Ezio was taken aback. ‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘I’ve already said too much. Hurry home.’ And the man melted into the shadows.
‘Wait!’ Ezio called after him. ‘What do you mean? Come back!’
But the man had gone.
Ezio walked quickly up the street to the lamplighter. ‘What time is it?’ he asked. The man screwed up his eyes and looked at the sky. ‘Must be an hour since I came on duty,’ he said. ‘Makes it about the twentieth hour.’
Ezio made a quick calculation. He must have left his palazzo two hours earlier, and it would take him perhaps twenty minutes to reach home again. He took off at a run. Some awful premonition caught at his soul.
As soon as he came within sight of the Auditore mansion, he knew something was wrong. There were no lights anywhere, and the great front doors stood open. He quickened his pace, calling as he ran: ‘Father! Federico!’
The great hall of the palazzo stood dark and empty, but there was enough light for Ezio to see tables overturned, chairs smashed, broken crockery and glassware. Someone had torn Leonardo’s paintings from the walls and slashed them with a knife. From the darkness beyond, he could hear the sound of sobbing – a woman sobbing: his mother!
He started to make his way towards the sound when a shadow moved behind him, something raised above its head. Ezio twisted round and seized a heavy silver candlestick which someone was bringing down on his head. He gave a savage wrench and his attacker let go of the candlestick with a cry of alarm. He tossed the candlestick away, out of reach, grabbed the arm of his assailant, and pulled the person towards what light there was. There was murder in his heart, and already his dagger was out.
‘Oh! Ser Ezio! It’s you! Thank God!’
Ezio recognized the voice, and now the face, of the family housekeeper, Annetta, a feisty countrywoman who’d been with the family for years.
‘What has happened?’ he asked Annetta, taking both her wrists in his hands and almost shaking her in his anguish and panic.
‘They came – the city guards. They’ve arrested your father and Federico – they even took little Petruccio, they tore him from your mother’s arms!’
‘Where is my mother? Where is Claudia?’
‘Here we are,’ came a shaky voice from the shadows. Claudia emerged, her mother leaning on her arm. Ezio righted a chair for his mother to sit on. In the dim light, he could see that Claudia was bleeding, her clothes dirty and torn. Maria did not acknowledge him. She sat on the chair, keening and rocking. In her hands she clutched the little pearwood box of feathers Petruccio had given her not two days – a lifetime – before.
‘My God, Claudia! Are you all right?’ He looked at her and anger flooded through him. ‘Did they – ?’
‘No – I’m all right. They roughed me up a little because they thought I could tell them where you were. But Mother… Oh, Ezio, they’ve taken Father and Federico and Petruccio to the Palazzo Vecchio!’
‘Your mother’s in shock,’ said Annetta. ‘When she resisted them, they -‘ She broke off. ‘Bastardi!’
Ezio thought quickly. ‘It’s not safe here. Is there somewhere you can take them, Annetta?’
‘Yes, yes… to my sister’s. They’ll be safe there.’ Annetta barely managed to get the words out, the fear and anguish choking her voice.
‘We must move fast. The guards will almost certainly come back for me. Claudia, Mother – there’s no time to waste. Don’t take anything, just go with Annetta. Now! Claudia, let Mamma lean on you.’
He escorted them out of their stricken home, still in shock himself, and helped them on their way before leaving them in the capable hands of the loyal Annetta, who had begun to regain her composure. Ezio’s mind raced with all the implications, his world rocked by the terrible turn of events. Desperately, he tried to assess all that had happened, and just what he must do now, what he must do to save his father and brothers… Straight away, he knew that he had to find some way of seeing his father, finding out what had brought on this attack, this outrage to his family. But the Palazzo Vecchio! They’d have put his kinsmen in the two small cells in the tower, of that he was sure. Maybe there’d be a chance… But the place was fortified like a castle keep; and there’d be a redoubtable guard placed on it, tonight of all nights.
Forcing himself to be calm and to think clearly, he slipped through the streets to the Piazza della Signoria, hugging its walls, and looking up. Torches burned from the battlements and from the top of the tower, illuminating the giant red fleur-de-lys that was the city’s emblem, and the great clock at the tower’s base. Higher up, squinting to see more clearly, Ezio thought he could discern the dim light of a taper in the small barred window near the top. There were guards posted outside the palazzo’s great double doors, and more on the battlements. But there were none that Ezio could see at the top of the tower, whose battlements anyway were above the window he needed to reach.
He skirted the square away from the palazzo and found his way to the narrow street which led off the piazza, along the palazzo’s north side. Fortunately, there were still a reasonable number of people about, strolling and enjoying the evening air. It seemed to Ezio that he suddenly existed in another world from theirs, that he had been cut off from the society he had swum in like a fish until only three or four short hours ago. He bristled at the thought that life could still continue in its even routine for all these people, while that of his own family had been shattered. Again, he felt his heart swell with an almost overwhelming rush of anger and fear. But then he turned his mind firmly back to the work in hand, and a look of steel crossed his face.
The wall rising above him was sheer and giddyingly high, but it was in darkness and that would be to his advantage. Moreover, the stones of which the palazzo was constructed were rough-hewn, so he would have plenty of handholds and footholds to aid him in his ascent. One problem would be any guards posted on the north-side battlements, but he’d have to deal with that when he came to it. He hoped that most would be grouped along the west-facing main façade of the building.
Taking a breath and glancing round – there was no one else in this dark street – he gave a leap, took a firm hold of the wall, gripped with his toes in their soft leather boots, and began to scale upwards.
Once he’d reached the battlements he dropped to a crouch, the tendons in his calves straining with tension. There were two guards here, but they had their backs to him, looking towards the lighted square beneath. Ezio stayed motionless for a moment, until it became clear that any sound he’d made had not alerted them to his presence. Staying low, he darted towards them and then struck, drawing them back, one hand around each of their necks, using their own weight and the element of surprise to bring them down on their backs. In barely a heartbeat, he had their helmets off and smashed their heads together violently – they were unconscious before they could register any surprise on their faces. If that hadn’t worked, Ezio knew he would have cut their throats without a second’s hesitation.