Assassin’s Creed®

by Oliver Bowden

  If the stone was upright, as it was most evenings, that meant no message. If the stone leaned to the right, it meant danger. Just that: danger. It was up to The Ghost to work out what manner of danger.

  However, if it leaned to the left then it meant his handler wanted to see him: usual time, usual place.

  And then, having performed that check, The Ghost began his five-mile walk home to Wapping and his living quarters at the Thames Tunnel.

  It had once been called one of the great wonders of the world, and even at ground level it cut an imposing figure among the surrounding buildings: a spired octagonal marble building acting as an entrance hall. Entering through doors that were never shut, he crossed the mosaic floor to reach a side-building, the watch-house. During the daytime pedestrians had to pay a penny to pass through and reach the steps down into the tunnel, but not at night. The brass turnstile was closed but The Ghost climbed over, just as everybody did.

  Ice had formed on the marble steps that spiralled round the inside of the shaft, so he trod more carefully than usual as he descended to the first platform, and then to the next, and finally to the bottom of the shaft – the grand rotunda, more than two hundred and fifty feet underground. Once it had been vast and opulent, now it was merely vast. The walls were dirty, the statues scruffy. The years had had their say.

  Even so, it was still a sight to see: alcoves set into grubby stucco walls. Inside the nooks, curled beneath sacks, slept the people of the rotunda: the necromancers, fortune tellers and jugglers who in the daytime plied their trade to those visiting the tunnel, the famous Thames Tunnel.

  The first of its kind anywhere, ever, the Thames Tunnel stretched from here, Wapping, below the river to Rotherhithe and had taken fifteen years to build, almost defeating Mr Marc Brunel and claiming the life of his son Isambard, who had near drowned in one of the floods that had plagued its construction. Both had hoped to see their tunnel used by horse-drawn carriages, but had been undone by the cost, and instead it became a tourist attraction, visitors paying their penny to walk its thousand-feet length, an entire subterranean industry springing forth to serve them.

  The Ghost moved from the entrance hall to the black mouth of the tunnel itself, its two arches pointing at him like the barrels of pistols. It was wide and its ceiling high, but the brickwork pressed in and each footfall became an echo, while the sudden change in atmosphere made him more aware of the gloom. In daytime hundreds of gas lamps banished the darkness but at night the only illumination belonged to the flickering candles of those who made the tunnel their home: traders, mystics, dancers and animal handlers, singers, clowns and street dealers. It was said that two million people a year took a walk down the tunnel, and had done since it opened some nineteen years ago. Once you had a place at the tunnel opening you didn’t leave it, not for fear that some other hawker might steal it with you absent.

  The Ghost looked over the slumbering bodies of the tradesmen and entertainers as he passed by, his footsteps ringing on the stone floor. He peered into alcoves and passed his lantern over those sleeping under the arches of the partition that ran the length of the tunnel.

  A strict hierarchy operated inside the tunnel. The tradesmen took their places at the mouth. Further along, the derelicts, the homeless, the vagrants, the wretched; and then even further along, the thieves, criminals and fugitives.

  Come morning time, the traders, who had a vested interest in making sure the tunnel was free of vagrants and as sanitary as possible, were enthusiastic in helping the peelers clear out the tunnel. The blaggers and fugitives would have departed under cover of darkness. The rest of them, the vagabonds, beggars, prostitutes, would come grumbling and blinking into the light, clutching their belongings, ready for another day of surviving on nothing.

  The Ghost’s lantern played over a sleeping figure in the gloom of an alcove. The next alcove was empty. He swung the torch to illuminate the arches of the tunnel partition and they too were vacant. He sensed the miserly light receding behind him, the glow given off by his lantern so very meagre all of a sudden, dancing eerily on the brick.

  From within the darkness had come a scuttling sound and he raised his light to see a figure crouched in a nook ahead of him.

  ‘Hello, Mr Bharat,’ said the boy in a whisper.

  The Ghost went to him, reaching into his coats for a thick crust of bread he’d put there earlier. ‘Hello, Charlie,’ he said, handing it over. The boy flinched a little, far too accustomed to the slaps and punches of grown-ups, then took the bread, staring at The Ghost with grateful eyes as he bit into it, cautiously at first.

  They did it every night. The same flinch. The same caution. And every night The Ghost, who knew nothing of the boy’s background, just that it involved violence and abuse, smiled at him, said, ‘See you tomorrow night, Charlie. Take care of yourself,’ and left the boy in his alcove, his heart breaking as he made his way further into the tunnel.

  Again he stopped. Here in another alcove lay a man with a leg broken from a fall on the icy steps of the rotunda. The Ghost had set the leg and he held his breath against the stench of piss and shit to check that his splint was still in place and that the leg was on the mend.

  ‘You’re a fine lad, Bharat,’ growled his patient.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ asked The Ghost, attending to the leg. He was not a man of delicate sensibilities but even so – Jake was ripe.

  ‘Maggie brought me some bread and fruit,’ said Jake.

  ‘What would we do without Maggie?’ wondered The Ghost aloud.

  ‘We’d die, son, is what we’d do.’

  The Ghost straightened, pretending to look back up the tunnel in order to take a lungful of uncontaminated air – relatively speaking. ‘Leg is looking good, Jake,’ he said. ‘Another couple of days and you might be able to risk a bath.’

  Jake chuckled. ‘That bad, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Jake,’ said The Ghost, patting his shoulder. ‘I’m afraid it’s that bad.’

  The Ghost left, pressing further on into the tunnel, until he came to the last of the alcoves used for sleeping. Here was where he and Maggie stayed. Maggie, at sixty-two, was old enough to be his grandmother, but they looked after one another. The Ghost brought food and money, and every night he taught Maggie to read by the light of a candle.

  Maggie, for her part, was the tunnel mother, a rabble-rousing mouthpiece for The Ghost when he needed one, an intimidating, redoubtable figure. Not to be trifled with.

  Beyond this point few people dared to tread. Beyond this point was the darkness, and it was no coincidence that this was where The Ghost had made his home. He stayed here as a kind of border guard, protecting those who slept in the tunnel from the miscreants and malfeasants, the lawbreakers and fugitives who sought shelter in its darker regions.

  Before he had arrived the outlaws would prey upon those who lived in the tunnel. It had taken a while. Blood had been spilt. But The Ghost had put a stop to that.

  8

  On the night that The Ghost had first met Maggie, he had been taking his route back home – if you could call it ‘home’, his lodging, his resting place in the tunnel.

  Occasionally, as he walked, he let his mind drift back to his real home, Amritsar in India, where he had grown up.

  He remembered spending his childhood and adolescence roaming the grounds of his parents’ house and then the ‘katras’ – the different areas of the city itself. Memory can play tricks on you – it can make things seem better or worse than they really were, and The Ghost was fully aware of that. He knew he was in danger of idealizing his childhood. After a
ll, how easy it would be to forget that Amritsar, unlike London, had not yet acquired a drainage system and thus rarely smelled of the jasmine and herbs that he recalled so vividly. He might forget that those walled streets which loomed so large in his recollections had played host to characters as unsavoury as anywhere else in India. Possibly the sun didn’t really bathe the entire city in golden light all day and all night, warming the stone, making the fountains glimmer, painting smiles on the faces of those who made the city their home.

  Possibly not. But that was how he remembered it anyway, and if he was honest that was how he preferred to remember it. Those memories kept him warm in the tunnel at night.

  He was born Jayadeep Mir. Like all boys he idolized his father, Arbaaz Mir. His mother used to say that his father smelled of the desert and that was how The Ghost remembered him too. From an early age Arbaaz told Jayadeep that greatness lay ahead of him, and that he would one day be a venerated Assassin, and he had made this future sound as thrilling as it was inevitable. In the comfortable confines of his loving parents’ home, Jayadeep had grown up knowing great certainty.

  Arbaaz liked to tell stories just as much as Jayadeep loved to hear them, and best of them all was the story of how Arbaaz had met his wife, Pyara. In this one, Arbaaz and his young mute servant, Raza Soora, had been trying to find the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the Mountain of Light. It was during his attempts to retrieve the diamond from the Imperial Palace that Arbaaz became involved with Pyara Kaur, granddaughter of Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Empire.

  The Koh-i-Noor diamond was what they called a Piece of Eden, those artefacts distributed around the globe that were the sole remnants of a civilization that preceded our own.

  Jayadeep knew of their power because his parents had seen it for themselves. Arbaaz, Pyara and Raza had all been there the night the diamond was activated. They had all seen the celestial lightshow. Talking of what they’d witnessed, his parents were candid about the effect it had upon them. What they’d seen had made them more devout and more fervent in their belief that such great power should never be wielded by their enemies, the Templars. They instilled that in the boy.

  Back then, growing up in an Amritsar painted gold by the sun and being mentored by a father who was like a god to him, Jayadeep could not have conceived of a day when he might be named The Ghost, huddled in a freezing dark tunnel, alone in the world, venerated by nobody.

  Training had begun when he was four or five years old, but although it was physically demanding work it had never seemed like a chore; he had never complained or played truant, and there was one very simple reason for this: he was good at it.

  No. More than that. He was great. A natural from the day he was handed his first wooden training blade, a kukri. Jayadeep had a gift for combat such as had been rarely witnessed in the Indian Brotherhood. He was extraordinarily, almost supernaturally, fast in attack, and more than usually responsive in defence; he boasted tremendous powers of observation and anticipation. He was so good, in fact, that his father felt impelled to call upon another tutor.

  Into the boy’s life came Ethan Frye.

  Meeting Ethan Frye was among The Ghost’s earliest memories: this tired-looking, melancholy man, whose Western robes seemed to hang heavier on him than those of his father.

  Just a tiny child, the boy had neither the inclination nor the initiative to ask about Ethan Frye. As far as he was concerned, the elder Assassin might as well have fallen from the skies, tumbled to earth like a downhearted angel come to sully his otherwise idyllic existence.

  ‘This is the boy then?’ Ethan had asked.

  They had been sitting in the shaded courtyard at the time, the clamour of the streets outside drifting over the wall and joining the birdsong and the soft tinkle of a fountain.

  ‘This is indeed the boy,’ said Arbaaz proudly. ‘This is Jayadeep.’

  ‘A great warrior you say.’

  ‘A great warrior in the making – or at least I think so. I’ve been training him myself and I’ve been astonished, Ethan, astonished by his natural aptitude.’ Arbaaz stood, and in the house behind him Jayadeep glimpsed his mother, seeing the two of them at once. For the first time, perhaps due to the presence of this gruff stranger, he was aware of their beauty and grace. He saw them as people rather than just his parents.

  Without taking his eyes from the boy, Ethan Frye clasped his hands over his belly and spoke over his shoulder to Arbaaz. ‘Supernatural in his abilities, you say?’

  ‘It is like that, Ethan, yes.’

  Eyes still on Jayadeep. ‘Supernatural, eh?’

  ‘Always thinking two or three moves ahead,’ answered Arbaaz.

  ‘As one should.’

  ‘At six years old?’

  Ethan turned his gaze on Jayadeep once again. ‘It’s precocious, I’ll admit, but …’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say. That so far he has been sparring with me and as father and son we naturally share a bond and that maybe, just maybe, I’m exhibiting certain tells that give him the edge, yes?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’

  ‘Well, that’s why you’re here. I’d like you to take charge of training Jayadeep.’

  Intrigued by the boy, Ethan Frye agreed to Arbaaz’s request and from that day he took up residence at the house, drilling the boy in swordcraft.

  The boy, knowing little of what drove Ethan, was confused at first by his new tutor’s gruff manners and rough tone. Jayadeep was not one to respond to the touch of a disciplinarian, and it had taken some months for the two of them to form a tutor–pupil relationship that wasn’t characterized by sour asides (Ethan), harsh words (Ethan) and tears (Jayadeep).

  For some time, in fact, Jayadeep believed that Ethan Frye simply did not like him, which came as something of a culture shock. The boy was handsome and charismatic. He knew next to nothing of the adult world and although he remained oblivious to concepts such as charm and persuasion he was instinctively adept at being both charming and persuasive, able to twist his family and household round his little finger, seemingly at will. He was the sort of little boy that grown-ups loved to touch. Never was a boy’s hair so constantly ruffled by the men, his cheek rarely lasting longer than half an hour without one of the household women praising his smile and planting a kiss on him, inhaling his fresh little-boy smell at the same time, silently luxuriating in the softness of his skin.

  It was as though Jayadeep were a drug to which all who met him became addicted.

  All, that was, except Ethan, who wore a permanently pensive and preoccupied expression. It was true that occasionally the light would come to him, and when it did Jayadeep fancied he saw something of the ‘old’ or maybe the ‘real’ Ethan, as though there were a different Ethan struggling to peer out from beneath the gloom. Otherwise it seemed that whatever Jayadeep had that intoxicated other grown-ups simply failed to work on his tutor.

  These were the rather shaky foundations on which their tutorials were built: Ethan, in a grey study; Jayadeep confused by this new type of grown-up, who didn’t lavish him with affection and praise. Oh, of course Ethan was forced to offer grudging praise for Jayadeep’s skills in combat. How could he not? Jayadeep excelled at every aspect of Assassin craft, and in the end it was this more than anything that cracked open their relationship, because if there’s one thing a skilled Assassin can admire and appreciate, even grow to like, it’s an initiate with promise. And Jayadeep was most certainly that.

  So, as the years passed, and master and pupil sparred in the shade of the courtyard trees, discussed theory by the fountains, and then put t
heir teachings into practice in the streets of the city, it was as though Ethan began to thaw towards his young charge, and when he spoke of taking the boy from wood to steel there was an unmistakable note of pride in his voice.

  For his part, Jayadeep began to learn a little about his reflective mentor. Enough, in fact, for him to realize that ‘glum’ was the wrong adjective, and that ‘troubled’ was more accurate. Even at that age he was remarkably intuitive.

  What’s more, there came a day when he overheard the women in the kitchen talking. He and Ethan were practising a stealth exercise in the grounds of the house, and Ethan had commanded him to return with information obtained using covert means.

  When The Ghost thought about this years later, it occurred to him that sending a small child to gather covert information was a plan fraught with possible pitfalls, not least that the child might learn something unsuitable for young ears.

  Which, as it turned out, was exactly what happened.

  As he was later to learn, though, Ethan was, despite outward appearances, prone to making the odd rash and hasty decision, as well as being possessed of what you might call a sense of mischief, and thinking back, Ethan’s instructions for the exercise were perhaps the first time Jayadeep saw an outward manifestation of this in his tutor.

  So Jayadeep went on his exercise and two hours later joined Ethan at the fountain. He took a seat on the stone beside where his master sat looking pensive as usual, choosing not to acknowledge Jayadeep as was his custom. Like everything else about Ethan, this had taken Jayadeep time to get used to, and getting used to it was a process that involved moving first from being offended to being confused and lastly accepting that his lack of warmth was in its own way a measure of the familiarity the two of them shared, these two men so far apart in age and culture – one of them an experienced killer, the other training to be one.