Текст книги "Assassin's creed : Black flag "

Автор книги: Oliver Bowden

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LAST CHANCE

I snarled and came forward, blades cutting half circles in the air, hoping to daze or disorient him. His expression hardly changed, and with fast movements of his elbow and forearm he met my attack easily. He was concentrating on my left hand, the hand that held the sword, and before I even realized he was doing it, my cutlass went spinning from my bloody fingers to the dirt.

My hidden blade was all I had left now. He concentrated on it, knowing it was new to me. Behind him more guards had gathered in the courtyard, and though I couldn’t understand what they were saying, it was obvious: I was no match for El Tiburón; my end was but a heartbeat away.

Ace titles by Oliver Bowden

ASSASSIN’S CREED: RENAISSANCE

ASSASSIN’S CREED: BROTHERHOOD

ASSASSIN’S CREED: THE SECRET CRUSADE

ASSASSIN’S CREED: REVELATIONS

ASSASSIN’S CREED: FORSAKEN

ASSASSIN’S CREED: BLACK FLAG

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

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ASSASSIN’S CREED® BLACK FLAG

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Penguin Books, Ltd.

Copyright © Ubisoft Entertainment 2013. All rights reserved. Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-59566-4

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Ace premium edition / December 2013

Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

C

ONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

PART I

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

PART II

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

PART III

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

FORTY-FOUR

FORTY-FIVE

FORTY-SIX

FORTY-SEVEN

FORTY-EIGHT

FORTY-NINE

FIFTY

FIFTY-ONE

FIFTY-TWO

FIFTY-THREE

FIFTY-FOUR

FIFTY-FIVE

FIFTY-SIX

PART IV

FIFTY-SEVEN

FIFTY-EIGHT

FIFTY-NINE

SIXTY

SIXTY-ONE

SIXTY-TWO

SIXTY-THREE

SIXTY-FOUR

SIXTY-FIVE

SIXTY-SIX

SIXTY-SEVEN

SIXTY-EIGHT

SIXTY-NINE

SEVENTY

SEVENTY-ONE

SEVENTY-TWO

SEVENTY-THREE

List of Characters

Acknowledgements

PART I

ONE

1719 (OR THEREABOUTS)

I cut off a man’s nose once.

I don’t recall exactly when it was: 1719 or thereabouts. Nor where. But it happened during a raid on a Spanish brig. We wanted her supplies, of course. I pride myself on keeping the Jackdaw well stocked. But there was something else on board too. Something we didn’t have but needed. Someone, to be precise. A ship’s cook.

Our own ship’s cook and his mate were both dead. The cook’s mate had been caught pissing in the ballast, which I didn’t allow and so punished him the traditional way, by making him drink a mug of the crew’s piss. I must admit, I’ve never had it happen before where the mug of punishment piss actually killed the man, but that’s what happened with the cook’s mate. He drank the mug of piss, went to sleep that night and never got up. Cook was all right by himself for a time, but he did like a nip of rum, and after a nip of rum was apt to take the night air on the poop-deck. I’d hear him clomping about on the roof of my cabin, dancing a jig. Until one night I heard him clomping about on the roof of my cabin and dancing a jig—followed by a scream and a splash.

The bell rang and the crew rushed to the deck, where we dropped anchor and lit lanterns and torches, but of Cook there was no sign.

They had lads working with them, of course, but they were just boys; none of them knew how to do anything more culinary-minded than stir the pot or peel some spuds, and we’d been living on raw grub ever since. Not a man among us knew how to do so much as boil a pot of water.

Now, not long back we’d taken a man-o’-war. A tasty little excursion from which we’d bagged ourselves a brand-spanking-new broadside battery and a holdful of artillery: cutlasses, pikes, muskets, pistols, powder and shot. From one of the captured crew, who then became one of my crew, I’d learnt that the Dons had a particular supply ship on which served an especially adept cook. Word was that he’d cooked at court but offended the queen and been banished. I didn’t believe a word of that but it didn’t stop me repeating it, telling the crew we’d have him preparing our meals before the week was out. Sure enough we made it our business to hunt down this particular brig, and when we found it, lost no time in attacking it.

Our new broadside battery came in handy. We drew up alongside and peppered the brig with shot till she broke, the canvas in tatters and the helm splintered in the water.

She was already listing as my crew lashed and boarded her, scuttling over her sides like rats, the air heavy with the stink of powder, the sound of muskets popping and cutlasses already beginning to rattle. I was in among them as always, cutlass in one hand and my hidden blade engaged, the cutlass for melee work, the blades for close finishing. Two of them came at me and I made short work of the first, driving my cutlass into the top of his head and slicing his tricorn in half as the blade cleaved his head almost in two. He went to his knees with the blade of my sword between his eyes but the problem was I’d driven it too deep, and when I tried to wrench it free his writhing body came with it. Then the second man was upon me, terror in his eyes, not used to fighting, obviously, and with a flick of the blade I sliced off his nose, which had the desired effect of sending him back with blood spraying from the bloody hole where his beak had been, while I used two hands to finally wrench my cutlass out of the skull of the first attacker and continue the good fight. It was soon over, with as few of their crew dead as possible, me having given out special instructions that on no account was the cook to be harmed—Whatever happens, I’d said, we have to take the cook alive.

As their brig disappeared beneath the water and we sailed away, leaving a fog of powder-smoke and a sea of splintered hull and bobbing bits of broken ship behind us, we gathered their crew on the main deck to flush out the cook, hardly a man among us not salivating, his belly not rumbling, the well-fed look of their crew not lost on us. Not at all.

It was Caroline who taught me how to appreciate good food. Caroline my one true love. In the all-too-brief time we’d spent together she refined my palate, and I liked to think that she’d have approved of my policy towards the repast, and how I’d passed on a love of the finer things to the crew, knowing as I did, partly due to what she’d shown me, that a well-fed man is a happy man, and a happy man is a man less prone to questioning the authority of the ship, which is why in all those years at sea I never had one sniff of mutiny. Not one.

“Here I am,” he said, stepping forward. Except it sounded more like, “Beer I bam,” owing to his bandaged face, where some fool had cut off his nose.

TWO

1711

But anyway, where was I? Caroline. You wanted to know how I met her.

Well, therein lies a tale, as they say. Therein lies a tale. For that I need to go much further back, to a time when I was just a simple sheep-farmer, before I knew anything of Assassins or Templars, of Blackbeard, Benjamin Hornigold, of Nassau or The Observatory, and might never have been any the wiser but for a chance meeting at the Auld Shillelagh one hot summer’s day back in 1711.

The thing is, I was one of those young firebrands who liked a drink even though it got me into a few scrapes. Quite a few . . . incidents, shall we say, of which I’m none too proud. But that’s the cross you have to bear if you’re a little over-fond of the booze; it’s rare to find a drinker with a clean conscience. Most of us will have considered knocking it on the head at one time or another, reforming our lives and perhaps turning to God or trying to make something out of ourselves. But then noon comes around and you know what’s good for that head is another drink, and so you head for the tavern.

The taverns I’m referring to were in Bristol, on the south-west coast of dear old England, where we were accustomed to fierce winters and glorious summers, and that year, that particular year, the year that I first met her, 1711, like I say, I was just seventeen years old.

And, yes—yes, I was drunk when it happened. In those days, you’d have to say I was drunk a lot of the time. Perhaps . . . well, let’s not exaggerate, I don’t want to give a bad account of myself. But perhaps half of the time. Maybe a bit more.

Home was on the outskirts of a village called Hatherton, seven miles outside Bristol, where we ran a small holding keeping sheep. Father’s interests lay with the livestock. They always had, so having me on board had freed him from the aspect of the business he most despised, which was making the trips into town with the merchandise, haggling with merchants and traders, bargaining, cutting deals. As soon as I’d come of age, by which I mean, as soon as I was enough of a man to meet the eye of our business associates and trade as an equal, well, that’s what I did. Father was all too glad to let me do it.

My father’s name was Bernard. My mother, Linette. They hailed from Swansea but had found their way to the West Country when I was ten years old. We still had the Welsh accent. I don’t suppose I minded much that it marked us out as different. I was a sheep-farmer, not one of the sheep.

Father and Mother used to say I had the gift of the gab, and Mother in particular used to tell me I was a good-looking young man, and that I could charm the birds off the trees, and it’s true, even though I do say so myself, I did have a certain way with the ladies. Let’s put it this way: dealing with the wives of the merchants was a more successful hunting-ground than having to barter with their husbands.

How I spent my days would depend on the season. January to May was lambing season, our busiest time, when I’d find myself in the barns by sun-up, sore head or not, needing to see whether any ewes had lambed during the night. If they had, then they were taken into one of the smaller barns and put into pens, lambing jugs we called them, where Father would take over, while I was cleaning feeders, filling them up again, changing the hay and water, and Mother would be assiduously recording details of the new births in a journal. Me, I didn’t have my letters then. I do now, of course; Caroline taught me them, along with much else that made me a man, but not back then, so that duty fell to Mother, whose own letters weren’t much better but enough to at least keep a record.

They loved working together, Mother and Father. Even more reason why Father liked me going into town. He and my mother—it was as though they were joined at the hip. I had never seen another two people so much in love and with so little need to make a display of the fact. It was plain to witness that they kept each other going. It was good for the soul to see.

In the autumn we’d bring the rams through to the pasture to graze with the ewes, so that they could go on with the business of producing more lambs for the following spring. Fields needed tending to; fences and walls required building and repairing.

In winter, if the weather was very bad, we brought the sheep into the barns, kept them safe and warm, ready for January, when lambing season began.

But it was during summer when I really came into my own. Shearing season. Mother and Father carried out the bulk of it while I made more frequent trips into town, not with carcasses for meat but with my cart laden with wool. In the summer, with even more opportunity to do so, I found myself frequenting the local taverns more and more. You could say I became a familiar sight in the taverns, in fact, in my long, buttoned-up waistcoat, knee-breeches, white stockings and the slightly battered brown tricorn that I liked to think of as being my trade-mark, because my mother said it went well with my hair (which was permanently in need of a cut but quite a striking sandy colour, if I do say so myself).

It was in the taverns I discovered that my gift of the gab was improved after a few ales at noon. The booze, it has that effect, doesn’t it? Loosens tongues, inhibitions, morals . . . Not that I was exactly shy and retiring when I was sober, but the ale, it gave me that extra edge. Or at least that’s what I told myself at the time. After all, the money from extra sales made as a result of my ale-inspired salesmanship more than covered the cost of the ale in the first place. Or at least that’s what I told myself at the time.

There was something else too, apart from the foolish notion that Edward in his cups was a better salesman than Edward sober, and that was my state of mind.

Because the truth was, I thought I was different. No, I knew I was different. There were times I’d sit by myself at night and know I was seeing the world in a way that was all my own. I know what it is now but I couldn’t put it into words back then other than to say I felt different.

Either because of that or despite it, I’d decided I didn’t want to be a sheep-farmer all my life. I knew it the first day, when I set foot on the farm as an employee, and not as a child, and I saw myself, then looked at my father, and understood that I was no longer here to play and would soon go home to dream about a future setting sail on the high seas. No, this was my future, and I would spend the rest of my life as sheep-farmer, working for my father, marrying a local girl, siring boys and teaching them to become sheep-farmers, just like their father, just like their grandfather. I saw the rest of my life laid out for me, like neat work-clothes on a bed, and rather than feel a warm surge of contentment and happiness about that fact, it terrified me.

So the truth was, and there’s no way of putting it more gently, and I’m sorry, Father, God rest your soul, but I hated my job. And after a few ales, well, I hated it less, is all I can say. Was I blotting out my dashed dreams with the booze? Probably. I never really thought about it at the time. All I knew was that sitting on my shoulder, perched there like a mangy cat, was a festering resentment at the way my life was turning out—or, worse, actually had turned out.

Perhaps I was a little indiscreet concerning some of my true feelings. I might on occasion have given my fellow drinkers the impression that I felt life had better things in store for me. What can I say? I was young and arrogant and a sot. A lethal combination at the best of times, and these were definitely not the best of times.

“You think you’re above the likes of us, do you?”

I heard that a lot. Or variations of it, at least.

Perhaps it would have been more diplomatic of me to answer in the negative, but I didn’t, and so I found myself in more than my fair share of fights. Perhaps it was to prove that I was better than them in all things, fighting included. Perhaps because in my own way I was upholding the family name. A drinker I might have been. A seducer. Arrogant. Unreliable. But not a coward. Oh no. Never one to shrink from a fight.

It was during the summertime when my recklessness reached its heights; when I would be most drunk and most boisterous, and mainly a bit of a pain in the arse. But on the other hand, all the more likely to help a young lady in distress.

THREE

She was in the Auld Shillelagh, a tavern halfway between Hatherton and Bristol, which was a regular haunt of mine and sometimes, in the summer when Mother and Father toiled over the shearing at home, when I’d make more frequent trips into town, it was regular to the tune of several times a day.

I admit I hadn’t taken much notice of her at first, which was unusual for me because I liked to pride myself on knowing the exact location of any pretty woman nearabouts, and besides, the Shillelagh wasn’t the sort of place you expected to find a pretty woman. A woman, yes. A certain type of woman. But this girl I could see wasn’t like that: she was young, about my age, and she wore a white linen coif and a smock. Looked to me like a domestic.

But it wasn’t her clothes that drew my attention. It was the loudness of her voice, which you’d have to say was in complete contrast to the way she looked. She was sitting with three men, all of them older than her, who I recognized at once: Tom Cobleigh, his son Seth, and Julian somebody, whose surname escaped me, but who worked with them: three men with whom I had traded words if not blows before—the kind who looked down their noses at me because they thought I looked down my nose at them, who liked me no more than I liked them, which was not a lot. They were sat forward on their stools and watching this young girl with leering, wolfish eyes that betrayed a darker purpose even though they were all smiles, thumping on the table, encouraging her as she drank dry a flagon of ale.

No, she did not look like one of the women who usually frequented the tavern, but it seemed she was determined to act like one of them. The flagon was about as big as she was, and as she wiped her hand across her mouth and hammered it to the table, the men responded with cheers, shouting for another one and no doubt pleased to see her wobble slightly on her stool. Probably couldn’t believe their luck. Pretty little thing like that.

I watched as they let the girl drink yet more ale with the same tumult accompanying her success, then as she did the same as before, and wiped her hand across her mouth, but with an even more pronounced wobble this time, a look passed between them. A look that seemed to say, The Job Is Done.

Tom and Julian stood, and they began, in their words, to “escort” her to the door, because, “You’ve had too much to drink, my lovely, let’s get you home, shall we?”

“To bed,” smirked Seth, thinking he was saying it under his breath even though the whole tavern heard him. “Let’s be getting you to bed.”

I passed a look to the barman, who dropped his eyes and used his apron to blow his nose. A customer sat down the bar from me turned away. Bastards. Might as well have looked to the cat for help, I thought; then with a sigh I banged down my tankard, stepped off my stool and followed the Cobleighs into the road outside.

I blinked as I stepped from the darkness of the tavern into bright sunlight. My cart was there, roasting in the sun; beside it another one that I took to belong to the Cobleighs. On the other side of the road was a yard with a house set far back, but no sign of a farmer. We were alone on the highway: just me, the two Cobleighs, Julian and the girl, of course.

“Well, Tom Cobleigh,” I said, “the things you see on a fine afternoon. Things like you and your cronies getting drunk and getting a poor defenceless young woman even drunker.”

The girl sagged as Tom Cobleigh let go her arm and turned to address me, his finger already raised.

“Now just you stay out of this, Edward Kenway, you young good-for-nothing. You’re as drunk as I am and yer morals just as loose. I don’t need to be given a talking to by the likes of you.”

Seth and Julian had turned as well. The girl was glazed over, like her mind had gone to sleep even if her body was still awake.

“Well”—I smiled—“loose morals I might have, Tom Cobleigh, but I don’t need to pour ale down a girl’s throat before taking her to bed, and I certainly don’t need two others to help me at the task.”

Tom Cobleigh reddened. “Why, you cheeky little bastard, you. I’m going to put her on my cart is what I’m going to do, and take her home.”

“I have no doubt that you intend to put her on your cart and take her home. It’s what you plan to do between putting her on the cart and reaching home that concerns me.”

“That concerns you, does it? A broken nose and a couple of broken ribs will be concerning you unless you mind your own bloody business.”

Squinting, I glanced at the highway, where trees bordering the dirt track shone gold and green in the sun, and in the distance was a lone figure on a horse, shimmering and indistinct.

I took a step forward, and if there had been any warmth or humour in my manner, then it disappeared, almost of its own accord. There was a steeliness in my voice when I next spoke.

“Now you just leave that girl alone, Tom Cobleigh, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

The three men looked at one another. In a way they’d done as I asked. They’d let go of the girl, and she seemed almost relieved to slide to her haunches, placing one hand on the ground and looking at us all with bleary eyes, evidently oblivious to all this being discussed on her behalf.

Meanwhile I looked at the Cobleighs and weighed up the odds. Had I ever fought three at once? Well, no. Because if you were fighting three at once, then you weren’t so much fighting as getting beaten up. But come on, Edward Kenway, I told myself. Yes, on the one hand it was three men, but one of them was Tom Cobleigh, who was no spring chicken, about my father’s age. Another one was Seth Cobleigh, who was Tom Cobleigh’s son. If you can imagine the kind of person who would help his father get a young girl drunk, well, then you can imagine that sort of person Seth Cobleigh was, which was to say a maggoty, underhand type, more likely to run away from a fight with wet breeches than stand his ground. And what’s more, they were drunk.

On the other hand I was drunk too. Plus they had Julian who, going on looks alone, could handle himself.

But I had another idea. That lone rider I could see in the distance. If I could just hold off the Cobleighs until he arrived, the odds were likely to shift back in my favour. After all, if he was of good character, the lone rider was bound to stop and help me out.

“Well, Tom,” I said, “you got the advantage over me, that’s obvious for anyone to see, but, you know, I just wouldn’t be able to look my mother in the eye knowing I’d let you and your cronies abduct this pretty young thing.”

I glanced up the road to where that lone rider was getting closer. Come on then, I thought. Don’t hang about.

“So,” I continued, “even if you end up leaving me in a bloody heap by the side of this here road, and carry that young lassie off anyway, I’m going to have to do all that I can to make it as difficult for you as possible. And perhaps see to it that you go on your way with a black eye and maybe a pair of throbbing bollocks for your troubles.”

Tom Cobleigh spat, then peered at me through wizened, slitty eyes. “That’s it then, is it? Well are you just going to stand there talking about it all day, or are you going to attend to your task? Because time waits for no man . . .” He grinned an evil grin. “I’ve got people to see, things to do.”

“Aye, that’s right, and the longer you leave it, the more chance that poor lassie has of sobering up, eh?”

“I don’t mind telling you, I’m getting tired of all this talk, Kenway.” He turned to Julian. “How about we teach this little bastard a lesson? Oh, and one more thing before we start, Master Kenway. You ain’t fit to shine your mother’s shoes, you understand?”

That hit me hard, I don’t mind admitting. Having someone like Tom Cobleigh, who had all the morals of a frothing dog and about half the intelligence, able to reach into my soul as if my guilt were an open wound, then stick his thumb in that open wound and cause me even more pain, well, it certainly firmed up my resolve, if nothing else.

Julian pushed his chest forward and with a snarl advanced. Two steps away from me he raised his fists, dipped his right shoulder and swung. I don’t know who Julian was used to fighting outside taverns, but somebody with less experience than me, that’s for sure, because I’d already taken note of the fact that he was right-handed, and he couldn’t have made his intentions more obvious if he’d tried.

The dirt rose in clouds around my feet as I dodged easily and brought my own right up sharply. He shouted in pain as I caught him under the jaw. If it had just been him, the battle would have been won, but Tom Cobleigh was already upon me. From the corner of my eye I saw him but was too late to react and next thing you know I was dazed by knuckles that slammed into my temple.

I staggered slightly as I swung to meet the attack, and my fists were swinging much more wildly than I’d have liked. I was hoping to land a lucky blow, needing to put at least one of the men down to even up the numbers. But none of my punches made contact as Tom retreated, plus Julian had recovered from my first strike with alarming speed and came at me again.

His right came up and connected with my chin, spinning me about so that I almost lost my balance. My hat span off, my hair was in my eyes and I was in disarray. And guess who came in with his boots kicking? That worm Seth Cobleigh, shouting encouragement to his father and Julian at the same time. The little bastard was lucky. His boot caught me in the midriff and, already off balance, I lost my footing. And fell.

The worst thing you can do in a fight is fall. Once you fall it’s over. Through their legs I saw the lone rider up the highway, who had become my only chance at salvation, possibly my only hope of getting out of this alive. But what I saw made my heart sink. Not a man on a horse, a tradesman who would dismount and come rushing to my aid. No, the lone rider was a woman. She was riding astride the horse, not side-saddle, but despite that you could see she was a lady. She wore a bonnet and a light-coloured summer dress, and the last thing I thought, before the Cobleigh boots obscured my view and the kicks came raining in, was that she was beautiful.

So what, though? Good looks weren’t going to save me at that moment.

“Hey,” I heard. “You three men. Stop what you’re doing right now.”

They turned to look up at her and removed their hats, shuffling in line to hide the sight of me, who lay coughing on the ground.

“What is going on here?” she demanded to know. From the sound of her voice I could tell she was young and while not high-born, definitely well-bred—too well-bred, surely, to be riding unaccompanied?

“We were just teaching this young man here some manners,” rasped Tom Cobleigh, out of breath. Exhausting business, it was, kicking me half to death.

“Well it doesn’t take three of you to do that, does it?” she replied. I could see her then, twice as beautiful as I’d first thought, as she glowered at the Cobleighs and Julian, who for their part looked thoroughly mollified.

She dismounted. “More to the point, what are you doing with this young lady here?” She indicated the girl, who still sat dazed and drunk on the ground.

“Oh, ma’am, begging your pardon, ma’am, but this is a young friend of ours who has had too much to drink,” Seth said.

The lady darkened. “She is most certainly not your young friend, she is a maidservant, and if I don’t get her back home before my mother discovers she’s absconded, then she will be an unemployed maidservant.”

She looked pointedly from one man to the next. “I know you men, and I think I understand exactly what has been going on here. Now, you will leave this young man alone and be on your way before I am of a mind to take this further.”

With much bowing and scraping, Julian and the Cobleighs clambered aboard their cart and were soon gone. Meanwhile the woman knelt to speak to me. Her voice had changed. She was softly spoken now and I heard concern. “My name is Caroline Scott, my family lives on Hawkins Lane in Bristol, let me take you back there and tend to your wounds.”

“I cannot, my lady,” I said, sitting up and trying to manage a grin. “I have work to do.”

She stood, frowning. “I see. Did I assess the situation correctly?”

I picked up my hat and began to brush the dirt from it. It was even more battered. “You did, my lady.”

“Then I owe you my thanks and so will Rose when she sobers up. She’s a wilful girl, not always the easiest of staff, but nevertheless, I don’t want to see her suffer for her impetuousness.”

She was an angel, I decided then, and as I helped them mount the horse, Caroline holding on to Rose, who lolled drunkenly over the neck of the horse, I had a sudden thought.

“Can I see you again, my lady? To thank you properly when I look a little more presentable, perhaps?”

She gave me a regretful look. “I fear my father would not approve,” she said, and with that shook the reins and left.

That night I sat beneath the thatch of our cottage, gazing out over the pastures that rolled away from the farm as the sun went down. Usually my thoughts would be of escaping my future.

That night I thought of Caroline. Caroline Scott of Hawkins Lane.