Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  Around the edges of the square, merchants had set up stalls and were not shy about calling out to advertise them, every one an ‘execution special’. In the air was an atmosphere I could only describe as one of celebratory bloodlust. You wondered whether they would have had enough of blood by now, these people, the people of France. Looking around, obviously not.

  Meanwhile, the executioner was calling up prisoners to be beheaded. They cried and protested as they were dragged to the scaffold of the guillotine. The crowd called for their blood. They hushed in the moment before it was spilt and they cheered when it came spurting forth into the crisp January day.

  ii.

  ‘Are you sure Germain will be here?’ I’d said to Arno when we arrived.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he’d said, and we went our separate ways. Though the plan had been for us to locate Germain, in the end the treacherous ex-lieutenant had made his presence felt by clambering on to a viewing platform, surrounded by his men.

  That was him, I thought, looking at him, the crowd seeming to fall away for a moment or so.

  This was François Thomas Germain.

  I knew it was him. His greying hair was tied back in a black bow and he wore the robes of the Grand Master. And I wondered what bystanders thought, seeing this robed man take such an exalted viewing position. Did they see an enemy of the revolution? Or a friend?

  Or, as their faces turned quickly away, as though not wanting to catch Germain’s eye, did they just see a man to fear? Certainly he looked fearsome. He had a cruel downturned mouth and eyes that even from this distance I could see were dark and penetrating. There was something about his stare that was disquieting.

  I seethed. These were robes I was used to seeing on my father. They had no place adorning the back of this imposter.

  Arno had seen him, too, of course, and managed to get much closer to the platform. I watched as he approached the guards stationed at the foot of the stairs, whose job involved keeping the surge of people away from the platform. He spoke to one of them. There were shouts. My eyes went to Germain who leaned over to see Arno, then indicated to the guards to let him up.

  I, meanwhile, came as close to the platform as I dared. Whether Germain would recognize me I had no idea, but there were other familiar faces around. I couldn’t afford to be seen.

  Arno had reached the platform, joining Germain and standing by his side, the two of them looking out over the crowd towards the guillotine, which rose and fell, rose and fell …

  ‘Hello, Arno,’ I heard Germain say, but only just, and I risked raising my face to stare up at the platform, hoping that with a mix of lip-reading and the wind in the right direction I would be able to make out what they were saying.

  ‘Germain,’ Arno said.

  Germain indicated to him. ‘It’s fitting you’re here to see the rebirth of the Templar Order. After all, you were there for its conception.’

  Arno nodded. ‘Monsieur de la Serre,’ he said simply.

  ‘I tried to make him see,’ said Germain, shrugging. ‘The order had become corrupt, clutching at power and privilege for its own sake. We forgot De Molay’s teachings, and that our purpose is to lead humanity into an age of order and peace.’

  On the stage the king had been brought up. And to give him his due he faced his tormentors with his shoulders thrown back and his chin held high, proud to the very last. He began to give a speech he had no doubt rehearsed in whatever rough surrounds he had been kept prior to his journey to the guillotine. But just as it came to delivering the final words, a drum roll started up, drowning them out. Brave, yes. But ineffectual to the last.

  Above me Arno and Germain continued to talk, Arno, I could see, trying to make sense of things. ‘But you could set it right, is that it? All by killing the man in charge?’

  The ‘man in charge’ – my father. The surge of hatred I had experienced on first seeing Germain intensified and I longed to slide the blade of my sword between his ribs and watch him die on the cold stone, just as my father had done.

  ‘La Serre’s death was only the first stage,’ Germain had said. ‘This is the culmination. The fall of a Church, the end of a regime … the death of a king.’

  ‘And what did the king do to you?’ sneered Arno. ‘Cost you your job? Take your wife as a mistress?’

  Germain was shaking his head as though disappointed with a pupil. ‘The king is merely a symbol. A symbol can inspire fear, and fear can inspire control – but men inevitably lose their fear of symbols. As you can see.’

  Leaning on the barrier he gestured towards the scaffold where the king, denied his final chance to recover some of his regal pride, had been forced down to his knees. His chin fit into the notched block and the skin of his neck was exposed for the waiting guillotine.

  Germain said, ‘This was the truth De Molay died for: the Divine Right of Kings is nothing but the reflection of sunlight upon gold. And when Crown and Church are ground to dust, we who control the gold will decide the future.’

  There was a ripple of excitement among the crowd, which then fell to a hush. This was it. This was the moment. Looking over, I saw the guillotine blade shimmer then drop with a soft thunk, followed by the sound of the king’s head falling into the basket below the block.

  There was a moment of silence in the courtyard, which was followed by a sound I would find difficult to identify at first, until, later, I recognized it for what it was. I recognized it from the Maison Royale. It was the sound a classroom full of pupils makes when they realize they’ve gone too far, when a collective intake of breath says there’s no going back. ‘That’s torn it, there’s going to be trouble now.’

  Speaking almost under his breath, Germain said, ‘Jacques de Molay, you are avenged.’ And I knew then I was dealing with an extremist, a fanatic, a madman. A man to whom human life had no cost other than its worth in the promotion of his own ideals, which, as the man in charge of the Templar Order, made him perhaps the most dangerous man in France.

  A man who had to be stopped.

  On the scaffold, Germain was turning to Arno. ‘And now I must take my leave,’ he was saying. ‘A good day to you.’

  He looked at his guards and with an imperious wave of the hand, ordered them after Arno with the simple, chilling words: ‘Kill him.’

  He moved off.

  I started running, vaulting the steps just as two guards were moving forward on Arno, who swung his upper body to meet them, his sword hand reaching across his front.

  His blade never cleared leather; my sword spoke once, twice: two fatal arterial slashes that had the guards pitching forward, eyes rolling up in their sockets even as their foreheads made contact with the boards of the platform.

  It was quick; it achieved the objective of killing the two guards. But it was bloody and not at all discreet.

  Sure enough, from nearby came a scream. In all the commotion of the execution it wasn’t quite urgent or loud enough to panic the crowd, but it was sufficient to alert more guards who came running, mounting the steps of the platform to where Arno and I stood ready to meet them.

  I surged forward, desperate to get to Germain, running the first of our assailants through with my blade, withdrawing and spinning at the same time in order to slash backhand at a second guard. It was the kind of move Mr Weatherall would have hated, an attack born more of the desire for a speedy kill than the need to maintain a defensive stance, the kind that left me vulnerable to a counter. And there was nothing Mr Weatherall despised more than a showy, incautious attack.

  But then again, I had Arno on my flank, who dealt with a third guard, and just maybe Mr Weatherall might have forgiven me.

  In the space of a few seconds we had three bodies piled at our feet. But more guards were arriving and a few yards away I caught sight of Germain. He had seen the tide of battle turn and was making a run for it – racing towards a carriage on the thoroughfare at the perimeter of the square.

  I was cut off from reaching him, but Arno …

&n
bsp; ‘What are you doing?’ I screamed at him, urging him to go after Germain. I deflected the first of my attackers and saw Germain getting away.

  ‘I’m not leaving you to die,’ called Arno, and turned his attention to where more guards had appeared on the steps.

  But I wasn’t going to die. I had a way out. I glanced up to the thoroughfare, saw the carriage door gaping open and Germain about to climb aboard. Thrashing wildly with my sword I vaulted the barrier, landing badly in the dirt but not quite badly enough to die at the hands of a guard who thought he’d seen his chance to kill me and paid for the assumption with steel in his gut.

  From somewhere I heard Arno shout, telling me to stop – ‘It’s not worth it!’ He’d seen a phalanx of guards who rounded the platform, creating an obstacle between me and …

  Germain. Who had reached the carriage, clambered in and slammed the door shut behind him. I saw the coachman shake the reins and the horse’s crests were whipped by a wind as their muzzles rose and their hocks tightened, and the carriage set off at a lick.

  Damn.

  I braced myself, about to take on the guards, when I felt Arno by my side, grabbing my arm. ‘No, Élise.’

  With a cry of frustration I shook him off. The squad was advancing on us, blades drawn, shoulders dropped and forward. In their eyes was the confidence of strength in numbers. I bared my teeth.

  Blast him. Blast Arno.

  But then he grabbed me by the hand, pulled me into the safety and anonymity of the crowd and began pushing his way through startled onlookers at the periphery and into the heart of the mob, leaving the guards behind us.

  It wasn’t until we had left the scene of the execution – until there were no more people around – that we stopped.

  I rounded on him. ‘He’s gone, damn it, our one chance …’

  ‘It’s not over,’ he insisted. Seeing I needed cooling down, he added, ‘We’ll find another lead …’

  I felt my blood rising. ‘No, we won’t. You think he’ll be so careless now, knowing how close at his heels we are? You were given a golden opportunity to end his life, and you refused to take it.’

  He shook his head, not seeing it that way at all. ‘To save your life,’ he insisted.

  ‘It isn’t yours to save.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m willing to die to put Germain down. If you don’t have the stomach for revenge … then I don’t need your help.’

  And I meant it, dear journal. As I sit and write this, and mull over the angry words we exchanged I remain certain that I meant it then and mean it now.

  Perhaps his loyalty to my father was not as great as he had professed it to be.

  No, I didn’t need his help.

  10 November 1793

  They called it the Terror.

  ‘Enemies of the revolution’ were being sent to the guillotine in their dozens – for opposing the revolution, for hoarding grain, for helping foreign armies. They called the guillotine ‘the national razor’ and it worked hard, claiming two or three heads a day in the place de Révolution alone. France cowered beneath the threat of its dropping blade.

  Meanwhile, in events even closer to my own heart, I heard that Arno had been laid low by his Order.

  ‘He’s been banished,’ Mr Weatherall read from his correspondence, holding a letter, the last vestiges of his once-proud network having got in touch at last.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Arno.’

  ‘I see.’

  He smiled. ‘You pretending not to care, are you?’

  ‘There’s no pretence about it, Mr Weatherall.’

  ‘Still not forgiven him, eh?’

  ‘He once pledged to me that if he had his chance to take a shot, then he would take it. He had his chance and didn’t take it.’

  ‘He was right,’ Mr Weatherall said one day. He spat it out, as though it was something that had been on his mind.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

  Actually, I didn’t ‘say’ it. I ‘snapped’ it. The truth was that Mr Weatherall and I had been irate with one another for weeks, maybe even months. Life had been reduced to this one thing: lying low. And it made me howl with frustration. Each day spent worrying about finding Germain before he found us; each day spent waiting for letters to arrive from an ever-changing series of drops. Knowing that we were fighting a losing battle.

  And yes, I seethed, knowing that Germain had been so close to feeling my sword. Mr Weatherall seethed, too, but for slightly different reasons. What went left unsaid was that Mr Weatherall believed me to be too rash and hot-headed, that I should have waited and bided my time to plot against Germain, just as Germain had done in his takeover of our Order. Mr Weatherall said I was thinking with my sword. He tried to tell me that my parents would not have acted with such incautious haste. He used every trick he knew, and now he used Arno.

  ‘Arno was right,’ he said. ‘You would have been cut down. You might as well have slit your own throat for all the good it would have done you.’

  I made an exasperated sound, shooting a resentful look around the room in which we sat. It was warm, homely and I should have loved it here but instead it felt small and crowded. This room and the lodge as a whole had come to symbolize my own inaction.

  ‘What would you have me do, then?’ I asked.

  ‘If you truly loved the Order the best thing you can do is offer to make peace. Offer to serve the Order.’

  My mouth dropped open.

  ‘Yield?’

  ‘No, not yield, make peace. Negotiate.’

  ‘But they are my enemies. I cannot negotiate with my enemies.’

  ‘Try looking at it from another point of view, Élise,’ Mr Weatherall pressed, trying to get through to me. ‘You’re making peace with the Assassins but you don’t negotiate with your own people. That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘It wasn’t the Assassins who killed my father,’ I hissed. ‘You think I can make a truce with my father’s murderers?’

  He threw up his hands. ‘Christ, and she thinks that Templars and Assassins can just make up. What if they’re all like you, eh? “I want revenge, bugger the consequences.” ’

  ‘It would take time,’ I admitted.

  He pounced. ‘And that’s what you can do. You can bide your time. You can do more on the inside than you can on the outside.’

  ‘And they’ll know that. They’d have smiling faces and knives behind their backs.’

  ‘They won’t murder a peacemaker. The Order would think it dishonourable, and what they need above all is harmony within the Order. No. If you bring diplomacy they’ll respond with diplomacy.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  He gave a small shrug. ‘No, but either way, I believe risking death that way is better than risking death your way.’

  I stood and glared down at him, this old man hunched over his crutches. ‘So that’s your advice, is it? Make peace with my father’s killers.’

  He looked up at me with eyes that were sad because we both knew there was only one way this could end.

  ‘It is,’ he said. ‘As your advisor, that’s my advice.’

  ‘Then consider yourself dismissed,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘You want me to leave?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I want you to stay.’

  It was me who left.

  2 April 1794

  It was almost too painful to come here again, to the chateau in Versailles, but this was where Arno was staying, so this was where I went.

  At first I thought the information I’d been given must have been wrong, because inside, the chateau was in the same, if not worse, condition than it had been when I was last there.

  Then again, something else I’d learnt was that Arno had evidently taken his banishment from the Assassins badly, and had gained something of a name for himself as the local drunk.

  ‘You look like hell,’ I told him, when eventually I found him ensconced in my father’s o
ffice.

  Regarding me with tired eyes before his gaze slid away, he said, ‘You look like you want something from me.’

  ‘That’s a fine thing to say after you up and vanished.’

  He made a short scoffing sound. ‘You made it fairly clear my services were no longer required.’

  I felt my anger rise. ‘Don’t. Don’t you dare talk to me like that.’

  ‘What do you want me to say, Élise? I’m sorry I didn’t leave you to die? Forgive me for caring more about you than about killing Germain?’

  And yes, I suppose my heart did melt. Just a little. ‘I thought we wanted the same thing.’

  ‘What I wanted was you. It kills me knowing my carelessness got your father killed. Everything I’ve been doing has been to fix that mistake and to prevent it happening again.’ He dropped his eyes. ‘You must have come here with something in mind. What was it?’

  ‘Paris is tearing itself apart,’ I told him, ‘Germain has driven the revolution to new heights of depravity. The guillotines operate nearly round the clock now.’

  ‘And what do you expect me to do about it?’

  ‘The Arno I love wouldn’t have had to ask that question,’ I said.

  I waved a hand at the mess that had once been my father’s beloved office. It was in here that I had learnt of my Templar destiny, in here I had been told of Arno’s Assassin lineage. Now it was a hovel. ‘You’re better than this,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going back to Paris – are you coming?’

  His shoulders slumped and for a moment I thought it was the end for Arno and me. With so many secrets poisoning the lake of our relationship, how could we ever be what we were? Ours was a love thwarted by the plans made for us by other people.

  But he stood, as though having made the decision, and raised his head, looking at me with bleary, hungover eyes that were nevertheless filled with renewed purpose.

  ‘Not yet,’ he told me. ‘I can’t leave without taking care of La Touche.’