Patience part 12

Villa Auditore, Monteriggioni, Anno 1490

Leonardo da Vinci was woken by quiet voices outside his window. He rose on bare feet but when he reached the window only the guard was left alone in front of the house. He stood for a moment hesitating and listening for noises from inside the house. When he couldn't hear anything he gave in to his curiosity. He lit his bedside candle with a coal from the fireplace and put on a robe.

He walked down the stairs to the ground floor; his bare feet hardly making any sound against the cool stone floors. He hoped it was Mario back with news about Ezio, the man had left some months earlier in search of him. In the last year or so Ezio had moved around so much that any letter sent had always come back unopened. Eventually, as even the small trickle of news dried up Mario had left in search of his nephew.

It was dark downstairs and he stood in the empty hallway wondering if he should just go back to bed, had Mario had news he would have come and found him. Then he saw that the door to the study was open. Curious, he walked in.

At first he thought the room empty and was on his way to leave when the candle flame flickered from a breeze of air and he saw the figure lying slumped over the desk. He knew that dark hair and white robes, he leapt over the floors and gently placed a hand on the man's shoulder. As he came closer he could see that Ezio was sleeping, back moving ever so slowly. He shook him.

"Ezio," the man did not react so he shook a bit harder,

"Wake up, you cannot sleep here," Ezio stirred slightly under him and groaned.

"Ezio, are you hurt?" he wondered if he should wake the servants so they could run for the medicus living in the town below, but Ezio slowly lifted his head and looked at him. Leonardo could tell he was not properly awake, eyes still unfocused.

Ezio looked starved and more tired than Leonardo had ever seen him before, eyes resting in deep, dark hollows, cheeks slightly sunken in. He had a light beard, when he had always gone clean shaven before. He stretched out for Leonardo and dragged a finger over his face.

"Why do you always hunt me artist?" he said but Leonardo could tell he did not really see him and was already falling back to sleep. He was trying to catch him, to get him to bed before it happened when Ezio spoke again and he froze in mid air.

"It is as if my mind has finally realized that my heart cannot beat without you..." the rest disappeared in a drawn out mumble as his head sank back onto his arms.

Leonardo stood indecisive, trying to digest what Ezio had said. He had always known that the man cared for him, loved him as a friend and he himself had whished that it was something more. Yet he had never been sure and the man had never said so.

He found himself hesitating as he tried to decide what to feel until the light flickered and died and the room sank into darkness. It stirred him from his reveries and he grabbed hold of the sleeping Ezio, pulling the man's arm over his shoulder and half dragged, half carried him to his bedroom.

He woke the servants and ordered up hot water, while he waited he undressed the sleeping man, placing all his weapons, armour and clothes in a pile to be taken outside later to be washed and mended. He stooped to wince in pain at the jagged scar across his stomach, he had heard from Mario that it had been close, but he had not felt it then as he felt it now seeing the ugly mark. He dragged a finger across the new skin thinking how fleeting and fragile life was.

As the water arrived he sent the maid away and washed him himself and never once during all this did Ezio wake up, he slept the sleep of a dead man. When he was done, he sat back and waited.

Claudia Auditore, Ezio's sister, entered the room as dawn was drawing near. She was dressed in a blue dress, simple but of fine quality. It was split for riding and she held her gloves in one hand. She stopped in front of the bed just looking at her brother and then up at Leonardo, now dressed, sitting in a chair half sleeping.

"You should go sleep artist, this one here will sleep for hours if not days," She smiled at her brother and pulled a strand of his hair away from his face.

"Thank you bella donna but I will stay," Leonardo said and she said nothing to counter him only nodded slightly, as if she had expected nothing else.

"He talks about you often you know," Leonardo was pulled fully awake.

"He does?"

"Yes," She laughed and Leonardo was struck by how much she resembled her brother, same dark eyes and hair and mouth curling like everything was a private joke, like her brother had been as a young man, "Yes indeed artist, you would be the king of the world if everyone believed my brothers tales."

Leonardo didn't answer, for some reason it had never occurred to him that Ezio would return home and speak to his sister about him. Or that he had ever been on Ezio's mind except when he was right there in front of him.

"I have to visit the farms today Leonardo, I will not be back until tomorrow," she said, "Will you make sure he eats when wakes?"

"Yes of course amica," she smiled at him again, cast one look at her brother and then left. She closed the door quietly behind her and Leonardo was again gladdened by the thought that she had taken him in so well these past months. Even though he had not seen her since she had called herself Claudia Auditore da Firenze she had greeted him like a long lost friend of the family.

He sat back in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him and let his eyes rest on the form of the sleeping Ezio and slowly as the birds started their morning song he drifted slowly into some sort of half sleep.

ooo

Venezia, Anno 1489, six months earlier...

Leonardo put another log on the small fire, it was cold even for late December and his workshop seemed to loose warmth faster than he keep the fire alive, if the temperature continued to drop it would slowly turn so cold that the very air would freeze. He was not sure air could actually freeze but he had read stories of places so cold that a man could die in a moment and where winds could freeze the water in your eyes. He poked at the fire trying to force the log to catch fire.

Eventually flames licked up the sides of the dried wood and he greedily reached out his hands trying to absorb some of the warmth. He stayed stooped down in front of the fire even though it hurt his back, anything to avoid looking at the room behind him. Instead he kept his eyes on the red and yellow flames as they danced in the soot stained fireplace.

"Almost time," a voice said all too soon from the dark room. Leonardo sighed, turned his hands over one last time before rising up from his crouched position. He turned around to nod at the man standing in the corner. He could not help seeing, and what he saw made pain explode in his chest all over again. Where once his studio had stood, messy but his mess, was now only disarray. Everywhere he looked was broken frames and torn book pages all trampled down into the ground; nothing had been left standing.

He had managed to save some of his paintings and he had carefully gathered most of his research notes from the floor. Not all documents were whole, but with enough time he would be able to piece them back together. He was carrying most of the things he had been able to save; rolled up paintings and documents he carried in a hard leather tube, as thick as a horse's thigh and a satchel filled with books that had survived the sacking was slung over his shoulder.

That someone, anyone, could do something like this to art, take something of utter beauty and break it, walk on it, piss on it, was beyond him. It was like a physical pain in his body to see the destruction of everything that he had cared about, yet he had opted to spend the day and early night here. He had convinced the assassins that this was now the last place the Templars would look for him. He had needed to say goodbye, to see it one last time and face what had happened here. They had promised to send what they could after him, when things had calmed down but even so it felt like he was leaving everything behind.

The man in the corner was leaning casually against the wall, head turned to the side as he scouted the road in front of the house. He was absently picking his nails with a small knife, although Leonardo found it hard to understand why since the rest of the man was so dirty that not even the smells of the desecrated room could completely disguise his stink.

"Are they here yet?" Leonardo said, restless now to leave this place behind him, to forget what had happened here.

" 'll be 'ere when 'll be 'ere," was the man's only answer and he flashed a toothless grin at him. Antonio had assured him that the man's ugliness was part of his brilliance, no one could bare to look at the pockmarked skin, trice broken nose, and black rotten teeth for long so no one remembered him, ideal for a thief. He was also one of the few that Antonio still trusted completely.

At that moment a quiet knock was heard on the back door, two short ones followed by a brief pause and finished by a single knock. Leonardo moved to open the door but was stopped as his grimy guardian stepped in front of him, showing him to be quiet with a finger to his lips. Leonardo nodded and the man smiled again and turned around to the door.

He turned his knife in his hand and hid his hand behind his back, the cruel inches of steel perfectly visible to Leonardo, if not anyone outside the door. He gently opened the door just an inch and after a brief moment of murmured discussion turned to Leonardo and nodded at him to follow.

They walked out and joined two cloaked men, hoods pulled down in front of their faces so Leonardo could not see who they were. The shorter of the two offered him a cloak of his own; he draped it over his shoulders, holding his satchel and leather case under the thick wool. He could see bulges in the other men's robes, but theirs looked like weapons. He pulled his hood up and they started walking, one man in front of him and one behind, the thief with no teeth, he had not volunteered his name, disappeared in front of them.

The brisk walk through the quiet city was tense, Leonardo tried to walk casually but he found that however much he tried his shoulders were painfully tense. At every step he expected to be stabbed in the back or find the shaft of an arrow sticking out of his stomach. He found himself walking faster only to bump into one of his guards in front of him, which made him slow down only to once again increase his pace. It was the most agonizing walk in his life, to believe that every second was your last, to fully expect to die and yet not be able to do anything about it.

He silently cursed the Templars and himself for being so stupid as to believe that they would leave him alone. He cursed over how helpless he felt and how they had driven him from his home. It had only happened a week ago, yet it felt like a lifetime. He wondered if he was another man now, if the pain and fear had been branded into his very bones or if he had been purged of these feelings forever. He would not know until he had time to relax; yet he knew that he had changed.

As it had become clear that the apple was truly gone it seemed the Templars had decided that anything would go. They must have been as desperate as the assassins. They had come at night and broken Leonardo's art in front of his very eyes, torn his books to pieces, and broken his models under their feet. They had injured him as well, although they had not realized that they had hurt him more by wreaking his life's work. The unspeakable things they had done to his body was like dust in the wind compared to seeing his very soul defiled.

He had even told them the simple truth, that he knew nothing about the apple; they had not believed him. He had been close in the end, close to telling them anything he knew about the assassins only to make them stop, for the pain to go away. As he had seen yet another painting ruined and tossed on the fire and as blood ran down into his eyes and made everything appear as it was washed in red he had wondered if there was anything he could say to make them stop.

That had been when Antonio and the thieves had broken in from all directions at once; the fight had been bloody but brief. In the chaos some of the Templars had escaped and it did not matter that he had told them nothing, now they knew he was important. They would come for him again if only to finish what they had begun.

He supposed that he had known deep down that it would eventually come to this, he had just not wanted to believe it and now he had to flee. He had spent days hiding in different basements and attics, allowing himself to be moved by night, as his wounds slowly healed while a new location had been sought for him. It had been Mario Auditore who had provided the solution, the Villa Auditore was well guarded by high walls and soldiers, he would be safe there. Especially if no one knew that was where he was.

Finally he could see water in front of him and smell the salt of the sea. They came to a small abandoned dock, the jetty was broken down and the water not deep enough for even most small boats. A lone man was waiting for him, the posture told him it was Antonio himself. The two men in cloaks held back, guarding the waterfront while the nameless man appeared again by their side and jumped into a small rowboat and seated himself by the oars.

Leonardo walked up quietly beside Antonio who was looking out at the dark sea. A storm lantern was giving off a low glow through the joints of its protected sides. He didn't say anything; he had nothing to say anymore, thanks and goodbyes already over and done with. They stood in silence for a moment before Antonio turned to him, a serious cast to his eyes. He placed a hand on Leonardo's shoulder, squeezing lightly before letting go.

"Tell him to come back to us will you vecchio amico?" There was no question who he was talking about, there had hardly been any news from Ezio in months, only a stray letter now and then indicating no success.

Leonardo just shook his head, he had no influence there, nothing to offer. Antonio smiled sadly.

"For all his years he is still only a boy at heart," the thief pulled up his hood and waved at Leonardo one last time before vanishing in the dark. Leonardo strained his eyes and ears but he could not see or hear him anymore, it was as if he had never been there.

He picked up the lantern and his items and walked with determined steps towards the row boat. He did not look back at Venezia, in his heart he was already somewhere new.


Okay, I'm pleased to tell you that the end is now in sight! Thanks for being patient and staying with me, will try not to disappoint=)