“A pox on you, traitor. You’ve betrayed us!”
“Because I found a better path,” said Hornigold. Instead of drawing his weapon he signalled with his hand. From the warehouse behind I heard the sound of swords being drawn.
Hornigold continued. “The Templars know order, discipline, structure. But you never could fathom these subtleties. Good-bye, old friend! You were a soldier once! When you fought for something real. Something beyond yourself!”
He left, almost breaking into a run. From the warehouse came his reinforcements and the men closed in behind him, forming a crescent around me.
Taking them by surprise, I started quickly forward, grabbed a sailor who waved his sword to no particular effect and span him, using him as a shield and pushing him forward so that his boots skidded on the harbour stone.
At the same time there was the crack of a pistol and my human shield took a musket ball that was meant for me before I shoved him into the line of men and with my left hand snatched out my first pistol. I shot a heavy in the mouth, holstered it and snatched my second at the same time as I engaged the blade and sliced open a third man’s chest. Discharged the pistol. A wayward shot, it nevertheless did the job and stopped a man bearing a cutlass and sent him falling to the ground with his hands at his stomach.
I crouched and whirled, taking the legs from beneath the next man, finished him with a quick and ruthless blade-punch to the chest. Then I was on my feet, scattering the last two men, their faces portraits in terror, not wishing to join their comrades dead or bleeding on the harbour floor, and ran for my row-boat to get back to the Jackdaw.
As I worked the oars back to where my ship was moored I could imagine the conversation with my quartermaster; how he’d remind me that the men didn’t approve of my quest.
They’d approve, though, once we found The Observatory. Once we found The Sage.
And it took me a month, but I did.
FIFTY
JULY 1719
I found him on Principé, one afternoon, in a camp full of corpses.
Now, here’s what I’d learnt about The Sage, whose full name I learned was Bartholomew Roberts, some of which was later told to me by him, some by others.
What I learnt was that we had something in common: we were both Welsh, me from Swansea, him from Casnewydd Bach, and that he had changed his name from John to Bartholomew. That he had gone to sea when he was just thirteen, as a carpenter, before finding himself an object of interest for this secret society known as the Templars.
At the beginning of 1719, with the Templars and the Assassins on his tail, The Sage had found himself serving as a third mate on the Princess, just as I’d been told, serving under Captain Abraham Plumb.
As I’d learnt in Kingston, in early June the Princess had been attacked by pirates in the Royal Rover and the Royal James, led by Captain Howell Davis. Somehow, Roberts, wily operator that he was, had inveigled himself in with Captain Howell Davis. He’d convinced the pirate captain, also a Welshman, as it happens, that he was a superb navigator, which he might well have been, but he was also able to talk to Captain Davis in Welsh, which created a further bond between the two men.
It was said that Bart Roberts was not keen on becoming a pirate at first. But as you’ll see, he took to his new job like he was born to it.
They landed on Principé. The Royal Rover, this was, what with the Royal James having to be abandoned with worm damage. So, the Royal Rover headed for Principé, and by hoisting British colours, was allowed to dock, where the crew played the part of visiting English sailors.
Now, according to what I heard, Captain Davis came up with a plan to invite the governor of Principé on board the Rover on the pretext of giving him lunch, and then as soon as he was aboard take him hostage and demand a huge ransom for his release.
Perfect. Couldn’t fail.
But when Davis took men to meet the governor, they were ambushed along the way.
Which was where I came in.
I crept into the camp, into the deserted scene of the ambush, where the fire had burned down to red embers and scattered around it, one man actually lying in the dying red embers of the fire, his corpse slowly cooking. Scattered around were more bodies. Some were soldiers, some were pirates.
“Captain Kenway?” came a voice, and I span around to see him there: The Sage. Perhaps I would have been pleased to see him; perhaps I would have thought my journey was at an end. If he hadn’t been pointing a gun at me.
At the insistence of his gun barrel I put my hands in the air.
“Another dire situation, Roberts. We must stop meeting like this.”
He smiled grimly. Does he bear me any ill will? I wondered. He had no idea of my plans, after all. A crazy part of me realized that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could read minds.
“Stop following me and your wish would come true,” he said.
“There’s no need for this. You know I’m as good as my word.”
Around us the jungle was silent. Bartholomew Roberts seemed to be thinking. It was odd, I mused. Neither of us really had the measure of the other. Neither of us really knew what the other one wanted. I knew what I wanted from him, of course. But what about him? What did he want? I sensed that whatever it was, it would be more dark and more mysterious than I could possibly imagine. All I knew for sure was that death followed Bart Roberts and I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.
He spoke. “Our Captain Howell was killed today in a Portuguese ambush. Headstrong fool. I warned him not to come ashore.”
It was to the recently deceased captain that Bartholomew Roberts’s thoughts went now. Evidently deciding I was not a threat, he holstered his pistol.
And, of course, the attack. I thought I knew who was behind it.
“It was orchestrated by the Templars,” I told him. “The same sort who took you to Havana.”
His long hair shook as he nodded, seeming to think at the same time. “I see now there is no escaping the Templars’ attention, is there? I suppose it is time to fight back?”
Now you’re talking, I thought.
As we’d been speaking I’d watched him peel off his sailors rags and pull on first the breeches of the dead captain, then move to take the shirt as well. The shirt was blood-stained so he discarded it, put his own back on, then hunched his shoulders into the captain’s coat. He pulled the tie from his hair and shook it free. He popped the captain’s tricorn on his head and its feather wafted as he turned to face me. This was a different Bartholomew Roberts. His time aboard ship had put health back in his cheeks. His dark, curly locks shone in the sun and he stood resplendent in a red jacket and breeches, white stockings, with a hat to match. He looked every inch the buccaneer. He looked every inch the pirate captain.
“Now,” he said, “we must go before Portuguese reinforcements arrive. We must get back to the Rover. I have an announcement to make there that I’d like you to witness.”
I thought I knew what it was, and I was surprised in one way—he was but a lowly deck-hand, after all—but unsurprised also, because this was Roberts. The Sage. The tricks up his sleeve were never-ending. Sure enough, when we arrived at the Rover, where the men waited nervously for news of the expedition, he leapt up to a crate to command their attention. They goggled at him up there: the lowly deck-hand, a new arrival on board to boot, now resplendent in the captain’s clothes.
“In honest service there are thin commons, low wages and hard labor. Yet as gentlemen of fortune we enjoy plenty and satisfaction, pleasure and ease, liberty and power . . . so what man with a sensible mind would choose the former life, when the only hazard we pirates run is a sour look from those without strength or splendour.
“Now, I have been among you six weeks, and in that time have adopted your outlook as my own, and with so fierce a conviction that it may frighten you to see your passions reflected from me in so stark a light. But . . . if it’s a captain you see in me now, aye then . . . I’ll be your bloody captain!”
&n
bsp; You had to hand it to him, it was a rousing speech. In a few short sentences proclaiming his kinship, he had these men eating out of the palm of his hand. As the meeting broke up I approached, deciding now was the time to make my play.
“I’m looking for The Observatory,” I told him. “Folks say you’re the only man that can find it.”
“Folks are correct.”
He looked me up and down as if to confirm his impressions. “Despite my distaste for your eagerness, I see in you a touch of untested genius.” He held out his hand to shake. “I’m Bartholomew Roberts.”
“Edward.”
“I’ve no secrets to share with you now,” he told me.
I stared at him, unable to believe what I was hearing. He was going to make me wait.
FIFTY-ONE
SEPTEMBER 1719
Damn the man. Damn Roberts.
He wanted me to wait two months. Two whole months. Then meet him west of the Leeward Islands, east of Puerto Rico. With only his word to take for that, I sailed the Jackdaw back to San Inagua. There I rested the crew for a while, and we took prizes when we could, and my coffers swelled, and it was during that period, I think, that I cut off the nose of the ship’s cook.
When we weren’t taking prizes and when I wasn’t slicing off noses, I brooded at my homestead. I wrote letters to Caroline in which I assured her I would soon be returning as a man of wealth, and I fretted over The Observatory, only too aware that with it lay all my hopes of a fortune. It was built on nothing more than a promise from Bartholomew Roberts.
And then what? The Observatory was a place of enormous potential wealth but even if I found it—even if Bart Roberts came good on his word—it remained only a source of potential wealth. Wasn’t it Edward who had scoffed at the very idea? Gold doubloons was what we wanted, he’d said. Perhaps he was right. Even if I found this amazing machine, how the bloody hell was I going to convert it into the wealth I hoped to acquire? After all, if there were riches to be made, then why hadn’t Roberts made them?
Because he has some other purpose.
I thought of my parents. My mind went back to the burning of our farmhouse and I thought anew of striking a blow at the Templars, this secret society who used its influence and power to grind down anyone who displeased it; to exercise a grudge. I still had no idea exactly who was behind the burning of my farmhouse. Or why. Was it a grudge against me for marrying Caroline and humiliating Matthew Hague? Or against my father, mere business rivalry? Probably both, was my suspicion. Perhaps the Kenways, these arrivals from Wales, who had shamed them so, simply deserved to be taken down a peg or two.
I would find out for sure, I decided. I would return to Bristol one day and exact my revenge.
On that I brooded too. Until the day came in September when I gathered the crew and we readied the Jackdaw, newly caulked, its masts and rigging repaired, its shrouds ready, its galley stocked and the munitions at capacity, and we set sail for our appointment with Bartholomew Roberts.
• • •
Like I say, I don’t think I ever truly knew what was on his mind. He had his own agenda and wasn’t about to share it with the likes of me. What he did like to do, however, was keep me guessing. Keep me hanging on. When we’d parted he’d told me he had business to attend to, which I later found out involved taking his own crew back to Principé and exacting his revenge for the death of Captain Howell Davis on the people of the island.
They’d attacked at night, put to the sword as many men as they could, and made off, not only with as much treasure as they could carry but the beginnings of Black Bart’s fearsome reputation: unknowable, brave and ruthless, and apt to carry off daring raids such as the one we were about to carry out, for example. The one that began with Roberts insisting that the Jackdaw join him on a jaunt around the coast of Brazil to the Todos os Santos Bay.
We didn’t have long to find out the reason why. A fleet of no less than forty-two Portuguese merchant ships. What’s more, with no navy escorts. Roberts lost no time in capturing one of the outlying vessels to “hold talks” with the captain. It wasn’t something I got involved with, but from the bruised Portuguese naval officer he’d learnt that the flagship had on it a chest, a coffer that, he told me, contained “crystal vials filled with blood. You may remember.”
Vials of blood. How could I forget?
• • •
We anchored the Jackdaw and I took Adewalé and a skeleton crew to join Roberts on his purloined Portuguese vessel. Up to now we’d remained at the fringes of the fleet, but now it seemed to split up, and we saw our chance. The flagship was testing her guns.
Anchored some distance away, we watched, and Bartholomew looked at me.
“Are you stealthy, Edward Kenway?”
“That I am,” I said.
He looked over to the Portuguese galleon. It was anchored not far from land, with most of the crew on the gun-deck firing inland, carrying out exercises. Never was there a better time to steal aboard, so at a nod from Bart Roberts I dived overboard and swam to the galleon, on a mission of death.
Climbing up a Jacob’s ladder I found myself on deck, where I moved quietly along the planks to the first man, engaged my blade, swept it quickly across his throat, then helped him to the deck and held my hand over his mouth while he died.
All the time I kept my eyes on the lookouts and crow’s-nest above.
I disposed of a second sentry the same way, then began scaling the rigging to the crow’s-nest. There a lookout scanned the horizon, his spyglass moving from left to right, past Roberts’s ship and back again.
He focused on Roberts’s vessel, his gaze lingered on it, and I wondered if his suspicions were churning. Perhaps so. Perhaps he was wondering why the men on board didn’t look like Portuguese merchantmen. He seemed to decide. He lowered the spyglass and I could see his chest inflate as though he were about to call out, just as I sprang into the lookout position, grabbed his arm and slid my blade into his armpit.
I swept my other arm across his neck to silence any cries as blood gushed from beneath his arm and he breathed his last as I let him fold to the well of the crow’s-nest.
That accomplished, Bart’s ship came alongside, and as I descended the rat-lines the two ships bumped and his men began pouring over the sides.
A hatch in the quarter-deck opened and Portuguese sailors appeared, but they stood no chance. Their throats were cut, their bodies thrown overboard. In a matter of a few bloody moments the galleon was controlled by Bart Roberts’s men. Fat lot of good their gun training had done.
Everything that could be pillaged was pillaged. A deck-hand who dragged the coffer on deck and grinned at his captain, hoping for some words of praise, got none. Roberts ignored him and indicated for the chest to be loaded on his stolen ship.
Then, suddenly, came a shout from the lookouts, “Sail ho!” and in the next instant we were piling back to the stolen ship, some of the slow men even falling to the sea as Roberts’s ship pulled away from the flagship and we set sail, two Portuguese naval warships bearing down upon us.
There was the pop of muskets but they were too far away to do any damage. Thank God we were in a stolen Portuguese ship; they had no desire to fire their carriage guns at us. Not yet. Probably they hadn’t worked it out yet. Probably they were still wondering what the bloody hell was going on.
We came around the bay, sails pregnant with wind, men dashing below decks to man the guns. Ahead of us was anchored the Jackdaw, and I prayed that Adewalé had ordered lookouts and thanked God my quartermaster was an Adewalé and not a Calico Jack, and so would have made sure the lookouts were posted. I prayed that those very lookouts would at this very moment be relaying the news that Roberts’s vessel was speeding towards them with the Portuguese Navy in pursuit and that they would at this very moment be manning their positions and weighing anchor.
They were.
Even though we were being pursued, I still had time to admire what to my eyes is one of the most beautiful sig
hts of the sea. The Jackdaw, men on its rigging, its sails unfurling gracefully, being secured, then blooming with a noise I could hear even from my vantage point far away.
Still, our speed meant we caught them smartly, just as the Jackdaw was gaining speed herself, and after exchanging quick words with Roberts I stood on the poop deck and my mind returned to the sight of Duncan Walpole, he who had begun this whole journey, as I leapt from the poop of Robert’s ship back onto the Jackdaw.
“Ah, there’s nothing like the hot winds of hell blowing in your face!” I heard Roberts cry as I crouched and watched as our two vessels peeled apart. I gave orders to man the stern guns below. The Portuguese reluctance to open fire was over, but their hesitancy had cost them dear, for it was the Jackdaw who took first blood.
I heard our stern guns boom, then spin back across the deck below. I saw hot metal speed over the face of the ocean and slam into the leading ship, saw splinters fly from jagged holes in the bow and along the hull, men and bits of men joining the debris already littering the sea. The bow gained wings of foam as it dipped and I could imagine the scene below decks, men at the pumps, but the vessel was already shipping too much water and soon . . .
She turned in the water, listing, her sails flattening. A cheer went up from my men but from around her came the second ship, and that was when Bartholomew Roberts decided to test his own guns.
His shot found its mark, just as mine had, and once more we were treated to the sight of the Portuguese vessel ploughing on, even as the bowsprit dipped and the bow sank, her hull looking as though it had been the victim of a giant shark attack.
Soon both ships were seriously floundering, the second one more badly damaged than the first, and boats were being launched, men were jumping over the side and the Portuguese Navy had, for the time being at least, forgotten about us.
We sailed, celebrating for some hours until Roberts commanded both vessels to drop anchor and I stood alert on the quarter-deck wondering, What now?
Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Page 23