Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  We continued, as though we were skirting the school, which I supposed we were. Élise had mentioned a lodge.

  Sure enough, we came upon a large-based low building in a clearing, with a couple of ramshackle outbuildings not far away. Standing on step of a porch was an older man on crutches.

  The crutches were new, of course, but I half recognized the white beard from having seen him around the chateau when I was growing up. He had been someone who belonged to Élise’s ‘other’ life, her François and Julie life. Not someone I had ever concerned myself with then. Nor him with me.

  And yet, of course, I write this entry having read Élise’s journals, and can now appreciate the position he held in her life, and again I marvel at how little I really knew of her; again I mourn the chance to have discovered the ‘real’ Élise, the Élise free of secrets to keep and a destiny to fulfil. I sometimes think that with all of that on her shoulders, we were doomed from the start, she and I.

  ‘Hello, son,’ he growled at me from the porch. ‘It’s been a long time. Look at you. I hardly recognize you.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Weatherall,’ I said, dismounting and tethering my horse. I approached him, and had I known then what I know now I would have greeted him the French way with an embrace, and we would have shared the solidarity of bereavement, we who were the two men closest to Élise, but I didn’t; he was merely a face from the past.

  Inside the lodge the decor was simple, the furniture spartan. Mr Weatherall leaned on his crutches and ushered me to a table, requesting coffee from a girl I took to be Hélène, at whom I smiled and received a curtsey in return.

  Again, I paid her less mind than I would have done had I read the journals. I was just taking the first steps into Élise’s other life, feeling like an interloper, like I shouldn’t be there.

  Jacques entered, too, doffing an imaginary cap and greeting Hélène with a kiss. The atmosphere in the kitchen was bustling. Homely. No wonder Élise had liked it there.

  ‘Was I expected?’ I asked, with a nod at Jacques.

  Mr Weatherall settled before he nodded thoughtfully. ‘Élise wrote to say Arno Dorian might be collecting her trunk. Then a couple of days ago Madame Levene brought the news that she’d been killed.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘She wrote to you? And you didn’t suspect there was anything wrong?’

  ‘Son, I may have wood beneath my armpits but don’t go thinking I’ve got it in my head. What I suspected was that she was still angry with me, not that she was making plans.’

  ‘She was angry with you?’

  ‘We’d had words. We parted on bad terms. The not-on-speaking-terms sort of terms.’

  ‘I see. I have been on the receiving end of a number of Élise’s tempers myself. It’s never very pleasant.’

  We looked at one another, smiles appearing. Mr Weatherall tucked his chin into his chest as he nodded with bitter-sweet remembrance. ‘Oh yes, indeed. Quite a will on that one.’ He looked at me. ‘I expect that’s what got her killed, is it?’

  ‘What did you hear about it?’

  ‘That the noblewoman Élise de la Serre was somehow involved in an altercation with the renowned silversmith François Thomas Germain, and that swords were drawn and the pair of them fought a battle that ended in their mutual death at each other’s hands. That about how you saw it, was it?’

  I nodded. ‘She went after him. She could have exercised more caution.’

  He shook his head. ‘She never was one for exercising caution. She give him a good battle, did she?’

  ‘She fought like a tiger, Mr Weatherall, a true credit to her sparring partner.’

  The older man gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘There was a time when I was sparring partner to François Thomas Germain as well, you know. Yes, you may well look like that. The treacherous Germain honed his own skills on a wooden blade wielded by Freddie Weatherall. Back then when it was unthinkable that a Templar might turn on Templar.’

  ‘Unthinkable? Why? Were Templars less ambitious when you were younger? Was the process of backstabbing in the name of advancement less developed?’

  ‘No,’ smiled Mr Weatherall, ‘just that we were younger, and that bit more idealistic when it came to our fellow man.’

  v.

  Perhaps we would have more to say to one another if we ever met again. As it was we two men who were closest to Élise had precious little in common, and when the conversation had at last withered and died like an autumn leaf, I asked to see the trunk.

  He took me to it, and I carried it to the kitchen table and set it down, running my hands over the monogram EDLS, then opening it. Inside, just as she’d said, were the letters, her journals and the necklace.

  ‘Something else,’ said Mr Weatherall, and left, returning some moments later with a short sword. ‘Her first sword,’ he explained, adding it to the trunk with a disdainful look, as though I should have known instantly. As though I had a lot to learn about Élise.

  Which, of course, I did. And now I understand that, and realize that I may have appeared a little haughty during my visit, as though these people were not worthy of Élise, when in reality it was the other way round.

  I went to fill my saddlebags with Élise’s keepsakes, ready to transport them back to Versailles, stepping out into a clear and still moonlit night and going to my horse. I stood in the clearing, the buckle of a bag in my hand, when I smelled something. Something unmistakable. It was perfume.

  vi.

  Thinking we were on our way my mare snorted and pawed at the ground but I steadied her, patting her neck and sniffing the air at the same time. I licked a finger, held it up and verified that the wind was coming from behind me. I searched the perimeter of the clearing. Perhaps it was one of the girls from school who had made her way down here for some reason. Perhaps it was Jacques’s mother …

  Or perhaps I recognized the scent of the perfume, and knew exactly who it was.

  I came upon him hiding behind a tree, his white hair almost luminous in the moonlight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him. Ruddock.

  He pulled a face. ‘Ah, well, you see, I … well, you could say I was just wanting to safeguard my prize.’

  I shook my head with irritation. ‘So you don’t trust me, after all?’

  ‘Well, do you trust me? Did Élise trust me? Do any of us trust each other, we who live our lives in secret societies?’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Inside.’

  vii.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  The occupants of the lodge, having turned in for bed just moments ago, reappeared: Hélène in a nightdress, Jacques in just his breeches, Mr Weatherall still fully dressed.

  ‘His name is Ruddock.’

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a remarkable transformation as the one that came over Weatherall then. His face coloured, a look of fury crossing it as his glare descended on Ruddock.

  ‘Mr Ruddock plans to collect his letters then be on his way,’ I continued.

  ‘You didn’t tell me they were going to him,’ said Weatherall with a growl.

  I cast him a look, thinking that I was growing tired of him, and that the sooner my business was concluded, the better.

  ‘There is bad blood between the two of you, I take it.’

  Mr Weatherall merely glowered; Ruddock simpered.

  ‘Élise vouched for him,’ I told Mr Weatherall. ‘He is by all accounts a changed man, and has been forgiven for past misdemeanours.’

  ‘Please,’ Ruddock implored me, his eyes darting, clearly unnerved by the thunder that rolled across the face of Mr Weatherall, ‘just hand me the letters and I will go.’

  ‘I’ll get you your letters, if that’s what you want,’ said Mr Weatherall, moving over to the trunk, ‘but believe you me, if it wasn’t Élise’s wish you’d be picking them out of your throat.’

  ‘I loved her too in my own way,’ protested Ruddock. ‘She saved my life twice.’

  By the trunk, Mr Weatherall p
aused. ‘Saved your life twice, did she?’

  Ruddock wrung his hands. ‘She did. She saved me from the hangman’s noose and then from the Carrolls before that.’

  Still standing by the trunk, Mr Weatherall nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I remember she saved you from the hangman’s noose. But the Carrolls …’

  A guilty shadow passed across Ruddock’s face. ‘Well, she told me at the time that the Carrolls were coming for me.’

  ‘You knew them did you, the Carrolls?’ asked Mr Weatherall innocently.

  Ruddock swallowed. ‘I knew of them, of course I did.’

  ‘And you scarpered?’

  He bristled. ‘As anybody in my position would have done.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mr Weatherall, nodding. ‘You did the right thing, missing all of the fun. Fact remains, though, they weren’t going to kill you.’

  ‘Then I suppose you’d have to say that Élise saved my life once. I hardly think it matters and, after all, once is enough.’

  ‘Unless they were going to kill you.’

  Ruddock gave a nervous laugh, his eyes still flitting around the room. ‘Well, you’ve just said yourself they weren’t.’

  ‘But what if they were?’ pressed Mr Weatherall. I wondered what on earth he was getting at.

  ‘They weren’t,’ said Ruddock with a wheedling note in his voice.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Sweat glistened on Ruddock’s brow and the smile on his face was lopsided and queasy. His gaze found mine as though searching for support, but he found none. I was just watching. Watching carefully.

  ‘See,’ continued Mr Weatherall, ‘I think you were working for the Carrolls back then, and you thought they were on their way to silence you – which they might well have been. I think that either you gave us false information about the King of Beggars or he was working on behalf of the Carrolls when they hired you to kill Julie de la Serre. That’s what I think.’

  Ruddock was shaking his head. He tried a look of nonchalant bemusement, he tried a look of ‘this is outrageous’ indignation, and settled on a look of panic.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘now this has gone far enough. I work for myself.’

  ‘But have ambitions to rejoin the Assassins?’ I prompted.

  He shook his head furiously. ‘No, I’m cured of all that. And you know who finally cured me? Why, the fragrant Élise. She hated both of your orders, you know that? Two ticks fighting for control of the cat was what she called you. Futile and deluded, she called you, and she was right. She told me I’d be better off without you, and she was right.’ He sneered at us. ‘Templars? Assassins? I piss on you all for a bunch of worthless old woman squabbling over ancient dogma.’

  ‘So you have no interest in rejoining the Assassins, and thus no interest in the letters?’ I asked him.

  ‘None at all,’ he insisted.

  ‘Then what are you doing here?’ I said.

  The knowledge that the hole he’d dug was too deep flashed across his face and then he whirled and in one movement drew a brace of pistols. Before I could react he had grabbed Hélène, pointed one of the pistols at her head and covered the room with the other one.

  ‘The Carrolls say hello,’ he said.

  viii.

  As a new kind of tension settled over the room, Hélène whimpered. The flesh at her temple whitened where the barrel of the pistol pointed hard and she looked imploringly over Ruddock’s forearm to where Jacques stood coiled and ready to strike, fighting the need to get over there, free Hélène and kill Ruddock with the need not to spook him into shooting her.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said after a silence, ‘you might like to tell me who these Carrolls are.’

  ‘The Carroll family of London,’ said Ruddock, one eye on Jacques who stood tensed, his face in furious knots. ‘At first they hoped to influence the path of the French Templars, but then Élise upset them by killing their daughter, which gave it a somewhat “personal” dimension.

  ‘And of course they did what any good doting parent with a lot of money and a network of killers at their disposal would do – they ordered revenge. Not just on her but on her protector – oh, and I’m sure they’ll pay handsomely for these letters into the bargain.’

  ‘Élise was right,’ said Mr Weatherall to himself. ‘She never believed the Crows tried to kill her mother. She was right.’

  ‘She was,’ said Ruddock almost sadly, as though he wished Élise could be here to appreciate the moment. I wished she was here, too. I’d have enjoyed watching her take Ruddock apart.

  ‘Then it’s over,’ I told Ruddock simply. ‘You know as well as we do that you can’t possibly kill Mr Weatherall and leave here alive.’

  ‘We shall see about that,’ said Ruddock. ‘Now open the door, then step away from it.’

  I stayed where I was until he cast me a warning look at the same time as eliciting a shout of pain from Hélène with the barrel of the pistol. And then I opened the door and moved a few steps to the side.

  ‘I can offer you a trade,’ said Ruddock, pulling Hélène round and backing towards the black rectangle of the entrance.

  Jacques, still tensed and dying to get at Ruddock; Mr Weatherall, furious but thinking, thinking; and me, watching and waiting, fingers flexing on the hidden blade.

  ‘His life for hers,’ continued Ruddock, indicating Mr Weatherall. ‘You allow me to kill him now, and I free the girl when I’m clear.’

  Mr Weatherall’s face was very, very dark. The fury seemed to roll off him in waves. ‘I would sooner take my own life than allow you to take it.’

  ‘That’s your choice. Either way your corpse is on the floor when I leave.’

  ‘And what happens to the girl?’

  ‘She lives,’ he said. ‘I take her with me, then let her go when I’m clear and sure you’re not trying to double-cross me.’

  ‘How do we know you won’t kill her?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Mr Weatherall,’ I began. ‘There’s no way we’re letting him take Hélène. We’re not –’

  Mr Weatherall interrupted me. ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Dorian, let me hear it from Ruddock here. Let me hear the lie from his mouth, because the bounty isn’t just for Élise’s protector, is it, Ruddock? It’s for her protector and her lady’s maid, isn’t it, Ruddock? You’ve no intention of letting Hélène go.’

  Ruddock’s shoulders rose and fell as his breathing became heavier, his options narrowing by the second.

  ‘I’m not leaving here empty-handed,’ he said, ‘just so you can hunt me down and kill me another time.’

  ‘What other choice do you have? Either people die and one of them is you, or you leave and spend the rest of your life as a marked man.’

  ‘I’m taking the letters,’ he said finally. ‘Hand me the letters and I’ll let the girl go when I’m clear.’

  ‘You’re not taking Hélène,’ I said. ‘You can take the letters but Hélène never leaves this lodge.’

  I wonder if he appreciated the irony that had he not followed me, had he just waited in Versailles, I would have brought him the letters.

  ‘You’ll come after me,’ he said uncertainly. ‘As soon as I let go of her.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘You have my word of honour. You may have your letters and leave.’

  He seemed to decide. ‘Give me the letters,’ he demanded.

  Mr Weatherall reached into the trunk, took the sheaf of letters and held them up.

  ‘You,’ Ruddock told Jacques, ‘lover boy. Put the letters on my horse and bring it round then shoo away the Assassin’s mount. Be fast and get back here or she dies.’

  Jacques looked from me to Mr Weatherall. We both nodded and he darted out into the moonlight.

  The seconds passed and we waited, Hélène quiet now, watching us over Ruddock’s forearm as he covered me with the pistol, his eyes on me, not paying much attention to Mr Weatherall, thinking he posed no threat.

  Jacq
ues returned, sidling inside with his eyes on Hélène, waiting to collect her.

  ‘Right, is everything ready?’ asked Ruddock.

  I saw Ruddock’s plan flash across his eyes. I saw it so clearly he might as well have said it out loud. His plan was to kill me with the first shot, Jacques with the second, deal with Hélène and Weatherall by blade.

  Perhaps Mr Weatherall saw it, too. Perhaps Mr Weatherall had been planning his move all along. Whatever the truth, I don’t know, but in the same moment as Ruddock shoved Hélène away from himself and swung his gun arm towards me, Mr Weatherall’s hand appeared from within the trunk, the sheath to Élise’s short sword flipped up and away and the sword itself was in his fingers.

  And it was so much larger than a throwing knife that I thought he couldn’t possibly find his target, but of course his knife-throwing skills were at their best and the sword twirled and I dived at the same time, hearing the shot and the ball zip past my ear as one sound, regaining my balance and springing my hidden blade, ready to leap and plunge it into Ruddock before he loosed his second shot.

  But Ruddock had a sword in his face, his eyes swivelling in opposite directions as his head snapped back and he staggered, his second shot going safely into the ceiling as his body teetered back, then he fell, dead before he hit the floor.

  On Mr Weatherall’s face was a look of grim satisfaction, as though he had laid a ghost to rest.

  Hélène ran to Jacques and then for some while we just stood, the four of us, looking at one another and at Ruddock’s prone body, barely able to believe it was all over, and that we had survived.

  And then, once we had carried Ruddock outside for burial the next day, I collected my horse and went to continue loading my saddlebags. As I did so I felt Hélène’s hand on my arm and gazed into eyes that were bloodshot from crying, but no less sincere for that.