‘What are we looking for?’ he whispered.
Her eyes roved around the space. ‘I’m not quite sure.’ The pair of them set about conducting a search, finding that there were musical notes hidden around the room.
‘What are the Templars not seeing?’ said Henry almost to himself.
‘Something only we can.’
‘Edward Kenway was a pirate. Where would a pirate hide his treasure?’
‘I’d hide mine in a library,’ said Evie, and Henry chuckled.
‘Mine would be the library,’ he said and the pair of them shared another look. Kindred spirits.
‘The piano is beautiful.’
‘Do you play?’
‘No. I wish I could. I love the sound. You?’
‘A little. Enough to pass as a genteel young lady if I need to.’
‘I would love to hear you play if the opportunity presents itself,’ he said, and noticed a blush come to her cheeks.
He went to the piano now. ‘Some of these keys are more raised than others,’ he said, and studied them, trying to find some rhyme or reason to the almost imperceptible way that certain keys sat more proudly than others.
He tried one – tink – which made Evie start, and she looked over, about to rebuke him for the noise, when suddenly the piano began playing itself. They forgot to panic about the sound carrying, when, at the same time, a section of the floor opened to reveal steps that led down into some unseen basement.
This, then, was the Kenway vault.
‘Not enormously subtle, is it?’ said Henry.
Evie rolled her eyes. ‘Clearly Kenway had a strong sense of spectacle.’
They went down and found themselves in the Kenway vault, their breath held as they began to make sense of a lifetime’s worth of paraphernalia that was stored here.
‘This is incredible. I think this is the Jackdaw,’ said Henry, his eyes alighting on a model of Edward Kenway’s legendary pirate brig. ‘To think this has been hidden for a century.’
But Evie had moved to a high table in the centre of the vault, where her eyes had gone to a document and an engraved disc. She scanned the parchment. ‘The history of the London Assassins … Boltholes … Vaults … A hidden key.’ Excited now she added, ‘This is it.’
Henry moved across and again they enjoyed the sudden proximity, before the moment was broken by the sound of Lucy Thorne from the music room above them. ‘You say you heard music,’ they heard her snap at unseen guards. And then: ‘There was no opening there before.’
Evie and Henry looked at one another. Uh-oh. Henry found a latch that he closed, exciting general dismay from those above.
‘Help me block it,’ called Lucy Thorne, sensing that this newly opened door was crucial to their continued progress.
Down below, the door shut and Evie and Henry were left wondering what to do now.
A way out. There had to be one. Together they scoured the walls with a fingertip search until, with a small cry of triumph, Henry found it: a wall panel that opened to reveal stone steps spiralling down and beyond the reach of any lantern. Next they were making their way along a passageway beneath the great house, grateful to escape the clutches of Lucy Thorne but tinged with disappointment.
‘An entire vault filled with Assassin history, left behind once again,’ bemoaned Evie.
‘We’ll just have to find an even better cache or reclaim this one later,’ Henry said.
She scoffed. ‘We? I thought you preferred to stay out of fieldwork.’
‘I … I was thinking more of you and your brother. I shall provide planning assistance. From the train.’
‘Jacob’s off marauding,’ she said. ‘There is a vacancy, should you decide to broaden your horizons.’
‘I’ll think on it,’ he said.
‘You do that,’ she said with a gently mocking smile. ‘Now let’s get above ground.’
73
‘So, the hints you found in the Kenway house lead here …’
Jacob waved a somewhat disparaging hand at the huge column rising from the ground below them. They stood on a hillside overlooking it, yet were still dwarfed by it. The Great Fire Monument. Built near the spot in Pudding Lane where the eponymous Fire of London had started on 2 September 1666, and a suitably awe-inspiring tribute to that epochal event.
For some moments the twins simply gazed at it, eyes going from the sculpted plinth at the booth, up the fluted column and to the top, where a cage had been constructed to prevent suicides. As the tallest tower in the world, it dwarfed surrounding buildings and on a clear day it was possible to see it from right across the city. At close quarters it took their breath away.
Evie wished Henry were here. Then chided herself for the disloyal thought. After all, Jacob was her brother, her twin brother with whom she shared an almost supernatural communication. Things she’d save from a fire? Number one, her blade; number two, her brother. And on a good day, if Jacob were being especially pleasant company, well, she might even rescue her brother first.
Today, however, was not one of those days. Jacob was not pleasant company. Instead he was choosing to mock and lampoon her at every available opportunity, specifically, it seemed, the growing affection between herself and Henry Green.
Henry, of course, wasn’t here to defend himself. He was at the shop, reviewing the material, so Jacob was taking advantage of his absence.
‘Oh yes, Mr Green,’ Jacob said, parroting his sister, ‘that’s a fascinating idea. Oh please, Mr Green, come and take a look at this book and stand oh-so-close to me, Mr Green.’
She fumed. ‘I do not …’ And then composed herself. ‘Well, perhaps you have nothing better to do, but I am busy protecting the Assassins.’
‘Are you really? What was it Father used to say …?’
‘“Don’t allow personal feelings to compromise the mission”?’ Evie rolled her eyes.
‘Precisely,’ replied her brother. ‘Anyway, I’m off. If I find any more wild geese for you to chase, I’ll be in touch.’
To show his scorn he lowered his cowl, retrieved his hat from inside his clothes, popped it out and then rolled it along his arm to the top of his head.
And with that he left.
She watched Jacob go, pleased to see the back of him almost as much as she mourned the tension between them, and then made her way to the monument. On its base was a small and familiar-looking recess. Sure enough the disc she’d liberated from the Kenway mansion fitted perfectly. In response the stone seemed to crack, just enough to open, and she took a set of spiral steps up the inside of the monument. These were not the usual steps – not those taken by sightseers and suicides and James Boswell, who had apparently suffered a panic attack halfway up, before gathering himself, completing the journey and then declaring the view an abomination. No, these steps were purely for he or she who was in possession of the disc.
Sure enough, when she reached the summit, two hundred feet high, two things greeted her. Firstly, the view – and she stood buffeted by wind as she gasped at a panorama that bristled with chimneys and spires, a skyline of industry and worship. Secondly, she found another disc, this one larger, and with a slot. She compared the two discs in her hand and then, on a whim, decided to try to fit the first one into the aperture of the second.
It fitted. Perfectly. Still pummelled by the wind, she looked at it in blank amazement as a picture formed. If where she currently stood was London’s best-known landmark, then this was pointing her to the second best-known, another Sir Christopher Wren building: St Paul’s Cathedral.
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br /> A short time later she had made her way there, wishing she’d stopped to collect either Jacob or, preferably, Henry on the way, but knowing they could be anywhere. She ascended to the roof of the grand cathedral. No problem for a woman of her skills.
There, at the statue of St Paul, she inserted the two disc pieces into a slot in the stone. Next – did she sense it or genuinely feel it? – a door deep below her opened, and shortly afterwards she had gone down and was walking into a vault in the chapel.
It was a large room dominated by a table in the centre. On one wall was an Assassin symbol. Ah, so it was a dedicated Assassin vault. Across the room was a stained-glass window, while in an alcove hung what Evie at first took for a beautiful item of jewellery. She moved closer, examining a chain that was decorated with links and small intricate spheres, about the size of pearls but inscribed with odd angular hieroglyphics, as well as a pendant that she lifted in her palm. Again there was something infinitely precious about it, as though it had been fashioned by a silversmith who was not of this earth or of this era. A thrill ran through her. The knowledge that in all likelihood she was holding something of the First Civilization.
A key of some kind. Inscribed on it was Latin, meaning ‘the remedy is worse than the disease’, and she picked it up, turning it over in her hands. It was nothing she recognized from any of her readings. Nothing she could make sense of there and then. Perhaps when she had the literature in front of her …
She hung it round her neck – just as the door opened to admit Lucy Thorne.
‘Good day, Miss Frye. I’ll take that,’ said the Templar. All in black, her features baked into a predatory stare, she crossed the chamber towards Evie. She came alone, supremely confident of her dominion.
Evie let the key fall to her chest. She raised her cowl then let her hands drop to her sides, loose but ready. ‘You want the Shroud to cement your own power,’ she said, ‘but what if you cannot control it?’
Lucy pursed her lips. ‘And why do you want the Shroud? Merely to keep the Templars from having it? How like an Assassin – to hold the power of eternal life and yet be too afraid to use it.’
Lucy had stopped a few feet away from Evie, just out of striking range. The two women sized each other up. Evie saw no obvious weapons, but then who could say what was concealed in the voluminous folds of her opponent’s funereal garb. ‘Eternal life,’ she said, every muscle alert, ‘is that what you think the Shroud offers?’
‘What I think is no longer your concern,’ said Lucy, whose eyes gave away her intentions a second before she made her move, and in one eye-wateringly fast motion she had snatched a blade from her boot and sprang, full-length, knife hand extended, in an action that almost took Evie by surprise.
Almost being the operative word. The young Assassin skipped back, triggered her blade at the same time and was pleased to see the expression on her opponent’s face instantly transform. If Lucy Thorne saw easy pickings she had made a dire mistake, for a Templar and a boot knife were no match for Evie Frye. A spirited attack it might have been, but it was predicated on surprise, and without that Lucy had nothing save a desire to win and an instinct for survival. And neither were enough to best Evie.
Their blades clashed. The ringing sound ricocheted around the stone walls. With bared teeth Lucy tried again but Evie fended her off easily, taking the measure of her opponent, biding her time, ready for the death blow.
But Lucy Thorne wasn’t done. As Evie approached, her hand shot out. What bloomed from the centre of her fist was a globe and for a strange, mad moment, Evie thought that Lucy Thorne was attacking her with a Piece of Eden, until it registered: a smoke bomb.
Blinded and temporarily disorientated, Evie staggered back, bringing her blade into a defensive position and restoring her balance, ready to meet a follow-up attack. Sure enough, it came. Lucy Thorne was an inferior combatant but she lacked for nothing when it came to commitment and she was brave. My God, thought Evie, is she brave. Through the smoke of the bomb, Lucy flew forward with her boot dagger slashing more in hope than confidence and thanks to the fog and ferocity of her attack very nearly succeeded.
Nearly being the operative word.
Smoke billowed as Evie turned smartly to one side, thrusting out her chest as she swept back her shoulders and brought her blade low, knocking Lucy Thorne’s knife aside. In the next moment she swung about, bringing her right shoulder forward in a most unladylike but very Evie Frye-like roundhouse punch that made hard and sickening contact with Lucy Thorne’s jaw, sending the Templar’s eyeballs spinning and her teeth rattling as she staggered back. Evie sheathed her blade then stepped forward and swung the gauntlet hand.
The move had been neat. It had won her the fight. But maybe Evie had a little too much of her father and brother in her. Perhaps she was overconfident. For the punch was too much and instead of flooring Lucy Thorne it sent her flailing back, blade skittering off to one side, arms wildly pinwheeling, towards a plate-glass window behind her.
Evie saw what was going to happen and realized her mistake. But it was too late. She sprang forward and in her haste lost her footing. Her grasping fingers failed to find Lucy Thorne, and for a split second the two women scrabbled at one another trying to prevent the inevitable.
They could not. The glass shattered around Lucy Thorne and she seemed about to fall to her certain death when one desperate hand found the key round Evie’s neck. Suddenly it was all that prevented her from falling and Evie was trapped too, crying out in pain as the chain dug into her flesh.
‘Coming with me?’ sneered Lucy Thorne, and once again Evie had to hand it to her opponent. She didn’t lack for valour.
But …
‘I have other plans,’ said Evie, and out came her blade and she sliced the chain, dismissing Lucy Thorne.
With a scream the Templar fell, still holding the key, and Evie was dumped back inside the room. She pulled herself up, coughing and panting as she dragged herself to check the broken window and the stone below.
Lucy Thorne was gone.
‘Dammit,’ said Evie.
74
Evie sat and brooded. True, she had been pleased to hear of Jacob’s progress. He had dispensed with the bank owner Twopenny, putting a crimp in the Templar’s financial pipeline, for one thing. Other smaller sorties had proved similarly effective.
Her own work had met with less success.
On the one hand, she had the opportunity to spend more time with Henry Green, and even Jacob’s taunts could not take the edge off that particular pleasure. She and Henry were growing closer all the time.
But on the other, their investigations had yielded little of merit. The more they buried themselves in books and the more they pored over the material that Evie had taken from the crate, the less, it seemed, they learnt.
She mulled over Lucy’s words. How the Shroud offered eternal life. They already knew the Shroud of Eden was, quote, ‘supposed to heal even the gravest injury’, but eternal life?
And now Lucy Thorne had Evie’s key.
‘What good is a key if you don’t know what lock it opens?’ she said one afternoon, as she and Henry wasted another fruitless afternoon in the company of candlelight and mystifying literature.
‘I daresay Miss Thorne is in the same predicament,’ Henry said dryly, not even bothering to lift his head from the journal he was reading.
It was a good point. One that Evie acknowledged with a sigh and a heavy heart, her eyes going back to her own work. And then – just as she did so – she saw it. There in front of her was …
‘Henry,’ she said
quickly. She put her hand to his arm, then just as quickly dropped it once more, clearing her throat of the sudden embarrassment of contact. ‘Here. This is it.’
Henry saw an image of the key beneath her finger. So that was it. Galvanized, he reached to a pile for another book, mind instantly making connections.
‘This matches the collection owned by the queen,’ said Henry, flicking through the pages. He found what he was searching for and looked at her, eyes shining with excitement. ‘It’s kept in the Tower of London.’
75
Hours later, with the city cowering beneath a curtain of darkness and fog, Evie Frye crouched in the crenulation of a wall overlooking the inner ward of the Tower of London. To her left were the darkened windows of Lanthorn Tower, which had been gutted by fire in the great blaze of 1774 and was still in need of repair. For that reason it remained an uninhabited, badly lit and mostly unguarded corner of the Tower grounds. Perfect for Evie to take stock.
Squatting there, she was able to see over into the central complex where the White Tower stood – ‘the keep’, presiding over the smaller structures surrounding it. Dotted around were the familiar figures of the Yeoman Warders, the beefeaters who guarded the Tower day and night. Among them would be a man that Henry counted as an ally. Finding this man was her next task.
As she crouched, watching, she stretched out her muscles. Four hours she had been waiting, and it had given her ample opportunity to study the movements of the Warders. What struck her was a sense of two distinct groups. Something was afoot, she thought. And she believed she knew what it was.
And then her attention was arrested by the arrival of Lucy Thorne.
Evie clung even more tightly to the shadows as her nemesis stepped from a carriage and crossed the courtyard to the lower steps of the great keep. The Templar woman’s gaze swept around the walls surrounding the inner ward and Evie found herself holding her breath as it passed her hiding place. Then Lucy Thorne ascended the steps and stepped inside the keep.
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