Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (25 page)

A lot can happen in six months. But in the six months to November 1720, it happened to other people. Me, I was mouldering in jail in Kingston. While Bartholomew Roberts became the most feared pirate of the Caribbean, commanding a squadron of four vessels, his flagship
The Royal Fortune
at its head, I was trying and failing to sleep on a roll on the floor of a cell so cramped I couldn’t lie straight. I was picking maggots from my food and holding my nose to get it down. I was drinking dirty water and praying it wouldn’t kill me. I was watching the striped grey light from the bars of the door and listening to the clamour of the jail: the curses; night-time screams; a constant clanging that never ceased, as though someone, somewhere, spent all day and night rattling a cup along the bars; and, sometimes, I was listening to my own voice, just to remind myself that I was still alive, when I would curse my luck, curse Roberts, curse Templars, curse my crew . . .

I had been betrayed—by Roberts, of course, though that was no surprise—but also by the
Jackdaw
. My time in jail gave me the distance I needed to see how my obsession with The Observatory had blinded me to the needs of my men, and I stopped blaming them for leaving me at Long Bay. I’d decided if I was lucky enough to see them again I’d greet them like brothers and tell them I bore no grudge and offer apologies of my own. Even so. The image of the
Jackdaw
’s sailing away without me burned like a brand on my brain.

Not for much longer though. No doubt my trial approached—though I had yet to hear, of course. And after my trial would come my hanging.

Yesterday they had one. A pirate hanging, I mean. The trial was held in Spanish Town, and five of the men tried went to the gallows the day after at Gallows Point. They hanged the other six the next day in Kingston.

One of those they hung yesterday was “Captain John Rackham,” the man we all knew as Calico Jack.

Poor old Jack. Not a good man but not an especially bad one, either. And who can say fairer than that? I hoped he’d managed to get enough liquor down him before they sent him to the gallows. Keep him warm for the journey to the other side.

Thing was, Calico Jack had a couple of lieutenants, and their trial was to start this very day. I was due to be brought up into the courtroom, in fact, where they said I might be needed as a witness although they hadn’t said whether for the defence or the prosecution.

The two lieutenants, you see, were Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

And therein lies a tale. I’d witnessed the story’s beginning with what I saw at The Observatory: Calico Jack and Anne Bonny were lovers. Jack had worked his charm, tempted her away from James (that scurvy toad) and taken her to sea.

On board she dressed as a man and she wasn’t the only one. Mary Read was aboard ship too, dressed as James Kidd, and the three of them—Calico Jack, Anne and Mary—were all in on it. The two women wore men’s jackets, long trousers and scarves around their necks. They carried pistols and cutlasses and were as fearsome as any man—and more dangerous, what with having more to prove.

For a while they sailed the neighbourhood terrorizing merchant ships, until earlier in the year, when they stopped off at New Providence. There on August 22, the year of our Lord 1720, Rackham and a load of his crew, including Anne and Mary, stole a sloop called the
William
from Nassau harbour.

Of course Rogers knew exactly who was responsible. He issued a proclamation and despatched a sloop crammed with his own men to catch Calico Jack and his crew.

But old Calico Jack was on a roll, and in between splicing the main brace, which is to say carousing, he attacked fishing boats and merchant ships and a schooner.

Rogers didn’t like that. He sent a second vessel after him.

But old Calico Jack didn’t care, and he continued his piracy westward until the western tip of Jamaica, where he encountered a privateer by the name of Captain Barnet, who saw the opportunity to make a bit of money in return for Jack’s hide.

Sure enough, Jack was boarded and his crew surrendered, all apart from Mary and Anne, that was. From what I heard Jack and his crew had caroused themselves stupid and were drunk or passed out when Barnet’s men attacked. Like hell-cats, Mary and Anne cursed out the crew and fought with pistols and swords but were overcome, and the whole lot of them were taken across the island to Spanish Town jail.

Like I say, they’d tried and hanged Jack already.

Now it was the turn of Anne and Mary.

I hadn’t seen many court-rooms in my life, thank God, but even so, I’d never seen one as busy as this. My guards led me up a set of stone steps to a barred door, opened it, shoved me out into the gallery and bade me sit. I gave them a puzzled look.
What’s going on?
But they ignored me and stood with their backs to the wall, muskets at the ready in case I made a break for it.

But made a break where? My hands were manacled, men were wedged into the gallery seats all around: spectators, witnesses . . . all of them come to lay eyes on the two infamous women pirates—Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

They stood together before the judge, who glared at them and banged his gavel.

“The charges, sir, I will hear them again,” he called to the bailiff, who stood and cleared his throat.

“His Majesty’s Court contends that the defendants, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, did piratically, feloniously, and in a hostile manner, attack, engage, and take seven certain fishing boats.”

During the minor uproar that followed I sensed somebody sit behind me. Two people, in fact—but paid them little mind.

“Secondly,” continued the bailiff, “this Court contends that the defendants lurked upon the high seas and did set upon, shoot at, and take two certain merchant sloops, thus putting the captains and their crews in corporeal fear of their lives.”

Then matters of court receded into the background as one of the men sitting behind me leaned forward and spoke.

“Edward James Kenway . . .” I recognized the voice of Woodes Rogers at once. “Born in Swansea to an English father and Welsh mother. Married at eighteen to Miss Caroline Scott, now estranged.”

I lifted my manacles and shifted around in the seat. Neither of my guards with their muskets had moved, but they watched us carefully. Beside Rogers, every inch the man of rank, sat Laureano Torres, dapper and composed in the balmy heat of the court-room. They weren’t there on pirate-hunting business, though. They were there on Templar business.

“She is a beautiful woman, I’m told,” said Torres, with a nod in greeting.

“If you touch her, you bastards . . .” I snarled.

Rogers leaned forward. I felt a nudge at my shirt and looked down to see the muzzle of his pistol in my side. In the year since my fall from The Observatory I had by some miracle avoided gangrene or infection, but the wound had never quite healed. He didn’t know about it, of course, he couldn’t have. But still, somehow he’d managed to prod it with the barrel of his gun, making me wince.

“If you know The Observatory’s location, tell us now and you’ll be out of here in a flash,” said Rogers.

Of course.
That was why I hadn’t felt the burn of the hangman’s noose so far.

“Rogers can hold these British hounds at bay for a time,” said Torres, “but this will be your fate if you fail to cooperate.” He was gesturing out to the court-room, where the judge was speaking; where witnesses were telling of the awful things Anne and Mary had done.

Their warning over, Torres and Rogers stood, just as a female witness described in breathless detail how she’d been attacked by the two women pirates. She’d known they were women, she said, “by the largeness of their breasts,” and the court liked that. The court laughed at that until the laughter was silenced by the rap of the judge’s gavel, the sound drowning out the slam of the door behind Rogers and Torres.

Anne and Mary, meanwhile, hadn’t said a word.
What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?
I’d never known them lost for words before, but there they were, silent as the grave. Tales of their derring-do were told, and they never once butted in to correct anything egregious, nor even said a peep when the Court found them guilty. Even when they were asked if they could offer any reason why sentence of death should not be passed. Nothing.

So the judge, not knowing the two ladies, and perhaps taking them for the reticent sort, delivered his sentence: death by hanging.

And then—and only then—did they open their mouths.

“Milord, we plead our bellies,” said Mary Read, breaking their silence.

“What?”
said the judge, paling.

“We are pregnant,” said Anne Bonny.

There was an uproar.

I wondered if both the sprogs belonged to Calico Jack, the old devil.

“You can’t hang a woman quick with child, can ye?” called Anne over the noise.

The court-room was in turmoil. As if anticipating my thoughts, one of the guards behind nudged me with his musket barrel.
Don’t even think about it
.

“Quiet! Quiet!” called the judge. “If what you claim is true, then your executions will be stayed, but only until your terms are up.”

“Then I’ll be pregnant the next time you come knocking!” roared Anne.

That was the Anne I remembered, with the face of an angel and the mouth of the roughest jack-tar. And she had the court-room in an uproar again, as the red-faced judge hammered at the bench with his gavel and ordered them removed, and the session broke up in disarray.

“Edward Kenway. Do you remember you once threatened to cut off my lips and feed them to me?”

Laureano Torres’s face appeared from the gloom outside my prison-cell door, framed by the window, divided by the bars.

“I didn’t do it, though,” I reminded him, my disused voice croaking.

“But you would have done.”

True
.

“But I didn’t.”

He smiled. “The typical terror tactics of a pirate: unsophisticated and unsubtle. What say you, Rogers?”

He lingered there too. Woodes Rogers, the great pirate hunter. Hanging about near my cell door.

“Is that why you’ve been denying me food and water?” I rasped.

“Oh”—Torres chuckled—“but there is much, much more to come. We have the little matter of The Observatory’s location to extract. We have the little matter of what you did to Hornigold. Come, let us show you what lies in store.
Guards
.”

Two men arrived, the same pair of Templar stooges who’d escorted me to the court-room. Torres and Rogers left as I was manacled and leg-irons were fitted to me. Then, with my boots dragging on the flags, they hauled me out of the cell and along the passageway, out into the prison courtyard, where I blinked in the blinding sun, breathed fresh air for the first time in weeks, then, to my surprise, out of the main prison-gates.

“Where are you taking me?” I gasped. The light of the sun was too blinding. I couldn’t open my eyes. It felt as though they were glued together.

There was no reply. I could hear the sounds of Kingston. Daily life carrying on as normal around me.

“How much are they paying you?” I tried to say. “Whatever it is, let me go, and I’ll double it.”

They came to a halt.

“Good man, good man,” I mumbled. “I can make you rich. Just get me . . .”

A fist smashed into my face, splitting my lip, breaking something in my nose that began to gush blood. I coughed and groaned. As my head lolled back, a face came close to mine.

“Shut. Up.”

I blinked, trying to focus on him, trying to remember his face.

“I’ll get you for that,” I murmured. Blood or saliva ran from my mouth. “You mark my words, mate.”

“Shut up, or next time it’ll be the point of my sword.”

I chuckled. “You’re full of shit, mate. Your master wants me alive. Kill me and you’ll be taking my place in that cell. Or worse.”

Through a veil of pain, blood and piercing sunlight, I saw his expression darken. “We’ll see about that,” he snarled. “We’ll see about that.”

The journey continued, me spitting blood, trying to clear my head and mostly failing until we came to what looked like the foot of a ladder. I heard the murmured voices of Torres and Rogers, then a squeaking sound coming from just overhead, and when I raised my chin and cast my eyes upwards, what I saw was a gibbet. One of the stooges had climbed the ladder and unlocked it, and the door opened with a complaint of rusty metal. I felt the sun beat down upon me. I could die in there. In the sun.

I tried to say something, to explain that I was parched and could die in the sun and if I did that—if I died—then they’d never find out where The Observatory was. Only Black Bart would know, and what a terrifying thought that was—Black Bart in charge of all that power.

He’s doing that right now, isn’t he? That’s how he got to be so successful.

But I never got the chance to say it because they’d locked me in the gibbet to let the sun do its work. Let it slowly cook me alive.

At sundown my two friends came to fetch me and take me back to my cell. My reward for surviving was water, a bowl of it on my cell floor, just enough to dab on my lips, keep me alive, to use on the blisters and pustules brought up by the sun.

Rogers and Torres came. “Where is it? Where is The Observatory?” they demanded.

With cracked, desiccated lips I smiled at them but said nothing.

He’s robbing you blind, isn’t he? Roberts, I mean. He’s destroying all your plans.

“You want to go back there tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I whispered. “Sure. I could do with the fresh air.”

It wasn’t every day. Some days I stayed in my cell. Some days they only hung me for a few hours.

“Where is it? Where is The Observatory?”

Some days they left me until well after nightfall. But it wasn’t so bad when the sun went in. I was still crumpled into the gibbet like a man stuck in a privy, every muscle and bone shrieking in agony; I was still dying of thirst and hunger, my sunburnt flesh flaming. But still, it wasn’t so bad. At least the sun had gone in.

“Where is it? Where is The Observatory?”

Every day I’m up there he’s a bigger pain in the arse, isn’t he? Every day wasted is Black Bart’s triumph over the Templars. There’s that, at least.

“
You want to go back there tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

I wasn’t sure I could take another day. In a strange way I was trusting them not to kill me. I was trusting in
my
resolve being greater than theirs. I was trusting in my own inner strength.

But for another day I hung there, crouched and crumpled in the gibbet. Night fell again, and I heard the guards taunting me, and I heard them gloating about Calico Jack, and how Charles Vane had been arrested.

Charles Vane,
I thought.
Charles Vane
 . . .
I remember him. He tried to kill me. Or did I try to kill him?

Then the sounds of a short, pitched battle, bodies falling, muffled groans. And then a voice.

“Good morning, Captain Kenway. I have a gift for you.”

Very, very slowly, I opened my eyes. On the ground below me, painted grey in the dead light of the day, were two bodies. My friends, the Templar stooges. Both had slashed throats. A pair of crimson smiles adorned their necks.

Crouching next to them, rifling through their tunics for the gibbet keys, was the Assassin Ah Tabai.

I assumed I’d never see him again. After all, the Assassin Ah Tabai was not the greatest supporter of Edward Kenway. He probably would just as soon have slit
my
throat as rescue me from jail.

Fortunately for me, he chose to rescue me from jail.

But—“Do not mistake my purpose here,” he said, climbing the ladder, finding the right key for the lock and being good enough to catch me when I almost fell forward from the gibbet. He had a bulging leather flask and held the teat to my lips. As I gulped I felt tears of relief and gratitude pouring down my cheeks.

“I have come for Anne and Mary,” he was saying as he helped me down the ladder. “You owe me nothing for this. But if you would lend me your aid, I can promise you safe passage from this place.”

I had collapsed to the ground, where Ah Tabai allowed me to gather myself, handing me the leather flask once again.

“I’ll need weapons,” I said after some minutes.

He smiled and handed me a hidden blade. It was no small thing for an Assassin to hand an interloper a blade, and as I crouched on the ground and strapped it on I realized I was being honoured in some way. The thought gave me strength.

I stood and engaged the steel, worked the action of the blade, then slid it home. It was time—time to go and save Anne and Mary.