After examining the cannon for a few moments, the master-armourer rounded on the soldiers. ‘What have you been doing? You’ve been tampering with them, haven’t you? Thank God you didn’t fire one: you could have got us all killed. They’re not ready yet. Got to give the bores a good clean first.’

‘Perhaps with you around we won’t need cannon after all,’ the sergeant told him. ‘We’ll just get you to breathe on the enemy!’

But the armourer was busy with a cleaning rod and wads of coarse, oily cotton. When he’d finished, he stood up and eased his back.

‘There, that’s done it,’ he said. Turning to Ezio, he continued, ‘Just get these fellows to load her - that’s something they can do, though God knows it took ’em long enough to learn - and you can have a go. Look over there on the hill. We set some targets up on a level with this gun. Start by aiming at something on the same level, that way, if the cannon explodes, at least it won’t take your head off with it.’

‘Sounds reassuring,’ said Ezio.

‘Just try it, Messer. Here’s the fuse.’

Ezio placed the slow match on the touch hole. For a long moment nothing happened, then he sprang back as the cannon bucked and roared. Looking across to the targets, he could see that his ball had shattered one of them.

‘Well done,’ said the armourer. ‘Perfetto! At least one person here, apart from me, knows how to shoot.’

Ezio had the men reload and fired again, but this time he missed.

‘Can’t win ’em all,’ said the armourer. ‘Come back at dawn. We’ll be practising again then and it’ll give you a chance to get your eye in.’

‘I will,’ said Ezio, little realizing that when he next fired a cannon, it would be in deadly earnest.