A Matter Of Taste, Fred Saberhagen [love story books to read TXT] 📗

positions around the silent house, we two stealthily approached the building and decided on our points of entry. Each of us was carrying a short axe, as well as sword and dagger.

      On the way we came upon the sentry we had been half expecting, just where we thought he should be, but asleep, wrapped in two blankets. Michelotto quietly and efficiently cut his throat. One down. Five to fifteen left.

      Somewhere on the far side of the house, a dog stirred in its slumber, senses tickled subliminally by the presence of hostile strangers. Just as the beast was about to give us away, I soothed it back to sleep, exerting a certain influence silently and at a distance, without my companion or anyone else being aware of the fact. My rapport with animals had been steadily developing since the beginning of my new life.

      Under slightly different conditions we might have set fire to the nest and burned the rascals out. But much of the building was stone, and the weather had been wet for some time. Therefore, having chosen our respective points of entry, Corella and I broke in simultaneously—he through a shuttered window, whilst I smashed in a door—making our separate entrances on opposite sides of the house, which was basically only a one-room shelter.

      Other dogs than the one I had soothed woke up to bark at the outrageous racket. Simultaneously human voices were raised in even greater panic.

      On this chill night a fire still smoldered in the house, faint coals giving enough light for the adapted eyes of breathers, my companion and our victims, to see what was happening and about to happen to them.

      Breathing bodies wrapped in blankets lay everywhere, on the floor and furniture. My entry, at least, had been so swift that some were only struggling to their feet whilst others had not yet stirred. The axe in my right hand did deadly execution, whilst with my left, picking up a chair, I fended off the first blade thrust at me.

      Across the large room, Corella had got in through the window. Once well inside and on his feet, he slew and parried with remorseless goodwill, displaying a formidable aptitude for the job.

      It was soon obvious that the true number of our foe lay somewhere near the midrange of our intelligence estimates, and that their eagerness for combat was no greater than we had expected.

      Soon the handful who had taken up arms against us were all cut down, and we changed our tactics to search-and-destroy, routing out thieves from under furniture and blankets and dispatching them on the spot. With all the doors and windows barricaded as they were for the night, escape from the house was no easy matter, requiring more time than our hosts had readily available. In the end only two or three of them got clear, to be picked off neatly by our efficient troops outside.

      Of approximately a dozen occupants of the house, only a woman and a girl survived. I saw to it that they were left unmolested. Our men, when they had a chance to see the inside of the house, looked at Corella and myself in awe.

      At dawn, when we were ready to leave the scene, Michelotto and I shook hands. Thus began our period of mutual respect.

* * *

      By the middle of the year of Our Lord 1502, both Niccolo Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci had come, for different purposes, to spend considerable time in the company of Duke Valentino.

      The writings of Machiavelli that were to make him famous were still in the future. At this time he was a rising Florentine politician in his early thirties. A sly, calculating man, yet filled with the desire to see his beloved Italy stand united and respected among the nations of the world. Physically he was thin and pale-faced, with high cheekbones and a piercing glance. He spoke little, but gave an impression of deep thought.

      I suppose that for a time it seemed to Signore Niccolo that the Borgias might accomplish a united Italy. In any event, Machiavelli attended Cesare in the capacity of an emissary from Florence; and he was a witness to the Duke’s bloody vengeance on his mutinous captains at Sinigaglia, December 31, 1502.

      Leonardo da Vinci was now a graybeard about fifty years of age, serving in Valentino’s train in the capacity of an engineer, with his main or exclusive job the observation and development of military projects.

      On several occasions during my attendance on the younger Borgia, I was able to converse with Machiavelli. In the course of our conversations, we frequently spoke on the future of Italy, and I heard Machiavelli’s hopes expressed that Cesare might be the prince destined to create a real nation out of the squabbling principalities and towns of the peninsula, or out of the central Romagna, at least.

      Everyone agreed that Cesare was going to need his father’s continued help if he were to have any chance of succeeding in such a grand design. Father and son together made a truly formidable team. And fortunately for the son’s ambitions, there was no sign that the father was going to do anything but keep spending, intriguing, and conniving furiously in an effort to insure the success of his favorite surviving child.

      I also had, during that same epoch, more than one good talk with Leonardo. We two had met once before, when he was a twelve-year-old apprentice in the studio of Verrocchio in Florence. I thought it most unlikely that the successful artist and designer would remember me now. But he did—in a way. After all, he had once sketched my face.

      I seriously doubt that Leonardo truly recalled the circumstances of our previous meeting. Rather, I think, he was puzzled, and thought he remembered me from somewhere, but could not place a man of my apparent youthfulness that far in the past.

      The artist was chiefly occupied in the Duke’s service with studying and designing fortifications. Cesare Borgia was unfailingly interested in the subject,