And then, just as suddenly, a cry went up as the crew from both ships recovered their senses. I was ahead of Connor and had already dashed to the prow of the Aquila, swinging to the deck of Benjamin’s schooner, where I hit the wood with extended blade and killed the first crew member who raised a weapon towards me, stabbing him and swinging his writhing body overboard.
Spotting the hatch, I ran to it, hauled out a sailor trying to escape and punched the blade into his chest before taking the steps. With a final look at the devastation I’d caused, as the two huge ships locked together and began slowly to turn in the ocean, I slammed the hatch closed behind me.
From above came the thunder of feet on deck, the muted screams and gun blasts of battle and the thud of bodies hitting the wood. Below the deck, there was a strange, damp, almost eerie silence. But, from further along, I realized, came the slosh and drip that told me the schooner was taking on water. I grabbed a wooden strut as it suddenly listed and, somewhere, the drip of water became a constant flow. How long would it remain afloat? I wondered.
Meantime, I saw what Connor would soon discover: that the supplies we’d spent so long in pursuit of were non-existent—or on this ship anyway.
Just as I was absorbing this, I heard a noise and twisted to see Benjamin Church holding a pistol on me two-handed, squinting along its sights.
“Hello, Haytham,” he snarled, and pulled the trigger.
He was good. I knew that. It was why he pulled the trigger right away, to put me down while he still had the element of surprise; and why he didn’t aim directly for me but at a spot slightly to my right, because I’m a right-sided fighter and would naturally dive to my strongest side.
But of course I knew that because I’d trained him. And his shot smacked harmlessly into the hull when I dived, not to the right but to the left, rolled then came to my feet, pounced and was upon him before he could draw his sword. With a fistful of his shirt in my hand I snatched his pistol and tossed it away.
“We had a dream, Benjamin,” I snarled into his face, “a dream you sought to destroy. And for that, my fallen friend, you will be made to pay.”
I kneed him in the groin. When he doubled over, gasping with pain, I drove my fist into his abdomen then followed it up with a punch to the jaw that was hard enough to send two bloodied teeth skittering along the floor.
I let him drop, and he fell to where the wood was already wet, his face splashing into a wash of incoming seawater. Again the ship lurched but, for the moment, I didn’t care. When Benjamin tried to get to his hands and knees I lashed out with my boot, kicking whatever breath he had left out of him. Next I grabbed a length of rope and hauled him to his feet, shoved him against a barrel then wound it around him, securing him fast. His head dropped forward, trails of blood, spit and snot spooling slowly to the wood below. I stood back, took hold of his hair then looked into his eyes, drove a fist into his face and heard the crunch of his breaking nose then stood back, shaking the blood from my knuckles.
“Enough!” cried Connor from behind me, and I turned to see him staring at me, and then at Benjamin, with a disgusted look on his face.
“We came here for a reason . . .” he said.
I shook my head. “Different reasons, it seems.”
But Connor pushed past me and waded through water, now ankle deep, to Benjamin, who regarded him with defiance in his bruised and bloodshot eyes.
“Where are the supplies you stole?” Connor demanded.
Benjamin spat. “Go to hell.” And then, incredibly, began to sing: “Rule Britannia.”
I stepped forward. “Shut your mouth, Church.”
Not that it stopped him. He continued singing.
“Connor,” I said, “get what you need from him and let’s be done with this.”
And at last Connor stepped forward, his blade engaged, and held it to Benjamin’s throat.
“I ask again,” said Connor. “Where is your cargo?”
Benjamin looked at him and blinked. For a moment I thought his next move would be to insult or spit at Connor, but instead he began to speak. “On the island yonder, waiting to be transported. But you’ve no right to it. It isn’t yours.”
“No, not mine,” said Connor. “Those supplies are meant for men and women who believe in something bigger than themselves, who fight and die that one day they may live free from tyranny such as yours.”
Benjamin smiled sadly. “Are these the same men and women who fight with muskets forged from British steel? Who bind their wounds with bandages sown by British hands? How convenient for them that we do the work. They reap the rewards.”
“You spin a story to excuse your crimes. As though you’re the innocent one and they the thieves,” argued Connor.
“It’s all a matter of perspective. There is no single path through life that is right and fair and does no harm. Do you truly think the Crown has no cause? No right to feel betrayed? You should know better than this, dedicated as you are to fighting Templars—who themselves see their work as just. Think on that the next time you insist that your work alone befits the greater good. Your enemy would beg to differ—and would not be without cause.”
“Your words may have been sincere,” whispered Connor, “but it does not make them true.”
And he finished him.
“You did well,” I said as Benjamin’s chin dropped to his chest and his blood splashed to the water that continued to rise. “His passing is a boon for us both. Come on. I suppose you’ll want my help retrieving everything from the island . . .”
16 JUNE 1778
i
It had been months since I’d last seen him, yet I cannot deny I thought of him often. When I did, I thought, What hope is there for us? Me, a Templar—a Templar forged in the crucible of treachery, but a Templar nevertheless—and him an Assassin, created by the butchery of the Templars.
Once upon a time, many years ago, I’d dreamed of one day uniting Assassin and Templar, but I was a younger and more idealistic man then. The world had yet to show me its true face. And its true face was unforgiving, cruel and pitiless, barbaric and brutal. There was no place in it for dreams.
And yet, he came to me again, and though he said nothing—not so far anyway—I wondered if the idealism I’d once had lurked behind those eyes, and it was that which brought him once more to my door in New York, seeking answers perhaps, or wanting an end to some doubt that nagged at him.
Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps there was an uncertainty that resided within that young soul after all.
New York was still in the grip of the redcoats, squads of them out on the streets. It was years later, and still nobody had been held responsible for the fire that had plunged the city into a grimy, soot-stained depression. Parts of it were still uninhabitable. Martial law continued, the redcoats’ rule was harsh and the people more resentful than ever. As an outsider I studied the two groups of people, the downtrodden city folk giving hateful looks to the brutal, unruly soldiers. I watched them with a jaundiced eye. And, dutifully, I continued. I worked to try to help win this war, end the occupation, find peace.
I was grilling one of my informants, a wretch named Twitch—because of something he did with his nose—when I saw Connor out of the corner of my eye. I held up a hand to stop him while I continued listening to Twitch, and wondered what he wanted. What business did he have with the man he believed had given the order to kill his mother?
“We need to know what the loyalists are planning if we are to put an end to this,” I said to my man. Connor loitered, overhearing—not that it mattered.
“I’ve tried,” responded Twitch, as his nostrils flared and his eyes darted to Connor, “but the soldiers themselves are told nothing now: only to await orders from above.”
“Then keep digging. Come and find me when you have something worth sharing.”
Twitch nodded, slunk off, and I took a deep breath to face Connor. For a moment or so we regarded one another, and I looked him up and down, his Assassin’s
robes somehow at odds with the young Indian boy beneath, his long dark hair, those piercing eyes—Ziio’s eyes. What lay behind them? I wondered.
Above us, a flock of birds made itself comfortable on the ledge of a building, cawing loudly. Nearby, a patrol of redcoats lounged by a cart to admire passing laundry women, making lewd suggestions and responding to any disapproving looks and tuts with threatening gestures.
“We’re so close to victory,” I told Connor, taking his arm and leading him further down the street, away from the redcoats. “Just a few more well-placed attacks and we can end the civil war and be rid of the Crown.”
An almost smile at the edges of his mouth betrayed a certain satisfaction. “What did you intend?”
“Nothing at the moment—since we’re completely in the dark.”
“I thought Templars had eyes and ears everywhere,” he said, with just a hint of dry humour. Just like his mother.
“We did. Until you started cutting them off.”
He smiled. “Your contact said it was orders from above. It tells us exactly what we need to do: track down other loyalist commanders.”
“The soldiers answer to the Jaegers,” I said. “The Jaegers to the commanders, which means . . . we work our way up the chain.”
I looked up. Not far away, the redcoats were still being lewd, letting down their uniform, the flag and King George. The Jaegers were the link between the army command and the troops on the ground and were supposed to keep the redcoats in check, stop them from aggravating an already hostile populace, but they rarely showed their faces, only if there was real trouble on the streets. Like if someone, say, killed a redcoat. Or two.
From my robes I drew my pistol and pointed it across the street. I saw Connor’s mouth drop open out of the corner of my eye as I took aim at the unruly group of redcoats near the cart, picked one who, even now, was making an obscene suggestion to a woman, who walked past with swishing skirts and her head bowed, blushing beneath her bonnet. And pulled the trigger.
The report of my gun cracked open the day and the redcoat staggered back, a penny-sized hole between his eyes, already beginning to leak dark red blood as his musket dropped and he fell heavily back into a cart and lay still.
For a moment the other redcoats were too shocked to do anything, their heads swinging this way and that as they tried to locate the source of the gunshot while pulling their rifles from their shoulders.
I began to make my way across the street.
“What are you doing?” called Connor after me.
“Kill enough, and the Jaegers will appear,” I told him. “They’ll lead us right back to those in charge”—and as one of the redcoats turned to me and went to jab with his bayonet, I swept the blade across his front, slicing through his white crisscrossed belts, his tunic and his stomach. I laid into the next one straight away, while another, who tried to retreat and find space to raise his weapon and fire, backed straight into Connor and in the next instant was sliding off his blade.
The battle was over, and the street, busy before, was suddenly empty. At the same time I heard bells, and winked. “The Jaegers are out, just as I said they’d be.”
It was a matter of trapping one, a task I was happy to leave to Connor, and he didn’t let me down. In less than an hour we had a letter, and as groups of Jaegers and redcoats ran shouting up and down the streets, angrily searching for the two Assassins—“Assassins, I tell you. They used the blade of the Hashashin”—who had so mercilessly cut down one of their patrols, we took to the roofs, where we sat and read it.
“The letter’s encrypted,” said Connor.
“Not to worry,” I said. “I know the cypher. After all, it’s a Templar invention.”
I read it then explained. “The British command is in disarray. The Howe brothers have resigned and Cornwallis and Clinton have left the city. The leadership that remains has called a meeting at the ruins of Trinity Church. It’s there we should go.”
ii
The Trinity Church was at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. Or, I should say, what was left of the Trinity Church was at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. It had been badly burned in the great fire of September ’76, so badly burned, in fact, that the British hadn’t bothered to try to convert it to use as barracks, or to imprison patriots. Instead they’d constructed a fence and used it for occasions such as this—the meeting of commanders that Connor and I fully intended to join as uninvited guests.
Wall Street and Broadway were both dark. The lamplighters didn’t come here because there were no lamps to light, none in working order anyway. Like everything else within about a mile’s radius of the church, they were blackened and soot-covered, their windows smashed. And what would they illuminate anyway? The greyed-out, broken windows of the surrounding buildings? Empty stone-and-wooden carcasses fit only for habitation by stray dogs and vermin.
Above it all towered the spire of Trinity, and it was there we headed, scaling one of the remaining walls of the church in order to take up position. As we climbed I realized that what the building reminded me of was an enlarged version of my home at Queen Anne’s Square, how it had looked after the fire. And as we crouched in the shadowy alcoves awaiting the arrival of the redcoats, I recalled the day I’d gone back to the house with Reginald and how it had looked. Like the church, its roof had been taken by fire. Like the church, it was a shell, a shadow of its former self. Above us, the stars twinkled in the sky, and I stared at them for a moment through the open roof, until an elbow in my side roused me from my reverie and Connor was indicating down to where officers and redcoats were making their way along the deserted rubble of Wall Street towards the church. As they approached, two men ahead of the squad were pulling a cart and hanging lanterns in the black and brittle branches of the trees, lighting the way. They reached the church and we cast our eyes downwards as they hung more lanterns below. They moved quickly among the truncated columns of the church, where weeds, moss and grass had begun to grow, nature claiming the ruins for herself, and placed lanterns on the font and lectern, then stood to one side as the delegates strode in: three commanders and a squad of soldiers.
Next we were both straining to hear the conversation and having no luck. Instead I counted the guards, twelve of them, but I didn’t think it too many.
“They’re talking in circles,” I hissed to Connor. “We’ll learn nothing, watching as we are.”
“What do you propose?” he replied. “That we get down there and demand answers?”
I looked at him. Grinned. “Well, yes,” I said.
And in the next instant I was climbing down until I was close enough, and jumped down, surprising two of the guards at the rear, who died, their mouths making an O shape.
“Ambush!” went the cry as I piled into two more of the redcoats. From above I heard Connor curse as he leapt from his perch to join me.
I was right. There weren’t too many. The redcoats, as ever, were too reliant on muskets and bayonets. Effective on the battlefield, perhaps, but useless at close-quarters combat, which was where Connor and I excelled. We were fighting well together by now, almost a partnership. Before long, the moss-covered figurines of the burnt-out church sparkled with fresh redcoat blood, the twelve guards were dead and just the three terrified commanders remained, cowering, lips moving in prayer as they prepared to die.
I had something else in mind—a trip to Fort George, to be precise.
iii
In southernmost Manhattan was Fort George. Over 150 years old, from the sea it presented a vast skyline of spires, watchtowers and long barracks buildings that seemed to run across the entire length of the promontory, while inside the towering battlements were expanses of drill square surrounding the tall dormitories and administrative buildings, all of it heavily defended and fortified. A perfect place for the Templars to make their base. A perfect place for us to take the three loyalist commanders.
“What are the British planning?” I asked the first one,
after lashing him to a chair in an interrogation room deep in the bowels of the North End building, where the smell of damp was all-pervasive and where, if you listened carefully, you could just hear the scratching and gnawing of the rats.
“Why should I tell you?” he sneered.
“Because I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
His arms were bound, but he indicated the interrogation room with his chin. “You’ll kill me if I do.”
I smiled. “Many years ago I met a man named Cutter, an expert in torture and the administration of pain, who was able to keep his victims alive for days on end, but in considerable pain, with only . . .” I flicked the mechanism of the blade and it appeared, glinting cruelly in the flickering torchlight.
He looked at it. “You promise me a quick death if I tell you.”
“You have my word.”
So he did, and I kept my word. When it was over I strode out into the passageway outside, where I ignored Connor’s inquisitive look and collected the second prisoner. Back in the cell I tied him to the chair and watched as his eyes went to the body of the first man.
“Your friend refused to tell me what I wanted to know,” I explained, “which is why I slit his throat. Are you prepared to tell me what I want to know?”
Wide-eyed, he gulped, “Look, whatever it is, I can’t tell you—I don’t even know. Maybe the commander . . .”
“Oh, you’re not the man in charge?” I said breezily, and flicked my blade.
“Wait a minute . . .” he blurted, as I moved in back of him. “There is one thing I know . . .”
I stopped. “Go on . . .”
He told me and, when it was over, I thanked him and drew the blade across his throat. As he died, I realized that what I felt was not the righteous fire of one who performs repellent acts in the name of a greater good but a sense of jaded inevitability. Many years ago, my father had taught me about mercy, about clemency. Now I slaughtered prisoners like livestock. This was how corrupt I had become.
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