards, coughing up a mouthful of blood. A thin line of scarlet trickled downwards from her pale, bloodless lips. The little songbird held her, a concerned look underneath that hood.

My part? Done?

"Like Hell... it is..." Matilda muttered through bloodied teeth. "Maltilda... la Gran Contessa.. am no one's pawn. Give me the quill, girl. I will recommend Radobo myself."

The hooded girl, as if in awe, slowly turned the wooden pallet over, back to Matilda's lap. She couldn't feel the gout in her legs anymore, nor the cold wetness from the hole in her back, nor the thin, ever-growing trail of blood that was tracing a line from her lips to frame her chin. All she could see now was this letter. This wretched letter, which would destroy her entire life's accomplishments.

"Guide my hands, child. I will lead and you will follow."

It was morning now. Only when they were done, and the letter was finished, sealed and left outside of her locked bedroom doors where her attendants would send it off long before they would realize her death- did the Countess of Contessa, the Vice-Queen of Italy, Defender of the Faith and Imperial Vicar to Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth- finally breathe her last and rest.

The hooded girl took a step onto the windowsill. She looked back at the late Countess. And what the hooded girl saw made her laugh just a little. And she was gone.

Matilda of Canossa was a powerful widow who was the youngest child and daughter of Boniface III of Tuscany, the most powerful Italian Prince of the time and a key vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. During a crisis between Pope Gregory and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, she acted as a key ally for Gregory VII, remaining loyal to the pope despite Henry IV's overlord status over her. She won linchpin battles against Imperial Forces, eventually allying with Henry' IV's sons to eventually defeat the emperor once and for all. So great was the Vatican's respect for her courage and loyalty to the church that to this day she is only one of three women to be interred in Saint Peter's Basilica as well as the first non-Pope, non-Saint at all.

After her death, her successor Count Raldobo the German was so incompetent that he got himself killed by a mob three years into his rule, upon which the beginnings of the Republic of Florence began to form. Matilda's holdings included a large swath of Northern Italy that was known as the March of Tuscany. From this kingdom was essentially born many city-state republics. Though the Italian city-states republics were a bit of a unique case that wasn't necessarily replicated elsewhere in Europe, by extension of this example, it was certainly possible for a monarch to convert his kingdom into a republic simply by drumming up enough popular support for such a governmental shift with his incompetence. Though, as I mentioned in the short story above, these Republics were usually short-lived in their efficacy, if not their title. Around a hundred years or so after its establishment the Republic of Florence essentially became two familial camps rigging the elections against each other, and a few decades after that, it was just one familial camp rigging the elections- the Medici- while their enemies groveled in the dirt like the losers that they were.