Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  ‘Too frivolous, Christian,’ smiled my mother, and with an imperious wave of the hand swept past him to other shelves. I cast an eye at the shop boy who returned my look with an unreadable gaze, and followed.

  She chose briskly. She made her choices with a certainty that Christian remained bewildered by her. I, her constant companion, saw the difference in her as she chose her shoes. A lightness. A smile she shone in my direction as she slipped on yet another shoe and admired her beautiful ankles in the mirror to the accompanying gasps and bleats of Christian – every shoe a work of art in progress, my mother’s foot the final flourish.

  We made our choices, mother arranged for payment and delivery, and then we left, Christian helping us out on to the street where …

  There was no sign of Jean, our coachman. No sign of our carriage at all.

  ‘Madame?’ said Christian, his face creased with concern. I felt her stiffen, saw the tilt of her chin as her eyes roamed the street around us.

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Christian,’ she assured him breezily. ‘Our carriage is a little late, that is all. We shall enjoy the sights and sounds of Paris as we await its return here.’

  It was beginning to get dark and there was a chill in the air, which had thickened with the first of the evening fog.

  ‘That is quite out of the question, madame, you cannot wait on the street,’ said an aghast Christian.

  She looked at him with a half-smile. ‘To protect my sensibilities, Christian?’

  ‘It is dangerous,’ he protested, and leaned forward to whisper with his face twisted into a slightly disgusted expression, ‘and the people.’

  ‘Yes, Christian,’ she said, as though letting him into a secret, ‘just people. Now please, go back inside. Your next customer values her exclusive time with Paris’s most attentive shoe salesman as highly as I do, and would no doubt be most put out having to share her time with two strays awaiting their negligent coachman.’

  Knowing my mother as a woman who rarely changed her mind, and knowing she was right about the next customer, Christian bowed acquiescence, bid us au revoir and returned to the shop, leaving us alone on the street where the barrows were being removed and people dissolved into shapes moving within the murky fog.

  I gripped her hand. ‘Mama?’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself, Élise,’ she said, raising her chin. ‘We shall hire a carriage to return us to Versailles.’

  ‘Not to the villa here in Paris, Mama?’

  ‘No,’ she said, thinking and chewing her lip a little. ‘I think I should prefer that we return to Versailles.’

  She was tense and watchful as she began to lead us along the street, incongruous in our long skirts and bonnets. From her purse she took a compact to check her rouge and we stopped to gaze in the window of a shop.

  Still, as we walked, she used the opportunity to teach me. ‘Make your face impassive, Élise. Don’t show your true feelings, especially if they are nerves. Don’t appear to hurry. Maintain your calm exterior. Maintain control.’

  The crowds were thinning out now. ‘At the square they have carriages for hire, and we shall be there in a few moments. First, though, I have something I need to tell you. When I tell you, you must not react, you must not turn your head. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘Good. We are being followed. He has been following us since we left Christian. A man in a tall felt hat and cloak.’

  ‘Why? Why is the man following us?’

  ‘Now that, Élise, is a very good question, and that is something I intend to find out. Just keep walking.’

  We stopped to look into another shop window. ‘I do believe our shadow has disappeared,’ Mother said thoughtfully.

  ‘Then that’s a good thing,’ I replied, with all the naivety of my unburdened eight-year-old self.

  There was concern on her face. ‘No, my darling, it’s not a good thing. I liked him where I could see him. Now I have to wonder if he really has gone or, as seems more likely, he’s sped on ahead to cut us off before we can reach the square. He will expect us to use the main road. We shall fox him, Élise, by taking another route.’

  Taking my hand she led us off the street, first on to a narrower highway, and then into a long alleyway, dark apart from a lit lantern at each end.

  We were halfway along when the figure stepped out of the fog in front of us. Disturbed mist billowed along the slick walls on either side of the narrow alley. And I knew Mother had made a mistake.

  iv.

  He had a thin face framed by a spill of almost pure white hair, and looked like a dandyish but down-at-heel doctor in his long black cape and tall shabby hat, the ruff of a shirt spilling over his collar.

  He carried a doctor’s bag that he placed to the ground and opened with one hand, all without taking his eyes off us as he took something from it, something long and curved.

  Then he smiled and drew the dagger from its sheath, and it gleamed wickedly in the dark.

  ‘Stay close, Élise,’ whispered Mother. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

  I believed her because I was an eight-year-old girl and of course I believed my mother. But also because having seen her with the wolf I had good reason to believe her.

  Even so, fear nibbled at my insides.

  ‘What is your business, monsieur?’ she called levelly.

  He made no answer.

  ‘Very well. Then we shall return to where we came from,’ said Mother loudly, taking my hand, about to depart.

  At the alley entrance a shadow flickered and a second figure appeared in the orange glow of the lantern. It was a lamplighter; we could tell by the pole he carried. Even so, Mother stopped.

  ‘Monsieur,’ she called to the lamplighter cautiously. ‘Might I ask you to call off this gentleman who is bothering us?’

  The lamplighter said nothing, going instead to where the lamp burned and raising his pole. Mama began to speak. ‘Monsieur …’ And I wondered why the man would be trying to light a lamp that was already lit and realized too late that the pole had a hook on the end – the hook that they used for dousing the flame of the candle inside.

  ‘Monsieur …’

  The entrance was plunged into darkness. We heard him drop his pole with a clatter, and as our eyes adjusted I could see him reach into his coat to bring something out. Another dagger. Now he, too, moved forward a step.

  Mother’s head swung from the lamplighter to the doctor.

  ‘What is your business, monsieur?’ she asked the doctor.

  In reply the doctor brought his other arm to bear. With a snicking sound a second blade appeared from his wrist.

  ‘Assassin,’ she said, with a smile, as he moved in. The lamplighter was close now too – close enough for us to see the harsh set of his mouth and his narrowed eyes. Mother jerked her head in the other direction and saw the doctor, both blades held at his side. Still he smiled. He was enjoying this – or trying to make it look as though he was.

  Either way, Mother was as immune to his malevolence as she was to the charms of Christian, and her next move was as graceful as a dance step. Her heels clip-clopped on the stone as she kicked out one foot, bent and drew a boot knife, all in the blink of an eye.

  One second we were a defenceless woman and child trapped in a darkened passageway, the next we were not: we were a woman brandishing a knife to protect her child. A woman who, by the way she’d drawn her weapon and the way she was now poised, knew exactly what to do with the knife.

  The doctor’s eyes flickered. The lamplighter stopped. Both given pause for thought.

  She held her knife in her right hand, and I knew something was amiss because she was left-handed, and presented her shoulder to the doctor.

  The doctor moved forward. At the same time my mother passed her knife from her left hand to her right, and her skirts pooled as she dipped and with her right hand outflung for balance slashed her left across the front of the doctor whose frock coat opened just a
s neatly as though cut by a tailor, the fabric instantly soaked with blood.

  He was cut but not badly wounded. His eyes widened and he lurched backwards, evidently stunned by the skill of Mother’s attack. For all his sinister act, he looked frightened, and amid my own fear I felt something else: pride and awe. Never before had I felt so protected.

  Still, though he had faltered he stood his ground, and as his eyes flicked to behind us, Mother twisted too late to prevent the lamplighter grabbing me with a choking arm round my neck.

  ‘Lay down your knife, or –’ was what the lamplighter started to say.

  But never finished, because half a second later he was dead.

  Her speed took him by surprise – not just the speed with which she moved but the speed of her decision, that if she allowed the lamplighter to take me hostage then all was lost. And it gave her the advantage as she swung into him, finding the space between my body and his, leading with her elbow, which with a yell she jabbed into his throat.

  He made a sound like boak and I felt his grip give, then saw the flash of a blade as Mother pressed home her advantage and drove her boot knife deep into his stomach, shoving him up against the alley wall and with a small grunt of effort driving the blade upwards, then stepping smartly away as the front of his shirt darkened with blood and bulged with his spilling guts as he slid to the floor.

  Mother straightened to face a second attack from the doctor but all we saw of him was his cloak as he turned and ran, leaving the alley and running for the street.

  She grabbed my arm. ‘Come along, Élise, before you get blood on your shoes.’

  v.

  There was blood on Mother’s coat. Apart from that there was no way of telling she’d recently seen combat.

  Not long after we arrived home messages were sent and the Crows bustled in with a great clacking of walking canes, huffing and puffing and talking loudly of punishing ‘those responsible’. Meanwhile, the staff fussed, put their hands to their throats and gossiped round corners, and Father’s face was ashen and I noticed how he seemed compelled to keep embracing us, holding us both a little too tightly and a little too long and breaking away with eyes that shone with tears.

  Only Mother seemed unruffled. She had the poise and authority of one who has acquitted themselves well. Rightly so. Thanks to her, we had survived the attack. I wondered, did she feel as secretly thrilled as I did?

  I would be asked to give my account of events, she had warned me in the hired carriage on the way back to our chateau. In this regard I should follow her lead, support everything she said, and say nothing to contradict her.

  And so I listened as she told versions of her story, first to Olivier, our head butler, then to my father when he arrived, and lastly to the Crows when they bustled in. And though her stories acquired greater detail in the telling, and she answered all questions fired at her, they all lacked one very important detail. The doctor.

  ‘You saw no hidden blade?’ she was asked.

  ‘I saw nothing to identify my attackers as Assassins,’ she replied, ‘thus I can’t assume it was the work of Assassins.’

  ‘Common street robbers are not so organized as this man seems to have been. You can’t think it a coincidence that your carriage was missing. Perhaps Jean will turn up drunk but perhaps not. Perhaps he will turn up dead. No, madame, this has none of the hallmarks of an opportunistic crime. This was a planned attack on your person, an act of aggression by our enemies.

  Eyes would flick to me. Eventually I was asked to leave the room, which I did, finding a seat in the hallway outside, listening to the voices from the chamber as they bounced off marble floors and to my ears.

  ‘Grand Master, you must realize this was the work of Assassins.’

  (Although to my ears, it was the work of ‘assassins’ and so I sat there thinking, ‘Of course it was the work of assassins, you stupid man. Or “would-be assassins” at least.’)

  ‘Like my wife, I would rather not leap to any false conclusions,’ replied Father.

  ‘Yet you’ve you posted extra guards.’

  ‘Of course I have, man. I can’t be too careful.’

  ‘I think you know in your heart, Grand Master.’

  My father’s voice rose. ‘And what if I do? What would you have me do?’

  ‘Why, take action at once, of course.’

  ‘And would that be action to avenge my wife’s honour or action to overthrow the king?’

  ‘Either would send a message to our adversaries.’

  Later, the news arrived that Jean had been discovered with his throat cut. I went cold, as though somebody had opened a window. I cried. Not just for Jean but, shamefully, for myself as well. And I watched and listened as a shock descended on the house and there were tears from below-stairs and the voices of the Crows were once more raised, this time in vindication.

  Again they were silenced by Father. When I looked out of the window, I could see men with muskets in the grounds. Around us, everybody was jumpy. Father came to embrace me time and time again – until I got so fed up I began wriggling away.

  vi.

  ‘Élise, there’s something we have to tell you.’

  And this is the moment you’ve been waiting for, dear reader of this journal, whoever you are – the moment when the penny dropped; when I finally understood why I had been asked to keep so many véritées cachées; when I discovered why my father’s associates called him Grand Master; and when I realized what they meant by ‘Templar’ and why ‘assassin’ actually meant ‘Assassin’.

  They had called me into Father’s office and asked for chairs to be gathered by the fire before asking the staff to withdraw completely. Father stood while Mother sat forward, her hands on her knees, comforting me with her eyes. I was reminded of when once I had had a splinter and Mother had held me and comforted me and hushed my tears while Father gripped my finger and removed it.

  ‘Élise,’ he began, ‘what we are about to say was to have waited until your tenth birthday. But events today have no doubt raised many questions in your mind, and your mother believes you are ready to be told, so … here we are.’

  I looked at Mother, who reached to take my hand, bathing me in a comforting smile.

  Father cleared his throat.

  This was it. Whatever dim ideas I’d formed about my future were about to change.

  ‘Élise,’ he said, ‘you will one day become the French head of a secret international order that is centuries old. You, Élise de la Serre, will be a Templar Grand Master.’

  ‘Templar Grand Master?’ I said, looking from Father to Mother.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of France?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Presently, I hold that position. Your mother also holds a high rank within the Order. The gentlemen and Madame Levesque who visit, they too are knights of the Order and, like us, they are committed to preserving its tenets.’

  I listened, not really understanding but wondering why, if all these knights were committed to the same thing, they spent every meeting shouting at one another.

  ‘What are Templars?’ I asked instead.

  My father indicated himself and Mother, then extended his hand to include me in the circle. ‘We all are. We are Templars. We are committed to making the world a better place.’

  I liked the sound of that. I like the sound of making the world a better place. ‘How do you do it, Papa?’

  He smiled. ‘Ah, now, that is a very good question, Élise. Like any other large, ancient organization there are differing opinions on how best to achieve our ends. There are those who think we should violently oppose those who oppose as. Others who believe in peacefully spreading our ideologies.’

  ‘And what are they, Papa?’

  He shrugged. ‘Our motto is “May the father of understanding guide us.” You see, what we Templars know is that despite exhortations otherwise, people don’t want real freedom and true responsibility because these things are too great a burden to bear, and only the ver
y strongest minds can do so.

  ‘We believe people are good but easily led towards wickedness, laziness and corruption, that they require good leaders to follow – leaders who will not exploit their negative characteristics but instead seek to celebrate the positive ones. We believe peace can be maintained this way.’

  I could literally feel my horizons expand as he spoke. ‘Do you hope to guide the people of France that way, Father?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, Élise, yes we do.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, let me ask you – how do you think?’

  My mind went blank. How did I think? It felt like the most difficult question I had ever been asked. I had no idea. He looked at me kindly and yet I knew he expected an answer. I looked towards Mother, who squeezed my hand encouragingly, imploring me with her eyes, and I found my beliefs in words I had heard her speak myself to Mr Weatherall and to Mrs Carroll.

  I said, ‘Monsieur, I think our present monarch is corrupted beyond redemption, that his rule has poisoned the well of France and that in order for the people’s faith to be restored in the monarchy King Louis needs to be set aside.’

  My answer caught him off-guard and he looked startled, casting a quizzical look at Mother, who shrugged as though to say nothing to do with me, even though it was her words I was parroting.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, your mother is no doubt pleased to hear you espouse such views, Élise, for in this matter she and I are not in full agreement. Like you she believes in change. Myself, I know that the monarch is appointed by God and I believe that a corrupt monarch can be persuaded to see the error of his ways.’

  Another quizzical look and a shrug and I moved quickly on. ‘But there are other Templars, Papa?’

  He nodded. ‘Across the world, yes. There are those who serve the Order. Those who are sympathetic to our aims. However, as you and your mother discovered today, we have enemies, too. Just as we are an ancient order hoping to shape the world in our image, so there is an opposing order, one with as many adherents sensitive to their own aims. Where we hope to unburden the good-thinking people of the responsibility of choice and be their guardians, this opposing order invites chaos and gambles on anarchy by insisting man should think for himself. They advocate casting aside traditional ways of thinking that have done so much to guide humanity for thousands of years in favour of a different kind of freedom. They are known as Assassins. We believe it was Assassins who attacked you today.’