Assassin's Creed: Forsaken (11 page)

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 itself 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 J
ULY
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 J
UNE
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.”

“Where?”

“Where you will soon be going to recover him: Corsica.”

So I’d been wrong. Not an assassination. I would be minding a child.

“What?” he said, at the look on my face. “You think it below you? Quite the opposite, Haytham. This is the most important task I have ever given you.”

“No, Reginald”—I sighed—“it’s not; it simply appears that way in your thinking.”

“Oh? What are you saying?”

“That perhaps your interest in this has meant you have neglected affairs elsewhere. Perhaps you have let certain other matters become out of control . . .”

Perplexed, he said, “What ‘matters’?”

“Edward Braddock.”

He looked surprised. “I see. Well, is there something you want to tell me about him? Something you’ve been keeping from me?”

I indicated for more ales and our waitress brought them over, set them down with a smile then walked away with her hips swaying.

“What has Braddock told you of his movements in recent years?” I asked Reginald.

“I have heard very little from him, seen him even less,” he replied. “In the last six years we’ve met just once, as far as I can recall and his communications have become increasingly sporadic. He disapproves of my interest in Those Who Came Before and, unlike you, has not kept his objections to himself. It appears we differ greatly on how best to spread the Templar message. As a result, no, I know very little of him; in fact, if I wanted to know about Edward, I dare say I’d ask someone who has been with him during his campaigns—” He gave a sardonic look. “Where might I find such a person, do you think?”

“You’d be a fool to ask me,” I chortled. “You know full well that, where Braddock is concerned, I’m not an especially impartial observer. I began by disliking the man and now like him even less, but in the absence of any more objective observations, here’s mine: he has become a tyrant.”

“How so?”

“Cruelty, mainly. To the men suffering under him, but also to innocents. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, for the first time, in the Dutch Republic.”

“How Edward treats his men is his business,” said Reginald with a shrug. “Men respond to discipline, Haytham, you know that.”

I shook my head. “There was one particular incident, Reginald, on the last day of the siege.”

Reginald settled back to listen: “Go on . . .” as I continued.

“We were retreating. Dutch soldiers were shaking their fists at us, cursing King George for not sending more of his men to help relieve the fortress. Why more men had not arrived I don’t know. Would they have even made any difference? Again, I don’t know. I’m not sure any of us who were stationed within those pentagonal walls knew how to contend with a French onslaught that was as committed as it was brutal, and as ruthless as it was sustained.

“Braddock had been right: the French had dug their parallel trench lines and begun their bombardment of the city, pressing close to the fortress walls, and they were on them by September, when they dug mines beneath the fortifications and destroyed them.

“We made attacks outside the walls to try to break the siege, all to no avail until, on 18 September, the French broke through—at four in the morning, if memory serves. They caught the Allied forces quite literally napping, and we were overrun before we knew it. The French were slaughtering the entire garrison. We know, of course, that eventually they broke free of their command and inflicted even worse damage on the poor inhabitants of that town, but the carnage had already begun. Edward had secured a skiff at the port, and had long since decided that, were a day to come when the French broke through, he would use it to evacuate his men. That day had arrived.

“A band of us made our way to the port, where we began to oversee the loading of men and supplies on to the skiff. We kept a small force at the port walls to keep any marauding French troops back, while Edward, I and others stood by the gang-board, overseeing the loading of men and supplies on to the skiff. We took some fourteen hundred men to the fortress at Bergen op Zoom, but the months of fighting had depleted numbers by about half. There was room on the skiff. Not lots of it—it wasn’t as though we could have taken a great many passengers; certainly not the numbers who needed to evacuate from the fortress—but there was space.” I looked hard at Reginald. “We could have taken them, is what I’m saying.”

“Could have taken whom, Haytham?”

I took a long pull on my ale. “There was a family who approached us on the port. Included in their number was an old man who could barely walk, as well as children. From among them came a young man, who approached us and asked me if we had room on the boat. I nodded yes—I saw no reason why not—and indicated to Braddock, but instead of waving them aboard as I expected, he held up a hand and ordered them off the port, beckoning his men to board the boat more quickly. The young man was as surprised as I was, and I opened my mouth to protest, but he got there before me; his face darkened and he said something to Braddock that I didn’t catch, but was obviously an insult of some kind.

“Braddock told me later that the insult was ‘craven.’ Hardly the most insulting affront, certainly not worth what happened next, which was that Braddock drew his sword and plunged it into the young man where he stood.

“Braddock kept a small party of the men nearby at most times. His two regular companions were the executioner, Slater, and his assistant—his new assistant, I should say. I killed the old one. These men, you might almost have called them bodyguards. Certainly they were much closer to him than I was. Whether or not they had his ear I couldn’t say, but they were fiercely loyal and protective and were rushing forward even as the young man’s body fell. They set about the family, Reginald, Braddock and these two of his men, and cut them down, every single one of them: the two men, an older woman, a younger woman, and of course the children, one of them an infant, one of them a babe in arms . . .” I felt my jaw clench. “It was a massacre, Reginald, the worst atrocity of war I have seen—and I’m afraid I’ve seen a great many.”

He nodded gravely. “I see. Naturally, this hardened your heart against Edward.”

I scoffed. “Of course—of course it has. We are all men of war, Reginald, but we are not barbarians.”

“I see, I see.”

“Do you? Do you see at last? That Braddock is out of control?”

“Steady on, Haytham. ‘Out of control’? The red mist descending is one thing. ‘Out of control’ is quite another.”

“He treats his men like slaves, Reginald.”

He shrugged. “So? They’re British soldiers—they expect to be treated like slaves.”

“I think he is moving away from us. These men he has serving him, they’re not Templars, they’re free agents.”

Reginald nodded. “The two men in the Black Forest. Were these men part of Braddock’s inner circle?”

I looked at him. I watched him very carefully as I lied: “I don’t know.”

There was a long pause and, to avoid meeting his eye, I took a long drink on my ale and pretended to admire the waitress, pleased to have the subject changed when Reginald at last leaned forward to give me more details of my forthcoming journey to Corsica.

ii

Reginald and I parted outside White’s and went to our carriages. When my carriage was some distance away I tapped on the ceiling to stop, and my driver climbed down, looked left and right to check that nobody was watching, then opened the door and joined me inside. He sat opposite me and removed his hat, placing it on the seat beside him and regarding me with bright, curious eyes.

“Well, Master Haytham?” he said.

I looked at him, took a deep breath and stared out of the window. “I’m due to leave by sea tonight. We will return to Queen Anne’s Square, where I will pack, then straight to the docks, if you would.”

He doffed an imaginary cap. “At your service, Mr. Kenway, sir, I’m getting quite used to this driving lark. Lots of waiting around, mind, could do without all that, but otherwise, well, at least you ain’t got Frenchmen shooting at you, or your own officers shooting at you. In fact, I’d say the lack of blokes shooting at you is a real perk of the job.”

He could be quite tiresome sometimes. “Quite so, Holden,” I said, with a frown that was intended to shut him up, although chance would be a fine thing.

“Well, anyway, sir, did you learn anything?”

“I’m afraid nothing concrete.”

I looked out of the window, wrestling with feelings of doubt, guilt and disloyalty, wondering if there was anyone I truly trusted—anyone to whom I remained truly loyal now.

Ironically, the person I trusted most was Holden.

I had met him while in the Dutch Republic. Braddock had been as good as his word and allowed me to move among his men, asking them if they knew anything of the “Tom Smith” who had met his end on the scaffold, but I wasn’t surprised when my investigations proved fruitless. No man I asked would even admit to knowing this Smith, if indeed Smith was his name—until, one night, I heard a movement at the door of my tent and sat up in my cot in time to see a figure appear.

He was young, in his late twenties, with close-cropped, gingery hair and an easy, impish smile. This, it would turn out, was Private Jim Holden, a London man, a good man who wanted to see justice done. His brother had been one of those who had been hanged the same day I almost met my own end. He had been executed for the crime of stealing stew—that was all he had done, steal a bowlful of stew because he was starving; a flogging offence, at worst, but they hanged him. His biggest mistake, it seemed, had been to steal the stew from one of Braddock’s own men, one of his private mercenary force.

This was what Holden told me: that the fifteen-hundred-strong force of Coldstream Guards was made up mainly of British Army soldiers like himself, but that there was within that a smaller cadre of men personally selected by Braddock: mercenaries. These mercenaries included Slater and his assistant—and, more worryingly, the two men who had ridden to the Black Forest.

None of these men wore the ring of the Order. They were thugs, brutes. I wondered why—why Braddock chose men of this stripe for his inner circle, and not Templar Knights? The more time I’d spent with him, the more I thought I had my answer: he was moving away from the Order.

I looked back at Holden now. I had protested that night, but he was a man who had glimpsed the corruption at the heart of Braddock’s organization. He was a man who wanted to see justice for his brother and, as a result, no amount of my protesting made the slightest bit of difference. He was going to help me whether I liked it or not.

I had agreed, but on the understanding that his assistance was kept secret at all times. In the hope of hoodwinking those who always seemed one step ahead of me, I needed it to appear as though I’d dropped the matter of finding my father’s killers—so that they might no longer be one step ahead of me.

Thus, when we left the Dutch Republic Holden took on the title of my gentleman’s gentleman, my driver, and, to all intents and purposes, as far as the outside world was concerned, that’s exactly what he was. Nobody knew that in fact he was carrying out investigations on my behalf. Not even Reginald knew that.

Perhaps
especially
not Reginald.

Holden saw the guilt written across my face.

“Sir, it ain’t lies you’re telling Mr. Birch. All you’re doing is what he’s been doing, which is withholding certain bits of information, just until you’ve satisfied yourself that his name is clear—and I’m sure it will be, sir. I’m sure it will be, him being your oldest friend, sir.”