And I twisted away from Pointy-Ears, smacking the wet mud in frustration as I pulled myself upright, ignoring the sound of his harsh and jagged laugh as I rose to meet the troops who appeared from within the fog and rain, trying to bring myself to full height as I said, “My name is Haytham Kenway, and I am an associate of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Braddock. I demand this man be given into my custody.”
The next laugh I heard, I wasn’t sure if it came from Pointy-Ears, who still lay pinned to the ground, or perhaps from one of the small band of troops who had materialized before me, like wraiths delivered from the field. Of the commander I saw a moustache, a dirty, wet, double-breasted jacket trimmed with sodden braid that had once been the colour gold. I saw him raising something—something that seemed to flash across my eye line—and realized he was striking me with the hilt of the sword an instant before he made contact, and I lost consciousness.
ii
They don’t put unconscious men to death. That would not be noble. Not even in an army commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Braddock.
And so the next thing I felt was cold water slapping into my face—or was it an open palm on my face? Either way, I was being rudely awakened, and as my senses returned I spent a moment wondering who I was, where I was . . .
And why I had a noose around my neck.
And why my arms were tied behind my back.
I was at one end of a platform. To my left were four men, also, like me, with their necks in nooses. As I watched, the man on the far left jerked and shook, his feet kicking at empty air.
A gasp went up in front of me and I realized that we had an audience. We were no longer in the battlefield but in some smaller pasture where men had assembled. They wore the colours of the British Army and the bearskin hats of the Coldstream Guards, and their faces were ashen. They were here under sufferance, it was clear, forced to watch as the poor unfortunate at the end of the line kicked his last, his mouth open, and the tip of his tongue, bleeding from having been bitten, protruding, his jaw working in to try and gulp air.
He continued to twitch and kick, his body shaking the scaffold, which ran the length of the platform above our heads. I looked up and saw my own noose tied to it, cast my eyes downwards to the wooden stool on which I stood, and saw my feet, my stockinged feet.
There was a hush. Just the sound of the hanged man dying, the creak of the rope and the complaint of the scaffold.
“That’s what happens when you’re a thief,” screeched the executioner, pointing at him then striding down the platform towards the second man, calling out to the stock-still crowd, “You meet your maker at the end of a rope, orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Braddock.”
“I know Braddock,” I shouted suddenly. “Where is he? Bring him here.”
“Shut your mouth, you!” bawled the executioner, his finger pointed, while at the same time his assistant, the man who’d thrown water in my face, came from my right and slapped me again, only this time not to bring me to my senses but to silence me.
I snarled and struggled with the rope tying my hands, but not too vigorously, not enough so that I would overbalance and fall from the stool on which I was so perilously perched.
“My name is Haytham Kenway,” I called, the rope digging into my neck.
“I said, ‘Shut your mouth!’” the executioner roared a second time, and again his assistant struck me, hard enough so that he almost toppled me from the stool. For the first time I caught sight of the soldier strung up to my immediate left and realized who it was. It was Pointy-Ears. He had a bandage that was black with blood around his thigh. He regarded me with cloudy, hooded eyes, a slow, sloppy smile on his face.
By now the executioner had reached the second man in the line.
“This man is a deserter,” he screeched. “He left his comrades to die. Men like you. He left you to die. Tell me, what should his punishment be?”
Without much enthusiasm, the men called back, “Hang him.”
“If you say so,” smirked the executioner, and he stepped back, planted his foot in the small of the condemned man’s back and pushed, savouring the revolted reaction of the watching men.
I shook the pain of the assistant’s blow from my head and continued to struggle just as the executioner reached the next man, asking the crowd the same question, receiving the same muted, dutiful reply then pushing the poor wretch to his death. The platform quaked and shook as the three men jerked on the end of the ropes. Above my head the scaffold creaked and groaned, and glancing up I saw joints briefly part before coming back together.
Next the executioner reached Pointy-Ears.
“This man—this man enjoyed a small sojourn in the Black Forest and thought he could sneak back undetected, but he is wrong. Tell me, how should he be punished?”
“Hang him,” mumbled the crowd unenthusiastically.
“Do you think he should die?” cried the executioner.
“Yes,” replied the crowd. But I saw some of them surreptitiously shaking their heads no, and there were others, drinking from leather flasks, who looked happier about the whole affair, the way you might if you were being bribed with ale. Indeed, did that account for Pointy-Ears’ apparent stupor? He was still smiling, even when the executioner moved behind him and planted his foot in the small of his back.
“It’s time to hang a deserter!” he shouted, and shoved at the same time as I cried, “No!” and thrashed at my bonds, desperately trying to break free. “No, he must be kept alive! Where is Braddock? Where is Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Braddock?”
The executioner’s assistant appeared before my eyes, grinning through a scratchy beard, with hardly a tooth in his mouth. “Didn’t you hear the man? He said, ‘Shut your mouth.’” And he pulled back his fist to punch me.
He didn’t get the chance. My legs shot out, knocked the stool away and in the next instant were locked around the assistant’s neck, crossed at the ankle—and tightening.
He yelled. I squeezed harder. His yell became a strangulated choke and his face began to flush as his hands went to my calves, trying to prise them apart. I wrenched from side to side, shaking him like a dog with prey in its jaws, almost taking him off his feet, straining my thigh muscles at the same time as I tried to keep the weight off the noose at my neck. Still, at my side, Pointy-Ears thrashed on the end of his rope. His tongue poked from between his lips and his milky eyes bulged, as if about to burst from his skull.
The executioner had moved to the other end of the platform, where he was pulling on the legs of the hanged men to make sure they were dead, but the commotion at this end caught his attention and he looked up to see his assistant trapped in the vise grip of my legs and came dashing up the platform towards us, cursing at the same time as he reached to draw his sword.
With a shout of effort, I twisted my body and wrenched my legs, pulling the assistant with me and by some miracle timing it just right so that his body slammed into the executioner as he arrived. With a shout the executioner tumbled messily from the platform. In front of us the men were standing, open-mouthed with shock, none moving to get involved.
I squeezed my legs even more tightly together and was rewarded with a cracking, crunching sound that came from the assistant’s neck. Blood began pouring from his nose. His grip on my arms began to slacken. Again I twisted. Again I shouted as my muscles protested and I wrenched him, this time to the other side, where I slammed him into the scaffold.
The shaking, creaking, coming-apart scaffold.
It creaked and complained some more. With a final effort—I had no more strength left, and if this didn’t work then here was where I died—I rammed the man into the scaffold again and, this time, at last, it gave. At the same time, as I began to feel myself black out, as though a dark veil were being brought across my mind, I felt the pressure at my neck suddenly relax as the support crashed to the ground in front of the platform, the crossbar toppled, then the platform itself gave way with the sudden weight of men and wood, falling in on it
self with a splintering and crashing of disintegrating wood.
My last thought before I lost consciousness was, Please let him be alive, and my first words on regaining consciousness inside the tent where I now lie were, “Is he alive?”
iii
“Is who alive?” asked the doctor, who had a distinguished-looking moustache and an accent that suggested he was higher born than most.
“The pointy-eared man,” I said, and tried to raise myself upright, only to find his hand on my chest guiding me back down to a lying position.
“I’m afraid I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” he said, not unkindly. “I hear that you are acquainted with the lieutenant-colonel. Perhaps he will be able to explain everything to you when he arrives in the morning.”
Thus, I now sit here, writing up the events of the day and awaiting my audience with Braddock . . .
17 JULY 1747
He looked like a larger, smarter version of his men, with all of the bearing that his rank implied. His shining black boots were up to the knee. He wore a frock coat with white trim over a dark, buttoned-up tunic, a white scarf at his neck, and on a thick brown leather belt at his waist hung his sword.
His hair was pulled back and tied with a black ribbon. He tossed his hat to a small table at the side of the bed where I lay, put his hands to his hips and regarded me with that deep, colourless gaze I knew well.
“Kenway,” he said simply, “Reginald did not send word that you were due to be joining me here.”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, Edward,” I said, suddenly feeling young in his presence, intimidated almost.
“I see,” he said. “You thought you’d just drop in, did you?”
“How long have I been here?” I asked. “How many days have passed?”
“Three,” replied Braddock. “Dr. Tennant was concerned you might develop a fever. According to him, a feebler man might not have been able to fight it off. You’re lucky to be alive, Kenway. Not every man gets to escape both the gallows and a fever. Fortunate for you, too, that I was informed about one of the men to be hanged calling for me personally; otherwise, my men might well have finished the job. You see how we punish wrongdoers.”
I put my hand to my neck, which was bandaged from the fight with Pointy-Ears and still painful from the rope burn. “Yes, Edward, I have had first-hand experience of how you treat your men.”
He sighed, waved away Dr. Tennant, who retired, closing the flaps of the tent behind him, then sat heavily, putting one boot to the bed as though to stake his claim on it. “Not my men, Kenway. Criminals. You were delivered to us by the Dutch in the company of a deserter, a man who had gone absent with a companion. Naturally, you were assumed to be the companion.”
“And what of him, Edward? What of the man I was with?”
“This is the man you’ve been asking about, is it? The one Dr. Tennant tells me you’re especially interested in, a—what did he say now?—‘a pointy-eared man.’” He couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice as he said it.
“That man, Edward—he was there the night of the attack on my home. He’s one of the men we have been seeking these last twelve years.” I looked at him hard. “And I find him enlisted in your army.”
“Indeed—in my army. And what of it?”
“A coincidence, don’t you think?”
Braddock always wore a scowl, but now it deepened. “Why don’t you forget the insinuations, boy, and tell me what’s really on your mind. Where is Reginald, by the way?”
“I left him in the Black Forest. No doubt he’s halfway home by now.”
“To continue his research into myths and old wives’ tales?” said Braddock with a contemptuous flick of his eyes. Him doing that made me feel strangely loyal to Reginald and his investigations, despite my own misgivings.
“Reginald believes that if we were able to unlock the secrets of the storehouse, the Order would be the most powerful it has been since the Holy Wars, perhaps ever. We would be poised to rule completely.”
He gave a slightly tired, disgusted look. “If you really believe that then you’re as foolish and idealistic as he is. We don’t need magic and tricks to persuade people to our cause, we need steel.”
“Why not use both?” I reasoned.
He leaned forward. “Because one of them is a rank waste of time, that’s why.”
I met his gaze. “That’s as may be. However I don’t think the best way to win men’s hearts and minds is to execute them, do you?”
“Again. Scum.”
“And has he been put to death?”
“Your friend with—sorry, what was it?—‘pointy ears.’”
“Your ridicule means nothing to me, Edward. Your ridicule means as much to me as your respect, which is nothing. You may think you tolerate me only because of Reginald—well, I can assure you the feeling is entirely mutual. Now, tell me, the pointy-eared man, is he dead?”
“He died on the scaffold, Kenway. He died the death he deserved.”
I closed my eyes and for a second lay there aware of nothing but my own . . . what? Some evil, boiling broth of grief, anger and frustration; of mistrust and doubt. Aware, also, of Braddock’s foot on my bed and wishing I could lash out with a sword and purge him from my life for ever.
That was his way, though, wasn’t it? It wasn’t my way.
“So he was there that night, was he?” asked Braddock, and did he have a slightly mocking tone in his voice? “He was one of those responsible for killing your father, and all of this time he’s been among us, and we never knew. A bitter irony, wouldn’t you say, Haytham?”
“Indeed. An irony or a coincidence.”
“Be careful, boy, there’s no Reginald here to talk you out of trouble now, you know.”
“What was his name?”
“Like hundreds of men in my army his name was Tom Smith—Tom Smith of the country; much more about them we don’t know. On the run, probably from the magistrates, or perhaps having killed his landlord’s son in a duel, or deflowered a landowner’s daughter, or perhaps romped with his wife. Who’s to say? We don’t ask questions. If you were to ask does it surprise me that one of the men we hunted was here among my army all of the time, then my answer would be no.”
“Did he have associates in the army? Somebody that I could talk to?”
Slowly, Braddock took his foot from my cot. “As a fellow Knight you are free to enjoy my hospitality here and you may of course conduct your own enquiries. I hope that in return I can also call upon your assistance in our endeavours.”
“And what might they be?” I asked.
“The French have laid siege to the fortress of Bergen op Zoom. Inside are our allies: the Dutch, Austrians, Hanoverians and Hessians, and of course the British. The French have already opened the trenches and are digging a second set of parallel trenches. They will soon begin their bombardment of the fortress. They will be trying to take it before the rains. They think it will give them a gateway to the Netherlands, and the Allies feel that the fortress must be held at all costs. We need every man we can get. You see now why we do not tolerate deserters. Do you have a heart for the battle, Kenway, or are you so focused on revenge that you cannot help us any more?”
PART III
1753, SIX YEARS LATER
7 JUNE 1753
i
“I have a job for you,” said Reginald.
I nodded, expecting as much. It had been a long time since I’d last seen him and I’d had the feeling that his request to meet wasn’t just an excuse to catch up on tittle-tattle, even if the venue was White’s, where we sat supping an ale each, an attentive and—it hadn’t escaped my notice—buxom waitress keen to bring us more.
To the left of us a table of gentlemen—the infamous “gamesters of White’s”—were playing a rowdy game of dice, but otherwise the house was empty.
I hadn’t seen him since that day in the Black Forest, six years ago, and a lot had happened since. Joining Braddock
in the Dutch Republic, I’d served with the Coldstreams at the Siege of Bergen op Zoom, then until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle the following year, which marked the end of that war. After that I’d remained with them on several peace-keeping campaigns, which had kept me away from Reginald, whose correspondence arrived either from London or from the chateau in France. Aware that my own letters could be read before they were sent, I’d kept my correspondence vague while privately looking forward to the moment I could at last sit down with Reginald and talk over my fears.
But, returning to London, and once again taking up residence at Queen Anne’s Square, I found he was not available. That was what I was told: he had been sequestered with his books—he and John Harrison, another Knight of the Order, and one who seemingly was as obsessed with temples, ancient storehouses and ghostly beings from the past as he was.
“Do you remember we came here for my eighth birthday?” I said, wanting, somehow, to put off the moment when I learnt the identity of the person I would have to kill. “Do you remember what happened outside, the hot-headed suitor prepared to dispense summary justice on the street?”
He nodded. “People change, Haytham.”
“Indeed—you have. You’ve been mainly preoccupied with your investigations into the first civilization,” I said.
“I’m so close now, Haytham,” he said, as if the thought of it shrugged off a weary shroud he’d been wearing.
“Were you ever able to decypher Vedomir’s journal?”
He frowned. “No, worst luck, and not for want of trying, I can tell you. Or should I say ‘not yet,’ because there is a decypherer, an Italian Assassin affiliate—a woman, would you believe? We have her at the French chateau, deep within the forest, but she says she needs her son to help her decypher the book, and her son has been missing these past few years. Personally, I doubt what she says and think she could very well decypher the journal herself if she chose. I think she’s using us to help reunite her with her son. But she has agreed to work on the journal if we locate him and, finally, we have.”
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