Assassin's Creed: Unity (31 page)

12 S
EPTEMBER
1794

i

There was a young man on a cart in the road. He sat with one leg up and his arms folded, squinting at me beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, mottled by sunlight that found its way through a canopy of leafy branches overhead. He was waiting—waiting, it turned out, for me.

“Are you Arno Dorian, monsieur?” he said, sitting up.

“I am.”

His eyes darted. “Do you wear a hidden blade?”

“You think me an Assassin?”

“Are you?”

With a snick it was out, glinting in the sunlight. Just as quickly I retracted it.

The boy nodded. “My name is Jacques. Élise was a friend to me, a good mistress to my wife, Helene, and the close confidante of . . . a man who also lives with us.”

“An Italian man?” I said, testing him.

“No, sir.” The young man grinned. “An Englishman who goes by the name of Mr. Weatherall.”

I smiled at him. “I think you’d better take me to him, don’t you?”

On his cart, Jacques led the way, and we took a path that led us along one side of a river. On the other bank was a stretch of manicured lawn that led up to a wing of the Maison Royale, and I looked at it with a mixture of sadness and bemusement—sadness because the mere sight of it reminded me of her. Bemusement because it was nothing like I had imagined from the Satanic picture she had painted in her letters all those years ago.

We continued, as though we were skirting the school, which I supposed we were. Élise had mentioned a lodge.

Sure enough, we came upon a large-based, low building in a clearing, with a couple of ramshackle outbuildings not far away. Standing on step of a porch was an older man on crutches.

The crutches were new, of course, but I half recognized the gray beard from having seen him around the château when I was growing up. He had been someone who belonged to Élise’s “other” life, her François and Julie life. Not someone I had ever concerned myself with then. Nor him with me.

And yet, of course, I write this entry having read Élise’s journals, and can now appreciate the position he held in her life, and again I marvel at how little I really knew of her; again I mourn the chance to have discovered the “real” Élise, the Élise free of secrets to keep and a destiny to fulfill. I sometimes think that with all of that on her shoulders, we were doomed from the start, she and I.

“Hello, son,” he growled at me from the porch. “It’s been a long time. Look at you. I hardly recognize you.”

“Hello, Mr. Weatherall,” I said, dismounting and tethering my horse. I approached him, and had I known then what I know now, I would have greeted him the French way, with an embrace, and we would have shared the solidarity of bereavement, we who were the two men closest to Élise. But I didn’t; he was merely a face from the past.

Inside the lodge the décor was simple, the furniture spartan. Mr. Weatherall leaned on his crutches and ushered me to a table, requesting coffee from a girl I took to be Helene, at whom I smiled and received a curtsy in return.

Again, I paid her less mind than I would have done had I read the journals. I was just taking the first steps into Élise’s other life, feeling like an interloper, like I shouldn’t be there.

Jacques entered, too, doffing an imaginary cap, greeting Helene with a kiss. The atmosphere in the kitchen was bustling. Homely. No wonder Élise liked it here.

“Was I expected?” I said, with a nod at Jacques.

Mr. Weatherall settled before he nodded thoughtfully. “Élise wrote to say Arno Dorian might be collecting her trunk. A couple of days ago Madame Levene brought the news that she’d been killed.”

I raised an eyebrow. “She wrote to you? And you didn’t suspect there was anything wrong.”

“Son, I may have wood beneath my armpits but don’t go thinking I’ve got it in my head. What I
suspected
was that she was still angry with me, not that she was making plans.”

“She was angry with you?”

“We’d had words. We parted on bad terms. The not-on-speaking-terms sort of terms.”

“I see. I have been on the receiving end of a number of Élise’s tempers myself. It’s never very pleasant.”

We looked at one another, smiles appearing. Mr. Weatherall tucked his chin into his chest as he nodded with bittersweet remembrance. “Oh yes, indeed. Quite a will on that one.” He looked at me. “I expect that’s what got her killed, is it?”

“What did you hear about it?”

“That the noblewoman Élise de la Serre was somehow involved in an altercation with the renowned silversmith François Thomas Germain, and that swords were drawn and the pair of them fought a battle that ended in their mutual death at each other’s hands. That about how you saw it, was it?”

I nodded. “She went after him. She could have exercised more caution.”

He shook his head. “She never was one for exercising caution. She give him a good battle, did she?”

“She fought like a tiger, Mr. Weatherall, a true credit to her sparring partner.”

The older man gave a short, mirthless laugh. “There was a time when I was sparring partner to François Thomas Germain as well, you know. Yes, you may make that face. The treacherous Germain honed his own skills on a wooden blade wielded by Freddie Weatherall. Back then, when it was unthinkable that a Templar might turn on a Templar.”

“Unthinkable? Why? Were Templars less ambitious when you were younger? Was the process of backstabbing in the name of advancement less developed?”

“No.” Mr. Weatherall smiled. “Just that we were younger, and that bit more idealistic when it came to our fellow man.”

ii

Perhaps we would have more to say to one another if we ever met again. As it was, we two men who were closest to Élise had precious little in common, and when the conversation had at last withered and dried like an autumn leaf, I asked to see the trunk.

He took me to it, and I carried it to the kitchen table, set it down, running my hands over the monogram EDLS, then opening it. Inside, just as she’d said, were the letters, her journals and the necklace.

“Something else,” said Mr. Weatherall, and left, returning some moments later with a short sword. “Her first sword,” he explained, adding it to the trunk with a disdainful look, as though I should have known instantly. As though I had a lot to learn about Élise.

Which of course, I did. And now I understand that, and realize that I may have appeared a little haughty during my visit, as though these people were not worthy of Élise, when in reality it was the other way around.

I went to fill my saddlebags with Élise’s keepsakes, ready to transport them back to Versailles, stepping out into a clear and still moonlit night and going top my horse. I stood in the clearing, the buckle of a bag in my hand, when I smelled something. Something unmistakable. It was perfume.

iii

Thinking we were on our way, my mare snorted and pawed at the ground but I steadied her, patting her neck and sniffing the air at the same time. I licked a finger, held it up and verified the wind was coming from behind me. I searched the perimeter of the clearing. Perhaps it was one of the girls from school who had made her way down here for some reason. Perhaps it was Jacques’s mother . . .

Or perhaps I recognized the scent of the perfume and knew exactly who it was.

I came upon him hiding behind a tree, his white hair almost luminous in the moon.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him. Ruddock.

He pulled a face. “Ah, well, you see, I . . . well, you could say I was just wanting to safeguard my prize.”

I shook my head with irritation. “So you don’t trust me, after all?”

“Well, do
you
trust
me
? Did Élise trust me? Do any of us trust each other, we who live our lives in secret societies?”

“Come on,” I said, “inside.”

iv

“Who’s this?”

The occupants of the lodge, having turned in for bed just moments ago, reappeared: Helene in a nightdress, Jacques in just his breeches, Mr. Weatherall still fully dressed.

“His name is Ruddock.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a remarkable transformation as the one that came over Weatherall then. His face colored, a look of fury crossing it as his glare descended on Ruddock.

“Mr. Ruddock plans to collect his letters, then be on his way,” I continued.

“You didn’t tell me they were going to him,” said Weatherall with a growl.

I cast him a look, thinking that I was growing tired of Weatherall, and that the sooner my business was concluded, the better.

“There is bad blood between the two of you, I take it.”

Mr. Weatherall merely glowered; Ruddock simpered.

“Élise vouched for him,” I told Weatherall. “He is by all accounts a changed man, and has been forgiven for past misdemeanors.”

“Please,” Ruddock implored me, his eyes darting, clearly unnerved by the thunder that rolled across the face of Weatherall, “just hand me the letters and I will go.”

“I’ll get you your letters, if that’s what you want,” said Weatherall, moving over to the trunk, “but believe you me, if it wasn’t Élise’s wish, you’d be picking them out your throat.”

“I loved her too in my own way,” protested Ruddock. “She saved my life twice.”

By the trunk Weatherall paused. “Saved your life twice, did she?”

Ruddock wrung his hands. “She did. She saved me from the hangman’s noose and from the Carrolls before that.”

Standing by the trunk, Mr. Weatherall nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I remember she saved you from the hangman’s noose. But the Carrolls . . .”

A guilty shadow passed across Ruddock’s face. “Well, she told me at the time that the Carrolls were coming for me.”

“You knew them did you, the Carrolls?” asked Weatherall innocently.

Ruddock swallowed. “I knew
of
them, of course I did.”

“And you scarpered?”

He bristled. “As anybody in my position would have done.”

“Exactly.” Weatherall nodded. “You did the right thing, missing all of the fun. Fact remains, though, they weren’t going to kill you.”

“Well, then I suppose you’d have to say that Élise saved my life once. I hardly think it matters and after all, once is enough.”

“Unless they
were
going to kill you.”

Ruddock gave a nervous laugh, his eyes still flitting around the room. “Well, you’ve just said yourself they weren’t.”

“But what if they were?” pressed Weatherall. I wondered, what on earth was he getting at?

“Well, they weren’t,” said Ruddock with a wheedling note in his voice.

“How do you know?”

“I beg your pardon.”

Sweat glistened on Ruddock’s brow and the smile on his face was lopsided and queasy. His gaze found mine as though searching for support, but he found none. I was just watching. Watching carefully.

“See,” continued Weatherall, “I think you were working for the Carrolls back then, and you thought they were on their way to silence you—which they might well have been. I think that either you gave us false information about the King of Beggars or he was working on behalf of the Carrolls when they hired you to kill Julie de la Serre. That’s what I think.”

Ruddock was shaking his head. He’d tried a look of nonchalant bemusement; he’d tried a look of “this is outrageous” indignation and settled on a look of panic.

“No,” he said. “Now this has gone far enough. I work for myself.”

“But have ambitions to rejoin the Assassins?” I prompted.

“No.” He shook his head furiously. “I’m cured of all that. And you know who finally cured me? Why, the fragrant Élise. She hated both of your Orders, you know that? Two ticks fighting for control of the cat, was what she called you. Futile and deluded, she called you, and she was right. She told me I’d be better off without you, and she was right.” He sneered at us. “Templars? Assassins? I piss on you all for a bunch of worthless old women squabbling over ancient dogma.”

“So you have no interest in rejoining the Assassins, and thus no interest in the letters?” I asked him.

“None at all,” he insisted.

“Then what are you doing here?” I said.

The knowledge that the hole he’d dug was too deep flashed across his face, then he whirled and in one movement drew a brace of pistols. Before I could react he had grabbed Helene, pointed one of the pistols at her head and covered the room with the other one.

“The Carrolls say hello,” he said.

v

As a new kind of tension settled over the room, Helene whimpered. The flesh at her temple whitened where the barrel of the pistol pointed hard and she looked imploringly over Ruddock’s forearm to where Jacques stood coiled and ready to strike, fighting the need to get over there, free Helene and take Ruddock apart with the need not to spook him into shooting her.

“Perhaps,” I said, after a silence, “you might like to tell me who these Carrolls are.”

“The Carroll family of London,” said Ruddock, one eye on Jacques, who stood tensed, his face in furious knots. “At first they hoped to influence the path of the French Templars, but then Élise upset them by killing their daughter, which gave it a somewhat ‘personal’ dimension.

“And of course they did what any good doting parents with a lot of money and a network of killers at their disposal would do, they ordered revenge. Not just on her but on her protector, oh, and I’m sure they’ll pay handsomely for these letters into the bargain.”

“Élise was right,” said Weatherall to himself. “She never believed the Crows tried to kill her mother. She was right.”

“She was,” said Ruddock, almost sadly, as though he wished Élise could be here to appreciate the moment. I wished she was here, too. I’d have enjoyed watching her take Ruddock apart.

“Then it’s over,” I told Ruddock, simply. “You know as well as we do that you can’t possibly kill Mr. Weatherall and leave here alive.”

“We shall see about that,” said Ruddock. “Now open the door, then step away from it.”

I stayed where I was until he cast me a warning look at the same time as eliciting a shout of pain from Helene with the barrel of the pistol. And then I opened the door and moved a few steps to the side.