Assassin's Creed: Unity (10 page)

Our dance was greeted with a gale of laughter from the Middle Man atop the carriage as well as the thug holding the door, and behind their merriment I could hear the sobbing of the girl and knew that if the thugs managed to bundle me into the carriage, then we were both lost.

And then the back door to the tavern opened, cutting off their the laugher with a gust of noise and heat and smoke, and a figure staggered out, already reaching into his breeches.

It was the same drunken man. He stood with his legs apart, about to relieve himself on the wall of the tavern, craning back over his shoulder.

“Everything all right over there?” he croaked, head lolling as he returned to the serious business of undoing the buttons of his breeches.

“No, monsieur,” I started, but thug grabbed me and held my mouth, muffling my cry. I wriggled and tried to bite, to no avail. Sitting in the driver’s seat still, the Middle Man gazed down upon us all: me, pinned to the ground and gagged by the first thug; the drunk man still fiddling with his breeches; the second thug awaiting his instructions with an upturned face. The Middle Man drew a finger across his throat.

I increased my efforts to get free, shouting into the hand clamped over my mouth and ignoring the pain of his elbows and knees as I writhed on the ground, hoping somehow to wriggle free or at least make enough noise to attract the drunkard’s attention.

Casting a look toward the yard entrance, the thug drew his sword silently and moved up on the oblivious drunkard. I saw the girl in the carriage. She had moved across the seats and was peeking out.
Shout out, warn him.
I wanted to scream but couldn’t and so settled for gnashing my teeth instead, trying to nip the flesh of the sweaty hand across my mouth. For a second our eyes met and I tried to urge her simply with the power of my gaze, blinking furiously and widening my eyes and swiveling them over to the drunk man who stood concentrating on his breeches, death just a foot or so away.

But she couldn’t do anything. She was too scared. Too scared to shout out and too scared to move, and the drunk man was going to die and the thugs were going to bundle us in the carriage and into a ship, then . . . well, put it this way, I was going to wish I was back at the school.

The blade rose. But then, something happened—the drunk man wheeled around, faster than I would have thought possible, and in his hands was my short sword, which flashed, tasting blood for the first time as he swept it flat across the thug’s throat, which opened, spraying crimson mist into the yard.

For maybe half a second the only reaction was shock and the only noise the wet sound of lifeblood leaving the thug. Then with a roar of anger and defiance the second thug took his knee off my neck and leapt at the drunkard.

I’d allowed myself to believe that the drunkenness was an act, and that he was in fact an expert swordsman
pretending
to be drunk. But no, I realized, as he stood there, swaying from side to side and trying to focus on the advancing henchman. Though he might well have been an expert swordsman, he was certainly drunk. Enraged, the second thug charged him, wielding his sword. It wasn’t pretty; even though he was in his cups, my savior seemed to dodge him easily, striking backhand with my short sword, catching the thug on the arm and eliciting a scream of pain.

From above me I heard, “Ha!” and looked up in time to see the Middle Man shake the reins. For him the battle was over and he didn’t want to leave empty-handed. As the carriage lurched toward the entrance, with its passenger door swinging, I sprang to my feet and sprinted after it, reaching inside just as we came to the narrow entrance.

I had one chance. One moment. “Grab my hand,” I screamed and thank God she was more decisive than she had been before. With desperate, frightened eyes, her cry a guttural shout, she lunged across the seats and grabbed my outstretched hand. I flung myself backward and dragged her out of the carriage door just as it skittered through the yard entrance and was gone, clacking away along the cobbles of the dockside. From my left came a shout. It was the remaining thug. I saw his mouth drop open in the shock of abandonment.

The drunken swordsman made him pay for his moment of outrage. He ran him through where he stood and my sword tasted blood for the second time tonight.

Mr. Weatherall had once made me promise never to name my sword. Now, as I watched the henchman slide off the blood-dripping blade and crumple dead to the dirt, I understood why.

ii

“Thank you, monsieur,” I called into the silence that descended over the yard in the wake of the battle.

The drunken swordsman looked at me. He had long hair tied back, high cheekbones and faraway eyes.

“May we know your name, monsieur?” I called across the yard.

We might have been meeting at a civilized social function but for the two bodies sprawled on the dirt—that and the fact that he held a sword stained red with blood. He moved as though to hand my sword back to me, realized it needed cleaning, looked for somewhere to wipe it, then, finding nothing, settled for the body of the nearest thug. When that was done he raised a finger, said, “Excuse me,” turned and vomited against the wall of the Antlers.

The blond girl and I looked at one another. That finger was still held up as the drunkard coughed up the last of his vomit, spat out a final mouthful then turned and gathered himself before sweeping off an imaginary hat, making an exaggerated bow and introducing himself. “My name is Captain Byron Jackson. At your service.”

“Captain?”

“Yes—as I was trying to tell you in the tavern before you so rudely shoved me away.”

I bristled. “I did no such thing. You were very rude. You pushed into me. You were drunk.”

“Correction, I
am
drunk. And maybe also rude. However, there’s no disguising the fact that though drunk and rude, I was also trying to help you. Or the very least keep you from the grasp of these reprobates.”

“Well, you didn’t manage that.”

“Yes, I did,” he said, offended, then seemed to think. “Eventually, I did. And on that note, we had better leave before these bodies are discovered by the soldiers. You desire passage to Dover, is that right?”

He saw me hesitate and waved an arm at the two bodies. “Surely I’ve proved my suitability as an escort. I promise you, mademoiselle, that despite appearances to the contrary, my drunkenness and perhaps a certain uncouth manner, I fly with the angels. Just that my wings are a little singed is all.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You don’t have to trust me.” He shrugged. “No skin off my nose who you trust. Go back in there, and you can get the packet.”

“The packet?” I repeated, irritated. “What is this
packet
?”

“The packet is any ship carrying mail or freight to Dover. Virtually every man in there is a packetman, and they’ll be in the process of drinking up because the tides and winds are ripe for a crossing tonight. So by all means go back in there, flash your coin and you can secure yourself passage. Who knows? You might even get lucky and find yourself in the company of other fine lady travelers such as yourself.” He pulled a face. “You might not, of course . . .”

“And what’s in it for you if I come with you?”

He scratched the back of his neck, looking amused. “A lonely merchant would be very glad of the company for the crossing.”

“As long as the lonely merchant didn’t get any ideas.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the ways in which he might pass the time.”

He gave a hurt look. “I can assure you the thought never crossed my mind.”

“And you, of course would never consider telling an untruth?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Such as claiming to be a merchant when you are in fact a smuggler.”

He threw up his hands. “Oh, that’s just dandy. She’s never heard of the packet and thinks you can sail straight to London, but makes me for a smuggler.”

“So you
are
a smuggler?”

“Look, do you want passage or not?”

I thought about that for a moment or so.

“Yes,” I said, and stepped forward to retrieve my sword.

“Tell me, what is the inscription near the hilt?” he asked, handing it over. “I would of course read it myself but for the fact that I’m drunk.”

“Are you sure it’s not that you cannot read?” I said teasingly.

“Oh, woe. Truly my lady has been fooled by my rough manners. What can I do to convince her that I really am a gentleman?”

“Well, you could try behaving like one,” I said.

I took the proffered sword and with it held loosely in my palm I read the inscription on the hilt—“May the father of understanding guide you. Love, Mother”—and then before he could say anything, I brought the point of the sword to his neck and pressed it into the flesh of his throat.

“And on her life if you do anything to harm me, then I will run you through,” I snarled.

He tensed, held out his arms, looked along the blade at me with eyes that were laughing a little too much for my liking. “I promise, mademoiselle. Tempting though it would be to touch a creature quite so exquisite as yourself, I shall be sure to keep my hands to myself. And anyway,” he said, looking over my shoulder, “what about your friend?”

“My name is Helene,” she said, as she came forward. Her voice trembled. “I am indebted to the mademoiselle for my life. I belong to her now.”

“What?”

I dropped the sword and turned to face her. “No you aren’t. No you don’t. You must find your people.”

“I have no people. I am yours, mademoiselle,” she said, and I had never seen a face so earnest.

“I think that settles that,” said Byron Jackson from behind me. I looked from him then back to her, lost for words.

And with that I had acquired a lady’s maid and a captain.

iii

Byron Jackson, it turned out, was indeed a smuggler. An Englishman posing as a Frenchman, he piled his small ship, the
Granny Smith
, with tea, sugar and whatever else was taxed heavily by his government, sailed it to along England’s east coast, then by means he would only describe as “magic” smuggled it past the customs houses.

Helene, meanwhile, was a peasant girl who had watched both her mother and father die, and so traveled to Calais in the hope of finding her last remaining living relative, her uncle Jean. She hoped to find a new life with him; instead, he sold her to the Middle Man. And, of course, the Middle Man would want his money back and Uncle Jean would have spent the money within a day or so of receiving it, so there would be trouble involving Helene if she stayed. So I let her be indebted to me, and we made a fellowship of three as we set off from Calais earlier.

And now I can hear the sounds of supper being laid. Our gracious host, the captain of the
Granny Smith
, has promised us a hearty repast. He has enough food, he says, for the whole of the two-day crossing.

8 F
EBRUARY
1788

i

“If she’s to be your lady’s maid, she needs to learn some manners,” Byron Jackson had remarked at dinner last night.

Which, when you considered that he drank constantly from his flask of wine, ate with his mouth open and his elbows propped on the table, was a statement burdened with a staggering degree of hypocrisy.

I looked at Helene. She’d torn off a piece of crust, dipped it in her soup and was about to shove the whole dripping hunk into her mouth, but had stopped and was now regarding us from under her hair, as though we were talking in a strange, foreign language.

“She’s fine as she is,” I said, mentally thumbing my nose at Madame Levene, my father, the Crows and every servant in our house at Versailles, all of whom would have been repulsed by my new friend’s table manners.

“She might be fine for having her supper on board a smuggling vessel,” said Byron cheerfully, “but she won’t be fine when you’re trying to pass her off as your lady’s maid in London during this ‘secret assignation’ of yours.”

I shot him an irritated look. “It’s not a secret assignation.”

He grinned. “You could have fooled me. Either way, you’re going to need to teach her how to behave in public. For a start she needs to begin addressing you as mademoiselle. She needs to know the basics of etiquette and decorum.”

“Yes, all right, thank you, Byron,” I said primly. “I don’t need you to tell me about table manners. I shall teach her myself.”

“As you please, mademoiselle,” he said, and grinned. He did that a lot. Both the sarcastically referring to me as “mademoiselle” and the grinning.

When supper was over, Byron took his flask of wine and some animal skins above deck and left us to prepare for bed. I wondered what he was doing up there, what he was thinking.

We sailed through the next day. Byron tethered the wheel with rope and he and I sparred, my neglected sword fighting skills beginning to return as I danced across the boards and our steel met. I could tell he was impressed. He laughed and smiled and gave me encouragement. A more handsome sparring partner than Mr. Weatherall, though perhaps a little less disciplined.

That night we ate again. Helene retired to her berth in the cramped conditions we called our cabin belowdecks while Byron left to man the wheel. Only this time, I reached for an animal skin of my own.

“Have you ever used your sword in anger before?” he said when I joined him on the upper deck. He sat steering with his feet and drinking from his leather flask of wine.

“By anger you mean . . .”

“Well, let’s start with, have you ever killed anyone?”

“No.”

“I’d be the first, eh, if I tried to touch you without your permission?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I shall just have to make sure that I have your permission, then, shan’t I?”

I felt myself go warm despite the chill on the deck.

“Okay. So have you ever crossed swords with an opponent?”

The moon-dappled sea sucked at the hull but otherwise the night was almost totally still, like we were the only two people left alive.

“Of course.”

“An opponent who meant you harm?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Fair enough. Have you drawn your sword in order to protect yourself?”

“Indeed I have.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

“And that was the one time, was it? Back there in the tavern?”

I pursed my lips. “Yes.”

“Didn’t go so well for you, did it?”

“No.”

“And why was that, do you think?”

“I know why it was, thank you,” I said primly. “I don’t need telling by the likes of you.”

“Go on, humor me.”

“Because I hesitated.”

He nodded thoughtfully, swigged from his flask, then handed it to me. I gulped down a mouthful, feeling the alcohol spread warmly through my body. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that the first step to gaining a lady’s permission to get into her bed was to get her drunk. But it was cold and he was agreeable company, if a little frustrating and . . . Oh, and nothing. I just drank.

“I hesitated.”

“That’s right. What should you have done?”

“Look, I don’t need . . .”

“Don’t you? But you were almost carried away back there. You know what they would have done to you after taking you from that yard. You wouldn’t be above deck sipping wine with the captain. You’d have spent the voyage belowdecks, on your back, amusing the crew. Every member of the crew. And when you arrived at Dover, broken, mentally and physically, they would have sold you like cattle. Both of you. You and Helene. All of that but for my presence in the tavern. And you still don’t think I have a right to tell you where you went wrong?”

“I went wrong going in the tavern in the bloody first place,” I said.

He arched an eyebrow. “Been to England before, have you?” he asked.

“No, but it was an Englishman who taught me my sword skills.”

He chortled. “And what he’d tell you if he were here is that your hesitancy almost cost you your life. A short sword is not a warning weapon. It is a doing weapon. If you draw it, use it. Don’t just wave it around.” He lowered his eyes, took a long thoughtful draught from his leather flask and passed it back to me. “There are plenty of reasons to kill a man: duty, honor, vengeance. All of them might give you pause for thought. And a reason for guilty reflection afterward. But self-protection or protection of another, killing in the name of protection, that is one reason you should never have to worry about.”

ii

The following day Helene and I bid good-bye to Byron Jackson on the beach at Dover. He had much work to do, he said, in order to bypass the customs houses, so Helene and I would have to manage alone. He accepted the coins I gave him with a gracious bow and we went on our way.

As we took the path away from the beach, I turned to see him watching us go, waved and was pleased to see him wave back. And then he turned and was gone, and we took the steps toward the cliff top, the Dover lighthouse as our guide.

Though I’d been told the carriage ride to London could be hazardous thanks to highwaymen, our journey passed without incident and we arrived to find London a very similar city to the Paris I had left behind, with a blanket of dark fog hovering above the rooftops and a menacing River Thames crowded with traffic. The same stink of smoke and excrement and wet horse.

In a cab, I said to the driver in perfect English, “Excuse me, monsieur, but could you please be transporting myself and my companion to the home of the Carrolls in Mayfair.”

“Whatchootalkinabaht?” He peered at us through the hinged communication hatch. Rather than try again I simply passed him the piece of paper. Then, when we were moving, Helene and I pulled the blinds and took turns hanging on to the communication hatch as we changed. I retrieved my by-now rather creased and careworn dress from the bottom of my satchel and instantly regretted not taking the time to fold it more carefully. Meanwhile, Helene discarded her peasant’s dress in favor of my breeches, shirt and waistcoat—not much of an improvement considering the dirt I’d managed to accrue over the last three days, but it would have to do.

Finally we were dropped off at the home of the Carrolls in Mayfair, where the driver opened the door and gave us the now-familiar boggle eyes as two differently dressed girls materialized before his very eyes. He offered to knock and introduce us but I dismissed him with a gold coin.

And then, as we stood with the two colonnades of the entrance on either side, my new lady’s maid and I, we took a deep breath, hearing approaching footsteps before the door was opened by a round-faced man in a coat, who smelled faintly of silver polish.

I introduced us and he nodded, recognizing my name, it seemed, then led us through an opulent reception hall to a carpeted hallway, where he asked us to wait outside what appeared to be a dining room, the sound of polite chatter and civilized clinking of cutlery emanating from within.

With the door ajar I heard him say, “My lady, you have a visitor. A Mademoiselle de la Serre from Versailles is here to see you.”

There was a moment of shocked silence. Outside in the hallway I caught Helene’s eye and wondered if I looked as worried as she did.

Then the butler reappeared, bidding us, “Come in,” and we entered to see the occupants seated at the dining-room table having just enjoyed a hearty meal: Mr. and Mrs. Carroll, whose mouths were in the process of dropping open; May Carroll, who clapped her hands together with sarcastic delight and crowed, “Oh, it’s smell-bag,” and the mood I was in, I could just as easily have stepped over and given her a slap for her troubles; and Mr. Weatherall, who was already rising to his feet, his face reddening, roaring, “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing here?”