‘Of course. Of course. Do you have … do you have anything to defend yourselves with, should you run into bandits?’ I bounded quickly down the stairs and reached to take a sword from one of the dead guards. I handed to Lucio, offering him the handle.
‘Lucio, take this,’ I said. ‘You’ll need it to protect your mother as you make your way home.’
He grasped the sword, looked up at me, and I thought I saw a softening in his eyes.
Then he plunged it into me.
27 January 1758
Death. There had been so much of it, and would be more to come.
Years ago, when I had killed the fixer in the Black Forest, it was my mistake to stab him in the kidney and quicken his demise. When Lucio thrust his sword into me in the entrance hall of the chateau, he had quite by chance missed any of my vital organs. His blow was struck with ferocity. As with Jenny, his was an anger born of years of pent-up anger and vengeful dreams. And, as I myself was a man who had spent my entire life seeking revenge, I could hardly blame him for it. But he didn’t kill me, obviously, for I’m writing this.
It was enough to cause me serious injury, though, and for the rest of the year I had lain in bed at the chateau. I had stood on a precipice over death’s great infinity, drifting in and out of consciousness, wounded, infected and feverish but wearily fighting on, some weak and flickering flame of spirit within me refusing to be doused.
The roles were reversed, and this time it was Holden’s turn to tend to me. Whenever I recovered consciousness and awoke from thrashing in sweat-soaked sheets, he would be there, smoothing out the linen, applying fresh cold flannels to my burning brow, soothing me.
‘It’s all right, sir, it’s all right. Just you relax. You’re over the worst now.’
Was I? Was I over the worst?
One day – how long into my fever I’ve no idea – I woke up and, gripping Holden’s upper arm, pulled myself into a sitting position, staring intensely into his eyes to ask, ‘Lucio. Monica. Where are they?’
I’d had this image – an image of a furious, vengeful Holden cutting them both down.
‘Last thing you said before you blacked out was to spare them, sir,’ he said, with a look that suggested he wasn’t happy about it, ‘so spare them’s what I did. We sent them on their way with horses and supplies.’
‘Good, good …’ I wheezed and felt the dark rising to claim me again. ‘You can’t blame …’
‘Cowardly is what it was,’ he was saying ruefully as I lost consciousness again. ‘No other word for it, sir. Cowardly. Now just you close your eyes, get your rest …’
I saw Jenny, too, and even in my feverish, injured state couldn’t help but notice the change in her. It was as though she had achieved an inner peace. Once or twice I was aware of her sitting by the side of my bed, and heard her talking about life at Queen Anne’s Square, how she planned to return and, as she put it, ‘take care of business’.
I dreaded to think. Even half-conscious I found it in my heart to pity the poor souls in charge of the Kenways’ affairs when my sister Jenny returned to the fold.
On a table by the side of my bed lay Reginald’s Templar ring, but I didn’t put it on, pick it up, even touch it. For now, at least, I felt neither Templar nor Assassin, and wanted nothing to do with either order.
And then, some three months after Lucio had stabbed me, I climbed out of bed.
Taking a deep breath, with Holden gripping my left forearm in both of his hands, I swept my feet out from underneath the sheets, put them to the cold wooden floor and felt my nightshirt slide down to my knees as I stood upright for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. Straight away, I felt a twinge of pain from the wound at my side and put my hand there.
‘It was badly infected, sir,’ explained Holden. ‘We had to cut away some of the rotted skin.’
I grimaced.
‘Where do you want to go, sir?’ asked Holden, after we’d walked slowly from the bed to the doorway. It made me feel like an invalid, but I was happy for the moment to be treated like one. My strength would soon return. And then I would be …
Back to my old self? I wondered …
‘I think I want to look out of the window, Holden, please,’ I said, and he agreed, leading me over to it so that I could gaze out over the grounds where I’d spent so much of my childhood. As I stood there, I realized that, for most of my adult life, when I’d thought of ‘home’, I’d pictured myself staring out of a window, either over the gardens of Queen Anne’s Square or the grounds of the chateau. I’d called both of them home and still did, and now – now that I knew the full truth about Father and Reginald – they’d come to acquire an even greater significance, a duality almost: two halves of my boyhood, two parts of the man I became.
‘That’s enough, thank you, Holden,’ I said, and let him lead me back to the bed. I climbed in, suddenly feeling … I hate to admit it, but ‘frail’, after my long journey all the way to the window and back again.
Even so, my recovery was almost complete and the thought was enough to bring a smile to my face as Holden busied himself collecting a beaker of water and a used flannel, on his face a strange, grim, unreadable expression.
‘It’s good to see you back on your feet, sir,’ he said, when he realized I was looking at him.
‘I’ve got you to thank, Holden,’ I said.
‘And Miss Jenny, sir,’ he reminded me.
‘Indeed.’
‘We were both worried about you for a while, sir. It was touch and go.’
‘Quite something it would have been, to have lived through wars, Assassins and murderous eunuchs, only to die at the hands of a slip of a boy.’ I chuckled.
He nodded and laughed drily. ‘Quite so, sir,’ he agreed. ‘A bitter irony indeed.’
‘Well, I live to fight another day,’ I said, ‘and soon, maybe in a week or so, we shall take our leave, travel back to the Americas and there continue my work.’
He looked at me, nodded. ‘As you wish, sir,’ he said. ‘Will that be all for the time being, sir?’
‘Yes – yes, of course. Sorry, Holden, to be such a bother these past few months.’
‘My only wish has been to see you recover, sir,’ he said, and left.
28 January 1758
The first thing I heard this morning was a scream. Jenny’s scream. She had walked into the kitchen and found Holden hanging from a clothes dryer.
I knew even before she rushed into my room – I knew what had happened. He’d left a note but he hadn’t needed to. He had killed himself because of what the Coptic priests had done to him. It was as simple as that, and no surprise, not really.
I knew from the death of my father that a state of stupefaction is a good index of the grieving to come. The more paralysed, dazed and numb one feels, the longer and more intense the period of mourning.
Part Four
* * *
1774, Sixteen Years Later
12 January 1774
i
Writing this at the end of an eventful evening, there is but one question on my mind. Is it possible that …
That I have a son?
The answer is I don’t know for sure, but there are clues and perhaps most persistently, a feeling – a feeling that constantly nags at me, tugging on the hem of my coat like an insistent beggar.
It’s not the only weight I carry, of course. There are days I feel bent double with memory, with doubt, regret and grief. Days when it feels as if the ghosts won’t leave me alone.
After we buried Holden I departed for the Americas, and Jenny returned to live in England, back at Queen Anne’s Square, where she has stayed in glorious spinsterhood ever since. No doubt she’s been the subject of endless gossip and speculation about the years she spent away, and no doubt that suits her down to the ground. We correspond, but though I’d like to say our shared experiences had brought us together, the bald fact of the matter is they hadn’t. We corresponded because we shared the Kenway name and felt w
e should stay in touch. Jenny no longer insulted me, so in that sense I suppose our relationship had improved, but our letters were weary and perfunctory. We were two people who had experienced enough suffering and loss to last a dozen lifetimes. What could we possibly discuss in a letter? Nothing. So nothing was what we discussed.
In the meantime – I had been right – I had mourned for Holden. I never knew a greater man than him, and I never will. For him, though, the strength and character he had in abundance just wasn’t enough. His manhood had been taken from him. He couldn’t live with that, wasn’t prepared to, and so he had waited until I was recovered then taken his own life.
I grieved for him and probably always will, and I grieved for Reginald’s betrayal, too – for the relationship we once had and for the lies and treachery on which my life was based. And I grieved for the man I had been. The pain in my side had never quite gone away – every now and then it would spasm – and despite the fact that I hadn’t given my body permission to grow older, it was determined to do so anyway. Small, wiry hairs had sprouted from my ears and nose. All of a sudden I wasn’t as lithe as I once was. Though my standing within the Order was grander than ever, physically I was not the man I once was. On my return to the Americas I’d found a homestead in Virginia on which to grow tobacco and wheat, and I’d ride around the estate, aware of my powers slowly waning as the years passed. Climbing on and off my horse was harder than it had been before. And I don’t mean hard, just harder, because I was still stronger and faster and more agile than a man half my age and there wasn’t a worker on my estate who could best me physically. But even so … I wasn’t as fast, as strong or as nimble as I had been once. Age had not forgotten to claim me.
In ’73, Charles returned to the Americas, too, and became a neighbour, a fellow Virginian estate owner, a mere half-day’s ride away, and we had corresponded, agreeing that we needed to meet to talk Templar business and plan to further the interests of the Colonial Rite. Mainly we discussed the developing mood of rebellion, the seeds of revolution floating on the breeze and how best to capitalize on the mood, because our colonials were growing more and more tired of new rules being enforced by the British parliament: the Stamp Act; the Revenue Act; the Indemnity Act; the Commissioners of Customs Act. They were being squeezed for taxes and resented the fact that there was nobody to represent their views, to register their discontent.
A certain George Washington was among the discontents. That young officer who once rode with Braddock had resigned his commission and accepted land bounty for helping the British during the French and Indian War. But his sympathies had shifted in the intervening years. The bright-eyed officer whom I had admired for having a compassionate outlook – more than his commander at least – was now one of the loudest voices in the anti-British movement. No doubt this was because the interests of His Majesty’s government conflicted with his own business ambitions; he’d made representations at the Virginia Assembly to try to introduce legislation banning the import of goods from Great Britain. The fact that it was a doomed legislation only added to the growing sense of national discontent.
The Tea Party, when it happened in December ’73 – just last month, in fact – was the culmination of years – no, decades – of dissatisfaction. By turning the harbour into the world’s biggest cup of tea, the colonists were telling Great Britain and the world that they were no longer prepared to live under an unjust system. A full-scale uprising was surely just a matter of months away. So, with the same amount of enthusiasm as I tended my crops, or wrote to Jenny, or climbed out of bed each morning – in other words, very little – I decided it was time for the Order to make preparations for the coming revolution, and I called a meeting.
ii
We assembled, all of us together for the first time in over fifteen years, the men of the Colonial Rite with whom I had shared so many adventures twenty years ago.
We were gathered beneath the low beams of a deserted tavern called the Restless Ghost on the outskirts of Boston. It hadn’t been deserted when we’d arrived, but Thomas had seen to it that we soon had the place to ourselves, literally chasing out the few drinkers who were huddled over the wooden tables. Those of us who usually wore a uniform were wearing civilian clothes, with buttoned-up coats and hats pulled down over our eyes, and we sat around a table with tankards close at hand: me, Charles Lee, Benjamin Church, Thomas Hickey, William Johnson and John Pitcairn.
And it was here that I first learnt about the boy.
Benjamin addressed the subject first. He was our man inside Boston’s Sons of Liberty, a group of patriots, anti-British colonists who had helped organize the Boston Tea Party, and two years ago, in Martha’s Vineyard, he’d had an encounter.
‘A native boy,’ he said. ‘Not someone I’d ever seen before …’
‘Not someone you remember seeing before, Benjamin,’ I corrected.
He pulled a face. ‘Not someone I remember seeing before, then,’ he amended. ‘A boy who strode up to me and, bold as brass, demanded to know where Charles was.’
I turned to Charles. ‘He’s asking for you, then. Do you know who it is?’
‘No.’ But there was something shifty about the way he said it.
‘I’ll try again, Charles. Do you have a suspicion who this boy might be?’
He leaned back in his seat and looked away, across the tavern. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘But you’re not sure?’
‘There was a boy at …’
An uncomfortable silence seemed to descend on the table. The men either reached for their tankards or hunched their shoulders or found something to study in the fire nearby. None would meet my eye.
‘How about somebody tells me what’s going on?’ I asked.
These men – not one of them was a tenth of the man Holden had been. I was sick of them, I realized, heartily sick of them. And my feelings were about to intensify.
It was Charles – Charles who was the first to look across the table, hold my gaze and tell me, ‘Your Mohawk woman.’
‘What about her?’
‘I’m sorry, Haytham,’ he said. ‘Really I am.’
‘She’s dead?’
‘Yes.’
Of course, I thought. So much death. ‘When? How?’
‘It was during the war. In ’60. Fourteen years ago now. Her village was attacked and burned.’
I felt my mouth tighten.
‘It was Washington,’ he said quickly, glancing at me. ‘George Washington and his men. They burned the village and your … she died with it.’
‘You were there?’
He coloured. ‘Yes, we’d hoped to speak to the village elders about the precursor site. There was nothing I could do, though, Haytham, I can assure you. Washington and his men galumphing all over the place. There was a bloodlust on them that day.’
‘And there was a boy?’ I asked him.
His eyes flicked away. ‘Yes, there was a boy – young, about five.’
About five, I thought. I had a vision of Ziio, of the face I’d once loved, when I was capable of doing such a thing, and felt a dull backwash of grief for her and loathing for Washington, who had obviously learnt a thing or two from serving with General Braddock – lessons in brutality and ruthlessness. I thought of the last time she and I had been together, and I pictured her in our small encampment, gazing out into the trees with a faraway look in her eyes and, almost unconsciously, her hands going to her belly.
But no. I cast the idea aside. Too fanciful. Too far-fetched.
‘He threatened me, this boy,’ Charles was saying.
In different circumstances, I might have smiled at the image of Charles, all six foot of him, being threatened by a five-year-old native boy – if I hadn’t been trying to absorb the death of Ziio, that was – and I took a deep but almost imperceptible breath, feeling the air in my chest, and dismissed the image of her.
‘I wasn’t the only one of us there,’ said Charles defensively, and I looked arou
nd the table enquiringly.
‘Go on, then. Who else?’
William, Thomas and Benjamin all nodded, their eyes fixed on the dark, knotted wood of the tabletop.
‘It can’t have been him,’ said William crossly. ‘Can’t have been the same kid, surely.’
‘Come on, ’Aytham, what are the chances?’ chimed Thomas Hickey.
‘And you didn’t recognize him at Martha’s Vineyard?’ I asked Benjamin now.
He shook his head, shrugged. ‘It was just a kid, an Indian kid. They all look the same, don’t they?’
‘And what were you doing there, in Martha’s Vineyard?’
His voice was testy. ‘Having a break.’
Or making plans to line your pockets, I thought, and said, ‘Really?’
He pursed his lips. ‘If things go as we think, and the rebels organize themselves into an army, then I’m in line to be made chief physician, Master Kenway,’ he said, ‘one of the most senior positions in the army. I think that, rather than questioning why I was in Martha’s Vineyard that day, you might have some words of congratulation for me.’
He cast around the table for support and was greeted with hesitant nods from Thomas and William, both of them giving me a sideways look at the same time.
I conceded. ‘And I have completely forgotten my manners, Benjamin. Indeed it will be a great boost for the Order the day you achieve that rank.’
Charles cleared his throat loudly. ‘While we also hope that if such an army is formed, our very own Charles will be appointed its commander-in-chief.’
I didn’t see exactly, as the light in the tavern was so low, but I could sense Charles redden. ‘We do more than merely hope,’ he protested. ‘I am the obvious candidate. My military experience far outstrips that of George Washington.’
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