That was the Anne I remembered, with the face of an angel and the mouth of the roughest jack tar. And she had the court in uproar again as the red-faced judge hammered at the bench with his gavel and ordered them removed, and the session broke up in disarray.
58
‘Edward Kenway. Do you remember you once threatened to cut off my lips and feed them to me?’
Laureano Torres’s face appeared from the gloom outside my prison cell door, framed by the window, divided by the bars.
‘I didn’t do it, though,’ I reminded him, my disused voice croaking.
‘But you would have done.’
True. ‘But I didn’t.’
He smiled. ‘The typical terror tactics of a pirate: unsophisticated and unsubtle. What say you, Rogers?’
He lingered there, too. Woodes Rogers, the great pirate hunter. Hanging about near my cell door.
‘Is that why you’ve been denying me food and water?’ I rasped.
‘Oh,’ chuckled Torres, ‘but there is much, much more to come. We have the little matter of the Observatory’s location to extract. We have the little matter of what you did to Hornigold. Come, let us show you what lies in store. Guards.’
Two men arrived, the same pair of Templar stooges who’d escorted me to the courtroom. Torres and Rogers left as I was manacled and leg irons were fitted. And then with my boots dragging on the flagstones they hauled me out of the cell and along the passageway, out into the prison courtyard where I blinked in the blinding sun, breathed fresh air for the first time in weeks and then, to my surprise, out of the main prison gates.
‘Where are you taking me?’ I gasped. The light of the sun was too blinding. I couldn’t open my eyes. They felt as though they were glued together.
There was no reply. I could hear the sounds of Kingston. Daily life carrying on as normal around me.
‘How much are they paying you?’ I tried to say. ‘Whatever it is, let me go and I’ll double it.’
They came to a halt.
‘Good man, good man,’ I mumbled. ‘I can make you rich. Just get me –’
A fist smashed into my face, splitting my lip, breaking something in my nose that began to gush blood. I coughed and groaned. As my head lolled back a face came close to mine.
‘Shut. Up.’
I blinked, trying to focus on him, trying to remember his face.
‘I’ll get you for that,’ I murmured. Blood or saliva ran from my mouth. ‘You mark my words, mate.’
‘Shut up, or next time it’ll be the point of my sword.’
I chuckled. ‘You’re full of shit, mate. Your master wants me alive. Kill me and you’ll be taking my place in that cell. Or worse.’
Through a veil of pain, blood and piercing sunlight I saw his expression darken. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he snarled. ‘We’ll see about that.’
And then the journey continued, me spitting blood, trying to clear my head and mostly failing until we came to what looked like the foot of a ladder. I heard the murmured voices of Torres and Rogers, and then a creaking sound coming from just overhead, and when I raised my chin and cast my eyes upwards what I saw was a gibbet. One of the stooges had climbed the ladder and unlocked it, and the door opened with a complaint of rusty metal. I felt the sun beat down upon me.
I tried to say something, to explain that I was parched and could die in the sun. And that if I did that – if I died – then they’d never find out where the Observatory was. Only Black Bart would know, and what a terrifying thought that was – Black Bart in charge of all that power.
He’s doing that right now, isn’t he? That’s how he got to be so successful.
But I never got the chance to say it, because they’d locked me in the gibbet. Locked me in the gibbet to let the sun do its work. Let it slowly cook me alive.
59
At sundown my two friends came to fetch me and take me back to my cell. My reward for surviving was water, a bowl of it on my cell floor, just enough to dab on my lips, keep me alive, to use on the blisters and pustules brought up by the sun.
Rogers and Torres came. ‘Where is it? Where is the Observatory?’
With cracked, desiccated lips I smiled at them but said nothing.
He’s robbing you blind, isn’t he? Roberts, I mean. He’s destroying all your plans.
‘You want to go back there tomorrow?’
‘Sure,’ I whispered. ‘Sure. I could do with the fresh air.’
It wasn’t every day. Some days I stayed in my cell. Some days they only hung me for a few hours.
‘Where is it? Where is the Observatory?’
Some days they left me until well after nightfall. But it wasn’t so bad when the sun went in. I was still crumpled into the gibbet like a man stuck in a privy, every muscle and bone shrieking in agony; I was still dying of thirst and hunger, my sunburnt flesh flaming. But still, it wasn’t so bad. At least the sun had gone in.
‘Where is it? Where is the Observatory?’
Every day I’m up there he’s a bigger pain in the arse, isn’t he? Every day wasted is Black Bart’s triumph over the Templars. There’s that at least.
‘You want to go back there tomorrow?’
‘Sure.’
I wasn’t sure I could take another day. In a strange way I was trusting them not to kill me. I was trusting in my resolve being greater than theirs. I was trusting in my own inner strength.
But for another day I hung there, crouched and crumpled in the gibbet. And when night fell again I heard the guards taunting me, and I heard them gloating about Calico Jack, and how Charles Vane had been arrested.
Charles Vane, I thought. Charles Vane … I remember him. He tried to kill me. Or did I try to kill him?
And then the sounds of a short pitched battle, bodies falling, muffled groans.
And then a voice.
‘Good morning, Captain Kenway. I have a gift for you.’
Very, very slowly, I opened my eyes. On the ground below me, painted grey in the dead light of the day, were two bodies. My friends, the Templar stooges. Both had slashed throats. A pair of crimson smiles adorned their necks.
And crouching by them, rifling through their tunics for the gibbet keys, was the Assassin Ah Tabai.
I assumed I’d never see him again. After all, the Assassin Ah Tabai was not the greatest supporter of Edward Kenway. He probably would just as soon have slit my throat as rescue me from jail.
Fortunately for me, he chose to rescue me from jail.
But – ‘Do not mistake my purpose here,’ he said, climbing the ladder, finding the right key for the lock and being good enough to catch me when I almost fell forward from the gibbet. He had a bulging leather flask and held the teat to my lips. As I gulped I felt tears of relief and gratitude pouring down my cheeks.
‘I have come for Anne and Mary,’ he was saying as he helped me down the ladder. ‘You owe me nothing for this. But if you would lend me your aid I can promise you safe passage from this place.’
I had collapsed to the ground, where Ah Tabai allowed me to gather myself, handing me the leather flask once again.
‘I’ll need weapons,’ I said after some minutes.
He smiled and handed me a hidden blade. It was no small thing for an Assassin to hand an interloper a blade. And as I crouched on the ground and strapped it on I realized I was being honoured in some way. The thought gave me strength.
I stood and engaged the steel, worked the action of the blade then slid it home. It was time – time to go and save Anne and Mary.
60
He had some distractions to set off, he said. So I was to look for the women while he saw to that. Fine. I knew where they were being held, and not long later, when the first of his explosions gave me just the distraction I needed, I was able to slip back into the prison compound and make my way there.
Then, as I drew closer, what I heard was screaming and the unmistakable voice of Anne Bonny. ‘Help her, for God’s sake. Fetch help. Mary’s ill. Somebody, pl
ease.’
In return I heard the sound of soldiers trying to shut her up, thumping at the bars of her cell with their musket butts.
Not to be silenced, Anne was shrieking at them now. ‘She’s ill. Please, she’s ill,’ Anne was screaming. ‘She’s dying.’
‘A dying pirate, there’s your difference,’ one of the men was saying.
I ran now, heart thumping, feeling the pain at my side but ignoring it as I turned a corner in the corridor of the cellblock, one hand on the cool stone wall to steady my progress and the other engaging the blade at the same time.
The guards were already rattled by Ah Tabai’s explosions and Anne’s screaming. The first one turned and raised his musket but I swept my blade under and up, thrusting it through his ribcage, gripping the back of his head and wrenching it into his heart at the same time. His mate had turned at the sound of the body thumping to the stone and his eyes widened. He reached for his pistol but I got to him before his fingers curled round the grip, and with a shout leapt and struck downwards, plunging the blade into him, too.
Stupid move. I wasn’t in the condition for that kind of action.
Immediately I felt a searing pain along my side. Pain like fire that began at the wound and then rolled up and down my body. In a tumble of flailing arms and legs I fell with my blade embedded in the guard, landing badly but pulling it free as I rolled to meet the attack of the last guard …
Thank God. Ah Tabai appeared from my right, his own blade engaged, and seconds later the last guard lay dead on the stone.
I gave him grateful eyes and we turned our attention to the cells – to the screaming.
There were two cells beside one another. Anne stood, her desperate face pressed between the bars. ‘Mary,’ she was pleading, ‘see to Mary.’
I didn’t need telling twice. From a guard’s belt I liberated the keys and tore open Mary’s door. Inside she was using her hands for a pillow on the low, dirty cot where she lay. Her chest rose and fell weakly, and though her eyes were open she stared at the wall without seeing it.
‘Mary,’ I said, bending to her and speaking quietly. ‘It’s me. Edward.’
She breathed steady but ragged breaths. Her eyes stayed where they were, blinking but not moving, not focusing. She wore a dress but it was cold in the cell and there was no blanket to cover her. No water to touch to her parched lips. Her forehead was shiny with sweat and cauldron-hot when I put a hand to it.
‘Where’s the child?’ I asked.
‘They took it,’ replied Anne from the door. The bastards. My fists clenched.
‘No idea where she is,’ continued Anne, then suddenly cried out in pain herself.
Jesus. That’s all we need.
Right, let’s go.
As gently as I could I pulled Mary to a sitting position then swung her arm round my shoulder and stood. My own wound grumbled, but Mary cried out in pain and I could only imagine the agony she was going through. After childbirth she needed rest. Her body needed time to recover.
‘Lean on me, Mary,’ I told her. ‘Come on.’
From somewhere came the shouts of approaching soldiers. Ah Tabai’s distractions had worked; they’d given us the time we needed, but now the troops had recovered.
‘Search every cell,’ I heard.
We began stumbling along the passageway back towards the courtyard, Ah Tabai and Anne forging ahead.
But Mary was heavy and I was weak from days and nights spent hung in the gibbet, and the wound in my side – Christ, it hurt – something must have torn down there because the pain flared, and I felt blood, warm and wet, course into the waistband of my breeches.
‘Please, help me, Mary,’ I begged her, but I could feel her body sag as if the fight was leaving her, the fever too much for it.
‘Stop. Please,’ she was saying. Her breathing was even more erratic. Her head lolled from side to side. Her knees seemed to have given way and she sank to the flagstones of the passageway. Up ahead Ah Tabai was helping Anne, whose hands clutched at her stomach, and they turned to urge us on, hearing more shouting from behind us, more soldiers arriving.
‘There’s no one here!’ came the shout. So now they had discovered the breakout. More running feet.
Ah Tabai and Anne reached the door to the courtyard. A black square became a grey one and night air rushed into the passageway.
Guards behind us. Ahead Ah Tabai and Anne were already across the courtyard and at the main gate where the Assassin surprised a guard who slid down the wall dying. Anne was screaming now and needing help as they clambered through the wicket door of the prison compound and out into a night glowing orange with the fire of Ah Tabai’s explosions.
But Mary couldn’t walk. Not any more. I grimaced as I bent down and scooped her up, feeling another tearing sensation in my side as though my wound, though a year old, simply couldn’t cope with the extra weight.
‘Mary …’
I could carry her no longer, and had to lay her down on the stones of the courtyard. From all around us I could hear the sound of tramping boots and soldiers calling to one another.
Fine, I thought. Let them come. Here is where I’ll stand and fight. It’s as good a place to die as any.
She looked up at me and her eyes focused, and she managed to smile before a fresh surge of pain made its way through her body. ‘Don’t die on my account,’ she managed. ‘Go.’
I tried to say no.
But she was right.
I laid her down, and tried to make her as comfortable as possible on the stones. My eyes were wet when I spoke. ‘Dammit. You should have been the one to outlast me.’
She smiled a ghostly smile. ‘I’ve done my part. Will you?’
Her image divided as though viewed through diamonds and I palmed tears from my eyes. ‘If you came with me I could,’ I urged her.
She said nothing.
No, please. Don’t go. Not you.
‘Mary … ?’
She was trying to say something. I put my ear to her lips. ‘I’ll be with you, Kenway,’ she whispered. Her final breath was warm on my ear. ‘I will.’
I stood up and looked down at Mary Read, knowing there would be time to mourn her later, when I would remember a remarkable person, perhaps the most remarkable I ever knew. But for the moment I thought of how the British soldiers had let this good woman give birth, ripped her baby from her, then left her wounded and feverish in a prison cell. No blanket to cover her. No water to touch to her lips.
I heard the first British soldiers coming into the courtyard behind me. Just in time to exact a little revenge before I make my escape.
I engaged the blade and span to meet them.
61
I guess you could say I did a bit of drinking after that. And I saw people in my delirium, figures from the past: Caroline, Woodes Rogers, Bartholomew Roberts.
And ghosts, too: Calico Jack, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold, Edward Thatch.
And Mary Read.
Eventually, after a binge that lasted how long, I couldn’t say, salvation came in the form of Adewalé. He came to me on the beach in Kingston, and I thought he was another ghost at first, another figure from my visions. Come to taunt me. Come to remind me of my failings.
‘Captain Kenway, you look like a bowl of plum duff.’
One of my visions. A ghost. A trick my poor hungover mind is playing on me. And, yes, while we’re on the subject, where is my bottle of liquor?
Until, when he reached a hand to me and I reached back, expecting his fingers to become wisps of smoke, to disappear into nothing, they were real. Hard as wood, just as reliable. And real.
I sat up. ‘Christ, I’ve got a head for ten …’
Adewalé pulled me up. ‘On your feet.’
I stood rubbing my poor throbbing head. ‘You put me in a spot, Adewalé. After you left me with Roberts I should have hard feelings about seeing you here.’ I looked at him. ‘But mostly, I’m bloody glad.’
‘Me too, breddah, and you’
ll be chuffed to know your Jackdaw is still in one piece.’
He took me by the shoulder and pointed out to sea, and maybe it was the drink making me feel extra emotional but tears filled my eyes to see the Jackdaw once again. The men stood at the gunwales and I saw them in the rigging and their faces at the hatches of the stern guns, every man-jack of them looking over to the beach, to where Adewalé stood with me now. They came, I thought, and a tear rolled down my cheek that I brushed away with the sleeve of my robes (a parting gift from Ah Tabai, though I’d done little to honour them since).
‘Shall we set sail?’ I asked him, but Adewalé was already walking away, further up the beach towards inland. ‘You’re leaving?’ I called after him.
‘Aye, Edward. For I have another calling elsewhere.’
‘But …’
‘When your heart and your head are ready, visit the Assassins. I think you will understand then.’
So I took his advice. I sailed the Jackdaw to Tulum, back to where I had first discovered my sense and met Ah Tabai. There, I left the crew on board and went in search of Ah Tabai, only to arrive in the aftermath of an attack, walking into the smouldering, smoking ruins of an Assassin village and finding Adewalé there, too. This, then, was his calling.
‘Jesus, Adewalé, what the hell happened here?’
‘You happened here, Edward. The damage you caused six years ago has not been undone.’
I winced. So that was it. The Assassins were still feeling the repercussions of those maps I had sold to the Templars.
I looked at him. ‘I’m not an easy man to call a friend, am I? Is that why you’re here?’
‘To fight beside a man so driven by personal gain and glory is a hard thing, Edward. And I have come to feel the Assassins – and their creed – is a more honourable course.’
So that was it. The words of Mary Read and Ah Tabai had been wasted on me but Adewalé had been heeding them. I wished I’d made more effort to do the same.
‘Have I been unfair?’ he prompted.
I shook my head. ‘For years I’ve been rushing around, taking whatever I fancied, not giving a tinker’s cuss for those I hurt. Yet here I am … with riches and reputation, feeling no wiser than when I left home. Yet when I turn round, look at the course I’ve run … there’s not a man or woman I love left standing beside me.’
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