Assassin's creed : Black flag - Bowden Oliver - Страница 64

“It is, Miss Bonny, it is. Call it out.”

“Weigh anchor and let fall the courses, lads!” she called, and she shone with happiness. “We’re sailing for Jamaica!”

 • • •

Rogers, then. At the bureau in Kingston I was told of his whereabouts; that he would be attending a political function in town that very night. After that his movements were uncertain; it needed to be that whether I liked it or not.

So the next thing was to decide how. I decided to take on the guise of a visiting diplomat, Ruggiero Ferraro, and before I left took a letter from within my robes and handed it to the bureau chief—a letter for “Caroline Scott Kenway of Hawkins Lane, Bristol.” In it I asked after her. “Are you safe? Are you well?” A letter full of hope but burdened with worry.

Later that night I found the man I was looking for, Ruggiero Ferraro. In short order I killed him, took his clothes and joined others as we made our way to the party, and there was welcomed inside.

Being there took me back to when I’d posed as Duncan Walpole; when I’d first visited Torres’s mansion. That feeling of being overawed, out of place and possibly even out of my depth, but chasing some notions of fortune, looking for the quickest way to make easy money.

I was once again looking for something. I was looking for Woodes Rogers. Riches were no longer my primary concern. I was an Assassin now.

“You are Mr. Ferraro, I take it?” said a pretty female guest. “I do adore your frippery. Such elegance and colour.”

Thank you, madam, thank you. I gave her a deep bow in what I hoped was the Italian manner. Pretty she might have been, but I had enough ladies in my life for the time being. Caroline was waiting at home, not to mention certain . . . feelings I had for Anne.

Then, just as I realized that grazie was the only Italian word I knew, Woodes Rogers was giving a speech.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a toast to my brief tenure as a governor of the Bahamas! For, under my watch, no less than three hundred avowed pirates took The King’s Pardon and swore fealty to the Crown.”

His face twisted into a bitter, sarcastic sneer.

“And yet, for all my successes, His Majesty has seen fit to sack me and call me home to England. Brilliant!”

It was a bad-tempered, resentful end to the speech, and sure enough his guests didn’t quite know what to make of it. During his time on Nassau he’d handed out religious leaflets trying to persuade the merry buccaneers of New Providence to mend their hard-drinking, whoring ways, so perhaps he wasn’t accustomed to the liquor and he seemed to wobble around his own party, ranting at anyone unfortunate enough to find himself in the vicinity.

“Hurray, hurray for the ignoble and ignorant prigs who rule the world with sticks up their arses. Hurray!”

Moving on and another guest winced as he let fly with his whinges. “I brought those brutes in Nassau to heel, by God, and this is the thanks I get. Unbelievable.”

I followed him around the room, staying out of his view, trading greetings with the guests. I must have bowed a hundred times, murmured grazie a hundred times. Until at last Rogers appeared to have exhausted the goodwill of his friends, for as he made another circle of the hall, he found more and more backs were turned. The next moment he swayed, marooned in the room, looking around himself, only to find his erstwhile friends engaged in more thrilling conversations. For a second I saw the Woodes Rogers of old as he composed himself, drew back his shoulders, raised his chin and decided to take a little air. I knew where he was going, probably before he did, so it was an easy matter to move out to the balcony ahead of him and wait for him there. And then, when he arrived, I buried my blades into his shoulder and neck and, with one hand over his mouth to stop him screaming, lowered him to the floor of the balcony and sat him up against the balustrade.

It all happened too quickly for him. Too quickly to fight back or to even be surprised, and he tried to focus on me with drunken, pained eyes.

“You were a privateer once,” I said to him. “How is it you lack so much respect for sailors only trying to make their way in this world?”

He looked at where my blades were still embedded in his shoulder and neck. They were all that kept him alive, because as soon as I removed them, his artery would be open, the balcony would be awash with his blood and he would be dead within a minute.

“You couldn’t possibly understand my motives,” he said with a sardonic smile. “You who spent a whole lifetime dismantling everything that makes our civilization shine.”

“But I do understand,” I insisted. “I’ve seen The Obser-vatory, and I know its power. You’d use that device to spy. You Templars would use that device to spy and blackmail and sabotage.”

He nodded, but the movement pained him; blood soaked his shirt and jacket. “Yes, and yet all for a greater purpose. To ensure justice. To snuff out the lies and to seek truth.”

“There’s no man on Earth who needs that power.”

“Yet you suffer the outlaw Roberts to use it . . .”

I shook my head to put him right about that. “No. I’m taking it back, and if you tell me where he is, I’ll stop Roberts.”

“Africa,” he said. And I pulled my blades free.

Blood flowed heavily from his neck and his body sagged against the balustrade, undignified in the throes of death. What a difference from the man I’d first met all those years ago at Torres’s mansion: an ambitious man with a handshake as firm as his resolve, and now his life ended not just on my blade but in a drunken fugue, a morass of bitterness and broken dreams. Though he’d ousted the pirates from Nassau, he hadn’t been given the support he needed to finish the job. The British had turned their backs on him. His hopes of rebuilding Nassau were shattered.

Blood puddled on the stone around me and I moved my feet to avoid it. His chest rose and fell slowly. His eyes were half-closed and his breathing became irregular as life slipped away.

Then from behind came a scream and, startled, I turned to see a woman, the finery of her clothes in stark contrast to her demeanour, a hand over her mouth and wide, terrified eyes. There was the rumble of running feet, more figures appearing on the balcony. Nobody daring to tackle me but not withdrawing either. Just watching.

I cursed, stood and vaulted to the balustrade. To my left the balcony filled with guests.

“Grazie,” I told them, then spread my arms and jumped.

SIXTY-THREE

FEBRUARY 1722

And so to Africa, where Black Bart—now the most feared and infamous pirate in the Caribbean—continued to evade the British. I knew how he did it, of course, because in his possession was The Observatory Skull, and he was using it—using it to anticipate every move against him.

As I set the Jackdaw in pursuit of him, Roberts was stealing French ships and sailing them down the coast to Sierra Leone. His Royal Fortune remained at the head of his fleet and he continued sailing south-east along the African coast: raiding, pillaging, plundering as he went, constantly making improvements to his vessels and becoming better armed, more powerful and even more fearsome than he already was.

We had already come across the sickening evidence of his campaign of terror in January, when we sailed into the aftermath of not a battle, but a massacre: Roberts in The Royal Fortune had attacked twelve ships at anchor in Whydah. All had surrendered apart from an English slave ship, the Porcupine, and their refusal to lay down arms had made Roberts so furious that he had ordered the ship boarded, then set alight.