Assassin's creed : Black flag - Bowden Oliver (библиотека книг .txt) 📗

That—liberty—was something I held very, very dear indeed.

“How long have you been one of these Assassins?” I asked him.

“A couple of years now. I met Ah Tabai in Spanish Town and there was something about him I trusted, a sort of wisdom.”

“Is all of this his idea? This clan?”

Kidd chuckled. “Oh no, the Assassins and Templars have been at war for thousands of years, all over the world. The natives of this new world had similar philosophies for as long as they’ve been here. When Europeans arrived, our group sort of . . . matched up. Cultures and religions and languages keep folks divided . . . But there’s something in the Assassin’s Creed that crosses all boundaries. A fondness for life and liberty.”

“Sounds a bit like Nassau, don’t it?”

“Close. But not quite.”

I knew when we parted that I’d not seen the last of Kidd.

THIRTY-EIGHT

JULY 1716

As the pirates of Nassau finished their rout of Porto Guarico’s guards, I stepped into the fort’s treasure room and the sound of clashing swords, the crackle of musket fire and the screams of the dying faded behind me.

I shook blood from my blade and stepped into the treasure room, enjoying the look of surprise my presence brought to the face of its only occupant.

Its only occupant was governor Laureano Torres.

He was just as I remembered him: spectacles perched on his nose. Neatly clipped beard and twinkling, intelligent eyes that recovered easily from the shock of seeing me.

And behind him, the money. Just as had been promised by Charles Vane . . .

 • • •

The plan had been hatched two days ago. I’d been at The Old Avery. There were other taverns in Nassau, of course, and other brothels too, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t avail myself of both, but it was to The Old Avery that I returned, where Anne Bonny the barmaid would serve drinks (and there was no one prettier who ever bent to a bunghole with a tankard in her hand than Anne Bonny), where I’d spent so many happy hours in appreciation of that fine posterior, roaring with laughter with Edward Thatch and Benjamin, where for the hours we spent drinking there it was as though the world could not touch us and where, since returning to Nassau from Tulum, I found I’d rediscovered my thirst.

Oh yes. Just like those old days back in Bristol, the more dissatisfied I was, the thirstier I became. Not that I realized it at the time, of course, not being as prone to putting two and two together as I should have been. No, instead I just drank to quench that thirst and work up an even bigger one, brooding on The Observatory and how it figured in my plans to get rich and strike at the Templars; brooding on James Kidd and Caroline. I must have looked as though I was deep in a brown study that particular day, for the first thing that the pirate known as Calico Jack Rackham said to me was, “Oi, you, why the long look? Are you falling in love?”

I looked at him with bleary eyes. I was drunk enough to want to fight him; too drunk to do anything about it. Anyway, Calico Jack stood by the side of Charles Vane, the two of them having just arrived on Nassau, and their reputation preceded them. It came on the lips of every pirate who passed through Nassau. Charles Vane was captain of the Ranger, and Calico Jack his quartermaster. Jack was English but had been brought up in Cuba, so he had a hint of the swarthy South American about him. As well as the bright calico gear that had given him his nickname, he wore big hoop earrings and a headscarf that seemed to emphasize his long brow. It might sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but he drank constantly. His breath was always foul with it, his dark eyes heavy and sleepy with it.

Vane, meanwhile, was the sharper of the two, in mind and in tongue, if not in appearance. His hair was long and unkempt and he wore a beard and looked haggard. Both were armed with pistols on belts across their chests, and cutlasses, and were smelly from months at sea. Neither was the type you’d hurry to trust: Calico Jack, as dippy as he was tipsy; Vane on a knife’s edge, like you were always one slip of the tongue away from sudden violence, and he was not averse to ripping off his own crew, either.

Still, they were pirates, both of them. Our kind.

“You’re welcome to Nassau, gents,” I told them. “Everyone is who does his fair share.”

Now, one thing you’d have to say about Nassau, specifically about the upkeep of Nassau, was that as housekeepers we made good pirates.

After all, you have enough of that when you’re at sea, when having your ship spick and span is a question of immediate survival. They don’t call it ship-shape for nothing. So on dry land, when it’s not really a question of survival—not immediate survival, anyway—but more the sort of thing you feel you should do, a few duties would slip.

What I’m saying is, the place was a pit: our grand Nassau Fort crumbled, great cracks along its walls; our shanty houses were falling down; our stocks and stores were badly kept and in disarray, and as for our privies—well, I know I’ve not exactly spared you the gory details of my life so far, but that’s where I draw the line.

By far the worst of it was the smell. No, not from the privies, though that was bad enough, let me tell you, but the smell that hung over the whole place, emanating from the stacks of rotting animal hides pirates had left on the shore. When the wind was blowing the right way—oh my days.

So you can hardly blame Charles Vane when he looked around himself, and though it was rich coming from someone who stank like a man who’d spent the last month at sea, he said, “So this is the new Libertalia? Stinks the same as every squat I’ve robbed in the past year.”

It’s one thing being rude about your own hovel, it’s a different kettle of fish when someone else does it. You suddenly feel defensive of the old place. Even so, I let it ride.

“We was led to believe Nassau was a place where men did as they please,” snorted Calico Jack. But before I could answer, salvation arrived in the form of Edward Thatch, who, with a bellow that might have been a greeting but could just as well have been a war-cry, appeared at the top of the steps and burst onto the terrace, as though The Old Avery were a prize and he was about to pillage it.

A very different-looking Edward Thatch it was too, because to his already impressive head of hair he had added a huge black beard.

Ever the showman, he stood before us with his hands spread. Behold. Then tipped me a wink and moved into the centre of the terrace, taking command without even trying. (Which is funny, when you think on it, because for all our talk of being a republic, a place of ultimate freedom, we did still conform to our own forms of hierarchy, and with Blackbeard around there was never any doubt who was in charge.)

Vane grinned. Away with his scowl went the tension on the terrace. “Captain Thatch, as I live and breathe. And what is this magnificent muzzle you’ve cultivated?”

He rubbed a hand over his own growth as Blackbeard preened.

“Why fly a black flag when a black beard will do?” laughed Thatch.

That was the moment, in fact, that his legend was born. The moment he took the name Blackbeard. He’d go on to plait his face fuzz. When he boarded ships he inserted lit fuses into it, striking terror in all who saw him. It helped make him the most infamous pirate, not just in the Bahamas but in the whole wide world.

He was never a cruel man, Thatch, though he had a fearsome reputation. But like Assassins, with their robes and vicious blades springing from secret places; like Templars and their sinister symbols and their constant insinuations about powerful forces, Edward Thatch, Blackbeard as he came to be known, knew full well the value of making your enemies shit their breeches.