“Ezio—what is this all about? You’re not a scholar, that much is clear.” She eyed his sword. “No offense, of course!” She paused. “Do you work for the Church?”
Ezio gave an amused laugh. “Not the Church, no. But I am a teacher . . . of a kind.”
“What then?”
“I will explain one day, Sofia. When I can.”
She nodded, disappointed, but not—as he could see—actually devastated. She had sense enough to wait.
FORTY-TWO
The decoded cipher led Ezio to an ancient edifice barely three blocks distant, in the center of the Bayezid District. It seemed once to have been a warehouse, currently in disuse, and looked securely shut, but the door, when he tried it, was unlocked. Cautiously, looking up and down the street for any sign of either Ottoman guards or Janissaries, he entered, following the instructions on the paper he held in his hand.
He climbed a staircase to the first floor and went down a corridor, at the end of which he found a small room, an office, covered in dust; but its shelves were still full of ledgers, and on the desk lay a pen set and a paper knife. He examined the room carefully, but its walls seemed to hold no clue at all about what he sought, until at last his keen eyes noticed a discrepancy in the tilework that surrounded the fireplace.
He explored this with his fingers, delicately, finding that one tile moved under his touch. Using the paper knife from the desk, he dislodged it, listening all the time for the sound of any movement from below—though he was certain no one had noticed him enter the building.
The tile came away after only a moment’s work, revealing behind it a wooden panel, which he removed, seeing in the faint light behind it a book, which he withdrew carefully. A small, very old, book. He peered at the title on its spine: the version of Aesop’s Fables put into verse by Socrates while he was under sentence of death.
He blew the dust from it and expectantly opened it to a blank page at the front. There, as he had hoped, a map of Constantinople revealed itself. He scanned it carefully, patiently, concentrating. And as the page glowed with an unearthly light, he could see that the Galata Tower was pinpointed on it. Stowing the book carefully in his belt wallet, he left the building and made his way north through the city, taking the ferry across the Golden Horn to a quay near the foot of the tower.
He had to use all his blending-in skills to get past the guards but, once inside, was guided by the book, which took him up a winding stone staircase to a landing between floors.
It appeared to contain nothing beyond its bare stone walls.
Ezio double-checked with the book and verified that he was in the right place. He searched the walls with his hands, feeling for any giveaway crevice that might indicate a hidden aperture, tensing at the sound of the slightest footfall on the stairway, but none approached. At last he found a gap between the stonework that was not filled with mortar, and followed it with his fingers, disclosing what was a very narrow, concealed doorway.
A little more research led him to push gently against the surrounding stones until he found one about three feet from the floor that gave slightly, allowing the door to swing back, revealing, within the depth of the tower’s wall, a small room, scarcely big enough to enter. Inside, on a narrow column, rested another circular stone key—his third. He squeezed into the space to retrieve it, and as he did so, it began to glow, its light increasing fast, as the room in turn seemed to grow in volume, and Ezio felt himself transported to another time, another place.
As the light was reduced to a normal brightness, the brightness of sunshine, Ezio saw Masyaf again. But time had moved on. In his heart, Ezio knew that many years had passed. He had no idea whether or not he was dreaming. It seemed to be a dream, as he was not part of it; but at the same time, somehow, he was involved, and as well as having the feeling of dreaming, the experience was also, in some way Ezio could not define, like a memory.
Disembodied, at one with the scene that presented itself to him, yet no part of it, he watched, and waited . . .
And there again was the young man in white, though no longer young; whole decades must have passed.
And his look was troubled . . .
FORTY-THREE
Altaïr, now in his sixties, but still a lean and vigorous man, sat on a stone bench outside a dwelling in the village of Masyaf, thinking. He was no stranger to adversity, and disaster seemed, once again, poised to strike. But he had kept the great, terrible artifact safe through it all. How much longer would his strength hold, to do so? How much longer would his back refuse to buckle under the blows Destiny rained on it?
His ponderings were interrupted—and the interruption was not unwelcome—by the appearance of his wife, Maria Thorpe, the Englishwoman who had once—long ago—been his enemy, a woman who had longed to be counted among the Company of the Templars.
Time and chance had changed all that. By then, after a long exile, they had returned to Masyaf. And they faced Fate together.
She joined him on the bench, sensing his lowered spirits. He told her his news.
“The Templars have retaken their Archive on Cyprus. Abbas Sofian sent no reinforcements to aid the defenders. It was a massacre.”
Maria’s lips parted in an expression of surprise and dismay. “How could God have permitted this?”
“Maria, listen to me. When we left Masyaf ten long years ago, our Order was strong. But since then, all our progress—all that we built—has been undone, dismantled.”
Her face was a mask of quiet fury. “Abbas must answer for this.”
“Answer to whom?” replied Altaïr, angrily. “The Assassins obey only his command now.”
She placed a hand on his arm. “Resist your desire for revenge, Altaïr. If you speak the truth, they will see the error of their ways.”
“Abbas executed our youngest son, Maria! He deserves to die!”
“Yes. But if you cannot win back the Brotherhood by honorable means, its foundation will crumble.”
Altaïr didn’t reply for a moment but sat silently, brooding, the subject of some deep inner struggle. But at last he looked up, and his face had cleared.
“You are right, Maria,” he said, calmly. “Thirty years ago, I let passion overtake my reason. I was headstrong and ambitious, and I caused a rift within the Brotherhood that has never fully healed.”
He rose, and Maria rose with him. Slowly, immersed in conversation, they walked through the dusty village.
“Speak reasonably, Altaïr, and reasonable men will listen,” she encouraged him.