Assassin's Creed: Black Flag

by Oliver Bowden

  Then two things happened that changed everything. The first came in the shape of a gentleman who took his place next to me at the bar of the George and Dragon in Bristol one sunny afternoon. A smartly dressed gentleman with flamboyant cuffs and a colourful necktie, who removed his hat, placed it to the bar and indicated my drink.

  “Can I get you another, sir?” he asked me.

  It made a change from “son,” “lad” or “boy.” All of which I had to endure on a daily if not hourly basis.

  “And who do I have to thank for my drink? And what might he want in return?” I asked guardedly.

  “Perhaps just the chance to talk, friend,” beamed the man. He proffered his hand to shake. “The name is Dylan Wallace, pleased to make your acquaintance Mr. . . . Kenway, isn’t it?”

  For the second time in a matter of days I was presented with someone who knew my name though I had no idea why.

  “Oh yes,” he said, beaming. (He was at least of a more friendly nature than Wilson, I reflected.) “I know your name. Edward Kenway. Quite the reputation you have around these parts. Indeed, I’ve seen you in action for myself.”

  “Have you?” I looked at him, eyes narrowed.

  “Why yes indeed,” he said. “I hear from the people I’ve spoken to that you’re no stranger to a bit of a scuffle, but even so, you can’t have forgotten your fight at the Auld Shillelagh the other day.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be allowed to forget it.” I sighed.

  “When I tell you what, sir, I’m just going to come straight out with it, because you look like a young man who knows his own mind and is unlikely to be persuaded one way or the other by anything I might have to tell you, so I’m just going to come right out with it. Have you ever thought of going to sea?”

  “Well, now that you come to mention it, Mr. Wallace, I had once considered leaving Bristol heading in that direction, you’re right.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  I shook my head. “Now that is a very good question.”

  “Do you know what a privateer is, Mr. Kenway, sir?”

  Before I could answer he was telling me. “They’re buccaneers given letters of marque by the Crown. You see, the Dons and the Portuguese are helping themselves to the treasures of the New World, they’re filling their coffers, and it’s the job of privateers either to stop them or to take what they’re taking. Do you understand?”

  “I know what a privateer is, thank you very much, Mr. Wallace. I know that you can’t be put on trial for piracy, so long as you don’t attack ships belonging to your own country, that’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, that’s it, Mr. Kenway, sir.” Dylan Wallace grinned. “How would it be if I leaned over and was to help myself to a mug of ale? That’d be stealing, wouldn’t it? The barman might try to stop me, but what if I was doing it with impunity. What if my theft had the royal seal of approval? This is what we are talking about, Mr. Kenway. The opportunity to go out on the high seas and help yourself to as much gold and treasure as your captain’s ship will carry. By doing so you will not only be working with the approval of Her Majesty Queen Anne but helping her. You’ve heard of Captain Christopher Newport, Francis Drake, Admiral Sir Henry Morgan, privateers all. How about adding the name Edward Kenway to that illustrious list?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying how about becoming a privateer, sir?”

  I gave him a studying look. “And if I promise to think about it, what’s in it for you?”

  “Why, commission, of course.”

  “Don’t you normally press men for this kind of thing?”

  “Not men of your calibre, Mr. Kenway. Not men we might consider officer material.”

  “All because I showed promise in a fight?”

  “Because of the way you conducted yourself in that fight, Mr. Kenway, in all aspects of it.”

  I nodded. “If I promise to think about it, does that mean I don’t need to return the favour of an ale?”

  EIGHT

  I went to bed that night knowing I had to tell Father that my destiny lay not in sheep-farming but in swashbuckling adventure as a privateer.

  He’d be disappointed, of course, but maybe somewhat relieved also. Yes, on one hand I had been an asset, and had developed trading skills, put them to good use for the benefit of the family. But on the other hand there was the drinking, the brawling, and, of course, the rift with the Cobleighs.

  Shortly after the two dead carcasses had been deposited in our front yard there’d been another incident where we woke to find the flock had been let out in the night. Father thought the fences had been deliberately damaged. I didn’t tell Father about what had happened at the quayside, but it was obvious Tom Cobleigh still harboured a grudge—a grudge that wasn’t likely to go away any time soon.

  I had brought it down on Father’s head and without me in the picture, then perhaps the vendetta would end.

  So as I laid my head down that night, my only decision was how to break the news to my father. And how my father might break the news to my mother.

  Then I heard something from the window. A tapping.

  I looked out with no little trepidation. What did I expect to see? I wasn’t sure, but memories of the Cobleighs were still fresh in my mind. Instead what I saw, sitting astride her horse in the pale moonlight of the yard, as though God himself were shining his lantern upon her beauty, was Caroline Scott.

  She was dressed as if for riding school. Her clothes were dark. She wore a tall hat and a white shirt and black jacket. With one hand she held the reins and the other was raised, about to throw a second fistful of gravel at my window.

  I myself had been known to use the very same trick to attract the attention of a lady friend, and I remembered well the terror of waking up the whole household. So when I threw stones at a casement window, I usually did it from behind the safety of a stone wall. Not Caroline. That was the difference in our social standing. She had no fears of being run off the property with a boot in her behind and a flea in her ear. She was Caroline Scott of Hawkins Lane in Bristol. She was being courted by the son of a man ranked highly in the East India Company. Clandestine assignation or not—and there was no doubt this was clandestine—hiding behind stone walls was not for her.

  “Well . . .” she whispered. I saw her eyes dance in the moonlight. “Are you going to leave me sitting out here all night?”

  No. In moments I was in the yard by her side, taking the reins of the horse and walking her away from the property as we spoke.

  “Your actions the other day,” she said. “You put yourself in great danger in order to protect that young thief.”

  (Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, I did feel a little guilt at that.)

  (But not too much guilt.)

  “There is nothing I hate so much as a bully, Miss Scott,” I said. Which did at least have the benefit of being true.

  “So I thought. This is twice now I have been most impressed by the gallantry of your actions.”

  “Then it is on two occasions that I have been pleased you were there to witness it.”

  “You interest me, Mr. Kenway, and your own interest in me has not gone unremarked.”

  I stayed silent as we walked for a while. Even though no words were spoken there was a meaning in our silence. As though we were acknowledging our feelings for each other. I felt the closeness of her riding boot. Above the heat and scent of the horse, I thought I could smell the powder she wore. Never before had I been so aware of a person, the nearness of her.

  “I expect you have been told that I am betrothed to another,” she said.

  We stopped along the lane. There were stone walls on either side of us, the green pastures beyond interrupted by clusters of white sheep. The air was warm and dry around us, not even a breeze to disturb the trees that rose to make the horizon. From somewhere came the cry of an animal, lovelorn or hurt, but certainly feral, and a sudden disturbance in the bushes startled us. W
e felt like interlopers. Uninvited guests to nature’s household.

  “Why, I don’t think . . .”

  “Mr. Kenway . . .”

  “You can call me Edward, Miss Scott.”

  “Well you can continue calling me Miss Scott.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh go on then, you can call me Caroline.”

  “Thank you, Miss Scott.”

  She gave me a sideways look, as though to check whether or not I was mocking her.

  “Well, Edward,” she continued, “I know full well that you have been making enquiries about me, and though I do not pretend to know exactly what you have been told, I think I know the gist. That Caroline Scott’s betrothed to Matthew Hague, that Matthew Hague bombards her with love poems, that the union has the blessing not only of Caroline Scott’s father, which was beyond doubt, but also of Matthew Hague’s father.”

  I admitted I had heard as much.

  “Perhaps, in the short dealings we have had together, you might understand how I would feel about this particular arrangement?”

  “I wouldn’t like to say.”

  “Then I shall spell it out for you. The thought of marriage to Matthew Hague turns my stomach. Do you think I want to live my life in the household of the Hagues? Expected to treat my husband like a king, turn a blind eye to his affairs, run the household, shout at the staff, choose flowers and pick out doilies, go visiting, take tea, trade gossip with other wives?

  “Do you think I want to hide myself so deeply beneath an obsession with manners and bury myself so completely beneath the petty concerns of etiquette that I can no longer find myself? At the moment I live between two worlds, Edward, able to see them both. And the world I see on my visits to the harbour is the world that is most real to me, Edward. The one that is most alive. As for Matthew Hague himself, I despise him almost as much as his poetry.

  “Do not think me a helpless damsel in distress, Edward, because I am not that. But I’m not here for your help. I have come to help myself.”

  “You’ve come to help yourself to me?”

  “If you wish. The next move is yours to make, but if you make it, do so knowing this: any relationship between you and me would not have the blessing of my father, but it would have mine.”

  “Excuse me but it’s not so much your father who concerns me, as his musket.”

  “The thought of making an enemy of the Hagues, does that put you off?”

  I knew at that moment nothing would put me off. “No, Caroline, it doesn’t.”

  “I hoped as much.”

  We parted, with arrangements made to meet again, and after that, our relationship began in earnest. We were able to keep it a secret. For some months, in fact. Our meetings were held entirely in secret, snatched moments spent wandering the lanes between Bristol and Hatherton, riding in the pastures.

  Until one day she announced that Matthew Hague planned to ask for her hand in marriage the following morning, and my heart stopped.

  I was determined not to lose her. Because of my love for her, because I could think of nothing but her, because when we were together I savoured every moment; every word, every gesture that Caroline made was like nectar to me, everything about her, every curve and contour, her scent, her laugh, her refined manners, her intelligence.

  All of this ran through my mind as I dropped to one knee and took her hand, because what she was telling me, perhaps it wasn’t an invitation but a farewell, and if it was, well at least my humiliation would not be known far and wide, confined to the birds in the trees and the cows that stood in the fields watching us with sleepy eyes and chewing ruminatively.

  “Caroline, will you marry me?” I said.

  I held my breath. During our courtship, every meeting we’d had, every stolen kiss we’d shared, I’d been haunted by a feeling of not believing my luck. It was as though a great joke was being played on me—I half expected Tom Cobleigh to come leaping out of the shadows snorting with laughter. And if not that—if not some vengeful, practical joke at my expense—then perhaps I was merely a diversion for Caroline, a final fling, before she applied herself to her true calling, her duty. Surely she would say no.

  “Ah, Edward”—she smiled—“I thought you’d never ask.”

  NINE

  I still couldn’t accept it, though, and I found myself travelling into town the next day, my journey taking me to Hawkins Lane. All I knew was that Matthew Hague planned to pay her a visit in the morning, and as I sidled up the highway and passed the row of houses among which was hers, I wondered if he was in there already, perhaps making his proposal.

  One thing I knew of Caroline, she was a brave woman, perhaps the bravest I’d ever known, but even so, she was passing up the opportunity to live the rest of her days in pampered luxury; and, worse, she was going to scandalize her mother and father. I knew only too well the pressures of trying to please a parent, how tempting it was to go down that route. An unfulfilled soul, or a soul troubled with guilt—which was the hardest cross to bear?

  With me standing before her—and she loved me, I’m sure of that—perhaps the decision was easier to make. But what about at night, when misgivings made their rounds and doubt came visiting? Perhaps she might simply have changed her mind overnight and she was, at this very moment in time, blushing in her acceptance of Matthew Hague’s proposal and mentally writing a letter to me.

  If that happened, well, there was always Dylan Wallace, I supposed.

  But then from the corner of my eye I saw the front door open and Wilson appear, quickly followed by the draughtsman and behind them Matthew Hague, who offered his arm for Caroline, Rose taking up the rear as they began their perambulations.

  Staying some distance behind, I followed, all the way to the harbour, puzzling over his intentions. Not the harbour, surely? The dirty, smelly, crowded harbour, with its stench of manure and burning pitch and just-caught fish and men who had returned from months away at sea without so much as a bath during that time.

  They were making their way towards what looked like a schooner moored at the dock, around which were gathered some men. It was difficult to tell, though, because hanging from the back of the ship was some kind of canvas obscuring the name of the vessel. However, as the group drew closer to it I thought I knew what it was. I thought I knew his plan.

  Sure enough, they stopped before it and still out of sight I watched as Caroline’s eyes flicked nervously from Matthew Hague to the schooner, guessing that she too had worked out the purpose of their visit.

  Next thing I knew, Hague was down on one knee, and the staff of the schooner, Wilson and the draughtsman, were all standing with their hands behind their backs ready for the round of applause when Matthew Hague popped his question: “My darling, would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

  Caroline swallowed and stammered, “Matthew, must we do this here?”

  He shot her a patronizing look, then, with an expansive gesture of his hand, ordered the canvas come off the rear of the schooner. There etched in a gold leaf was the vessel’s name: CAROLINE.

  “What better place, my dear?”

  If it hadn’t been for the situation I might even have slightly enjoyed the sight of Caroline at a loss. Usually she was nothing if not sure of herself. The doubt and near panic I saw in her eyes, I suspect, was as new to her as it was to me.

  “Matthew, I must say, you’re embarrassing me.”

  “My dear, dear Caroline, my precious flower . . .” He gave a small gesture to his draughtsman, who immediately began rooting around for his quill in order to record his master’s poetic words.

  “But how else would I have unveiled my marital gift to you? Now, I must press you for an answer. Please, with all these people watching . . .”

  Yes, I realized looking around, the entire harbour seemed to have halted, everybody hanging on Caroline’s next words, which were . . .

  “No, Matthew.”

  Hague stood up so sharply that his draughtsman was forced
to scurry backwards and almost lost his footing. Hague’s face darkened, and his lips pursed as he fought to retain composure and forced a smile.

  “One of your little jokes, perhaps?”

  “I fear not, Matthew, I am betrothed to another.”

  Hague drew himself up to his full height as though to intimidate Caroline. Standing back in the crowd, I felt my blood rising and began to make my way forward.

  “To another,” he croaked. “Just who is this other man?”

  “Me, sir,” I announced, having reached the front of the crowd and presented myself to him.

  He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You.” He spat.

  From behind him Wilson was already moving forward, and in his eyes I could see his fury that I’d failed to heed his warning. And how that became his failure.

  With an outstretched arm Hague stopped him. “No, Wilson,” he said, adding pointedly, “not here. Not now. I’m sure my lady may want to reconsider.”

  A ripple of surprise and I guess not a little humour had travelled through the crowd and it rose again as Caroline said, “No, Matthew, Edward and I are to be married.”

  He rounded on her. “Does your father know about this?”

  “Not yet,” she said, then added, “I’ve a feeling he soon will, though.”

  For a moment Hague simply stood and trembled with rage, and for the first, but as it would turn out not the last time, I actually felt sympathy for him. In the next instant he was barking at bystanders to get back to their work, then shouting at the schooner crew to replace the canvas, then calling to Wilson and his draughtsman to leave the harbour, turning his back pointedly on Caroline and offering me a look of hate as he exited. At his rear was Wilson and our eyes locked. Slowly, he drew a finger across his throat.

  I shouldn’t have done it really, Wilson was not a man to provoke, but I couldn’t help myself and returned his death threat with a cheeky wink.

  TEN

  That was how Bristol came to know that Edward Kenway, a sheep-farmer worth a mere seventy-five pounds a year, was to marry Caroline Scott.