Assassin's Creed: Underworld (20 page)

Months passed, during which Aubrey stayed in
Freddie Abberline’s rooms and Freddie nursed him back to health. Aubrey had fewer teeth
and spoke differently, as though his tongue was too big for his mouth, and there were other
injuries besides, but he was alive. And there was a lot to be said for that. And he was a good
companion, and Abberline soon found that there was a lot to be said for that too.

One night, a fortnight or so after the beating,
Abberline had brought Aubrey some broth, leaving it on a bedside table, and thinking him asleep
was about to depart when he looked at his friend’s face and saw it wet with tears.

He cleared his throat and looked down at his
stockinged feet. ‘Um, are you all right there, me old mate? You getting a bit of the old
bad-memory gubbins, are you? Thinking back to what happened?’

Aubrey winced with pain as he nodded yes, and
then through broken teeth said, ‘I told them everything, Freddie. It weren’t a lot,
but I sang like a bird.’

Abberline had shrugged. ‘Good luck to
’em. Hope it means more to them than it does to either of us.’

‘But I told them. I told them
everything.’ Aubrey was wracked by a sob, his bruised face crumpling with the shame of it.

‘Hey, hey,’ said
Abberline, perching on the edge of the mattress. He reached for Aubrey’s hand. ‘It
doesn’t matter, mate. Anyway, you had no choice. And look, something tells me that our
friend in robes can look after himself.’

He sat like that for a while, in silence,
grateful for the comfort they each provided. And then Abberline had helped Aubrey with his broth
before taking his leave, telling his friend that he needed his rest.

Meanwhile, Aubrey was listed as missing.
‘Missing, presumed bored of police work and retiring to the Green Man for good’ was
the rumour, but Abberline knew different. He knew that the point of the attack was to send a
message, and to all intents and purposes, he heeded the warning. No more site visits for him. By
complete coincidence the division sergeant had assigned him a different beat, one that took him
nowhere near the rail works. ‘Just in case you get tempted,’ was what he’d
said as he delivered the news.

You’re in it up to your eyeballs,
aren’t you?
was what Abberline had thought, staring with concealed fury across the
table at his division sergeant. But he walked his beat, and when his shift was done he went home
to peel off his uniform, check Aubrey was all right and then ignored the other man’s
warnings and returned to the rail works. Every night, hidden in the shadows. A lone vigil of
what, he didn’t know, but a vigil nevertheless.

Aubrey was up and about by now, albeit with
limited locomotion, and later the two men would sit before the fire, having a chinwag. Abberline
would talk about the case. He was consumed by it. Aubrey talked of little else
but his family and, more to the point, when he would see them again.

‘No, Aubs, I’m sorry,’
Abberline told him, ‘but those geezers left you for dead and if you turn up alive
they’ll want to finish the job. You’re staying here until this thing is
over.’

‘But when will it be over, Freddie?’
said Aubrey. He shifted painfully in his chair. Though his face showed no signs of his ordeal
apart from the criss-crossing of scars left on his cheek by the brass knuckledusters, his
insides had taken a pummelling, and there was a pain in his hip that seemed in no danger of
going. It made it difficult to walk; it even made it difficult to sit still at times, and every
time he winced with the pain of it, his mind went back to an anonymous darkened room and the
relentless thump of fists ramming into a soft body that belonged to him.

Aubrey would never walk the beat again, but
thanks to a combination of the punishers’ carelessness and Abberline’s care he was
alive, and he never forgot to be grateful for that. On the other hand, what was life if it was a
life spent without his loved ones?

‘Just how do you think this whole thing
– whatever this “thing” is – is going to end?’ he said.

Abberline reached towards the fire and gave his
friend a mournful smile. ‘I don’t know, Aubs, is the truth. I don’t rightly
know. But you mark my words, while I can’t lay claim to be on top of the situation,
I’m there or thereabouts. I’ll know when it’s time, and I promise you we
won’t lose a second getting you back to your family.’

They had decided for safety’s sake that his
wife and
children couldn’t know he was alive, but it meant all four
of them lived in purgatory. One day Abberline and Aubrey took a police growler out to Stepney
and sat in the street so Aubrey might catch glimpses of his family through the windows. After
two hours or so it had been too much for him and they had left.

Abberline went to them with money and gifts. He
took them Aubrey’s uniform. There was no light in Mrs Shaw’s eyes now. The visits
were traumatic for her, she said. Every time she saw Abberline standing on the doorstep she
thought the worst. ‘Because I know if he was alive he’d be with you. And when I see
you alone, I think he’s not.’

‘He may still be alive.’ Abberline
told her, ‘There’s always hope.’

It was as though she hadn’t heard him.
‘You know the worst thing? It’s not having a body to bury.’

‘I know, Mrs Shaw, and I’m so, so
sorry,’ said Abberline, and then left, happy to escape the weight of grief for a man who
was not only alive but enjoying the relative comfort and warmth of Abberline’s rooms.
Taking with him the guilt of having to lie.

It was for the greater good. It was for the
safety of them all that Cavanagh and co. thought this particular loose end had been tied. But
still. The guilt.

‘You are to be inducted into the Knights
Templar,’ said Cavanagh. He, Marchant and two of the punishers – Hardy was missing
– had taken The Ghost away from his duties and to a corner of the excavation site, to all
intents and purposes conducting an impromptu works meeting.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said The Ghost. He
bowed his head low, hating himself at that moment. When his eyes returned to Cavanagh he saw
something unreadable in the man’s eyes, like a distant mocking.

‘But first, I have a job for you.’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied The Ghost. He
maintained a blank expression but inside his mind raced and he felt his pulse quicken,
thinking,
this is it
.

Indicating to his men to remain where they were,
Cavanagh took The Ghost’s arm and began to lead him away from the group, towards the
perimeter fence. There The Ghost could see Cavanagh’s Clarence. Tending to the horse was
Hardy, who looked up at them briefly and then returned to brushing the nag’s mane.

Away from the noise, Cavanagh no longer needed to
raise his voice. ‘What I’m about to tell you is information known only to members of
the Knights Templar. You are yet to be inducted and so, by rights, I shouldn’t be
revealing this, but you’ve proved yourself an asset to my operation and
your task is what we might call “time sensitive”. In other words it needs to happen
before the Council can meet to ratify your induction. I am a man of instinct and I prefer to act
on it. I have faith in you, Bharat. I see much of myself in you.’

The Ghost allowed himself a feeling of triumph.
Everything he had done, the months of living in the tunnel, of building a life as Bharat Singh,
had all been leading to this moment.

Cavanagh continued. ‘This dig you’ve
been involved in, perhaps you might have guessed, given my involvement, but there’s more
to it than meets the eye. The railway will of course be finished, and it will of course be a
success, but there is, believe it or not, an ulterior motive behind its construction.’

The Ghost nodded.

‘The Knights Templar in London are in
search of an artefact believed to be buried along the line. Pinpointing its exact location has
proved to be a demanding task. Let’s just say that, in my opinion at least, Lucy
Thorne’s exalted position within the Order is not fully deserved. Certainly not on this
showing.’

‘Lucy Thorne, sir?’

Cavanagh shot him a quick look and The Ghost had
to suppress a nervous swallow. Was the director trying to catch him off-guard?

‘All in good time,’ said Cavanagh.
‘You have the delights of the ruling council to come. For the time being all you need to
know is that Lucy Thorne is among a cadre
of high-ranking Templars whose
job it is to locate the artefact.’

‘This … artefact, sir, what does it
do?’

‘Well, you see, this is the trouble with
scrolls, isn’t it? They’re so damnably ambiguous. The details are left to the
imagination, I’m afraid; the scrolls simply say that great power will come to whoever has
it in their possession. And it may not surprise you to know that I intend to be the one in
possession of it. Who I have at my side when that day comes will very much depend.’

‘I hope it will be me, sir,’ said The
Ghost.

He glanced over to where the Clarence was
tethered. Hardy was replacing the horse brush in the carriage stowage box, but as The Ghost
watched he took something else from the box and slipped it into his pocket.

‘Well, as I say, that will very much
depend,’ said Cavanagh.

The two men walked a few more paces, The Ghost
keeping an eye on Hardy. The punisher seemed to have finished grooming the horse. Now he checked
the harness buckles. And now he was leaving the carriage enclosure and making his way towards
the gate, shouldering a match girl out of his way and kicking awake a navvy who leaned on the
gatepost with a railwayman’s cap pulled over his eyes.

‘On what will it depend, sir?’

‘On how well you perform your
task.’

Hardy was crossing the mudflats some fifty yards
away.

‘And what task is that, sir?’

‘You are to kill Charles
Pearson.’

Lately they had judged it
too risky to meet; The Ghost, in particular, wanted to leave nothing to chance. But this was
different. This represented a major escalation of events and he needed Ethan’s counsel,
and so, after an exchange of gravestone positions in the Marylebone churchyard, the two
Assassins convened at Leinster Gardens.

‘Why?’ asked Ethan. ‘Why kill
Pearson?’

‘The rite commands it, so Mr Cavanagh
says.’

‘Too much of a philanthropist for their
taste, eh? Christ, they won’t even let him see his beloved railway open.’

‘Cavanagh has the details worked out,
master. Now that work has resumed after the Fleet sewer burst, he wants to demonstrate to Mr
Pearson that the line between King’s Cross and Farringdon Street is fully operational.
What’s more, he has a new enclosed carriage to show off, and he plans a train ride to
Farringdon Street and back. But at the end of the journey, when Mr and Mrs Pearson make their
way back to their carriage, I am to kill him.’

‘But not Mrs Pearson?’

‘No.’

There was a long silence, and then The Ghost
spoke. ‘What do you think?’

Ethan took a deep breath. ‘Well, it’s
not a trap, not in the sense that they want to do you down; they could call you into the office
for that. What it is, is a test.’

The Ghost’s palms were sweaty. He gulped
and returned to a balmy room in Amritsar, tasting the fear afresh, seeing the blade in
Dani’s screaming mouth, blood and steel shimmering in the moonlight.

He had to summon all his strength to say the next
words, and it hurt to hear himself say them but say them he did. ‘If
it is a test, then I am sure to fail.’

Ethan shut his eyes in sad response.
‘We’re
this close
, Jayadeep.’

He was almost whispering.

The Ghost nodded. He too longed to see the
artefact. For years he had dreamed of bearing witness to its unearthly lightshow. But on the
other hand …

‘This artefact could be nothing more than a
trinket. Even the Templars know nothing of its true potential.’

‘Scrolls are cryptic. That’s the
point of them. They’re passed down through the ages so that our forefathers should think
themselves more clever than we.’

‘Yes. That’s what he said, more or
less.’

‘How perceptive of him. Perhaps he also
pointed out that, trinket or not, the artefact’s actual powers are less important than the
perception of their worth. Yes, it’s true that what lies beneath the earth may be an
ancient bauble fit for nothing more devastating than entrancing old dames and impressionable
children. But for centuries Assassins and Templars have fought over artefacts, and we have all
heard the tales of their great power: the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the unearthly force unleashed by
the Apple of Al Mualim … Is it possible, perhaps, that these tales have become exaggerated
in the telling? After all, none of these artefacts have ever been so powerful they proved
decisive in the war. And the scrolls are as good at aggrandizement as they are at being
abstruse.’

‘My parents …’

‘Your parents are a case in point, bouncing
you on their
knee, filling your head with the tales of the artefacts’
awesome power.’ He looked across at The Ghost, who returned his gaze, not quite able to
believe what he was hearing, and gave a dry chuckle. ‘Evie’s like you. She’s
fascinated by the idea of artefacts just as you were fascinated by that stupid bloody
diamond.’

The Ghost bit down on his anger, saying
nothing.

‘It’s the fascination with it, do you
see?
The idea of it
. That’s where the talismanic power of the artefact lies.
Assassin or Templar, we’re all in the business of selling ideas to the masses, and we all
think our ideas are the ones to save the world, but one thing we have in common is the knowledge
that these artefacts contain secrets of the First Civilization. Look around you …’
He indicated the false house in which they sat, the tunnel through which underground trains
–
underground trains
– would soon travel. ‘We have steam power. Soon
we will have electricity. The world is advancing at an almost unimaginable, unthinkable rate.
The twentieth century is almost upon us and the twentieth century is the future, Jayadeep. The
technology being used to build bridges, tunnels and railways – that same technology will
be harnessed to create weapons of war. That’s the future. And unless you want to see man
enslaved by tyranny and totalitarianism, then we need to win that future for our children and
all the generations to come, who will one day sit with storybooks and read of our exploits and
thank us for refusing to deliver them into despotism.

‘In other words, Jayadeep, we need to win
at all costs. And that means you kill Pearson and the mission continues until we have recovered
the artefact.’

It was quite a speech. The
Ghost let it sink in.

Then: ‘No,’ he said.

Ethan leapt angrily to his feet. ‘Damn you,
man!’ he roared, too loudly for the still night. Then he bit his tongue and turned away
from the steam hole to gaze angrily and unseeingly at the false brick-front of the house.

‘I cannot kill an innocent man in cold
blood,’ insisted The Ghost. ‘Surely, after everything that has happened, you know
that? Or is your desire for the artefact making you as blind to the truth as my father
was?’

Ethan turned and pointed. ‘He wasn’t
the only one who was blind, my dear boy. You yourself thought you were ready, I seem to
recall.’

‘I have more self-knowledge now. I know
you’re asking me to do something I simply cannot do.’

There was a catch in his voice, and Ethan
softened to see the boy so wrought with despair: a boy brought up to kill for his cause but
incapable of doing so. Once again he thought what a sad world, what an obscene state of affairs,
when we mourned a man’s inability to kill.

‘Inform Cavanagh you plan to use a
blowpipe. You can tell him you learnt its use in Bombay.’

‘But, master, I can’t kill an
innocent man.’

‘You won’t have to.’