Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  His lips downturned as though to say, ‘Yes? And?’

  ‘I’ve read the letters and taken note of what Haytham Kenway had to say. And what he had to say involved the worlds of Assassin and Templar ceasing hostilities. Haytham Kenway – a legend among Templars – had a vision for the future of our two orders and it was that they should work together.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Carroll, nodding, ‘and that meant something to you, did it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, suddenly sure of it. ‘Yes. Coming from him it meant something.’

  He nodded. ‘Indeed. Indeed. Haytham Kenway was … brave to put these ideas on paper. Had he been discovered he would have been tried for treachery by the Order.’

  ‘But he may well be right. We can learn from his writings.’

  Mr Carroll was nodding. ‘Quite so, my dear. We can. Indeed, I shall be very interested to see what he had to say. Tell me, do you by any chance have the letters with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said carefully. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Oh, jolly good. That’s jolly good. Could I by any chance see them, please?’

  His hand was held out, palm up. Beyond it a smile that went nowhere near his eyes.

  I reached into my shirt, took the sheaf of letters from where they pressed against my breast and handed them to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, still smiling, his eyes never leaving mine as he passed the letters to his daughter, who took them, a smile spreading across her face. I knew what was going to happen next. I was ready for it. Sure enough, May Carroll tossed the letters on to the fire.

  ‘No,’ I shouted, and sprang forward, but not to the fire as they expected, but to the side of Mr Weatherall, elbowing one of the Carrolls’ strong-arms as I pushed him away. The man gave a cry of pain, brought his sword to bear, and the sound of ringing steel was suddenly deafening in the tiny lodging room as our blades met.

  At the same time Mr Weatherall drew his sword and deftly fended off the second of the Carrolls’ men.

  ‘Stop,’ ordered Mr Carroll, and the skirmish was over. Mr Weatherall and I, our backs to the window, faced the three Carroll swordsmen, all five of us breathing heavily, blazing eyes on each other.

  With a tight voice Mr Carroll said, ‘Please remember, gentlemen, that Mademoiselle de la Serre and Mr Weatherall are still our guests.’

  I didn’t feel much like a guest. By my side the fire flared then died, the letters reduced to grey, fluttering sheets of ash. I checked my stance: feet apart, centre balanced, breathing steady. My elbows bent and close to the body. I kept the nearest swordsman on point and maintained eye contact while Mr Weatherall covered another one. The third? Well, he was a floater.

  ‘Why?’ I said to Mr Carroll, without taking my eyes off the nearest swordsman, my partner for this dance. ‘Why did you burn the letters?’

  ‘Because there can be no truce with the Assassins, Élise.’

  ‘Why not?’

  With his head slightly on one side and his hands clasped in front of him, he smiled condescendingly. ‘You don’t understand, my dear. Our kind have warred with the Assassins for centuries …’

  ‘Exactly,’ I pressed, ‘and that is why it should stop.’

  ‘Hush, my dear,’ he said and his patronizing tone set my teeth on edge. ‘The divisions between our two orders are too great, the enmity too entrenched. You might as well ask a snake and a mongoose to take afternoon tea together. Any truce would be conducted in an atmosphere of mutual distrust and the airing of ancient grievances. Each would suspect the other of plotting to overthrow them. It would never happen. Yes, we will prevent any attempts to spread the promotion of such ideas –’ he wafted a hand at the fire – ‘whether they be the writings of Haytham Kenway, or the aspirations of a naive young girl destined to be the French Grand Master one day.’

  The full impact of what he meant hit me. ‘Me? You mean to kill me?’

  Head on one side, he looked at me with sad eyes. ‘It is for the greater good.’

  I bristled. ‘But I am a Templar.’

  He pulled a face. ‘Well, not quite yet, of course, but I understand your meaning and admit that does affect matters. Just not quite enough. The simple fact is that things must stay as they are. Don’t you remember that from when we first met?’

  My eyes shifted to May Carroll. Her purse dangled from her gloved fingers, and she watched us as though enjoying a night at the theatre.

  ‘Oh, I remember our first meeting very well,’ I told Mr Carroll. ‘I remember my mother giving you very short shrift.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Your mother had progressive tendencies not in line with our own.’

  ‘One might almost think you would want her dead,’ I said.

  Mr Carroll looked confused. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Perhaps you wanted her dead enough to hire a man to do the job. A disenfranchised Assassin perhaps?’

  He clapped his hands with understanding. ‘Oh, I see. You mean the recently departed Mr Ruddock?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And you think we were the ones who hired him? You think we were the ones behind the attempted assassination? And that, presumably, is why you have just helped Mr Ruddock escape?’

  I felt myself colour, realizing I had given myself away as Mr Carroll clapped his hands together again. ‘Well, weren’t you?’

  ‘Much as I hate to disappoint you, my dear, but that particular action was nothing to do with us.’

  Silently I cursed. If he was telling the truth then I’d made a mistake letting Ruddock go. They had no reason to kill him.

  ‘So you see our problem, Élise,’ Mr Carroll was saying, ‘for now you are a lowly Templar knight with fanciful notions. But you will one day be Grand Master and you have not one but two key principles in opposition to our own. Letting you leave England is out of the question, I’m afraid.’

  His hand went to the hilt of his sword. I tensed, trying to get a sense of the odds: me and Mr Weatherall versus three Carroll strong-arms, as well as the three Carrolls themselves.

  They were terrible odds.

  ‘May,’ Mr Carroll said, ‘would you like to do the honours? You can be blooded at last.’

  She smiled obsequiously at her father, and I realized that she was the same as me: she’d been trained in swordsmanship but had yet to kill. I was to be her first. What an honour.

  From behind her, Mrs Carroll proffered a sword, a short sword like my own, custom-built for her size and weight. The light gleamed from an ornate curved hand guard, the sword handed to her as though it were some kind of religious artefact, and she turned in order to take it. ‘Are you ready for this, Smell-bag?’ she said as she turned.

  Oh yes, I was ready. Mr Weatherall and my mother had always told me that all sword fights begin in the mind and that most end with the first blow. It was all about who made the first move.

  So I made it. I danced forward and rammed the point of my sword through the back of May Carroll’s neck and out through her mouth.

  First blood was to me. Not exactly the most honourable killing but, at that very moment in time, honour was the last thing on my mind. I was more interested in staying alive.

  ix.

  It was the last thing they’d expected, to see their daughter impaled on my sword. I saw Mrs Carroll’s eyes widen in disbelief in the half-second before she screamed in shock and anguish.

  Meanwhile, I’d used my forward motion to shoulder-charge Mr Carroll, yanking my sword from May Carroll’s neck and hitting him with such force that he pinwheeled back off-balance and splayed into the doorway. May Carroll had sunk, dead before she hit the floor, painting it with her blood; Mrs Carroll was rooting in her purse but I ignored her. Finding my feet, I crouched and spun in anticipation of an attack from behind.

  It came. The swordsman lumbering towards me had a look of startled disbelief plastered across his face, unable to believe the sudden turn of events. I stayed low and met his sword with my blade, fending off his attack and pivot
ing at the same time, taking his feet from him with an outflung leg so that he crashed to the floor.

  There was no time to finish him. By the window Mr Weatherall was battling but he was struggling. I saw it in his face, a look of impending defeat and confusion, as though he couldn’t understand why his two opponents were still standing. As if this had never happened before.

  I drove one of his assailants through. The second man pulled away in surprise, finding he suddenly had two opponents rather than one, but with the first swordsman pulling himself to his feet, Mr Carroll up and reaching for his sword, and Mrs Carroll at last freeing something from her purse, which turned out to be a tiny three-barrel turnover pistol, I decided I’d pushed my luck far enough.

  It was time to go the same way as my friend Mr Ruddock.

  ‘The window,’ I shouted, and Mr Weatherall threw me a look that said, ‘You must be joking,’ before I put two hands to his chest and pushed so that he tumbled bottom first out of the window and on to the sloped roof outside.

  Just as I did there was a crack, the sound of a ball making contact with something soft and, in the window, a soft spray of blood, like a red lace sheet suddenly drawn across it, and even as I wondered whether the sound I had heard was the ball hitting me, or if the haze of blood in the window was mine, I hurled myself through the opening, smacked on to the tiles on the other side and slid on my stomach to Mr Weatherall, who had come to a halt on the lip of the roof.

  I saw now that the ball had hit his lower leg, the blood staining his breeches dark. His boots scrabbled on the tiles, which loosened and fell into the yard, accompanied by the sound of shouts and running feet below. There came a cry from above us and a head appeared at the window. I saw the face of Mrs Carroll contorted with anguish and fury, her need to kill the woman who killed her daughter overriding everything else in her life – including the need to remove herself from the casement so her men could get through and come after us.

  Instead she waved the turnover pistol at us. With a snarl and bared teeth she aimed it at me and surely couldn’t miss unless she was jostled from behind …

  Which was exactly what happened. Her shot was as wild as it was wide, pinging harmlessly off the tiles to our side.

  Later, as we raced towards Dover in a horse and carriage, Mr Weatherall would tell me that it was common for a barrel of a turnover pistol to ignite the other barrels, and that ‘it could be nasty’ for whoever it was doing the firing.

  That’s precisely what happened to Mrs Carroll. I heard a fizzing then a popping sound and the pistol came skidding down the roof towards us while up above Mrs Carroll screamed as her hand, now a shade of red and black, began to bleed.

  I took the opportunity to heave Mr Weatherall’s good leg off the side of the roof. He hung on by his fingertips, screwing his face up in pain but refusing to scream as I manhandled his other leg over, then shouted, ‘Sorry about this,’ as I clambered over him and dangling we jumped to the courtyard below, scattering onlookers.

  It was a short drop, but even so it knocked the wind out of us, sweat popping on Mr Weatherall’s face as he chewed back the pain of his shot leg. As he stood I commandeered a horse and carriage, and then he limped to take his place beside me.

  It all happened in a moment. We thundered out of the courtyard and into Fleet Street. I glanced up and saw faces at the window of the guest room. They would be after us soon, I knew, and I drove the horses as hard as I dared, silently promising them a tasty snack when we reached Dover.

  In the end, it took us six hours, and I could at least thank God that there was no sign of the Carrolls behind us on the route. In fact, I didn’t see them until we had pushed off Dover beach in a rowing boat, making our way towards the packet, which, we’d been told, was about to weigh anchor.

  Our oarsman grunted as he pulled us closer to the larger vessel, and I watched as two coaches arrived on the coast road at the top of the beach. We were drawing away and, with no light of our own, the vessel was swallowed up by the ink-black sea, the oarsmen guided by the light of the packet, so the Carrolls couldn’t see us from the shore. But we were able to see them, indistinct but illuminated by their swinging lanterns as they scurried about in search of their quarry.

  I couldn’t see Mrs Carroll’s face but could imagine the mix of hatred and grief she wore like a mask. Mr Weatherall, barely awake, his wounded leg hidden beneath travel blankets, watched. He saw me do a discreet bras d’honneur and nudged me.

  ‘Even if they could see you they wouldn’t know what you were doing. It’s only rude in France. Here, try this.’ He stuck up two fingers so I did the same.

  The hull of the packet was not far away now. I could feel its bulky presence in the night.

  ‘They’ll come after you, you know,’ he said, his chin tucked into his chest. ‘You killed their daughter.’

  ‘Not just that. I’ve still got their letters.’

  ‘The ones that got burned were a decoy?’

  ‘Some of my letters to Arno.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll never find out about that. Either way, they’ll come after you.’

  They had been swallowed up by the night. England now just a mass of land, the huge moon-dappled cliffs to our left.

  ‘I know,’ I told him, ‘but I’ll be ready for them.’

  ‘Just make sure you are.’

  9 April 1788

  ‘I need your help.’

  It was raining. The sort of rain that feels like knives on your skin, that batters your eyelids and pummels your back. It had plastered my hair to my head, and when I spoke the water spouted off my mouth, but at least it disguised the tears and snot as I stood on the steps of the Maison Royale at Saint-Cyr, trying not to fall over from sheer exhaustion, and watched Madame Levene’s face pale from the shock of seeing me, as though I were a ghost appearing on the steps of the school in the dead of night.

  And standing there, with the carriage behind me, Mr Weatherall asleep or unconscious inside, and Hélène looking anxiously from the window, gaping through the sluicing rain to where I stood on the steps of the school, I wondered if I was doing the right thing.

  And, for a second, as Madame Levene took in the sight of me, I thought she might simply tell me to go to hell for all the trouble I’d caused and slam the door in my face. And if she did that, then who could blame her?

  ‘I’ve got nowhere else to go,’ I said. ‘Please help me.’

  And she didn’t slam the door in my face. She said, ‘My dear, of course.’

  And I dropped into her arms, half dead with fatigue.

  10 April 1788

  Was ever a man more brave than Mr Weatherall? Not once had he shouted out in pain on the journey to Dover, but by the time we boarded the packet he had lost a lot of blood. I met Hélène aboard, the Dover cliffs shrinking in the distance, my time in London becoming a memory already, and we had laid Mr Weatherall on a section of the deck where we had a little privacy.

  Hélène knelt by him, placing cool hands to his forehead.

  ‘You’re an angel,’ he said, with a smile up at her, then slipped into unconsciousness.

  We bandaged him as best we could, and by the time we reached the shores of Calais he had recovered some of his colour. But he was still in pain, and as far as we knew the ball remained inside his leg, and when we changed his dressings the wound gleamed at us, showing no sign of healing.

  The school had a nurse but Madame Levene had fetched the doctor from Châteaufort, a man experienced in dealing with war wounds.

  ‘It’s going to have to come off, ain’t it?’ Mr Weatherall had said to him from the bed, five of us crammed into his bedchamber.

  The doctor nodded and I felt my tears prick my eyes.

  ‘Don’t you worry about it,’ Mr Weatherall was saying. ‘I knew the bloody thing was going to have to come off, right from the second she got me. Sliding on the bloody roof in me own blood, musket ball stuck in me leg, I thought, “That’s it – it’s a goner.” Sure enough.’

/>   He looked at the doctor and swallowed, a little fear showing on his face at last. ‘Are you fast?’

  The doctor nodded, adding with a slightly proud air, ‘I can do a leg in forty-four seconds.’

  Mr Weatherall looked impressed. ‘You use a serrated blade?’

  ‘Razor-sharp …’

  Mr Weatherall took a deep, regretful breath. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ he said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

  Jacques, the illegitimate son of the headmistress, and I held Mr Weatherall, and the doctor was as good as his word, being fast and thorough, even when Mr Weatherall passed out from the pain. When it was over he wrapped Mr Weatherall’s leg in brown paper and took it away, and the following day returned with a pair of crutches.

  2 May 1788

  To keep up appearances, I returned to school, where I was very much a mystery to my classmates, who were told that I had been segregated for disciplinary reasons. For these last few months I would be the most talked-about pupil at school, subject of more rumours and gossip than I care to mention: on the grapevine I heard that I had taken up with a gentleman of ill repute (not true), that I had fallen with child (not true), and that I had taken to spending my nights gambling in dockside bars (and, well, yes, I had done that, once or twice).

  None of them guessed that I had been trying to track down a man who was once hired to kill me and my mother, that I had returned with an injured Mr Weatherall and a devoted Hélène, and that the three of us now lived in the groundsman’s lodge with Jacques.

  No, nobody ever guessed that.

  I read Haytham Kenway’s letters again and then, one day, I wrote to Jennifer Scott. I told her how sorry I was. I ‘introduced’ myself, telling her about my home life, about Arno, my beloved, and how I was supposed to steer him away from the creed and towards the ways of Templars.

  And of course I discussed Haytham’s letters and how his words had moved me. I told her that I would do everything I could to help broker peace between our two kinds, because she was right, and Haytham was right: there had been too much killing, and it had to stop.