It had been a matter of five years or so, and they were just as luminous as he remembered, and around them the dingy darkness of the tunnel seemed to fall away, as if they created their own light, standing in front of him clad in the silken garments of the Indian Brotherhood, the chain that ran from the phul at his mother’s nose to her ear glimmering in the soft orange light of a lantern. No wonder he thought he was dreaming at first. Their appearance was ethereal and otherworldly. A memory made flesh.
The Ghost sensed other figures hanging back in the darkness and could make out George and Ethan. No, then—not a dream—and he scrambled to his feet, hands reaching out to the wet tunnel wall to steady himself, the dizziness of suddenly standing, the weakness he felt, having languished so long, the emotion of seeing his mother and father again, making him wobble unsteadily, knees buckling and his father stepped forward to support him. Ethan too, and then the four Assassins led Jayadeep out of the tunnel. Out of the darkness.
SIXTY-FIVE
His mother and father had taken temporary apartments in Berkeley Square. There, The Ghost slept in a bed for the first time in as long as he could remember; he ate well and received his mother’s kisses, each one like a blessing.
Meanwhile, between The Ghost and his father hung poisoned air. Was Arbaaz one of those who had arrested Jayadeep and flung him into The Darkness? What had Arbaaz done—or not done—about the death sentence pronounced on his son?
The questions were never asked. No answers offered. Doubt and suspicion remained. So naturally The Ghost gravitated toward his mother, who became a conduit between the elder Assassins and the recalcitrant younger one. It was she who told him he would not be returning to Amritsar. Not now. Maybe not ever. His appearance there would pose too many questions, and anyway the needs of the Brotherhood were best served if he remained in London.
The Ghost had sensed the hand of Ethan Frye and George Westhouse behind these decisions, but he knew his mother agreed that their very presence in London was a risk and taking Jayadeep home an unconscionable magnification of it.
He considered leaving, of course. But he was still an Assassin, and you can’t turn your back on a belief. The Ghost had seen the artifact’s terrifying potential and knew it should be retrieved. Having previously failed did nothing to change that.
One day, during that honey-coated period at Berkeley Square, his mother had invited The Ghost for a walk, just her and him. They trod streets thronged with Londoners who goggled at his mother as though she were not merely from another country but belonged to a different species altogether. Her robes were silk but otherwise unadorned and in stark contrast to the bustles, whalebone corsetry, unwieldy hats and fussy parasols of the indigenous population. For all that, none could touch his mother for her beauty. He had never been more proud of her than he was at that moment.
“You are aware, I think, of the course of action that Mr. Westhouse and Mr. Frye favor?” she said as they walked. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, shoulders thrust back, chin proud, meeting every stare with the same dignity.
“They want me to be something I’m not, Mother.”
“They want you to be something you most definitely are,” she insisted. “A credit to the Brotherhood.”
He forgot his pride for a moment, head hanging in remembrance. “No, I was never that, and fear I never will be.”
“Ah, hush,” she chided him. “What a load of rubbish. Did we raise you to welcome defeat with open arms? Do I look into your eyes and see nothing but surrender? I fear you will exhaust my patience if you’re to continue being quite so self-pitying.”
“Self-pitying? Really? You think me self-pitying?”
She inclined her head with a smile. “Maybe a little, sweetheart, yes. Just a touch.”
He thought about that, and said tartly, “I see.”
They continued their promenade, heading a little off the beaten track now, toward the less salubrious areas of town.
“I’ve hurt your feelings,” she said.
“Nobody likes to think of himself as a sulky child,” he admitted.
“You are never that, and making this journey to see you, I’ve found my child has grown into a man.”
He gave a derisive snort. “Some man. Incapable of completing his blooding.”
“There you go again . . .”
“Sorry, Mother.”
They had made their way through winding side streets into Whitechapel, until they found themselves in front of a shop, where his mother stopped, turned and reached to take her son’s face in her hands. “You’re so much taller than me now.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“You see? You’re a man now. A man ready to shed the childish conceits of self-admonishment, guilt, shame, whatever other poisonous emotions crowd that head of yours, and take up the next phase of your destiny.”
“Is it what you wish?”
She dropped her hands and half turned away with a laugh. “Ah, now you’re asking, Jayadeep. Dear, sweet Jayadeep, grown inside of me, brought into the world nursed by me. What mother dreams of her son growing up a killer?”
“An Assassin, Mother. A great Assassin, not a great killer.”
“You can be a great Assassin without being a great killer, Jayadeep. It’s what I hope for you now. It’s why we are here. For now that you have reconciled yourself to your new life, I welcome you to it.”
She was indicating the shop in front of which they stood. His eyes went to it, a window crowded with dusty knickknacks, bric-a-brac and gewgaws.
“A curio shop?” he said to her.
“Just the right thing for an inquiring mind such as yours,” she told him.
“I’m to be a shopkeeper,” he said, flatly.
“Let’s go inside, shall we?”
She produced a key from within her robes and moments later they stepped into the crowded but somehow comforting surroundings of the shop. Inside it seemed to stretch back a long way into spectral and mysterious depths, and when they closed the door they were cut off from the sounds of the street outside. Dust danced in shafts of light that leaked through dirty windows obscured by piled-high trinkets. Shelves heaved and bulged with a variety of goods that were little more than indistinct twilight shapes. He liked it at once.
But even so—a shop.
“I believe it was Napoleon who said that England was a nation of shopkeepers.” His mother smiled. She could see he was intrigued, and that he liked the premises too much to simply dismiss them out of hand. “How fitting, then, to become a shopkeeper.”
They made their way along a narrow passageway between shelves that groaned with every conceivable ornament and trinket. Here was one crammed with dusty books, another one that seemed in danger of simply collapsing beneath the weight of the china piled onto it. He saw pressed flowers under glass and found he was still able to name them, memories of his mother in Amritsar. She saw him looking; they shared a glance and he wondered how carefully these items had been chosen and placed. After all, his mother had evidently been here before. As they passed along a narrow passageway she indicated more things she thought were of interest to him: a tray of clockwork components that excited him on sight, taking him back to more barely remembered hours as a child, when he had pored over broken clocks and clockwork toys. Not far away a bureau groaned beneath the weight of a multitude of crystal balls, as though the shop had been visited by a gang of hard up fortune-tellers, and he recalled being fascinated by them as a child.
She led him to the back of the shop where she drew open a thick floor-to-ceiling curtain, ushering him into a workroom beyond, picking up an herbarium that she handed to him. “Here. It’s something of a British pastime.”
He opened it, finding it empty.
“For you to fill,” she said.
“I remember gathering flowers with you, Mother, at home.”
“They all h
ave symbolic meanings, you know.”
“So you often told me.”
She chuckled and then, as he laid down the book, indicated their surroundings. “What do you think?” she asked him.
He looked at her, thinking his heart might break with love. “I like it,” he told her.
On a table in the workroom were folded-up clothes and a scroll that she picked up and handed to him.
“These are the deeds. It belongs to you now.”
“Henry Green,” he read from the scroll as he unfurled it. “That is to be my new name now?”
“You always liked the name Henry, and after all, you’re wearing a green hat,” said Pyara. “And besides, it’s an English shopkeeper’s name for an English shopkeeper. Welcome to your new life, Henry. From here is where you can oversee the Assassin fightback in the city and control your information matrix. Who knows? Perhaps you might be able to sell the odd curio while you’re here too. Now . . .” She reached for the small pile of clothes. “An outfit of which you can at last be proud.”
To preserve his modesty she turned around as he changed and then swung back to admire him. He stood there, resplendent in flowing silky robes, edged in gilt, a leather chest strap, soft slippers.
“No more bare feet, Jayadeep, or should I say Henry,” his mother said. “And now, one last thing to complete the picture . . .”
She reached to a box that also lay on the table. Henry had seen its like before, knew exactly what it contained, and he reached for it with a mixture of gratitude and trepidation. Sure enough, his old blade. He strapped it to his wrist, enjoying the feel of it there again, after all this time.
He was no longer The Ghost now. He was Henry Green.
SIXTY-SIX
“Two Assassins,” said Henry on a rooftop overlooking the city, “equal in height. One female, one male. Two decades old, and those devilish smiles. You must be the Frye twins.”
He assessed them immediately: yes, the smiles were very “Ethan.” Otherwise, they seemed to incorporate differing qualities. Jacob: arrogant, impatient, a little rough around the edges; for Henry it was ambivalence at first sight. Evie, on the other hand . . .
“And you are . . .” she said.
His robes flapped in the breeze as he gave a short bow. “Henry Green at your service, miss.” He paused. “I was sorry to learn of your father’s passing.”
“Thank you,” she said, and her eyes dipped in sorrow before finding him again and holding him in a gaze in which he swam for a moment or so, reluctant to come to the surface.
“What can you tell us about Crawford Starrick?” said Jacob at last, and it was with some reluctance that Henry turned his attention to the other twin, slightly irritated at having the spell broken and assessing Evie’s brother afresh.
“I suppose the Council desires news,” he said, remembering himself.
“London must be freed. To provide a better future for all its citizens.” The conviction lit Evie’s face and danced in her eyes and made her even more beautiful if that was possible.
“Thank goodness the Council saw reason and sent you to aid us.”
“Yes, thank goodness,” said Jacob in a tone of voice Henry recognized. Young customers who thought him a clueless Indian shopkeeper.
He went on anyway. “I’m afraid I do not have pleasant news. Today, Starrick sits at the helm of the most sophisticated Templar infrastructure ever built in the Western world. His reach extends all across London. Every class, every borough, the industries, the gangs . . .”
Jacob preened. “I’ve always thought I would make a marvelous gang leader. Firm but fair. Strict dress code. Uniting a mix of disenfranchised outsiders under one name. Evie, that’s it. We can rally them to our side.”
Evie shot him a well-practiced look of reproach. “Oh? The way you rallied those cardplayers at the Oakbrook Tavern into the river?”
“That’s different. They beat me at whist.” He stared wistfully off into the distance. “I can see it now. We’ll call ourselves The Rooks.”
“You were never good at chess, either,” she said, casting a sideways look at Henry, apologizing for her brother.
“You have a better plan?” Jacob was saying.
Her eyes were on Henry, a kindred spirit. “Find the Piece of Eden.”
Jacob made a disgusted sound.
“Well.” Henry cleared his throat. “Now you’ve quite finished . . .”
SIXTY-SEVEN
Later, Henry took them to his shop. In the years since his mother had unveiled it, nothing had changed. Business in curios wasn’t exactly booming but that didn’t matter; selling knickknacks wasn’t his primary objective and his other business of assembling research into the artifacts, of monitoring Templar activities through a growing coterie of informants, was flourishing. George Westhouse had been right, Henry used the same innate talents that had endeared him to the tunnel dwellers to court the poor and dispossessed of Whitechapel. He had cultivated them almost unknowingly: a little protection, one or two moneylenders taught a lesson, a pimp shown the error of his ways, a violent father who needed reminding of his responsibilities. He had managed it using threat and insinuation. His combat skills falling into disuse suited him fine; he never was a warrior. His gang was unlike others that roamed the East End—like Jacob wished his “Rooks” would be—built on hierarchical principles of power and violence. His ran along far more benign principles. Their leader had earned their respect and also their love.
“Over the years I have established a number of connections across the city,” was all he said now.
“Splendid!” replied Evie. “We’ll need focused aid . . .”
“Focused aid?” scoffed Jacob. “No, what we need to do is take over Starrick’s gangs to cripple his control.”
“You’re not aiming high enough,” said Evie exasperatedly. “Starrick has influence in every branch of society. We need to match him.”
“I see what you’re saying, Evie. We need The Rooks.”
She shook her head, repeating an oft-stated maxim. “You’re not starting a gang called The Rooks. We need to locate the Piece of Eden.”
“No. We need to reclaim London from Starrick. Just tell me my targets . . .”
“No.”
“What?”
“It’s not time for that yet.”
“I didn’t come here to hunt down curios.”
“‘First understand the dance, only then become the dancer.’”
“Oh? So you’re taking over where Father left off?”
“Someone has to.”
SIXTY-EIGHT
“Well, Freddie, it’s nice to see you.”
Abberline sat in the front room of Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Shaw’s Stepney rooms and remembered a time when he was given the warmest of welcomes by Mrs. Shaw and her two children; when he had fervently wished he had better news to impart.
Now was the same. Except this time . . .
“Would you like a cup of tea, Freddie?”
Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Shaw departed, leaving the two men together.
“Well,” repeated Aubrey, “it’s good to see you, Freddie. Sergeant Frederick Abberline, as I live and breathe. Fresh-faced Freddie finally came of age, eh? I always knew you’d do it, mate. Of all of us you were always the dead cert to do well in the force.”
Aubrey now ran a butcher shop in Stepney Green. Abberline had swiftly discovered it was good to have a butcher friend. Especially when it came to cultivating contacts because it was true, Abberline had done well in the force. A man named Ethan Frye had introduced him to another man, Henry Green, whom Abberline had recognized as the Indian lad from the dig. About that, he was sworn to secrecy but only too happy to maintain the confidence. After all, Ethan Frye had saved his life. He and Henry had gone up against Cavanagh and friends. As far as Abberline was concerned, that
put them firmly on his team.
It was funny because Abberline had never got to the bottom of what happened at the Metropolitan dig. The “powerful object” that Ethan had told him about, well, Abberline had imagined some kind of weapon, something that set off an explosion. To what end, he had no idea. But Cavanagh had died, his three lieutenants were dead, too, and as for the other one, the clerk? Well, he had turned out to be working for a third party, and that was when it had got complicated; when it came down to what Ethan described as age-old enemies: men who move among us plotting to wrest control of man’s destiny. And that was plenty for Abberline. That had been enough to convince him to stop asking questions because somehow a fervently held belief of his own—that there are forces beyond our control manipulating us from on high—had dovetailed with one of Aubrey’s fervently held beliefs: that sometimes there are no answers.
So Frederick Abberline had accepted that there were things he couldn’t change but pledged to fight for the things he could change and given thanks for being able to tell the difference between the two. Meanwhile, Henry Green, it emerged, had built up a community of loyal informants in Whitechapel. Abberline joined his gang, sometimes the beneficiary of information, sometimes able to pass information on.
In other words the situation was what you’d call mutually beneficial. For the first time since the mess at the Metropolitan, the newly minted Sergeant Abberline had thought he was making progress. Doing a bit of good in this world.
Why, he’d even met a woman, Martha, fallen in love and got married . . . and there, unfortunately, his run of good fortune had come to an end.
“Freddie, is something wrong?” Aubrey was saying. The smile on his lips had died at the sight of his friend’s forlorn features. “This is just a social visit, is it? You’ve not got anything to tell me. You and Martha? You haven’t gone your separate ways, have you?”
Freddie wrung his hands between his knees. He had become adept at disguise. His penetration of Whitechapel sometimes depended on his ability to move in the streets unrecognized, unnoticed, unremarked. There were occasions when it had proved invaluable to Henry’s gang. He wished for a disguise now, so that he wouldn’t feel so very exposed.
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