I left, then halfway between Hatherton and Bristol, a road I knew so well, I stopped at a place I also knew well. The Auld Shillelagh. I tethered my horse outside, made sure she had water, then stepped in to find it almost exactly as I remembered: the low ceilings, a darkness that seemed to seep from the walls. The last time I was here I had killed a man. My first man. Many more had fallen beneath my blade since.
More to come.
Behind the bar was a woman in her fifties, and she raised her tired head to look at me as I approached.
‘Hello, Mother,’ I said.
68
She took me to a side table away from the prying eyes of the few drinkers there.
‘So it’s true then?’ she asked me. Her long hair had grey streaks in it. Her face was drawn and tired. It was only (only?) ten years since I’d last seen her but it was as though she had aged twenty, thirty, more.
All my fault.
‘What’s true, Mother?’ I asked carefully.
‘You’re a pirate?’
‘No, Mother, I’m not a pirate. No longer. I’ve joined an order.’
‘You’re a monk?’ She cast an eye over my robes.
‘No, Mother, I’m not a monk. Something else.’
She sighed, looking unimpressed. Over at the bar the landlord was towelling tankards, watching us with a hawk eye. He begrudged her the time she spent away from the bar but wasn’t about to say anything. Not with the pirate Edward Kenway around.
‘And you decided to come back, did you?’ she was saying. ‘I heard that you had. That you sailed into port yesterday, stepped off a glittering galleon like some kind of king. The big I-am, Edward Kenway. That’s what you always wanted, wasn’t it?’
‘Mother –’
‘That was what you were always going on about, wasn’t it? Wanting to go off and make your fortune, make something of yourself, become a man of quality, wasn’t it? That involved becoming a pirate, did it?’ She sneered. I didn’t think I’d ever seen my mother sneer before. ‘You were lucky they didn’t hang you.’
They still might, if they catch me.
‘It’s not like that any more. I’ve come to make things right.’
She pulled a face like she’d tasted something nasty. Another expression I’d never seen before. ‘Oh yes, and how do you plan to do that?’
I waved a hand. ‘Not have you working here, for a start.’
‘I’ll work wherever I like, young man,’ she scoffed. ‘You needn’t think you’re paying me off with stolen gold. Gold that belonged to other folks before they were forced to hand it to you at the point of your sword. Eh? Is that it?’
‘It’s not like that, Ma,’ I whispered, feeling young all of a sudden. Not like the pirate Edward Kenway at all. This wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be. Tears, embraces, apologies, promises. Not like this.
I leaned forward. ‘I don’t want it to be like this, Ma,’ I said quietly.
She smirked. ‘That was always your trouble, wasn’t it, Edward? Never happy with what you got.’
‘No …’ I began, exasperated. ‘I mean …’
‘I know what you mean. You mean you made a mess of things and then you left us to clear up your mess, and now you’ve got some finery about you, and a bit of money, you think you can come back and pay me off. You’re no better than Hague and Scott and their cronies.’
‘No, no, it’s not like that.’
‘I heard you arrived with a little girl in tow. Your daughter?’
‘Yes.’
She pursed her lips and nodded, a little sympathy creeping into her eyes. ‘It was her who told you about Caroline, was it?’
My fists clenched. ‘She did.’
‘She told you Caroline was sick with the pox and that her father refused her medicine, and that she ended up wasting away at that house on Hawkins Lane. She told you that, did she?’
‘She told me that, Ma, yes.’
She scratched at her head and looked away. ‘I loved that girl. Caroline. Really loved her. Like a daughter she was to me, until she went away.’ She shot me a reproachful look. That was your fault. ‘I went to the funeral, just to pay my respects, just to stand at the gate, but Scott was there and all his cronies, Matthew Hague and that Wilson fellow. They ran me off the place. Said I wasn’t welcome.’
‘They’ll pay for that, Ma,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘They’ll pay for what they’ve done.’
She looked quickly at me. ‘Oh yes? How are they going to pay then, Edward? Tell me that. You going to kill them, are you? With your sword? Your pistols? Word is, they’ve gone into hiding, the men you seek.’
‘Ma …’
‘How many men have died at your hand, eh?’ she asked.
I looked at her. The answer, of course, was countless.
She was shaking, I noticed. With fury.
‘You think that makes you a man, don’t you?’ she said, and I knew her words were about to hurt more than any blade. ‘But do you know how many men your father killed, Edward? None. Not one. And he was twice the man you are.’
I winced. ‘Don’t be like this. I know I could have done things differently. I wish I’d done things differently. But I’m back now – back to sort out the mess I made.’
She was shaking her head. ‘No, no, you don’t understand, Edward. There is no mess any more. The mess needed sorting out when you left. The mess needed sorting out when your father and I cleared up what remained of our home and tried to start again. It put years on him, Edward. Years. The mess needed sorting out when nobody would trade with us. Not a letter from you. Not a word. Your daughter was born, your father died, and not a peep from the great explorer.’
‘You don’t understand. They threatened me. They threatened you. They said if I ever returned they’d hurt you.’
She pointed. ‘You did more hurting than they ever could, my son. And now you’re here to stir things up again, are you?’
‘Things have got to be put right.’
She stood. ‘Not in my name, they don’t. I’ll have nothing to do with you.’
She raised her voice to address everybody in the tavern. Only a few would hear her, but word would soon spread. ‘You hear that?’ she said loudly. ‘I disown him. The great and famous pirate Edward Kenway; he’s nothing to do with me.’
Hands flat on a tabletop she leaned forward and hissed, ‘Now get out, no-son-of-mine. Get out before I tell the soldiers where the pirate Edward Kenway is to be found.’
I left, and when, on the journey back to my boarding house in Bristol, I realized that my cheeks were wet, I allowed myself to cry, grateful for one thing. Grateful that there was nobody around to see my tears or hear my wails of grief.
69
So – they had gone to ground, the guilty men. And yes, there had been others there that night – the Cobleighs among them. But I had no desire to account for them all; little taste for taking the lives of men given orders. The men I wanted gave those orders: Hague, Scott and, of course, the man who left the insignia of the Templars on my face all those years ago. Wilson.
Men who hid from me. Whose guilt was confirmed by the fact that they were hiding from me. Good. Let them hide. Let them shake with fear.
They knew I was coming after them. And I was – I was coming after them. Tonight, all being well, Scott, Wilson and Hague would be dead.
But they knew I was coming, so my investigations would have to be conducted a little more discreetly. When I left my boarding house the next morning I did so knowing I was beneath the gaze of Templar spies. I ducked into a tavern I knew of old – better than my pursuers, no doubt – and thanked my lucky stars it still had the same rear privy it always had.
By the back door I held my breath against the stink, quickly stripped off my robes and changed into clothes I’d brought with me from the Jackdaw – clothes I’d last worn many, many moons ago: my long buttoned-up waistcoat, knee breeches, white stockings and a battered brown tricorne. And thus attired I left the tavern, emergin
g on a different street a different person. Just another merchant on his way to market.
I found her there, exactly where I had expected to, and jogged the basket on her arm so she’d know I was behind her, whispering, ‘I got your message.’
‘Good,’ said Rose without turning her head, bending to inspect some flowers. With a quick look left and right she whipped out a headscarf and tied it over her head.
‘Follow me.’
A moment later Rose and I loitered near some dilapidated stables in a deserted corner of the market. I glanced at the structure, then back again with a jolt of recognition. I’d stabled my own horse here many years ago. It had been new then and convenient for the market, but the sprawl of stalls had shifted over the intervening years, its entrances had moved and the stables had fallen into disuse, fit only for loitering near, for conducting clandestine meetings, as we did now.
‘You’ve met young Jennifer, have you?’ she said.
She shifted the basket on her arm. She’d been a young girl when I’d first encountered her at the Auld Shillelagh. Ten years later she was still young but missing was that spark, that rebellious streak that had made her run away in the first place. A decade of drudgery had done that to her.
And yet, like the glowing sparks of a dying fire, there was some of her old nature left, because she’d sent me a letter requesting to meet me, and here she was, with things to tell me. Among them, I hoped, the whereabouts of her master and his friends.
‘I have,’ I told her. ‘I’ve met my daughter. She’s safe on my ship.
‘She has your eyes.’
I nodded. ‘She has her mother’s beauty.’
‘She’s a beautiful girl. We were all very fond of her.’
‘But wilful?’
Rose smiled. ‘Oh yes. She was determined that she should see you when Mistress Caroline passed away last year.’
‘I’m surprised Emmett allowed it.’
Rose chortled dryly. ‘He didn’t, sir. It was the mistress of the house who organized it, her and Miss Jennifer cooked it up between them. The first his nibs knew of it was when he woke up to find Miss Jennifer gone. He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy at all, sir.’
‘Meetings, were there?’
She looked at me. ‘You could say that, sir, yes.’
‘Who came to see him, Rose?’
‘Master Hague …’
‘And Wilson?’
She nodded her head.
All the conspirators.
‘And where are they now?’
‘I don’t rightly know, sir,’ she said.
I sighed. ‘Then why invite me here, if you’ve nothing to tell me?’
She turned her face to me. ‘I mean I don’t know where they’re hiding, sir, but I do know where Mr Scott plans to be tonight, for I have been asked to take him some fresh clothes to his offices.’
‘The warehouse?’
‘Yes, sir. He has business items to collect as well, sir. He plans to be there personally. I’ve been asked to go there when night has fallen.’
I looked at her long and hard. ‘Why, Rose?’ I said. ‘Why are you helping me like this?’
She glanced this way and that. ‘Because you once helped save me from a fate worse than death. Because Mistress Caroline loved you. And because …’
‘What?’
‘Because that man, he watched her die. He wouldn’t let her get the medicine she needed, not her or Mrs Scott, the both of them ill. Mrs Scott recovered but Mrs Kenway never did.’
It startled me to hear Caroline called Mrs Kenway. It had been so long since she’d been referred to that way.
‘Why did he deny them the medicine?’
‘Pride, sir. It was him who caught the smallpox first but he recovered. He thought Mrs Scott and Mrs Kenway should be able to as well. But she began to get such terrible blisters all over her face, sir. Oh, sir, you’ve never seen anything like it –’
I held up a hand, not wanting to hear more – wanting to preserve the image I had of Caroline.
‘There was an epidemic in London and we think Mr Scott picked it up there. Even the royal family were in fear of it.’
‘You didn’t get it?’
She looked at me guiltily. ‘The staff were inoculated, sir. Head butler saw to it. Swore us to silence.’
I sighed. ‘Good for him. He may have saved you a great deal of suffering.’
‘Sir.’
I looked at her. ‘Tonight, then?’
‘Tonight, sir, yes.’
70
And it had to be tonight.
‘Are you Edward Kenway?’ she’d said to me.
My landlady. Edith was her name. She’d knocked on the door to my room and stood on the threshold unwilling to venture further. Her face was bloodless, her voice shook and her fingers worried at the hem of her pinafore.
‘Edward Kenway?’ I smiled. ‘Now, why would you say a thing like that, Edith?’
She cleared her throat. ‘They say that a man arrived on a boat. A man dressed much like you are now, sir. And that the man is Edward Kenway, who once called Bristol his home.’
The colour had come back into her cheeks now, and she reddened, continuing, ‘And there are others who say that Edward Kenway has returned home to settle scores, and that those against whom he bears his grudge have gone into hiding, but being powerful men have called resources against you – I mean, him.’
‘I see,’ I said carefully, ‘and what manner of resources might these be?’
‘A troop of soldiers headed for Bristol, sir, expected to arrive this very evening.’
‘I see. And no doubt heading straight for wherever this Edward Kenway has his lodgings, whereupon Edward Kenway would be forced to defend himself, and there would surely be a bloody battle, with many lives lost and much damage caused?’
She swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, you can rest assured, Edith, that no such unpleasantness will occur here tonight. For I’m sure Edward Kenway will make certain of it. And know this of him, Edith. It’s true he was a pirate once and that he did his fair share of despicable things, but he’s chosen a different path now. He knows that to see differently we must think differently. And he has changed his thinking.’
She looked at me blankly. ‘Very good, sir.’
‘And now I shall take my leave,’ I told her. ‘Doubtless never to return.’
‘Very good, sir.’
On the bed was a bundle of my things that I picked up and slung over one shoulder, then I thought better of it and instead picked out what I needed: the skull and a small pouch of coins that I opened, pressing gold into Edith’s hand.
‘Oh, sir, that’s more than generous.’
‘You’ve been very kind, Edith,’ I said.
She stood to one side. ‘There’s a back door, sir,’ she said.
I went via a tavern where I knew to find the Jackdaw’s coxswain, awaiting my orders.
‘Birtwistle.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Bring the Jackdaw to the harbour tonight. We’re leaving.’
‘Yes, sir.’
And then I went on to the warehouse district, using the backstreets and rooftops. I stayed low and in the shadows.
And I thought, Oh, Mary, if you could only see me now.
Scott’s warehouse was one of many near the ports, the masts of berthed ships visible over the roofs. Most of the warehouses were deserted, shut up for the night. Only his had signs of life: flaming cressets that painted a small loading area a shade of flickering orange, empty carts nearby, and standing by the closed door a pair of guards. Not soldiers, at least – had they arrived in the city yet? – but local scar-faces slapping clubs into their palms, who probably thought this was an easy job, who were probably looking forward to a taste of ale later.
I stayed where I was, a shadow in the darkness, watching the door. Was he already in there? I was still debating when to make my move when Rose arrived. She wore the same headscarf as earlier an
d her basket bulged with clothes for her hated lord and master, Emmett Scott.
The two strong-arms at the door shared a lascivious look as they stepped forward to intercept her. Sticking to the side of the adjacent warehouse I crept within earshot.
‘Is Mr Scott here?’ she asked.
‘Ah,’ said one of the scar-faces in a heavy West Country accent, grinning. ‘Well, that all depends on who’s asking, don’t it, m’dear?’
‘I have clothes for him.’
‘You’d be the maid, would you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, he’s here, so you’d better go in.’
I was close enough to see her roll her eyes as they stepped aside and let her in.
Right. So Scott was in there.
In the dark I tested the action of my blade. Mustn’t be too hasty, I thought. Mustn’t kill him. Scott had some talking to do before he died.
I moved round the edge of the warehouse wall, and the two strong-arms were just a few feet away from me now. It was just a question of waiting for the right moment to str–
From inside came a scream. Rose. And it was no longer a question of waiting for the right time. It was a time for action. I’d sprung from the dark, covered the distance between myself and the sentries, engaged the blade and slashed the throat of the first one before Rose’s scream had even died down. The second one cursed and swung his club but I caught his flailing arm, jammed him up against the warehouse wall and finished him with a blade in his back. He slid down the wall even as I crouched at the wicket door of the warehouse, raised a hand and pushed it open.
A musket ball zinged over my head as I rolled into the entrance way, getting a quick impression of a warehouse stacked with tea chests, a gantry with offices on it at one end.
There were three figures on the gantry, one of them standing on the rail as though about to jump the twenty feet or so to the ground.
I came to rest behind a stack of crates, peeked round the edge and pulled back as another ball smacked into the wood nearby, showering me with wood chips. But my quick look was enough to confirm that, yes, there were three people on the gantry above me. There was Wilson, who stood with a pistol aimed at my hiding place. To one side of him was Emmett Scott, sweating as with trembling, frantic fingers he tried to reload another pistol to hand to Wilson.
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