‘I’m not aiming so high as that,’ I told him, ‘for what is peace but a confusion between two wars?’
He looked surprised for a second, as though thinking me incapable of anything other than grunts and demands for gold or another tankard. How pleasing it was that in his final moments Bartholomew Roberts witnessed the change in me, knew that his death at my hands was not driven by greed but by something nobler.
‘You’re a stoic then,’ he laughed. ‘Perhaps I was wrong about you. She might have had some use for you after all.’
‘She?’ I said, puzzled. ‘Of whom do you speak?’
‘Oh … She who lies in wait. Entombed. I had hoped to find her, to see her again. To open the door of the temple and hear her speak my name once more. Aita …’
Mumbo-jumbo. More bloody mumbo-jumbo.
‘Talk sense, man.’
‘I was born too soon, like so many others before.’
‘Where’s the device, Roberts?’ I asked him, tired now – tired of his riddles, even at the end.
From his clothes he pulled the skull and offered it to me with fingers that shook.
‘Destroy this body, Edward,’ he said as I took it and the last of life seeped from him. ‘The Templars … If they take me …’
And he died. And it was not for him, nor for the peace of his soul, that I tossed his body overboard, consigning it to the depths. But so that the Templars would not have him. Whoever – whatever – this Sage had been, the safest place for his body was at the bottom of the sea.
And now, Grand Master Torres, I’m coming for you.
64
Arriving in Havana a few days before, I’d I found the city in a state of high alert. Torres, it appeared, had been warned of my imminent arrival and was taking no chances: soldiers patrolled the streets, citizens were being searched and forced to reveal their faces, and Torres himself had gone into hiding – accompanied, of course, by his trusty bodyguard El Tiburón.
I’d used the Observatory skull. Under the watchful eye of the Assassin bureau chief, Rhona Dinsmore, I took a vial of Torres’s blood in one hand and the skull in the other. As she watched me work I wondered how I might look to her. Like a madman? A magician? A man using ancient science?
‘Through the blood of the governor, we can see through his eyes,’ I told her.
She looked as intrigued as she did doubtful. And after all, I wasn’t sure of it myself. I’d seen it work in the Observatory, but in images conjured up in the chamber by Roberts. Here I was trying something new.
I needn’t have worried. The red of the blood in the vial seemed to bathe the inside of the skull and its eyeholes burned scarlet as it began to glow and display images on its polished dome. We were looking through the eyes of Governor Laureano Torres, who was looking at –
‘That’s … That’s by the church,’ she said, amazed.
Moments later I’d been in pursuit, and followed Torres as far as his fort, where the trap had been sprung. At some point a decoy had taken Torres’s place. It was he who fell beneath my blade, and there, waiting for me beneath the walls of the fort, implacable, silent as ever, was El Tiburón.
You should have killed me when you had the chance, I thought. Because when on the last occasion he’d bested me it was a different Edward Kenway he’d met in battle; things had changed in the meantime – I had changed – and I had much to prove to him …
So if he’d hoped to beat me as easily as he had before he was disappointed. He came forward, feinting, then switching sides, but I anticipated the move, defended easily, hit him on the counter and opened a nick on his cheek.
There was no grunt of pain, not from El Tiburón. But in those cloudy eyes was just the merest hint, the tiniest glimmer, of something I hadn’t seen the last time we’d fought. Fear.
And that gave me a boost more than any shot of liquor, and once again I came forward with my blade flashing. He was forced on to the back foot, defending left and right, trying to find a weak spot in my attack but failing. Where were his guards? He hadn’t summoned them, believing this would be an easy kill.
But how wrong he was, I thought as I pressed forward, dodged to my left and swiped backhanded with my blade, opening a gash in his tunic and a deep cut in his stomach that began gushing blood.
It slowed him down. It weakened him. I allowed him to come forward, pleased to see his sword strokes becoming more wild and haphazard as I carried on harrying him. Small but bloody strikes. Wearing him down.
He was slow now, his pain making him careless. Again I was able to drive forward with my cutlass, slash upwards with my hidden blade and twist it in his stomach. A mortal blow, surely?
His clothes were ragged and blood-stained. Blood from his stomach wound splattered to the ground, and he staggered with pain and exhaustion, looking at me mutely, but with all the agony of defeat in his eyes.
Until at last I put him down and he lay losing precious lifeblood, slowly dying in the heartless Havana sun. I crouched, blade to his throat, ready to plunge it up beneath his chin into his brain. End it quickly.
‘You humbled me once, and I took that hard lesson and I bettered myself …’ I told him. ‘Die knowing that for all our conflicts, you helped make a soldier out of a scoundrel.’
My blade made a moist squelching sound as I finished it.
‘Leave this life for a lasting peace, down among the dead,’ I told his corpse, and left.
65
Desperate Torres had fled. With a last throw of the dice he’d decided to seek out the Observatory for himself.
I took the Jackdaw in pursuit, my heart sinking as with each passing hour there was no sighting of Torres, and with each passing hour we grew closer to Tulum. Would he find it? Did he already know where it was? Had he found another poor soul to torture? An Assassin?
And then we came round the coast of Tulum, and there was Torres’s galleon at anchor, smaller consorts bobbling by her sides. We saw the glint of spyglasses and I ordered hard port. Moments later black squares appeared in the hull of the Spanish galleon and the sun shone dully off her gun barrels before there was a thud and a puff of fire and smoke and balls were smacking into us and into the water around us.
The battle would continue but it would have to continue without its captain and, also, as she insisted on coming with me, its quartermaster. Together Anne and I dived off the gunwale into bright blue water and swam for shore, and then began the trek up the path to the Observatory.
It wasn’t long before we came upon the first corpses.
Just as the men on the galleon were fighting for their lives against the onslaught of the Jackdaw, so the men with Torres had been doing the same. They had been ambushed by the natives, the Observatory guardians, and from up ahead we could hear the sounds of more conflict: desperate shouts as the men at the rear of the column tried in vain to frighten off the natives.
‘This land is under the protection of King Philip. Tell your men to disperse or die!’
But it was they who would die. As we passed through the undergrowth a short distance away from them I saw their uncomprehending faces go from the monolithic edifice of the Observatory – Where had that come from? – to scanning the long grass around them. They would die like that: terrified and uncomprehending.
At the entrance to the Observatory were more bodies, but the door was open and some men had clearly made it inside. Anne bade me go in; she would stand guard. And so for a second time I entered that strange and sacred place, that huge temple.
As I stepped inside I remembered the last time, when Roberts had murdered his men rather than let them be unbalanced by what they saw inside. Sure enough, just as I crept into the vast entrance chamber, terrified Spanish soldiers were fleeing screaming, their eyes somehow blank, as though whatever life in them had already been extinguished. As though they were corpses running.
They ignored me and I let them go. Good. They’d distract the Observatory guardians on the outside. And I pressed onwards, climbing stone ste
ps, passing along the bridge chamber – more terrified soldiers – then towards the main control chamber.
I was halfway there when the Observatory began to hum. The same skull-crushing sound I’d heard on my first visit. I broke into a run, pushing past more frantic soldiers trying to make their escape and dashing into the main chamber where stone crumbled from the walls as the Observatory seemed to shake and vibrate with the droning noise.
Torres stood at the raised control panel, trying to make himself heard above the din, calling to guards who were either no longer there or trying to make their escape, trying to negotiate the stone that fell around us.
‘Search the area. Find a way to stop this madness,’ he screamed with his hands over his ears. He turned and with a lurch saw me.
‘He’s here. Kill him,’ he shouted, pointing. Spittle flew. In his eyes was something I’d never have believed him capable of: panic.
‘Kill him!’ Just two of his brave but foolhardy men were up to challenge, and as the chamber shook, seemingly working itself loose around us, I made short work of them. Until the only men left were Torres and I.
And now the Templar Grand Master cast his eye around the chamber, his gaze travelling from the dead bodies of his men back to me. The panic had gone now. Back was the Torres I remembered, and in his face was not defeat, nor fear, nor even sadness at his imminent death. There was fervour.
‘We could have worked together, Edward,’ he appealed with his hands outstretched. ‘We could have taken power for ourselves and brought these miserable empires to their knees.’
He shook his head as if frustrated with me, as though I was an errant son.
(And no, sorry, mate, but I’m an errant son no longer.)
‘There is so much potential in you, Edward,’ he insisted, ‘so much you have not yet accomplished. I could show you things. Mysteries beyond anything you could imagine.’
No. He and his kind had done nothing for me save to seek the curtailment of my freedom and take the lives of my friends. Starting with the night in Bristol when a torch was flung in a farmyard, his kind had brought me nothing but misery.
I drove the blade in and he grunted with pain as his mouth filled with blood that spilled over his lips.
‘Does my murder fulfil you?’ he asked weakly.
No, no it didn’t.
‘I’m only seeing a job done, Torres. As you would have done with me.’
‘As we have done, I think,’ he managed. ‘You have no family any more, no friends, no future. Your losses are far greater than ours.’
‘That may be, but killing you rights a far greater wrong than I ever did.’
‘You honestly believe that?’
‘You would see all of mankind corralled into a neatly furnished prison: safe and sober, yet dull beyond reason and sapped of all spirit. So, aye, with everything I’ve seen and learnt in these last years, I do believe it.’
‘You wear your convictions well,’ he said. ‘They suit you …’
It was as though I’d been in a trance. The noise of the Observatory, the rattle of stone falling around me, the screams of the fleeing troops: all of it had faded into the background as I spoke to Torres, and I only became aware of it again when the last breath died on his lips and his head lolled on the stone. There was the noise of a distant battle, soldiers being ruthlessly despatched, before Anne, Adewalé and Ah Tabai burst into the chamber. Their swords were drawn and streaked with blood. Their pistols smoked.
‘Torres awakened the Observatory something fierce,’ I said to Ah Tabai. ‘Are we safe?’
‘With the device returned, I believe so,’ he replied, indicating the skull.
Anne was looking around herself, open-mouthed. Even part-destroyed in the wake of the rockfall the chamber was still a sight to see. ‘What do you call this place?’ she said, awestruck.
‘Captain Kenway’s folly,’ said Adewalé, shooting me a smile.
‘We will seal this place and discard the key,’ announced Ah Tabai, ‘until another Sage appears, this door will remain locked.’
‘There were vials when I came here last,’ I told him, ‘filled with the blood of ancient men, Roberts said. But they’re gone now.’
‘Then it’s up to us to recover them,’ said Ah Tabai with a sigh, ‘before the Templars catch wind of this. You could join us in that cause.’
I could. I could. But …
‘Only after I fix what I mangled back home.’
The old Assassin nodded, and then as though reminded of it he removed a letter from his robes that he handed to me. ‘It arrived last week.’
They left me as I read it.
And I think you know the news it contained, don’t you, my sweet?
66
October, 1722
We had good reason to celebrate. So we did. However, with my new knowledge had come a decreased interest in inebriation, so I left the exuberance in the hands of the Jackdaw crew, who built fires and roasted hogs and danced and sang until they had no energy left, then they simply collapsed and slept where they had stood and then pulled themselves to their feet, grabbed the nearest flask of liquor and began again.
Me, I sat on the terrace of my homestead with Adewalé and Ah Tabai.
‘Gentlemen, how do you find it here?’ I asked them.
I’d offered it – my home – as their base.
‘It will work well for us,’ said Ah Tabai, ‘but our long-term goal must be to scatter our operations. To live and work among the people we protect, just as Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad once counselled.’
‘Well, until that time, it’s yours as you see fit.’
‘Edward …’
I had already stood to find Anne, but turned to Adewalé.
‘Yes?’
‘Captain Woodes Rogers survived his wounds,’ he told me. I cursed, remembering the interruption. ‘He has since returned to England. Shamed and in great debt, but no less a threat.’
‘I will finish that job when I return. You have my word.’
He nodded, and we embraced before we parted, leaving me to join Anne.
We sat in silence for a moment, smiling at the songs, until I said, ‘I’ll be sailing for London in the next few months. I’d be a hopeful man if you were beside me.’
She laughed. ‘England is the wrong way round the globe for an Irish woman.’
I nodded. Perhaps it was for the best. ‘Will you stay with the Assassins?’ I asked her.
She shook her head. ‘No. I haven’t that kind of conviction in my heart. You?’
‘In time, aye, when my mind is settled and my blood is cooled.’
Just then we heard a cry from afar, a ship sailing into the cove. We looked at one another, both of us knowing what the arrival of the ship meant – a new life for me, a new life for her. I loved her in my own way, and I think she loved me, but the time had come to part, and we did it with a kiss.
‘You’re a good man, Edward,’ said Anne, her eyes shining as I stood. ‘And if you learn to keep settled to one place for more than a week, you’ll make a fine father, too.’
I left her and headed down to the beach to where a large ship was coming into dock. The gangplank was lowered and the captain appeared, holding the hand of a little girl: a beautiful little girl, who shone brighter than hope, just nine years old.
And I thought you looked the spitting image of your mother.
67
A little vision, you were. Jennifer Kenway, a daughter I never even knew I had. Embarking on a voyage, which went against your grandfather’s wishes but had your grandmother’s blessing, you’d sailed to find me, in order to give me the news.
My beloved was dead.
(Did you wonder why I didn’t cry, I wonder, as we stood on the dock at Inagua? So did I, Jenny. So did I.)
And on that voyage home I got to know you. And yet there were still things I had to keep from you, because I still had much I needed to do. Before, I talked about having loose ends to tie, business to take care of. Well, ther
e were still loose ends to tie. Still business to settle.
I took a skeleton crew to Bristol, a few of my most trusted men. We sailed the Atlantic, a hard, rough crossing, made bearable by a stay in the Azores, then continued our journey to the British Isles and to Bristol. To home – to a place I hadn’t visited for nigh on a decade. A place I had been warned against ever returning to.
As we came into the Bristol Channel the black flag of the Jackdaw was brought down, folded up and placed carefully in a chest in my cabin. In its place we raised the red ensign. It would be enough to allow us to land at least, and once the port marshals had worked out the Jackdaw was not a naval vessel, I’d be ashore and the ship anchored offshore.
And then I saw it for the first time in so long, the Bristol dock, and I caught my breath. I had loved Kingston, Havana and above all Nassau. But despite everything that had happened – or maybe because of it – this was still my home.
Heads turned in my direction as I strode along the harbour, a figure of mystery, dressed not like a pirate but something else. Perhaps some of the older ones remembered me: merchants I’d done business with as a sheep farmer, men I’d drunk with in the taverns when I’d boasted of going off to sea. And tongues would wag, and news would travel. How far, I wondered. To Matthew Hague and Wilson? To Emmett Scott? Would they know that Edward Kenway was back, stronger and more powerful than before, and that he had scores to settle?
I found a boarding house in town and there rested the night. The next morning I bartered for a horse and saddle and set off for Hatherton, riding until I reached my father’s old farmhouse.
Why I went there, I’m not quite sure. I think I just wanted to see it. And so for long moments that’s what I did. I stood by the gate in the shade of a tree and contemplated my old home. It had been rebuilt, of course, and was only partly recognizable as the house in which I had grown up. But one thing that had remained the same was the outhouse: the outhouse where my marriage to Caroline had begun; the outhouse in which you were conceived, Jennifer.
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