I knocked on the door. "Claudia, may I come in?"
"I don't care," was her reply, so I went in. She was lying face down on her bed, her face pillowed on her arm. I sat down next to her.
"He didn't even tell me he was watching me to see if I'd make a good Assassin," she mumbled into her arm. "Or what I had to do to prove myself."
"Perhaps that was the point." I said, reasonably.
"Maybe I should just get married. I don't seem to be fit for anything else." My, this was certainly a good wallow in self-pity on Claudia's part. Well, don't we all need to wallow now and then? And she'd just been humiliated. "But if he won't talk to me anymore if I do, or let Ezio…"
"Your uncle wouldn't abandon you even if you took him up on the offer of finding you a husband, any husband," I told her. "If you weren't safe and reasonably content, he would do something, provided Ezio didn't get there first. I even think if you tried hard to prove you had the fortitude and endurance of an Assassin, he might reconsider."
Her head lifted up and she glared at me. "I just accused you of adultery," she half-snarled, half-groaned. "Why aren't you screaming at me? Or at least being nasty? Why are you being nice?"
"Maybe because I know you'll suffer more this way," I said, and smiled at her. Nicely, of course.
She put her head back down. "Hrmmmph," was her reply.
"I don't blame you for jumping to the obvious conclusion," I said, "If there had been anything more than friendship going on between Leo and me, I would never have left Firenze in the first place. In a lot of ways, he and I are very compatible. Just not in the ways that would make a marriage work.
"Here and now, among the upper classes, most marriages are just contracts where a woman agrees to bear one man's children exclusively and he agrees to stick around and provide for them, with a certain amount of housekeeping thrown in, but that isn't my idea of marriage, and from what I understand, it wasn't your parents' idea of it either. I think your uncle would rather that you had the chance to make a real marriage and didn't settle for a mere contract. You saw one of those for yourself today—Lorenzo and Clarice—and you can see how well that works out."
Claudia sat up suddenly. "Can I ask you a question? What exactly is the Florentine Vice? I still don't understand."
"Ummm—I can answer that, but only if we cry friends first. "
"Why?" she asked.
"Because my explanation would, if repeated to the wrong people, get me excommunicated and possibly burned at the stake."
"It's that bad?" Her brow creased.
"Maybe not quite, but the penance would be terrible for both of us. Friends?" I extended my hand.
"I wanted to give up hating you anyway," she said. "It was getting boring, and I didn't like myself for it."
That last statement pretty much summed up why I had gone through three centuries of celibacy in so many words, but I could hardly share that thought with her.
"Friends, then," she said, shaking hands.
"All right." I took a deep breath. "First of all, what I am about to tell you is a combination of what I've read, what I've observed, my own opinions, and a touch of actual personal experience. Um, you do know how babies are made, more or less, don't you?"
"Yes," she replied. "I have lived in the country for nearly four years, and between harvest festivals and farm animals, I figured it out."
"Good, that saves a long explanation right there. I'm sure you 've also read poetry that goes on and on about the joys of love without mentioning that those same joys and making babies are related. They are. There are emotional joys to love, but mainly what the poets are talking about is the physical. The reason why there should be physical pleasure involved is easy—if there weren't, who would want to do something as messy, sweaty and ludicrous as the act itself is, when the end result, nine months later, is a squirming, squalling incontinent thing that has to be cared for continually for years and spits up on you?"
I know how to deliver laughs, and I was putting everything I had into this. Claudia looked deeply shocked but also like she was about to giggle.
"So Nature makes it fun and gives us these urges so the human race doesn't die out. Mind you, like so many things, it isn't fair. The pleasure is more certain for men, especially when they're young, and they don't have the bothers of carrying the results and birthing them. However, humans have a way of outsmarting Nature. People soon figured out ways to have the pleasure without necessarily also having a baby, and then they also worked out that it was also almost as much fun doing so alone and that, if baby-making were not the whole point, that a person of the same gender could be just as good. Or for some people, better. And when that happens between men, it's called the Florentine Vice. It's also called a number of other things which are not nearly as nice. Before you ask, because I know you're going to, as far as I can tell, Ezio does not indulge in it. I'm not even sure he's all that aware of it."
Now Claudia had covered her mouth with both hands, and her shoulders were shaking. "Oh, I shouldn't be laughing like this," she said, "because I know you're talking about mortal sins. How can you say things like that?"
"It could be worse. I could be talking about immortal sins, which are quite different and a great deal worse. " I said flippantly. "But, to be serious, which I rarely am which I fear is a slight flaw in my character, the truth of it is," I left off the comedy, and said what I ought to have weeks before. "You remember what I said the first night, about how the story which the world must believe about me was the cover for things that can't be spoken of? I know Ezio told you something about that."
"Oh," she said, the corners of her mouth turning down. "Yes. It's—I haven't thought about it. The story seems so real."
"That's what it should do. Dr. Zeus—wasn't… I wasn't brought up like you were," I said, "I learned about religion, but as something to study, not something to believe in. I…never had a family before, just people who lived under the same roof. A few weeks ago, it seemed to me that I would be little better than a drudge for Dr. Zeus forever, and then I was delivered. To here, where the first person I met was Ezio and the second was Leonardo and the next thing I was riding into Monteriggioni, and whoops! Now I'm betrothed to a man who has the most generous spirit of anyone I've ever known, and I have a place in a real home, your home. There was your mother, and helping her—by being of use, I can feel like I've earned a place at your hearth, that I deserve this happiness. And then I went and made a wretched mess of it with you in the first half hour, and I haven't fixed it since."
"You came close to it when you sent Ariana off like that. Even then, I was thinking, 'Which of these people would I rather have for a friend?" and the answer was you." Claudia looked at her hands. "I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." I told her.
"Thank you." She looked over at me. "So—you truly care for Uncle Mario?"
"I do," I replied, and damn it all, why had I been so much of a watering can lately? My eyes were getting wet again. "I know he's your ancient uncle, and you can't see him as—the object of someone's affections, but to me—from the start, when we laughed together, I liked him. I liked him so much, and everything I have learned about him since then, his sense of humor—his sense of honor—Well, if I get started in on all his good qualities, I'll be talking all night. While he lives—and that will be as long as…as long as I can, with whatever medicines I have, can extend his years, I am his good and faithful wife." I am always either doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong thing for the right reasons. Why should this be any different?
"And I am going to go back out to him," I continued, "before he starts to fear one of us has killed the other, which might enhance your chances of becoming an Assassin, but really, do we want to put the innkeeper's people to the trouble of cleaning up the mess?"
She laughed. "Good night—Aunt Ginevra."
A/N: Two days. Two freaking days until Brotherhood…
The next chapter will be a scene between Ginevra and Mario which will reveal a great deal about where the story will be going, and the chapter after will see Ezio and Leonardo off to Venice. More feedback would be greatly appreciated. How can I tell if you like how things are going if you don't tell me?