Текст книги "Assassin's creed : Black flag "

Автор книги: Oliver Bowden

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

SIXTY-FOUR

Arriving in Havana a few days before, I’d found the city in a state of high alert. Torres, it appeared, had been warned of my imminent arrival and was taking no chances: soldiers patrolled the streets, citizens were being searched and forced to reveal their faces, and Torres himself had gone into hiding—accompanied, of course, by his trusty bodyguard, El Tiburón.

I’d used The Observatory Skull. Under the watchful eye of the Assassin Bureau Chief, Rhona Dinsmore, I took a vial of Torres’s blood in one hand and the skull in the other. As she watched me work I wondered how I might look to her: Like a madman? A magician? A man using ancient science?

“Through the blood of the governor, we can see through his eyes,” I told her.

She looked as intrigued as she did doubtful. After all, I wasn’t sure of it myself. I’d seen it work in The Observatory, but in images conjured up in the chamber by Roberts. Here I was trying something new.

I needn’t have worried. The red of the blood in the vial seemed to bathe the inside of the skull and its eyeholes burned scarlet as the skull first began to glow, then display images on its polished dome. We were looking through the eyes of Governor Laureano Torres, who was looking . . .

“That’s . . . That’s by the church,” she said, amazed.

Moments later I’d been in pursuit, followed Torres as far as his fort, where the trap had been sprung. At some point a decoy had taken Torres’s place. It was he who fell beneath my blade, and there, waiting for me beneath the walls of the fort, implacable, silent as ever, was El Tiburón.

 • • •

You should have killed me when you had the chance, I thought. Because whereas on the last occasion he’d bested me, it was a different Edward Kenway he’d met in battle on that occasion; things had changed in the meantime—I had changed—and I had much to prove to him . . .

So if he’d hoped to beat me easily, as he had before, he was disappointed. He came forward, feinting then switching sides, but I anticipated the move, defended easily, hit him on the counter, opened a nick in his cheek.

There was no grunt of pain, not from El Tiburón. But in those cloudy eyes was just the merest hint, the tiniest glimmer of something I hadn’t seen last time we fought. Fear.

That gave me a boost better than any shot of liquor, and once again I came forward with my blades flashing. He was forced onto the back foot, defending left and right, trying to find a weak spot in my attack but failing. Where were his guards? He hadn’t summoned them, believing this would be an easy kill.

But how wrong he was, I thought, as I pressed forward, dodged to my left and swiped back-handed with my blade, opening a gash in his tunic and a deep cut in his stomach that began gushing blood.

It slowed him down. It weakened him. I allowed him to come forward, pleased to see his sword strokes becoming more wild and haphazard, as I carried on harrying him. Small but bloody strikes. Wearing him down.

He was slow then, his pain making him careless. Again I was able to drive forward with my cutlass, slash upwards with my hidden blade and twist it in his stomach. A mortal blow, surely?

His clothes were ragged and blood-stained. Blood from his stomach wound splattered to the ground, and he staggered with pain and exhaustion, looking at me mutely, but with all the pain of defeat in his eyes.

Until at last I put him down and he lay, losing precious life-blood, slowly dying in the heartless Havana sun. I crouched, blade to his throat ready to plunge it up beneath his chin into his brain. End it quickly.

“You humbled me once, and I took that hard lesson and I bettered myself . . .” I told him. “Die knowing that for all our conflicts, you helped make a soldier out of a scoundrel.”

My blade made a moist, squelching sound as I finished it.

“Leave this life for a lasting peace, down among the dead,” I told his corpse, and left.

SIXTY-FIVE

Desperate, Torres had fled. With a last throw of the dice, he’d decided to seek out The Observatory for himself.

I took the Jackdaw in pursuit, my heart sinking as with each passing hour there was no sighting of Torres, and with each passing hour we grew closer to Tulum. Would he find it? Did he already know where it was? Had he found another poor soul to torture. An Assassin?

We came around the coast of Tulum, and there was Torres’s galleon at anchor, smaller consorts bobbling by her sides. We saw the glint of spyglasses and I ordered hard port. Moments later black squares appeared in the hull of the Spanish galleon and sunlight shone dully off gun-barrels before there was a thud and a puff of fire and smoke, and balls were smacking into us and into the water around us.

The battle would continue but it would have to continue without its captain and also—as she insisted on coming with me—its quartermaster. Together Anne and I dived off the gunwale into bright blue water and swam for shore, then began the trek up the path to The Observatory.

It wasn’t long before we came upon the first corpses.

Just as the men on the galleon were fighting for their lives against the onslaught of the Jackdaw, so the men with Torres had been doing the same. They had been ambushed by the natives, the guardians of The Observatory, and from up ahead we could hear the sounds of more conflict, desperate shouts as the men at the rear of the column tried in vain to frighten off the natives.

“This land is under the protection of King Philip. Tell your men to disperse or die!”

But it was they who would die. As we passed through the undergrowth a short distance away from them I saw their terrified, uncomprehending faces go from the monolithic edifice of The Observatory—where had that come from?—to scanning the long grass around them. They would die like that: terrified and uncomprehending.

At the entrance to The Observatory were more bodies but the door was open and some had clearly made it inside. Anne bade me go in; she would stand guard, and so for the second time, I entered that strange and sacred place, that huge temple.

As I stepped inside I remembered the last time, when Roberts murdered his men rather than let them be unbalanced by what they saw in The Observatory. Sure enough, just as I crept into the vast entrance chamber, terrified Spanish soldiers were fleeing screaming, their eyes somehow blank, as though whatever life in them had already been extinguished. As though they were corpses running.

They ignored me and I let them go. Good. They’d distract the guardians of The Observatory on the outside. I pressed onwards, climbing stone steps, passing along the bridge chamber—more terrified soldiers—then towards the main control chamber.

I was halfway there when The Observatory began to hum. The same skull-crushing sound I’d heard on my first visit. I broke into a run, pushing past more frantic soldiers trying to make their escape and dashing into the main chamber where stone crumbled from the walls as The Observatory seemed to shake and vibrate with the droning noise.

Torres stood at the raised control panel, trying to make himself heard above the din, calling to guards who were either no longer there or trying to make their escape, trying to negotiate the stone that fell around us.

“Search the area. Find a way to stop this madness,” he screamed with his hands over his ears. He turned and with a lurch saw me.

“He’s here. Kill him,” he shouted, pointing. Spittle flew. In his eyes was something I’d never have believed him capable of: panic.

“Kill him!” Just two of his brave but foolhardy men were up to the challenge, and as the chamber shook, seemingly working itself loose around us, I made short work of them. Until the only men left in the chamber were Torres and me.

Then the Templar Grand Master cast his eye around the chamber, his gaze travelling from the dead bodies of his men back to me. The panic had gone now. Back was the Torres I remembered, and in his face was not defeat, nor fear, nor even sadness at his imminent death. There was fervour.

“We could have worked together, Edward,” he appealed with his hands outstretched. “We could have taken power for ourselves and brought these miserable empires to their knees.”

He shook his head as if frustrated with me, as though I were an errant son.

(N o, sorry, mate, but I’m an errant son no longer.)

“There is so much potential in you, Edward,” he insisted, “so much you have not yet accomplished. I could show you things. Mysteries beyond anything you could imagine.”

No. He and his kind had done nothing for me save to seek the curtailment of my freedom and take the lives of my friends. Starting with the night in Bristol when a torch in a farmyard was flung, his kind had brought me nothing but misery.

I drove the blade in and he grunted with pain as his mouth filled with blood that spilled over his lips.

“Does my murder fulfil you?” he asked weakly.

No, no it didn’t.

“I’m only seeing a job done, Torres. As you would have done with me.”

“As we have done, I think,” he managed. “You have no family anymore, no friends, no future. Your losses are far greater than ours.”

“That may be, but killing you rights a far greater wrong than ever I did.”

“You honestly believe that?”

“You would see all of mankind herded into a neatly furnished prison, safe and sober, yet dull beyond reason and sapped of all spirit. So, aye, with everything I’ve seen and learnt in these last years, I do believe it.”

“You wear your convictions well,” he said. “They suit you . . .”

It was as though I’d been in a trance. The noise of The Observatory, the rattle of stone falling around me, the screams of the fleeing troops: all of it had faded into the background as I spoke to Torres, and I only became aware of it again when the last breath died on his lips and his head lolled on the stone. There was the noise of a distant battle, soldiers being ruthlessly despatched, before Anne, Adewalé and Ah Tabai burst into the chamber. Their swords were drawn and streaked with blood. Their pistols smoked.

“Torres awakened The Observatory something fierce,” I said to Ah Tabai. “Are we safe?”

“With the device returned, I believe so,” he replied, indicating the skull.

Anne was looking around herself, open-mouthed. Even partly destroyed in the wake of the rockfall, the chamber was still a sight to see. “What do you call this place?” she said, awe-struck.

“Captain Kenway’s folly,” said Adewalé, shooting me a smile.

“We will seal this place and discard the key,” announced Ah Tabai. “Until another Sage appears, this door will remain locked.”

“There were vials when I came here last,” I told him, “filled with the blood of ancient men, Roberts said. But they’re gone now.”

“Then it’s up to us to recover them,” said Ah Tabai with a sigh, “before the Templars catch wind of this. You could join us in that cause.”

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 expression 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.