Assassin's Creed: Unity

by Oliver Bowden

  When it was over and I’d summoned thoughts of Mother to make myself cry, and we’d replaced the cushion and cane, we opened the door. Madame Levene was standing in the vestibule some distance away. I arranged my face to look like a person who had recently been punished, gave her a baleful look with my red-rimmed eyes and, with my head down and resisting the temptation to give Mr. Weatherall a good-bye wink, I scuttled off as if to lick my wounds.

  In fact I had a little thinking to do.

  23 JANUARY 1788

  Let’s see. How did this start? That’s right—with Judith Poulou saying that Madame Levene had a lover.

  That was all Judith had said, one night after lights out, that Madame Levene had “a lover in the woods” and the other girls had mainly scoffed at the idea. But not me. I’d remembered a night some time ago when, just after supper, I’d spied the dreaded headmistress from a dormitory window, wrapping herself in a shawl as she hurried down the steps away from the schoolhouse, then melted into the darkness beyond.

  There’d been something about the way she behaved that made me think she wasn’t just planning to take the air. The way she looked from left to right. The way she headed toward the path that led in the direction of the sports fields and, yes, maybe, the woods at the perimeter.

  It had taken me two nights of keeping watch, but last night I saw her again. Just as before, she left the schoolhouse, and with the same furtive air, although not furtive enough to detect a window opening in the schoolhouse above, and me climbing from it, clambering down the trellis to the ground and setting off in pursuit.

  At last I was putting my training into action. I became like a wraith in the night, keeping her just in sight, silently tracking her as she used the light of the moon to navigate her way along the lawn and to the perimeter of the sports fields.

  They were an open expanse and I scowled for a moment—then did what my mother and Mr. Weatherall had always taught me to do. I assessed the situation. Madame Levene with the light of the moon behind her—her old bespectacled eyes versus my young ones. I decided to stay behind her, keeping her in the distance, so that she was little more than a shadow ahead of me. I saw the moonlight glint on her spectacles as she turned to check she wasn’t being followed, and I froze, became part of the night, prayed my calculations had been correct.

  They were. The witch kept on going until she reached the tree line and was swallowed up by the harsh shapes of tree trunks and undergrowth. I sped up and followed her, finding the same path she’d taken, that cut through the woods, and becoming a ghost. The route reminding me of years spent taking a similar track to see Mr. Weatherall. A track that used to end with my protector perched waiting on his tree stump, smiling, unburdened, then, by the weight of my mother’s death.

  I’d never smelled wine on his breath back then.

  I banished the memory as ahead of us I saw the small groundskeeper’s lodge and realized where she was heading. I drew to a halt and from my position behind a tree watched as she knocked gently and the door was opened. I heard her say, “I couldn’t wait to see you,” and there was the distinct sound of a kiss—a kiss—and then she disappeared inside, the door closing behind her.

  So this was her lover in the woods. Jacques, the groundskeeper, of whom I knew little other than what I’d seen as he attended to his duties in the middle distance. One thing I did know was that he was younger than Madame Levene. What a dark horse she was.

  I returned, knowing the rumors were true. And, unfortunately for her, not only was I the one in possession of that information, but I was not above using it to get what I wanted from her. Indeed, that was precisely what I intended to do.

  25 JANUARY 1788

  Just after lunch, Judith came to see me. The very same Judith from whom I’d heard the rumor about Madame Levene’s love. Neither one of my enemies nor my admirers, Judith face was impassive as she delivered the news that the headmistress wanted to see me in her office right away in order to talk about the theft of a horseshoe from the dormitory door.

  I made my face grave as if to say, “Oh God, not again. When will this torture ever end?” when in fact I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Madame Levene was playing right into my hands. Handed to me on a plate was a golden opportunity to give her the good news that I knew all about her lover, Jacques, because while she thought she was going to cane me for stealing the dormitory’s lucky horseshoe, in actual fact I’d be leaving not with the usual smarting palm and a seething sense of injustice, but a letter for my father. A letter in which Madame Levene informed him that his daughter Élise was to be leaving for individual English tuition in . . . guess.

  If all went to plan, that was.

  At her door I knocked smartly, entered, then, with my shoulders flung back and my chin inclined, strode across her office to where she sat before the window and dropped the horseshoe on her desk.

  There was a moment of silence. Those beady eyes fixed on the unwelcome bit of rusted iron on her desk, then rose to meet mine, but instead of the usual look of disdain and barely masked hatred, there was something else there—some unreadable emotion I’d never seen in her before.

  “Ah,” she said, a slight tremor in her voice, “very good. You have returned the stolen horseshoe.”

  “That’s what you wanted to see me about, wasn’t it?” I said carefully, less sure of myself all of a sudden.

  “That was what I told Judith I wanted to see you about, yes.” She reached beneath her desk and I heard the sound of a drawer scraping open, and she added, “But there was another reason.”

  I felt a chill, hardly dared ask, “And what was that, Madame?”

  “This,” she said, placing something on the desk in front of her.

  It was my journal. I felt my eyes widen. Was suddenly short of breath. My fists flexing.

  “You . . .” I tried, but could not finish. “You . . .”

  She leveled a trembling bony finger at me and her eyes blazed as her voice rose, her anger matching mine. “Don’t play the victim with me, young lady. Not after what I’ve read.” The pointing finger jabbed at the cover of my journal—a cover that I knew so well, that looked odd and out of place on the headmistress’s desk—a cover under which were my most private thoughts, ripped from their hiding place under my mattress. Pored over by most hated enemy.

  My temper began to rise. I fought to control my breathing and my shoulders rose and fell, fists still clenching and unclenching.

  “How . . . how much did you read?” I managed.

  “Enough to know you were planning to blackmail me,” she said tersely. “No more, no less.”

  Even in the heat of my anger I couldn’t miss the irony. We were both caught—hoisted halfway between shame at our own actions and outrage at what had been done to us. Myself, I felt a potent brew of fury, guilt and sheer hatred, and in my mind formed the image of me diving across the desk at her, hands fixing around her neck as her eyes bulged behind her round spectacles . . .

  Instead, I simply stared at her, barely able to comprehend what was happening.

  “How could you?”

  “Because I saw you, Élise de la Serre. I saw you creeping around outside the cottage the other night. I saw you spying on me and Jacques. And so I thought, not unreasonably, that your journal might illuminate me as to your intentions. Do you deny that you intended to blackmail me, de la Serre?” Her color rose. “Blackmail the headmistress of the school?”

  But our fury was at cross-purposes.

  “Reading my journal is unforgivable,” I raged.

  Her voice rose. “What you planned to do was unforgivable. Blackmail.” She spat the word as though she couldn’t quite believe it. As though she had never even encountered the concept before.

  I bridled. “I meant you no harm. It was a means to an end.”

  “I daresay you relished the prospect of it, Élise de la Serre.” She brandished my journal. “I’ve read exactly what you think of me. Your hatred—no, worse, your contempt—for me pou
rs off every page.”

  I shrugged. “Does that surprise you? After all, don’t you hate me?”

  “Oh, you stupid girl,” she raged, “of course I don’t hate you. I’m your headmistress. I want what’s best for you. And, for your information, I don’t listen at doors either.”

  I gave her a doubtful look. “You seemed gleeful enough when it came to the thought of my impending punishment.”

  Her eyes dropped. “In the heat of the moment we all say things we shouldn’t, and I regretted that remark. But the fact is, while you’re by no means my favorite person in the world, I’m your headmistress. Your guardian. And you, in particular, came to me a damaged girl, fresh from the loss of her mother. You, in particular, needed special attention. Oh, yes, my attempts to help have taken the form of a battle of wills, and I suppose that’s hardly surprising, and, yes, I suppose the fact you think I hate you is to be expected—or was, when you were younger and first arrived here. But you’re a young lady now, Élise, you should know better. I read no more of your journal than I needed to in order to establish your guilt, but I read enough to know that your future lies in a different direction from that of the majority of the pupils here, and for that I’m pleased. Nobody with your spirit should settle down to a life of domesticity.”

  I started, hardly able to believe what I was hearing, and she soaked it up before continuing, her voice softer. “And now we find ourselves at a difficult juncture, for we have both done something terrible and we both have something the other wants. From you I want silence about what you saw; from me you want a letter to your father.” She passed the journal across the table to me. “I’m going to give you your letter. I’m going to lie for you. I’m going to tell him that you will be spending part of your final year in London so that you can do what it is you need to do, and when you have exorcised whatever it is that compels you to go, I trust it will be a different Élise de la Serre who returns to me. One who has held on to the spirit of the little girl but abandoned the hotheaded juvenile.”

  The letter would be with me by the afternoon, she said, and I stood to leave, feeling mollified, shame making my head heavy. As I reached the door she stopped me. “One more thing, Élise. Jacques isn’t my lover. He’s my son.”

  I don’t think Mother would be very proud of me just now.

  7 FEBRUARY 1788

  i

  I am a long way from Saint-Cyr now. And after a fairly tumultuous last two days I write this entry in . . .

  Well, no. Let’s not give anything away just yet. Let’s go back to when I took my carriage away from the dreaded Le Palais de la Misère, when there was no backward glance, no friends to bid me bon voyage and certainly no Madame Levene standing at the window waving her handkerchief good-bye. There was just me in a carriage and my trunk lashed to the top.

  “We’re here,” the coachman said when we arrived at the docks in Calais. It was late and the sea was a dark, undulating shimmer beyond the cobbles of the harbor and the bobbing mast of moored ships. Above us were squawking gulls and around us were the people of the docks, staggering from tavern to tavern, the night in full swing, a rowdy hubbub in the air. My coachman took disapproving looks left and right, then stood on the footboard to free my trunk before laying it on the cobbles of the dockside. He opened my door and his eyes boggled. I was not the same girl he’d picked up.

  Why? Because during the journey I’d changed. Off had come the accursed dress and I now wore breeches, a shirt, waistcoat and justaucorps. I’d cast aside the dreaded bonnet, unpinned my hair and tied it back. And now, as I stepped out of the carriage, I plonked my tricorn on my head, bent to my trunk and opened it, all under the speechless gaze of the coachman. My trunk full of the clothes I hated and trinkets I planned to throw away anyway. All I needed was in my satchel—that and the short sword that I pulled from the trunk’s depths and tied around my waist, allowing my satchel to fall over it so it was hidden.

  “You can keep the trunk, if you like,” I said. From my waistcoat I took a small leather purse and proffered coins.

  “Who’s here to escort you, then?” he said, pocketing them as he looked around, scowling at the nighttime revelers making the way along the dockside.

  “Nobody.”

  He looked askance at me. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, why would it be?”

  “You can’t be roaming the docks on your own at this hour.”

  I dropped another coin into his palm. He looked at it.

  “No,” he said firmly, “I can’t allow it, I’m afraid.”

  I dropped another coin into his palm.

  “All right, then,” he acquiesced. “On your own head be it. Just steer clear of the taverns and stay near the lantern light. Watch the docks, they’re high and uneven, and many an unfortunate has fallen off them from getting too close for a peek over the edge. And don’t catch anybody’s eye. Oh, and whatever you do, keep that purse hidden.”

  I smiled sweetly, knowing I intended to take all of his advice apart from the bit about the taverns because the taverns were exactly where I wanted to be. I watched the carriage draw away, then headed straight to the nearest one.

  The first one I came to had no name, but hanging above a set of windows set high was a wooden sign on which was a pair of crudely drawn antlers, so let’s call it the Antlers. As I stood on the cobbles gathering the courage to go inside, the door opened, allowing out a blast of warm air, exuberant piano and the stink of ale, as well as a man and woman, rosy-cheeked and unsteady on their feet, each holding the other up. In the instant of the open door I got a glimpse of the tavern inside and it was like staring into a furnace before the door shut quickly and it was quiet on the dockside once more, the noise from inside the Antlers reduced to a background babble.

  I braced myself. All right, Élise. You wanted to get away from that prim and proper school, the rules and regulations you hated. On the other side of that door lies the exact opposite to school. The question is, Are you really as tough as you think you are?

  (The answer, I was about to find out, was no.)

  Entering was like walking into a new world fashioned entirely from smoke and noise. The sound of raucous laughter, squawking birds, the piano and drunken singing assaulted my ears.

  It was a small room, with a balcony at one end and birdcages hanging from beams, and it was heaving with drinkers. Men lounged at tables or on the floor and the balcony seemed to heave with people craning over to heckle revelers below. I stayed by the door, lingering in the shadows. Drinkers nearby eyed me with interest, and I heard a wolf whistle cut through the din, then caught the eye of a servingwoman in an apron, who turned from setting down two jugs of ale on a table, the ale thankfully arresting the attention of the men sitting there.

  “I’m looking for the captain of a ship leaving for London in the morning,” I said, loudly.

  She wiped her hands on her apron and rolled her eyes. “Any particular captain? Any particular ship?”

  I shook my head. It didn’t matter.

  She nodded, looking me up and down. “See that table at the back there.” I squinted through the ropes of smoke and capering bodies to a table in the far corner. “Go up back, speak to the one they call the Middle Man. Tell him Selene sent you.”

  I looked harder, seeing three men sitting with their backs to the far wall, curtains of smoke giving them the look of ghosts, like returning spirit-drinkers, cursed to haunt the tavern forevermore.

  “Which one is the Middle Man?” I asked Selene.

  She smirked as she moved off. “He’s the one in the middle.”

  Feeling exposed I began to make my way toward the Middle Man and his two friends. Faces were upturned as I threaded through tables.

  “Now that’s a very fetching little one to be in a place like this,” I heard, as well as a couple of other, more near-the-knuckle suggestions that modesty forbids me sharing. Thank God for the smoke and gloom and noise and the overall state of drunkenness that hung over the
place. It meant that only those nearest to me paid me any interest.

  I came to the three spirit-men and stood before the table where they sat facing the room with tankards close at hand, dragging their gaze away from the festivities and to me. Whereas others had leered or pulled faces or made lewd, drunken suggestions, they simply stared appraisingly. The Middle Man, smaller than his two companions, gazed past me and I turned in time to catch a glimpse of the grinning servingwoman as she slid away.

  Uh-oh. All of a sudden I was conscious of how far away I was from the door. Here in the depths of the tavern it was even darker. The drinkers behind me seemed to have closed in on me. The flames from a fire flickered on the walls and the faces of the three men watching me. I thought of my mother’s advice, wondered what Mr. Weatherall would say. Stay impassive but watchful. Assess the situation. (And ignore that nagging feeling that you should have done all that before entering the tavern.)

  “And what’s a fine-dressed young woman doing all by herself in a place like this?” said the man in the middle. Unsmiling, he fished a long-stemmed pipe from his breast pocket and fitted it into a gap between his crooked, blackened teeth, chomping on it with pink gums.

  “I was told you might be able to help me find the captain of a ship,” I said.

  “And what might you be wanting a captain for?”

  “For passage to London.”

  “To London?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You mean to Dover?”

  I felt my color rise, swallowed my stupidity. “Of course,” I said.

  The Middle Man’s eyes danced with amusement. “And you need a captain for this trip, do you?”

  “Quite.”

  “Well, why don’t you just take the packet?”

  The out-of-depth feeling had returned. “The packet?”