“Mary . . . ?”
She was trying to say something. I put my ear to her lips.
“I’ll be with you, Kenway,” she whispered. Her final breath was warm on my ear. “I will.”
She died.
I stood. I looked down at Mary Read, knowing there would be time to mourn her later, when I would remember a remarkable person, perhaps the most remarkable I ever knew. But for the moment I thought of how the British soldiers had let this good woman give birth, ripped her baby from her, then left her wounded and feverish in a prison cell. No blanket to cover her. No water to touch to her lips.
I heard the first British soldiers coming into the courtyard behind me. Just time to exact a little revenge before I make my escape.
I engaged the blade and span to meet them.
SIXTY-ONE
I guess you could say I did a bit of drinking after that. I saw people in my delirium, figures from the past: Caroline, Woodes Rogers, Bartholomew Roberts.
And ghosts too: Calico Jack, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold, Edward Thatch.
And Mary Read.
Eventually, after a binge that lasted how long, I couldn’t say, salvation came in the form of Adewalé. He came to me on the beach in Kingston, and I thought he was another ghost at first, another figure from my visions. Come to taunt me. Come to remind me of my failings.
“Captain Kenway, you look like a bowl of plum duff.”
One of my visions. A ghost. A trick my poor, hung-over mind is playing on me. And yes, while we’re on the subject, where is my bottle of liquor?
Until, when he reached a hand to me and I reached back, expecting his fingers to become wisps of smoke, to disappear into nothing, they were real. Hard as wood, just as reliable, and real.
I sat up. “Christ, I’ve got a head for ten . . .”
Ade pulled me up. “On your feet.”
I stood rubbing my poor throbbing head. “You put me in a spot, Adewalé. After you left me with Roberts, I should have hard feelings about seeing you here.” I looked at him. “But mostly, I’m bloody glad.”
“Me too, breddah, and you’ll be pleased to know, your Jackdaw is still in one piece.”
He took me by the shoulder and pointed out to sea, and maybe it was the drink making me feel extra emotional, but tears filled my eyes to see the Jackdaw once again. The men stood at the gunwales and I saw them in the rigging and their faces at the hatches of the stern guns, every man-jack of them looking over to the beach, to where Adewalé stood with me now. They came, I thought, and a tear rolled down my cheek, one that I brushed away with the sleeve of my robes (a parting gift from Ah Tabai though I’d done little to honour them since).
“Shall we set sail?” I asked him, but Adewalé was already walking away, further up the beach towards inland.
“You’re leaving?” I called after him.
“Aye, Edward. For I have another calling elsewhere.”
“But . . .”
“When your heart and your head are ready, visit the Assassins. I think you will understand then.”
• • •
So I took his advice. I sailed the Jackdaw to Tulum, back to where I had first discovered my Sense and met Ah Tabai. There, I left the crew on the Jackdaw and went in search of Ah Tabai, only to arrive in the aftermath of an attack, walking into the smouldering, smoking ruins of an Assassin village and finding Ade there too. This, then, was his calling.
“Jesus, Adewalé, what the hell happened here?”
“You happened here, Edward. The damage you caused six years ago has not been undone.”
I winced. So that was it. The Assassins were still feeling the repercussions of those maps I sold to the Templars.
I looked at him.
“I’m not an easy man to call a friend, am I? Is that why you’re here?”
“To fight beside a man so driven by personal gain and glory is a hard thing, Edward. I have come to feel the Assassins—and their creed—a more honourable course.”
So that was it. The words of Mary Read and Ah Tabai had been wasted on me but Adewalé had been heeding them. I wished I’d made more effort to do the same.
“Have I been unfair?” he prompted.
I shook my head. “For years, I’ve been rushing around, taking whatever I fancied, not giving a tinker’s cuss for those I hurt. Yet here I am . . . with riches and reputation, feeling no wiser than when I left home. Yet when I turn around, look at the course I’ve run . . . there’s not a man or woman I love left standing beside me.”
A new voice spoke up. Ah Tabai. “There is time to make amends, Captain Kenway.”
I looked at him. “Mary . . . Before she died she asked me to do good by her. To sort out the mess I’d made. Can you help me?”
Ah Tabai nodded. He and Adewalé turned to walk into the village.
“Mary was fond of you, Edward,” noted Ah Tabai. “She saw something in your bearing that gave her hope you might one day fight with us.” He paused. “What do you think of our creed?” he said.
We both knew that six years ago—Jaysus, one year ago—I would have scoffed and called it silly. Now, though, my answer was different.
“It’s hard to say. For if nothing is true, then why believe anything? And if everything is permitted . . . Why not chase every desire?”
“Why indeed?” Ah Tabai smiled mysteriously.
My thoughts collided in my head; my brain sang with new possibilities.
“It might be that this idea is only the beginning of wisdom and not its final form.”
“That’s quite a step up from the Edward I met many years ago,” said Ah Tabai, nodding with satisfaction. “Edward, you are welcome here.”
Thanking him, I asked, “How’s Anne’s child?”
He shook his head and lowered his eyes, a gesture that said it all. “She’s a strong woman, but not invincible.”
I pictured her on the deck of the William, cursing her crewmates as cowards. It was said she’d fired shots at the men as they cowered drunk below decks. I could well believe it. I could well imagine how terrible and magnificent she’d been that day.
I went to where she sat and joined her, staring over the tree-tops and out to sea. She hugged her own legs and turned her pale face to me with a smile.
“Edward,” she said in greeting.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.
I knew a thing or two about loss and was learning more every day.
“If I’d stayed in prison, they’d have taken him from me”—she sighed as she turned her face into the breeze—“and he’d now be alive. Might be this is God’s way of saying I ain’t fit to be a mum, carrying on like I do. Cursing and drinking, and fighting.”