“Poison me?” said Cesare, his eyes boring into his father’s.

“You would not listen to reason!” stammered the Pope.

Cesare smiled as he advanced, very deliberately, on Rodrigo, saying, “Father. Dear Father. Do you not see? I control everything. All of it. If I want to live, despite your efforts, I shall live. And if there is anything—anything—I want, I take it!” He came close to the Pope and seized him by the collar, raising the poisoned apple in his hand. “For example, if I want you to die, you die!”

Pulling his father close he shoved the apple into his open mouth before he had time to close it, and, grabbing him by the head and jaw, forced his lips together and held them shut. Rodrigo struggled and choked on the apple, unable to breathe. He fell to the floor in agony and his two children coldly watched him die.

Cesare wasted no time; kneeling, he searched his dead father’s robes. There was nothing. He stood and bore down on his sister, who shrank from him.

“You—you must seek help. The poison is in you, too,” she cried.

“Not enough,” he barked hoarsely. “And do you think I am really such a fool as not to have taken a prophylactic antidote before coming here? I know what a devious old shit our father was, and how he’d react if he thought for a moment the real power was slipping away in my direction. Now, he said he had the Piece of Eden.”

“He—he—was telling the truth.”

Cesare slapped her. “Why was I not told?”

“You were away…he had it moved…he feared the Assassins might…”

Cesare slapped her again. “You plotted with him!”

“No! No! I thought he had sent messengers to tell you—”

“Liar!”

“I am telling the truth. I really thought you knew, or at least had been informed, of what he’d done.”

Cesare slapped her again, harder this time, so that she lost her balance and fell.

“Cesare!” she said as she struggled for breath, panic and fear in her eyes now. “Are you mad? I am Lucrezia! Your sister! Your friend! Your lover! Your queen!” And, rising, she put her hands timidly to his cheeks, to stroke them. His response was to grab her around the throat and shake her, as a terrier shakes a ferret.

“You’re nothing but a bitch!” He brought his face close to hers, thrusting it at her aggressively. “Now tell me,” he continued, his voice dangerously low. “Where. Is. It?”

Disbelief showed in her voice when she replied, gagging as she struggled to speak at all, “You…never loved me?”

His response was to let go of her throat and hit her again, this time close to the eye, with a closed fist.

“Where is the Apple? The Apple!” he screamed. “Tell me!”

She spat in his face and he grasped her arm and threw her to the floor, kicking her hard as he repeated his question, over and over again. Ezio tensed, forcing himself not to intervene though he was appalled at what he was witnessing. But he had to know the answer.

“All right! All right!” she said at last in a broken voice.

He pulled her to her feet and she placed her lips close to his ear, whispering, to Ezio’s fury.

Satisfied, Cesare pushed her away. “Smart decision, little sister.” She tried to cling to him but he pushed her away with a gesture of disgust and strode from the room.

As soon as he had gone, Ezio smashed through the window and landed close to Lucrezia, who, all the spirit apparently drained from her, slumped against the wall. Ezio quickly knelt by Rodrigo’s inert body and felt for his pulse.

There was none.

“Requiescat in pace,” whispered Ezio, rising again and confronting Lucrezia. Looking at him she smiled bitterly, a little of the fire back in her eyes at the sight of him.

“You were there? All the time?”

Ezio nodded.

“Good,” she said. “I know where the bastard is going.”

“Tell me.”

“With pleasure. Saint Peter’s. The pavilion in the courtyard…”

“Thank you, Madonna.”

“Ezio—”

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

FORTY-FOUR

Ezio raced along the Passetto di Borgo, a passageway that ran through the rione of Borgo and connected the Castel Sant’Angelo with the Vatican. He wished he’d been able to bring some of his men with him, or had had time to find a horse, but urgency lent his feet wings, and any guards he encountered were swiftly thrown aside in his headlong rush.

Once in the Vatican itself, he made his way to the pavilion in the courtyard Lucrezia had indicated. With Rodrigo gone, there was a fair chance that there’d be a new Pope on whom the Borgia could have no influence, since the College of Cardinals, apart from those members who’d been well and truly bought, were fed up and disgusted at being pushed around by this foreign family.

But he had to stop Cesare now, before he could get hold of the Apple and use its power, however dimly he might understand it, to regain all the ground he had lost.

Now was the time to strike his enemy down for good—and it was now or never.

Ezio reached the courtyard and found it deserted. He noticed that at its center, instead of a fountain, stood a large sandstone sculpture of a pinecone, in a stone cup, on a plinth. It stood perhaps ten feet high. He scanned the rest of the sunlit courtyard, but it was plain and bare, with a dusty white floor that burned his eyes with its brightness. There wasn’t even a colonnade, and the walls of the surrounding buildings had no decoration, though there were rows of narrow windows high up, and at ground level, one plain door on each side, all of which were closed. An unusually austere place.

He looked again at the pinecone and approached it. Peering closely, he could just discern a narrow gap between the dome of the cone and its body, running around the whole circumference. Climbing up the plinth, he found he was able to steady himself by gripping with his toes, and, holding on with one hand, he ran the other around the rim of the cone where the gap was, feeling carefully for any imperfection, which might possibly disclose a hidden trigger or button.

There! He’d found it. Gently he pressed it, and the top of the cone sprang open on hitherto hidden bronze hinges, firmly screwed into the soft stone and strengthened with cement. In the center of the hollow space that was now revealed, he saw a dark green leather bag. He fumbled at its drawstring with his hand, and the faint glow he saw within its depths confirmed his hopes: He had found the Apple!