Assassin's Creed: Black Flag

by Oliver Bowden

  I could. I could. But . . .

  “Only after I fix what I mangled back home.”

  The old Assassin nodded, then as though reminded of it, he removed a letter from his robes that he handed to me.

  “It arrived last week.”

  They left me as I read it.

  I think you know the news it contained, don’t you, my sweet?

  SIXTY-SIX

  OCTOBER 1722

  We had good reason to celebrate. So we did. However, with my new knowledge had come a decreased interest in inebriation, so I left the exuberance in the hands of the Jackdaw crew, who built fires and roasted a hog and danced and sang until they had no energy left, when they simply collapsed and slept where they fell, then pulled themselves to their feet, grabbed the nearest flask of liquor and began again.

  Me, I sat on the terrace of my homestead with Anne, Adewalé and Ah Tabai.

  “Gentlemen, how do you find it here?” I asked them.

  I’d offered it—my home as their base.

  “It will work well for us,” said Ah Tabai, “but our long-term goal must be to scatter our operations. To live and work among the people we protect, just as Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad once counselled.”

  “Well, until that time, it’s yours as you see fit.”

  “Edward . . .”

  I had already stood to see Anne, but turned to Adewalé.

  “Yes?”

  “Captain Woodes Rogers survived his wounds,” he told me. I cursed, remembering the interruption. “He has since returned to England. Shamed and in great debt, but no less a threat.”

  “I will finish that job when I return. You have my word.”

  He nodded, and we embraced before we parted, leaving me to join Anne.

  We sat in silence for a moment, smiling at the songs, until I said, “I’ll be sailing for London in the next few months. I’d be a hopeful man if you were beside me.”

  She laughed. “England is the wrong way round the globe for an Irishwoman.”

  I nodded. Perhaps it was for the best. “Will you stay with the Assassins?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “No. I haven’t that kind of conviction in my heart. You?”

  “In time, aye, when my mind is settled and my blood is cooled.”

  Just then we heard a cry from afar, a ship sailing into the cove. We looked at one another, both of us knowing what the arrival of the ship meant—a new life for me, a new life for her. I loved her in my own way, and I think she loved me, but the time had come to part, and we did it with a kiss.

  “You’re a good man, Edward,” said Anne, her eyes shining as I stood. “If you learn to keep settled to one place for more than a week, you’ll make a fine father too.”

  I left her and headed down to the beach, where a large ship was coming into dock. The gang-board was lowered and the captain appeared holding the hand of a little girl, a beautiful little girl, who shone brighter than hope, just nine years old.

  And I thought you looked the spitting image of your mother.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  A little vision, you were. Jennifer Kenway, a daughter I never even knew I had. Embarking on a voyage, which went against your grandfather’s wishes but had your grandmother’s blessing, you’d sailed to find me, in order to give me the news.

  My beloved was dead.

  (Did you wonder why I didn’t cry, I wonder, as we stood on the dock at Inagua? So did I, Jenny. So did I.)

  On that voyage home I got to know you. And yet there were still things I had to keep from you because I still had much I needed to do. Before, when I talked about having loose ends to tie, business to take care of? Well, there were still more loose ends to tie. Still more business to settle.

  • • •

  I took a skeleton crew to Bristol, a few of my most trusted men. We sailed the Atlantic, a hard, rough crossing, made bearable by a stay in the Azores, then continued our journey to the British Isles and to Bristol. To home—to a place I hadn’t visited for nigh on a decade. A place I had been warned against ever returning to.

  As we came into the Bristol Channel the black flag of the Jackdaw was brought down, folded up, and placed carefully in a chest in my cabin. In its place we raised the Red Ensign. It would be enough to allow us to land at least, and once the port marshals had worked out the Jackdaw was not a naval vessel, I’d be ashore and the ship anchored off shore.

  And then I saw it for the first time in so long, the Bristol dock, and I caught my breath. I had loved Kingston, Havana and above all Nassau. But despite everything that had happened—or maybe because of it—here was still my home.

  Heads turned in my direction as I strode along the harbour, a figure of mystery, dressed not like a pirate but something else. Perhaps some of the older ones remembered me: merchants I’d done business with as a sheep-farmer, men I’d drunk with in the taverns, when I’d boasted of going off to sea. Tongues would wag, and news would travel. How far? I wondered. To Matthew Hague and Wilson? To Emmett Scott? Would they know that Edward Kenway was back, stronger and more powerful than before, and that he had scores to settle?

  I found a boarding-house in town and there rested the night. The next morning I bartered for a horse and saddle and set off for Hatherton, riding until I reached my father’s old farmhouse.

  Why I went there, I’m not quite sure. I think I just wanted to see it. And so for long moments that’s what I did. I stood by the gate in the shade of a tree and contemplated my old home. It had been rebuilt, of course, and was only partly recognizable as the house in which I had grown up. But one thing that had remained the same was the outhouse: the outhouse where my marriage to your mother had begun, the outhouse in which you were conceived, Jennifer.

  I left, then halfway between Hatherton and Bristol, a road I knew so well, I stopped at a place I also knew well. The Auld Shillelagh. I tethered my horse outside, made sure she had water, then stepped in to find it almost exactly as I remembered it: the low ceilings, a darkness that seemed to seep from the walls. The last time I was here I had killed a man. My first man. Many more had fallen beneath my blade since.

  More to come.

  Behind the bar was a woman in her fifties, and she raised her tired head to look at me as I approached.

  “Hello, Mother,” I said.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  She took me to a side table away from the prying eyes of the few drinkers there.

  “So it’s true then?” she asked me. Her long hair had grey streaks in it. Her face was drawn and tired. It was only (only?) ten years since I’d last seen her but it was as though she had aged twenty, thirty, more.

  All my fault.

  “What’s true, Mother?” I asked carefully.

  “You’re a pirate?”

  “No, Mother, I’m not a pirate. No longer. I’ve joined an Order.”

  “You’re a monk?” She cast an eye over my robes.

  “No, Mother, I’m not a monk. Something else.”

  She sighed, looking unimpressed. Over at the bar, the landlord was towelling tankards, watching us with the eye of a hawk. He begrudged her the time she spent away from the bar but wasn’t about to say anything. Not with the pirate Edward Kenway around.

  “And you decided to come back, did you?” she was saying. “I heard that you had. That you sailed into port yesterday, stepped off a glittering galleon like some kind of king. The big I-am, Edward Kenway. That’s what you always wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “Mother . . .”

  “That was what you were always going on about, wasn’t it? Wanting to go off and make your fortune, make something of yourself, become a man of quality, wasn’t it? That involved becoming a pirate, did it?” She sneered. I didn’t think I’d ever seen my mother sneer before. “You were lucky they didn’t hang you.”

  They still might if they catch me.

  “It’s not like that anymore. I’ve come to make things right.”

  She pulled a face like she’d tasted something nasty. Another expres
sion I’d never seen before. “Oh yes, and how do you plan to do that?”

  I waved a hand. “Not have you working here, for a start.”

  “I’ll work wherever I like, young man,” she scoffed. “You needn’t think you’re paying me off with stolen gold. Gold that belonged to other folks before they were forced to hand it to you at the point of your sword. Eh? Is that it?”

  “It’s not like that, Ma,” I whispered, feeling young all of a sudden. Not like the pirate Edward Kenway at all. This wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be. Tears, embraces, apologies, promises. Not like this.

  I leaned forward. “I don’t want it to be like this, Ma,” I said quietly.

  She smirked. “That was always your trouble, wasn’t it, Edward? Never happy with what you got.”

  “No . . .” I began, exasperated, “I mean . . .”

  “I know what you mean. You mean you made a mess of things, then you left us to clear up your mess, and now you’ve got some finery about you, and a bit of money, you think you can come back and pay me off. You’re no better than Hague and Scott and their cronies.”

  “No, no, it’s not like that.”

  “I heard you arrived with a little girl in tow. Your daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  She pursed her lips and nodded, a little sympathy creeping into her eyes. “It was her who told you about Caroline, was it?”

  My fists clenched. “She did.”

  “She told you Caroline was sick with the pox, and that her father refused her medicine, and that she ended up wasting away at that house on Hawkins Lane. She told you that, did she?”

  “She told me that, Ma, yes.”

  She scratched at her head and looked away. “I loved that girl. Caroline. Really loved her. Like a daughter she was to me, until she went away.” She shot me a reproachful look. That was your fault. “I visited the funeral, just to pay my respects, just to stand at the gate, but Scott was there, and all his cronies, Matthew Hague and that Wilson fellow. They ran me off the place. Said I wasn’t welcome.”

  “They’ll pay for that, Ma,” I said through clenched teeth. “They’ll pay for what they’ve done.”

  She looked quickly at me. “Oh yes? How are they going to pay then, Edward? Tell me that. You going to kill them, are you? With your sword? Your pistols? Word is, they’ve gone into hiding, the men you seek.”

  “Ma . . .”

  “How many men have died at your hand, eh?” she asked.

  I looked at her. The answer, of course, was countless.

  She was shaking, I noticed. With fury.

  “You think that makes you a man, don’t you?” she said, and I knew her words were about to hurt more than any blade. “But do you know how many men your father killed, Edward? None. Not one. And he was twice the man you are.”

  I winced. “Don’t be like this. I know I could have done things differently. I wish I’d done things differently. But I’m back now—back to sort out the mess I made.”

  She was shaking her head. “No, no, you don’t understand, Edward. There is no mess anymore. The mess needed sorting out when you left. The mess needed sorting out when your father and I cleared up what remained of our home and tried to start again. It put years on him, Edward. Years. The mess needed sorting out when nobody would trade with us. Not a letter from you. Not a word. Your daughter was born, your father died, and not a peep from the great explorer.”

  “You don’t understand. They threatened me. They threatened you. They said if I ever returned, they’d hurt you.”

  She pointed. “You did more hurting than they ever could, my son. And now you’re here to stir things up again, are you?”

  “Things have got to be put right.”

  She stood. “Not in my name, they don’t. I’ll have nothing to do with you.”

  She raised her voice to address everybody in the tavern. Only a few would hear her, but word would soon spread.

  “You hear that?” she said loudly. “I disown him. The great and famous pirate Edward Kenway, he’s nothing to do with me.”

  Hands flat on a tabletop, she leaned forward and hissed, “Now get out, no-son-of-mine. Get out before I tell the soldiers where the pirate Edward Kenway is to be found.”

  I left, and when, on the journey back to my boarding-house in Bristol, I realized my cheeks were wet, I allowed myself to cry, grateful for one thing at least. Grateful that there was nobody around to see my tears or hear my wails of grief.

  SIXTY-NINE

  So—they had gone to ground, the guilty men. Yes, there had been others there that night—the Cobleighs among them—but I had no desire to account for them all. There is little taste in taking the lives of men given orders. The men I wanted gave those orders: Hague, Scott and, of course, the man who left the insignia of the Templar on my face all those years ago. Wilson.

  Men who hid from me. Whose guilt was confirmed by the fact that they were hiding from me. Good. Let them shake with fear. That night, all being well, Scott, Wilson and Hague would be dead.

  But they knew I was coming, so my investigations would have to be conducted a little more discreetly. When I left my boarding-house the next morning I did so knowing I was beneath the gaze of Templar spies. I ducked into a tavern I knew of old—better than my pursuers, no doubt—and thanked my lucky stars it still had the same rear privy it always had.

  By the back-door I held my breath against the stink, quickly stripped off my robes and changed into clothes I’d brought with me from the Jackdaw—clothes I’d last worn many, many moons ago: my long, buttoned-up waistcoat, knee breeches, white stockings and, of course, my slightly battered brown tricorn. And thus attired I left the tavern, emerging on a different street a different person. Just another merchant on his way to market.

  I found her there, exactly where I expected, and jogged the basket on her arm so she’d know I was behind her, whispering, “I got your message.”

  “Good,” said Rose, without turning her head, bending to inspect flowers. With a quick look left and right, she whipped out a headscarf and tied it over her head.

  “Follow me.”

  A moment later Rose and I loitered near dilapidated stables in a deserted corner of the market. I glanced at the structure, then back again with a jolt of recognition. I’d stabled my own horse there many years ago. It had been new then, and convenient for the market, but the sprawl of stalls had shifted over the intervening years; its entrances had moved, and the stables had fallen into disuse, fit only for loitering nearby, conducting clandestine meetings, as we were doing.

  “You’ve met young Jennifer, have you?” she said.

  She shifted the basket on her arm. She’d been a young girl when I first encountered her at The Auld Shillelagh. Ten years later she was still young but missing was that spark, that rebellious streak that made her run away in the first place. A decade of drudgery had done that to her.

  And yet, like the glowing sparks of a dying fire, there was some of her old nature left because she’d sent me a letter requesting to meet me, and here she was with things to tell me. Among them, I hoped, the whereabouts of her master and his friends.

  “I have,” I told her. “I’ve met my daughter. She’s safe on my ship.

  “She has your eyes.”

  I nodded. “She has her mother’s beauty.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl. We were all very fond of her.”

  “But wilful?”

  Rose smiled. “Oh, yes. She was determined that she should see you when Mistress Caroline passed away last year.”

  “I’m surprised Emmett allowed it.”

  Rose chortled drily. “He didn’t, sir. It was the mistress of the house who organized it. Her and Miss Jennifer cooked it up between them. The first his nibs knew of it was when he woke up that morning to find Miss Jennifer gone. He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy at all, sir.”

  “Meetings, were there?”

  She looked at me. “You could say that, sir, yes.”

 
“Who came to see him, Rose?”

  “Master Hague . . .”

  “And Wilson?”

  She nodded.

  All the conspirators.

  “And where are they now?”

  “I don’t rightly know, sir,” she said.

  I sighed. “Then why invite me here if you’ve nothing to tell me?”

  She said, her face turned to me, “I mean I don’t know where they’re hiding, sir, but I do know where Mr. Scott plans to be tonight, for I have been asked to take him some fresh clothes at his offices.”

  “The warehouse?”

  “Yes, sir.

  “He has business items to collect as well, sir. He plans to be there personally. I’ve been asked to go there when night has fallen.”

  I looked at her long and hard. “Why, Rose?” I said. “Why are you helping me like this?”

  She glanced this way and that. “Because you once helped save me from a fate worse than death. Because Caroline loved you. And because . . .”

  “What?”

  “Because that man, he watched her die. He wouldn’t let her get the medicine she needed, not her or Mrs. Scott, the both of them ill. Mrs. Scott recovered but Mrs. Kenway never did.”

  It startled me to hear Caroline called Mrs. Kenway. It had been so long since she’d been referred to that way.

  “Why did he deny them the medicine?”

  “Pride, sir. It was him who caught the smallpox first but he recovered. He thought Mrs. Scott and Mrs. Kenway should be able to as well. But she began to get such terrible blisters all over her face, sir. Oh, sir, you’ve never seen anything like it . . .”

  I held up a hand, not wanting to hear more—wanting to preserve the image I had of Caroline.

  “There was an epidemic in London and we think Mr. Scott picked it up there. Even the royal family were in fear of it.”

  “You didn’t get it?”