I found him by the same pigeon coop where I’d met the native woman earlier. There he stood, tinkering with his hidden blade.
‘Cheery bunch of mates you’ve got,’ I offered.
Though he frowned, a light in his eyes betrayed that he was pleased to see me.
Nevertheless, he said, ‘You deserve scorn, Edward, prancing about like one of us, bringing shame to our cause.’
‘What’s that, your cause?’
‘He tested his blade – in and out, in and out – and then turned his eyes on me.
‘To be blunt … we kill people. Templars and their associates. Folks who’d like to control all the empires on earth … Claiming they do it in the name of peace and order.’
Yes, I’d come across those sort of people before. These people who wanted jurisdiction of everyone on earth – I had broken bread with them.
‘Sounds like DuCasse’s dying words,’ I said.
‘You see? It’s about power really. About lording over people. Robbing us of liberty.’
And that – liberty – was something I held very, very dear indeed.
‘How long have you been one of these Assassins?’ I asked him.
‘A couple of years now. I met Ah Tabai in Spanish Town and there was something about him I trusted, a sort of wisdom.’
‘And is all of this his idea? This clan?’
Kidd chuckled. ‘Oh no, the Assassins and Templars have been at war for thousands of years, all over the world. The natives of this new world had similar philosophies for as long as they’ve been here and when Europeans arrived our groups sort of … matched up. Cultures and religions and languages keep folks divided … but there’s something in the Assassin’s Creed that crosses all boundaries. A fondness for life and liberty.’
‘Sounds a bit like Nassau, don’t it?’
‘Close. But not quite.’
I knew when we parted that I’d not seen the last of Kidd.
38
July, 1716
As the pirates of Nassau finished their rout of Porto Guarico’s guards, I stepped into the fort’s treasure room and the sound of clashing swords, the crackle of musket fire and the screams of the dead and dying faded behind me.
I shook blood from my blade, enjoying the look of surprise my presence brought to the face of its only occupant.
Its only occupant being Governor Laureano Torres.
He was just as I remembered him. Spectacles perched on his nose. Neatly clipped beard and twinkling, intelligent eyes that recovered easily from the shock of seeing me.
And behind him, the money. Just as had been promised by Charles Vane …
The plan had been hatched two days ago. I’d been at the Old Avery. There were other taverns in Nassau, of course, and other brothels, too, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t avail myself of both, but it was to the Old Avery that I returned, where Anne Bonny the barmaid would serve drinks (and there was no one prettier who ever bent to a bung hole with a tankard in her hand than Anne Bonny), where I’d spent so many happy hours in appreciation of that fine posterior, roaring with laughter with Edward and Benjamin, where for the hours we spent drinking there it was as though the world could not touch us and where, since returning to Nassau from Tulum, I found I’d rediscovered my thirst.
Oh yes. Just like those old days back in Bristol, the more dissatisfied I was, the thirstier I became. Not that I realized it at the time, of course, not being as prone to putting two and two together as I should have been. No, instead I just drank to quench that thirst and work up an even bigger one, brooding on the Observatory, and how it figured in my plans to get rich and strike at the Templars; brooding on James Kidd and Caroline. And I must have looked as though I was deep in a brown study that particular day, for the first thing that the pirate known as Calico Jack Rackham said to me was, ‘Oi, you, why the long look? Are you falling in love?’
I looked at him with bleary eyes. I was drunk enough to want to fight him; too drunk to do anything about it. And, anyway, Calico Jack stood by the side of Charles Vane, the two of them having just arrived on Nassau, and their reputation preceded them. It came on the lips of every pirate who passed through Nassau. Charles Vane was captain of the Ranger, and Calico Jack his quartermaster. Jack was English but had been brought up in Cuba, so he had a hint of the swarthy South American about him. As well as the bright calico gear that had given him his nickname, he wore big hoop earrings and a headscarf that seemed to emphasize his long brow. It might sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but he drank constantly. His breath was always foul with it; his dark eyes heavy and sleepy with it.
Vane, meanwhile, was the sharper of the two, in mind and in tongue, if not in appearance. His hair was long and unkempt and he wore a beard and looked haggard. Both were armed with pistols on belts across their chests, and cutlasses, and were smelly from months at sea. Neither was the type you’d hurry to trust: Calico Jack, as dippy as he was tipsy; Vane on a knife edge, like you were always one slip of the tongue away from sudden violence. And not averse to ripping off his own crew either.
Still, they were pirates, both of them. Our kind.
‘You’re welcome to Nassau, gents,’ I told them. ‘Everyone is who does his fair share.’
Now, one thing you’d have to say about Nassau, specifically about the upkeep of Nassau, was that as housekeepers we made good pirates.
After all, you have enough of that when you’re at sea, when having your ship spick and span is a question of immediate survival. They don’t call it shipshape for nothing. So on dry land, when it’s not really a question of survival – not immediate survival anyway – but more the sort of thing you feel you should do … What I’m saying is, the place was a pit: our grand Nassau Fort crumbled, great cracks along its walls; our shanty houses were falling down; our stocks and stores were badly kept and in disarray, and as for our privies – well, I know I’ve not exactly spared you the gory details of my life so far, but that’s where I draw the line.
By far the worst of it was the smell. No, not from the privies, though that was bad enough, let me tell you, but a stench hung over the whole place, emanating from the stacks of rotting animal hides pirates had left on the shore. When the wind was blowing the right way – oh my days.
So you can hardly blame Charles Vane when he looked around and, though it was rich coming from a man who smelled like a man who’d spent the last month at sea, which is exactly what he was, said, ‘So this is the new Libertalia? Stinks the same as every squat I’ve robbed in the past year.’
It’s one thing being rude about your own hovel; it’s a different kettle of fish when someone else does it. You suddenly feel defensive of the old place. Even so, I let it ride.
‘We was led to believe Nassau was a place where men did as they please,’ snorted Calico Jack. But before I could answer salvation arrived in the form of Edward Thatch, who with a bellow that might have been greeting but could just as well have been a war cry, appeared at the top of the steps and burst on to the terrace, as though the Old Avery was a prize and he was about to pillage it.
A very different-looking Edward Thatch it was, too, because to his already impressive head of hair he had added a huge black beard.
Ever the showman, he stood before us with his hands spread. Behold. Then tipped me a wink and moved into the centre of the terrace, taking command without even trying. (Which is funny, when you think on it, because for all our talk of being a republic, a place of ultimate freedom, we did still conform to our own forms of hierarchy, and with Blackbeard around there was never any doubt who was in charge.)
Vane grinned. Away with his scowl went the tension on the terrace. ‘Captain Thatch, as I live and breathe. And what is this magnificent muzzle you’ve cultivated?’
He rubbed a hand over his own growth as Blackbeard preened.
‘Why fly a black flag when a black beard will do?’ laughed Thatch.
That was the moment, in fact, that his legend was born. The moment he took th
e name Blackbeard. He’d go on to plait his face fuzz. When he boarded ships he inserted lit fuses into it, striking terror in all who saw him. It helped make him the most infamous pirate, not just in the Bahamas, not just in the Caribbean, but in the whole wide world.
He was never a cruel man, Edward, though he had a fearsome reputation. But like Assassins, with their robes and vicious blades springing from secret places, like Templars and their sinister symbols and their constant insinuations about powerful forces, Edward Thatch, Blackbeard as he came to be known, knew full well the value of making your enemies shit their breeches.
Now, it turned out that the ale, the sanctuary and the good company weren’t the only reasons we’d been graced with the presence of Charles Vane and Calico Jack.
‘The word is the Cuban governor himself is fixing to receive a mess of gold from a nearby fort,’ said Vane when we’d availed ourselves of tankards and lit our pipes. ‘Until then, it’s just sitting there, itching to be took.’
And that was how we found ourselves laying siege to Porto Guarico …
Well, the fight had been bloody, but short. With every man tooled up and our black flags flying we brought four galleons to the bay and hammered the fortress with shot, just to say we’d arrived.
Then we dropped anchor, launched yawls then waded through the shallows, snarling and shouting battle cries, our teeth bared. I got my first look at Blackbeard in full flight, and he was indeed a fearsome sight. For battle he dressed entirely in black, and the fuses in his beard coughed and spluttered so that he seemed to be alive with snakes and wreathed in a terrifying fog.
There’s not many soldiers who won’t turn tail and run at the sight of that charging up the beach towards them, which is what a lot of them did. Those brave souls who remained behind to fight or die, they did the latter.
I took my fair share of lives, the blade on my right hand as much a part of me as my fingers and thumbs, my pistol blasting in my left. When my pistols were empty I drew my cutlass. There were some of our men who had never seen me in action before, and you’ll forgive me for admitting there was an element of showmanship in my combat, as I span from man to man, cutting down guards with one hand, blasting with the other, felling two, sometimes three, at a time; driven, not by ferocity or bloodlust – I was no animal, there was little savagery or cruelty to what I did – but by skill, grace and dexterity. There was a kind of artistry to my killing.
And then, when the fort was ours, I entered the room where Laureano Torres sat smoking his pipe, overseeing the money count, two soldiers his bodyguards.
It was the work of a moment for his two soldiers to become two dead soldiers. He gave me a look of scorn and distaste as I stood in my Assassin’s robes – slightly tatty by now but still a sight to see – and my blade clicked back into place beneath my fist. The blood of his guards leaked through the sleeve.
‘Well hello, Your Excellency,’ I said. ‘I had word you might be here.’
He chuckled. ‘I know your face, pirate. But your name was borrowed the last time we spoke.’
Duncan Walpole. I missed him.
By now Adewalé had joined us in the treasure room, and as his gaze went from the corpses of the soldiers to Torres, his eyes hardened, perhaps as he remembered being shackled in one of the governor’s vessels.
‘So,’ I continued, ‘what’s a Templar Grand Master doing so far from his castillo?’
Torres assumed a haughty look. ‘I’d rather not say.’
‘And I’d rather not cut yer lips off and feed ’em to ya,’ I said cheerily.
It did the trick. He rolled his eyes but some of his smugness had evaporated. ‘After his escape from Havana we offered a reward for the Sage’s recapture. Today someone claims to have found him. This gold is his ransom.’
‘Who found him?’ I asked.
Torres hesitated. Adewalé put his hand to the hilt of his sword and his eyes burned hatefully at the Templar.
‘A slaver by the name of Laurens Prins,’ sighed Torres. ‘He lives in Kingston.’
I nodded. ‘We like this story, Torres. And we want to help you finish it. But we’re going to do it our way. Using you and your gold.’
He had no choice, and he knew it. Our next stop was Kingston.
39
So it was that some days later myself and Adewalé found ourselves roasting in the heat of Kingston as we shadowed the governor on his way to his meeting with Prins.
Prins, it was said, had a sugar plantation in Kingston. The Sage had been working for him but Prins had got wind of the bounty and thought he could make the sale.
Storm the plantation, then? No. Too many guards. Too high a risk of alerting the Sage. Besides, we didn’t even know for certain he was there.
Instead we wanted to use Torres to buy the man: Torres would meet Prins, give him half the gold and offer the other half in return for the deliverance of the Sage; Adewalé and I would swoop in, take the Sage, whisk him off and then prise out of him the location of the Observatory. Then, we would be rich.
Simple, eh? What could go wrong with such a well-wrought plan?
The answer, when it came, came in the shape of my old friend James Kidd.
At the port Torres was greeted by Prins, who was old and overweight and sweating in the sun, and the two of them walked together, talking, with two bodyguards slightly in front of them, two behind.
Would Torres raise the alarm? Perhaps. And if he did, then Prins surely had enough men at his command to overpower us easily. But if that happened, Torres knew that my first sword slash would be across his throat. And if that happened, none of us would see the Sage again.
The funny thing is, I didn’t see him. Not at first. It was as though I sensed him or that I became aware of him. I found myself looking around, the way you do if you smell burning when you shouldn’t. What’s that smell? Where’s that coming from?
Only then did I see him. A figure who loitered in a crowd at the other end of the pier, part of the background but visible to me. A figure who, when he turned his face, I saw who it was. James Kidd. Not here to take the air and see the sights by the look of him. Here on Assassin business. Here to kill … who? Prins? Torres?
Jesus. We kept close to the harbour wall as I led Adewalé over, grabbed Kidd and dragged him into a narrow alleyway between two fishing huts.
‘Edward, what the hell are you doing here?’ He writhed in my grip but I held him easily. (And I’d think back to that later – how easily I was able to pin him to the hut wall.)
‘I’m tailing these men to the Sage,’ I told him. ‘Can you hold off until he appears?’
Kidd’s eyebrows shot up. ‘The Sage is here?’
‘Aye, mate, he is, and Prins is leading us straight to him.’
‘Jaysus.’ He pulled a frustrated face but I wasn’t offering him a choice. ‘I’ll stay my blade for a time – but not long.’
Torres and Prins had moved off now and we had no choice but to go after them. I followed Kidd’s lead and got some on-the-spot Assassin training in the art of stealth. And it worked, too. Like a dream. By staying at a certain distance we were able to remain out of sight and pick up on snippets of conversation, like Torres getting peeved at being made to hang on.
‘I grow tired of this walk, Prins,’ he was saying, ‘we must be close by now.’
As it turned out we were. But close to what? Not to Prins’s plantation, that much was certain. Ahead was the dilapidated wooden fencing and odd, incongruous arched entrance of what looked like a graveyard.
‘Yes, just here,’ Prins answered. ‘We must be on equal footing you see? I’m afraid I don’t trust Templars any more than you must trust me.’
‘Well, if I’d known you were so skittish, Prins, I’d have brought you a bouquet of flowers,’ Torres said with forced humour, and with a last look around he entered the graveyard.
Prins laughed. ‘Ah, I don’t know why I bother … For the money, I suppose. Vast sums of money …’ His voice had tailed off. Wi
th a nod we slipped inside the cemetery behind them, keeping low and using the crooked markers as cover, one eye on the centre where Torres, Prins and his four minders had congregated.
‘Now is the time,’ Kidd told me as we gathered.
‘No. Not until we see the Sage,’ I replied firmly.
By now the Templar and the slaver were doing their deal. From a pouch hanging at his waist, Torres produced a bag that clinked with gold and dropped it into Prins’s outstretched hand. Greasing his palm not with silver but gold. Prins weighed it, his eyes never leaving Torres.
‘This is but a portion of the ransom,’ said Torres. A twitch of his mouth was the only clue he was not his usual composed self. ‘The rest is close at hand.’
By now the Dutchman had opened the bag. ‘It pains me to traffic someone of my own race for profit, Mr Torres. Tell me again … What has this Roberts fellow done to upset you?’
‘Is this some form of Protestant piety I am not familiar with?’
‘Perhaps another day,’ Prins said, then unexpectedly tossed the bag back to Torres, who caught it.
‘What?’
But Prins was already beginning to walk away. He motioned to his guards at the same time, calling to Torres, ‘Next time, see that you are not followed!’
And then to his men, ‘Deal with this.’
But it wasn’t towards Torres that the men rushed. It was towards us.
Blade engaged, I stood from behind my grave marker, braced, and met the first attack with a quick upwards slash across the flank of the first man. It was enough to stop him in his tracks, and I span round him and drove the blade-edge into the other side of his neck, slicing the carotid artery, painting the day red.
He sank and died. I wiped his blood from my face then wheeled and punched through the breastplate of another. A third man I misdirected by leaping to a grave marker. Then made him pay for his mistake with hot steel. Adewalé’s pistol cracked, and the fourth man fell and the attack was over. But Kidd had already taken to his heels in pursuit of Prins. With a final glance back at where Torres stood, dazed and unable to take in the sudden turn of events, I gave a yell to Adewalé then set off in pursuit.
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