"Elizabetta!" Lord Cesare hailed her from the head of a large company of horseman that had entirely filled the small stone courtyard of the villa that stood on the shores of the Mediterranean. He dismounted and strode in her direction. Betta rose from the small stool that she had placed in the shade of an ancient tree where she could watch the children running through Micheletto's grape vines. Her sister Ginevera and her two children had joined Betta in the large house after her husband had been killed in one of the many street fights that broke out in Rome with increasing regularly and the house often rang with the sound of their laughter.

She watched him as he walked toward her, his stride filled with power and a smooth, easy grace. Cesare Borgia had recently won a great victory at Urbino, and he seemed poised to unite all of Italy into one kingdom. Still beautiful, his face now held a collection of small scars and his eyes no longer glowed with warmth or humor. The man that stood before her was barely recognizable as a former cleric and member of the College of Cardinals. His frame rippled with muscles under the engraved armor and he wielded the infamous Borgia charm like another weapon in his arsenal.

Cesare greeted her like a courtier, admiration shining in his eyes as he looked at her in appreciation. Betta knew that the years had been kind to her. Relieved of constant burden of work her looks had blossomed, and the simple garments and loose hairstyles she favored added to her charm. When he rose from his bow his attention focused on the group of children that ran through the fields.

"Lucia!" Betta called, and the smallest of the children came to where they stood in the shade. Cesare's eyes devoured the girl's face. Lucia had not reached her second birthday but her beauty was already apparent. Curls the color of warm honey tumbled to her shoulders and her delicate features glowed as she smiled at her father and waved her dirt covered hand at him. Cesare's face was filled with yearning as he looked at the small girl who so favored her mother. He reached out as if to stroke the delicate cheek but then he stopped and pulled back, his face guarded once more.

"I would not sully her with my touch." He said, but his expression had cracked just the tiniest bit. "Come, I would make someone known to you." Betta called to her sister from the house to watch the children. Lucia returned to the company of her cousins as Micheletto emerged from the fields that surrounded the house. His careful tending of the grapevines had started out as a jest between them, a way to pass the time when he was not training her or attending to business. Lately his business had taken him into Milan more and more, and Betta knew that he sought another type of fulfillment there. After greeting the Duke with a bow Micheletto stood by her side as Cesare motioned a man forward from the company of horsemen. He was tall, topping even Il Valentino, wearing a brightly colored doublet and hose. His flowing hair and beard were brown liberally streaked with white under a large floppy hat. Micheletto jerked almost imperceptibly when he saw the man walking forward and a particular tightness bracketed the corners of his mouth.

"This is Master Da Vinci." Betta and Micheletto greeted the man cordially, but Da Vinci's expression had gone perfectly bland when he drew close enough to see the face of the man behind the copper hair and beard.

"He is my mapmaker. I have heard that he paints occasionally but I have yet to see a completed work." Cesare's voice was filled with sardonic humor as he looked at the tall man. He had not missed the tenseness of the greeting between his former assassin and the artist but he dismissed the implications as unimportant.

"I am never satisfied with work, my lord, therefore I seldom finish it." Da Vinci mockingly shrugged his shoulders, and he cloaked himself in practiced charm once more. His eyes never ceased moving and Betta thought there was no part of the simple square villa that had not been committed to his memory, from the vines that wilted despite Micheletto's careful tending to the enormous black hound that Lady Lucrezia had sent to them the year before that watched over the children.

"After he finished a map of my fortress at Imola he showed me a sketch that found my favor."

Master DaVinci pulled a leather covered portfolio from a bag and thumbed through it quickly. Betta could see sketches and words filling the pages in glorious disarray and she had to stop herself from pulling the folio from his hands so she could examine it further. "Ah, here it is." Da Vinci flipped the book in his hands and Betta found herself looking at Lady Lucrezia's face, beautifully rendered with her hair tumbling around her shoulders. "I was in Malalbergo when Lady Lucrezia was making her procession to Ferrara. She had spent a day washing her hair in preparation for her entrance into the city but the wind that blew down from the mountains pulled the pins from it as if God himself desired that I should see the lady with her golden hair falling down."

"I have asked him to sketch Lucia for me." Betta knew that there must be more to his visit but she bowed and went to fetch the child who was still playing in the warm summer sunshine with her cousins. She attempted to restore some order to the child's honey colored curls as they walked back to the house but it was a fruitless endeavor. At almost two years old Lucia seldom spoke but she was possessed of boundless energy and her hair resisted all attempts to confine it under a respectable cap. Lucia's skin glowed with the faint golden sheen that spoke of her Spanish ancestry and her eyes were unexpectedly beautiful, almond shaped and surrounded by a fringe of dark lashes. Not gray like her mother's, the eyes were a mixture of green and gold and seemed lit from within. Betta placed Lucia on blanket near the hearth and watched as Master Da Vinci drew close to examine her.

"Your daughter is beautiful, my lord." Da Vinci said.

"How do you know that she is mine?" Cesare Borgia seemed amused rather than concerned that the painter had so easily guessed her sire.

"The features are strikingly similar and..." Master Da Vinci's voice trailed off as Lucia focused her gaze on the tall man with the flowing hair and beard for the first time. She looked at him solemnly, eyes enormous, no trace of a smile curving her round cheeks and full mouth. Their eyes held one another in a moment of mutual fascination before the old man grabbed his chalk and began to work feverishly, all traces of his earlier careless good humor gone as he strode to capture her likeness. He began to hum underneath his breath as red lines flew across the page. He drew her face over and over again, paying particular attention to her eyes, and then her dimpled hands as she examined them in the dappled sunlight. Micheletto seated himself in a darkened corner of the room, content to observe from the shadows until the child needed him.

"Elizabetta, would you walk outside with me?" Lord Cesare bowed to her as he would to a great lady and Betta could not help the blush that stained her cheeks as he took her hand and tucked it in the crook of his arm. The silence stretched between them as Betta led him down the warn path that led from the villa to the shoreline where the turquoise water of the sea had carved away at the shore until it stood in ragged cliffs to the horizon.

"Master Da Vinci is most unusual." Betta said, wondering where he had encountered Micheletto and how long their dalliance had lasted.

"His is the greatest mind of our age. I have seen his designs for weapons and they will revolutionize the way that we fight battles. He sees a world of infinite wonder, where man can know the nature of all things and take to the sky with the wings of birds."

"Is there not an ancient legend where a man wore the wings of a bird to escape from prison but died in a fall?"

"It was Daedalus's son Icarus that died." Cesare smiled sadly. "He flew too close to the sun and melted the wax that held the feathers and he fell like an angel thrown from God's sight."

"Too high a price, surely." Betta thought they were no longer speaking only of ancient legends.

"I would rather risk the fall then to be a prisoner for all my days, surrounded only by the things that my father had created."

Cesare was silent for a while, gazing into the horizon where the setting sun painted the clouds in glorious colors. "Tell me of my daughter." He commanded softly.

"She is...she is a child unlike any other, my lord. Beautiful, of course, but so sweet and gentle. I am sometimes afraid that our Lord will realize he sent one of his angels to us and snatch her away." Betta brushed a tear away with a small laugh. "Forgive my folly."

"You love her, then?"

"More than my own life, Lord Cesare."

Cesare smiled, and for the first time she could see a hint of the boy she had once known in the house of Vannozza dei Cattanei. "Then we have done well by her, at least." Cesare looked at her solemnly. "I must ask one thing more of you, Elizabetta. I would have you help me convince Micheletto to return to my service."

"You would leave your daughter defenseless?"

"No, but I need his guidance once more. Everything that we have planned hinges on the successes of the next year. If my father should die all might be lost. Two men that I have brought will remain to guard my daughter and they will protect her with their own lives. And Micheletto has led me to believe that you are skilled in the deadly arts as well." Cesare brought the knife he had palmed streaking toward her body. Betta easily deflected it and used the momentum of his strike to unbalance him and send flying against the bolder. He grunted at the impact but then began to laugh as he dropped the knife. Betta joined him in mirth and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her, arching her spine back against the boulder when he moved to stand between her legs. Part of her had always wanted him, and the changes that had been wrought in him by the years of bloodshed and pain only increased her attraction to him. The darkness always called more to her than the light and he now radiated nothing so much as deadly purpose and strength of will. The waves that crashed into the rocky shore were but a muted noise compared to the pounding blood in her ears and Betta struggled to remember all the reasons why she must send him away. His hips moved, and the intimate press of his hard flesh against hers as his tongue moved inside her mouth made her body tremble with need.

"I could stay for the night. Micheletto would not mind, I feel certain." His mouth moved up her neck and bit down on her ear and everything inside of Betta turned to flame and then melted. "He could even watch." He whispered persuasively.

Betta knew that he was correct. Micheletto would not begrudge her this, as she had never begrudged him the days spent in the city where he could find something in the embrace of another that she could not offer. But Cesare Borgia was not hers, and she would never be a substitute again. "When you look at me, do you see me, or another?"

"Does it matter so much?" He kissed her again, biting down on the fullness of her bottom lip and the heat that roared inside of her body became acutely painful.

"It would matter to me, my lord," she gasped "and to my Lady, should she ever find out."

He groaned softly and moved away from her but it was not far enough. Betta could still feel the heat from his body where it had pressed against hers and she hoped he would not touch her again because she did not have the will left to resist him any longer.

"Little Betta, our watcher. Would you give her something, then, should I fall like Icarus and you are the only one left who knows our story and all that we were to one another?"
She nodded and he gathered her into his arms. This kiss was different from the others and the sadness she could sense in him was unbearable. He truly did not care if he fell, she realized, for all that was left to him was the climb. Cesare had to brush the tears from her cheeks before he took her hand again and led her back from the shore. They had almost reached the gate when in the distance the sound of a rider could be heard racing towards them. As the rider approached Betta could see that the man wore the black livery of Cesare Borgia's army.

"Micheletto!" Cesare shouted, and an instant later her husband appeared at the door and took the place next to his lord as they waited for the soldier.

The man appeared half dead from weariness and the horse's sides heaved and were flecked with foam.

"A message, my lord, from your brother in law Alfonso d'Este. Your lady sister sits at death's door and they have given up hope of recovery."

His intake of breath was a sharp sound, echoing her own. "My horse!" Cesare bellowed, and the servants that had accompanied him from Milan sprang into action and made ready to depart despite the lateness of the hour.

Micheletto stood in the driveway watching as Cesare Borgia hastily made his preparations to leave and Betta, who knew him so well, could read his conflicting emotions. Lucia had totted out and grabbed Micheletto's legs and he reflexively scooped to pick her up. Lucia hugged her father and patted his cheek as though to reassure him and he pressed a light kiss into her curls. Betta came and took the child from him.

"It is time for you to return to his side, my husband. He needs you now more than ever before." There were tears that welled behind her eyes but she refused to let even so much as a hint of it show on her face.

"But you and the child.." She could see how he desired it, wanted to follow his master back into battle and she would not be the one to put the chain around his neck again.

"Who would think to look for us here? Now go, my dear, and make ready." The artist declined to ride with them, pleading his advanced age with a twinkle in his eyes, and he did sketch after sketch of Lucia before he departed the next day.

Betta thought of the emotion that had sometimes welled up inside of her when she looked at the man who was her husband. The tenderness, the aching need to make him happy. On the nights that Lucia had cried and Micheletto would spend hours walking her through the darkened rooms, singing songs in his gruff voice to her that he must have only half remembered. When they would laugh together at the follies of their neighbors, or when he would smile at her when they sparred together and she would hit him with the dull blade of the knife they used. It was love, she finally understood as she watched him make ready to leave. Not the dangerous, all-consuming love that she had craved but it was her own and it gave her the strength to let him go.

Micheletto kissed her cheek and sprinted into the house to gather his weapons. Later, when he returned home for a short visit, he would tell her of that wild journey through the dark to Ferrara. They had arrived mid-day, having ridden throughout the night, and galloped into the fortress just as they were making ready to bleed Lucrezia in a desperate bid to stop the fever that was claiming her life. Cesare had held her foot and whispered words to her in the language of Catalan that made her laugh and seemed to bring her back from the brink of death once more. After the danger had passed they left Ferrara and Micheletto rode into battle at Cesare Borgia's side once more.