Assassin's Creed: Unity (3 page)

12 A
PRIL
1778

i

I gaze from my window and remember last summer, when in moments of play with Arno I ascended from my cares and enjoyed blissful days of being a little girl again, running with him through the hedge maze in the grounds of the palace, squabbling over dessert, little knowing that the respite from worry would be so temporary.

Every morning I dig my nails into my palms and ask, “Is she awake?” and Ruth, knowing I really mean, “Is she alive?” reassures me that Mother has survived the night.

But it won’t be long now.

ii

So. The moment that the penny dropped. It draws nearer. But first, another signpost.

The Carrolls arrived in the spring of the year I first met Mr. Weatherall. What a gorgeous spring it was. The snows had melted to reveal lush carpets of perfectly trimmed lawn beneath, returning Versailles to its natural state of immaculate perfection. Surrounded by the perfectly cut topiary of our grounds, we could barely hear the hum of the town, while away to our right the slopes of the palace were visible, wide stone steps leading to the columns of its vast frontage. Quite the splendor in which to entertain the Carrolls from Mayfair in London, England. Mr. Carroll and Father spent hours in the drawing room, apparently deep in conversation and occasionally visited by the Crows, while Mother and I were tasked with entertaining Madame Carroll and her daughter, May, who lost no time at all telling me that she was ten and that because I was only six, that made her much better than me.

We invited them for a walk and wrapped up against a slight morning chill soon to be burned away by the sun: Mother and I, Madame Carroll and May.

Mother and Madame Carroll walked some steps in front of us. Mother, I noticed, wore her muff, and I wondered if the blade was secreted within. I had asked about it, of course, after the incident with the wolf.

“Mama, why do you keep a knife in your muff?”

“Why, Élise, in case of threats from the marauding wolves, of course.” And with a wry smile she added, “Wolves of the four-legged and two-legged variety. And anyway, the blade helps the muff keep its shape.”

But then, as was quickly becoming customary, she made me promise to keep it as one of our
vérités cachées
. Mr. Weatherall was a
vérité cachée
. Which meant that when Mr. Weatherall had given me a sword lesson, that became a
vérité cachée
as well.

Secrets by any other name.

May and I walked a polite distance behind our mothers. The hems of our skirts brushed the lawn so that from a distance we would appear to be gliding across the grounds, four ladies in perfect transport.

“How old are you, smell-bag?” whispered May to me, though as I’ve said, she had already established our ages. Twice, in fact.

“Don’t call me smell-bag,” I said primly.

“Sorry, smell-bag, but tell me again how old you are.”

“I’m six,” I told her.

She gave a six-is-a-terrible-age-to-be chortle, like she herself had never been six. “Well, I am ten,” she said haughtily. (And as an aside, May Carroll said everything haughtily. In fact, unless I say otherwise, just assume she said it haughtily.)

“I know you are ten,” I hissed, fondly imagining sticking out a foot and watching her sprawl to the gravel of the driveway.

“Just so you don’t forget,” she said, and I pictured little bits of gravel sticking to her bawling face as she picked herself up from the ground. What was it Mr. Weatherall had told me? The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

(And now I have reached the age of ten I wonder if I am arrogant like her. Do I have that mocking tone when I talk to those younger or lower in status than I? According to Mr. Weatherall I’m overconfident, which I suppose is a nice way of saying “arrogant,” and maybe that’s why May and I rubbed up against each other the way we did, because deep down we were actually quite similar.)

As we took our turn around the grounds, the words spoken by the ladies ahead of us reached our ears as Madame Carroll said, “Obviously we have concerns with the direction your Order appears to want to take.”

“You have
concerns
?” said Mother.

“Indeed. Concerns about the intentions of your husband’s associates. And as we both know, it is our duty to ensure our husbands do the right thing. Perhaps, if you don’t mind my saying, your husband is giving certain factions leave to dictate his policies?”

“Indeed, there are high-ranking members who favor, shall we say, more
extreme
measures regarding the changing of the old order.”

“This concerns us in England.”

My mother chortled. “Of course it does. In England you refuse to accept change of any kind.”

Madame Carroll bridled. “Not at all. Your reading of our national character lacks subtlety. But I’m beginning to get a feel for where your own loyalties lie, Madame de la Serre. You yourself are petitioning for change?”

“If change be for the better.”

“Then do I need to report that your loyalties lie with your husband’s advisers? Has my errand been in vain?”

“Not quite, Madame. How comforting it is to know that I enjoy the support of my English colleagues in opposing drastic measures. But I cannot claim to share your ultimate goal. While it’s true there are forces pushing for violent overthrow, and while it’s true that my husband believes in God-appointed monarchy, indeed, that his ideals for the future encompass no change at all, I myself tread a middle line. A third way, if you like. Perhaps it won’t surprise you to learn that I consider my belief to be the more moderate of the three.”

They walked on some steps and Madame Carroll nodded, thinking.

Into the silence my mother said, “I’m sorry if you don’t feel our goals are aligned, Madame Carroll. My apologies if that makes me a somewhat unreliable confidante.”

The other woman nodded. “I see. Well, if I were you, Madame de la Serre, I would use my influence with both sides in order to propose your middle line.”

“On that issue I shouldn’t like to say, but be assured your journey has not been in vain. My respect for you and your branch of the Order remains a steadfast as I hope it does in return. From me you can rely on two things: firstly that I will abide by my own principles, and secondly that I will not allow my husband to be swayed by his advisers.”

“Then you have given me what I want.”

“Very good. It is some consolation, I hope.”

Behind, May inclined her head to me. “Have your parents told you of your destiny?”

“No. What do you mean, ‘destiny’?”

She put a hand to her mouth, pretending to have said too much. “They will do, perhaps, when you turn ten years old. Just as they did me. How old are you, by the way?”

“I am six.” I sighed.

“Well, perhaps they will tell you when you are ten, as they did me.”

In the end, of course, my parents’ hand was forced, and they had to tell me my “destiny” much earlier, because two years later, in the autumn of 1775, when I had just turned eight years old, Mother and I went shopping for shoes.

iii

As well as the château in Versailles, we had a sizable villa in the city, and whenever we were there, Mother liked to go shopping.

As I have said, while she was contemptuous of most fashions, detesting fans and wigs, conforming to the very minimum of flamboyance when it came to her gowns, there was one thing about which she was fastidious.

Shoes. As I’ve said, she loved shoes. She bought silk pairs from Christian in Paris, where we would go, regular as clockwork, once every two weeks, because it was her one extravagance, she said, and mine too, since we always came away with a pair of shoes for me as well as her.

Christian was located in one of Paris’s more salubrious streets, far away from our villa on the Île Saint-Louis. But still, everything is relative and I found myself holding my breath as we were helped out of the comfortable and fragrant-smelling interior of our carriage and into the noisy, surging street, where the sound was of shouting and horses’ hooves and a constant rumbling of carriage wheels. The sound of Paris.

Above us women leaned from windows across folded arms and watched the world go by. Lining the street were stalls that sold fruit and fabrics, barrows piled high with goods manned by shouting men and women in aprons who immediately called to us. “Madame! Mademoiselle!”

My eyes were drawn to the shadows at the edges of the street, where I saw blank faces in the gloom, and I fancied I saw starvation and desperation in those eyes as they watched us reproachfully, hungrily.

“Come along now, Élise,” said Mother, and I picked up my skirts just as she did and trod daintily over the mud and excrement beneath our feet and we were ushered into Christian’s by the owner.

The door slammed behind us, the outside world denied. A shop boy busied himself at our feet with a towel, and in moments it was as though we had never made that perilous crossing, those few feet between our carriage and the door of one of Paris’s most exclusive shoe shops.

Christian wore a white wig tied back with a black ribbon, a justaucorps and white breeches. He was a perfect approximation of half nobleman, half footman, which was how he saw himself on the social ladder. He was fond of saying that it was in his power to make women feel beautiful, which was the greatest power a man possessed. And yet to him Mother remained an enigma, as though she was the one customer upon whom his power did not quite work. It didn’t, and I knew why. It was because other women simply saw the shoes as tributes to their own vanity, whereas Mother adored them as things of beauty.

Christian, however, hadn’t yet reached that conclusion, so every visit was marked by him barking up the wrong tree.

“Look, Madame,” he said, presenting to her a pair of slippers adorned with buckles. “Every single lady through that door goes weak at the knees at the mere sight of this exquisite new creation, yet only Madame de la Serre has ankles pretty enough to do them justice.”

“Too frivolous, Christian.” My mother smiled and with an imperious wave of the hand swept past him to other shelves. I cast an eye at the shop boy, who returned my look with an unreadable gaze, and followed.

She chose briskly. She made her choices with a certainty that Christian remained bewildered by her. I, her constant companion, saw the difference in her as she chose her shoes. A lightness. A smile she cast in my direction as she slipped on yet another shoe and admired her beautiful ankles in the mirror to the accompanying gasps and bleats of Christian—every shoe an exquisite work of art in progress, my mother’s foot the final flourish in order to make them complete.

We made our choices, Mother arranged for payment and delivery and we left, Christian helping us out onto the street where . . .

There was no sign of Jean, our coachman. No sign of our carriage at all.

“Madame?” said Christian, face creased with concern. I felt her stiffen, saw the tilt of her chin as her eyes roamed the street around us.

“There’s nothing to worry about, Christian,” she assured him, breezily. “Our carriage is a little late, that is all. We shall enjoy the sights and sounds of Paris as we await its return here.”

It was beginning to get dark and there was a chill in the air, which had thickened with the first of the evening fog.

“That is quite out of the question, Madame, you cannot wait on the street,” said an aghast Christian.

She looked at him with a half smile. “To protect my sensibilities, Christian?”

“It is dangerous,” he protested, and leaned forward to whisper with his face twisted into a slightly disgusted expression, “
and the people
.”

“Yes, Christian,” she said, as though letting him into a secret, “just people. Now please, go back inside. Your next customer values her exclusive time with Paris’s most attentive shoe salesman as highly as I do, and would no doubt be most put out having to share her time with two strays awaiting their negligent coachman.”

Knowing my mother as a woman who rarely changed her mind, and knowing she was right about the next customer, Christian bowed acquiescence, bid us
au revoir
and returned to the shop, leaving us alone on the street, where the barrows were being removed, where people dissolved into shapes moving within the murky fog.

I gripped her hand. “Mama?”

“Don’t concern yourself, Élise,” she said raising her chin. “We shall hire a carriage to return us to Versailles.”

“Not to the villa here in Paris, Mama?”

“No,” she said, thinking, chewing her lip a little, “I think I should prefer that we return to Versailles.”

She was tense and watchful as she began to lead us along the street, incongruous in our long skirts and bonnets. From her purse she took a compact to check her rouge and we stopped to gaze in the window of a shop.

Still as we walked she used the opportunity to teach me. “Make your face impassive, Élise, and do not show your true feelings, especially if they are nerves. Don’t appear to hurry. Maintain your calm exterior. Maintain control.”

The streets were thinning out now. “At the square they have carriages for hire, and we shall be there in a few moments. First, though, I have something I need to tell you. When I tell you, you must not react, you must not turn your head. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Good. We are being followed. He has been following us since Christian’s. A man in a tall felt hat and cloak.”

“Why? Why is the man following us?”

“Now that, Élise, is a very good question, and that is something I intend to find out. Just keep walking.”

We stopped to look into another shop window. “I do believe our shadow has disappeared,” she said thoughtfully.

“Then that’s a good thing,” I replied, with all the naivety of my unburdened eight-year-old self.

There was concern on her face. “No, my darling, it’s not a good thing. I liked him where I could see him. Now I have to wonder if he really has gone or, as seems more likely, he’s sped on ahead to cut us off before we can reach the square. He will expect us to use the main road. We shall fox him, Élise, by taking another route.”