About the Author
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Oliver Bowden is a pseudonym for an accled novelist. He is
the author of the Assassin’s Creed tie-in novels.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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Chapter One
1719 (or thereabouts)
I cut off a man’s nose once.
I don’t recall exactly when it was: 1719 or thereabouts. Nor
where. But it happened during a raid on a Spanish brig. We wanted
her supplies, of course. I pride myself on keeping the Jackdaw
well stocked. But there was something else on board too.
Something we didn’t have but needed. Someone, to be precise. A
ship’s cook.
Our own ship’s cook and his mate were both dead. The cook’s mate
had been caught pissing in the ballast, which I didn’t allow and
so punished him the traditional way, by making him drink a mug of
the crew’s piss. I must admit, I’ve never had it happen before
where the mug of punishment piss actually killed the man, but
that’s what happened with the cook’s mate. He drank the mug of
piss, went to that night and never got up. Cook was all
right by himself for a time, but he did like a nip of rum, and
after a nip of rum was apt to take the night air on the
poop-deck. I’d hear him clomping about on the roof of my cabin,
dancing a jig. Until one night I heard him clomping about on the
roof of my cabin and dancing a jig—followed by a scream and a
splash.
The bell rang and the crew rushed to the deck, where we dropped
anchor and lit lanterns and torches, but of Cook there was no
sign.
They had lads working with them, of course, but they were just
boys, none of them knew how to do anything more culinary-minded
than stir the pot or peel some spuds, and we’d been living on raw
grub ever since. Not a man among us knew how to do so much as
boil a pot of water.
Now, not long back we’d taken a man-o’-war. A tasty little
excursion from which we’d bagged ourselves a brand-spanking-new
broadside battery and a holdful of artillery: cutlasses, pikes,
muskets, pistols, powder and . From one of the captured crew,
who then became one of my crew, I’d learnt that the Dons had a
particular supply ship on which served an especially adept cook.
Word was that he’d cooked at court but offended the queen and
been banished. I didn’t believe a word of that but it didn’t stop
me repeating it, telling the crew we’d have him preparing our
meals before the week was out. Sure enough we made it our
business to hunt down this particular brig, and when we found it,
lost no time in attacking it.
Our new broadside battery came in handy. We drew up alongside and
peppered the brig with till she broke, the canvas in tatters
and the helm splintered in the water.
She was already listing as my crew lashed and boarded her,
scuttling over her sides like rats, the air heavy with the stink
of powder, the sound of muskets popping and cutlasses already
beginning to rattle. I was in among them as always, cutlass in
one hand and my hidden blade engaged, the cutlass for melee work,
the blades for close finishing. Two of them came at me and I made
short of the first, driving my cutlass into the top of his head
and slicing his tricorn in half as the blade cleaved his head
almost in two. He went to his knees with the blade of my
between his eyes but the problem was I’d driven it too deep, and
when I tried to wrench it free his writhing body came with it.
Then the second man was upon me, terror in his eyes, not used to
fighting, obviously, and with a flick of the blade I sliced off
his nose, which had the desired effect of sending him back with
blood spraying from the bloody hole where his beak had been,
while I used two hands to finally wrench my cutlass out of the
skull of the first attacker and continue the good fight. It was
soon over, with as few of their crew dead as possible, me having
given out special instructions that on no account was the cook to
be harmed—Whatever happens, I’d said, we have to take the cook
alive.
As their brig disappeared beneath the water and we sailed away,
leaving a fog of powder-smoke and a sea of splintered hull and
bobbing bits of broken ship behind us, we gathered their crew on
the main deck to flush out the cook, hardly a man among us not
salivating, his belly not rumbling, the well-fed look of their
crew not lost on us. Not at all.
It was Caroline who taught me how to appreciate good food.
Caroline my one true love. In the all-too-brief time we’d spent
together she refined my palate, and I liked to think that she’d
have approved of my policy towards the repast, and how I’d passed
on a love of the finer things to the crew, knowing as I did,
partly due to what she’d shown me, that a well-fed man is a happy
man, and a happy man is a man less prone to questioning the
authority of the ship, which is why in all those years at sea I
never had one sniff of mutiny. Not one.
“Here I am,” he said, stepping forward. Except it sounded more
like, “ I bam,” owing to his bandaged face, where some fool
had cut off his nose.
Chapter Two
1711
But anyway, where was I? Caroline. You wanted to know how I met
her.
Well, therein lies a tale, as they say. Therein lies a tale. For
that I need to go much further back, to a time when I was just a
simple sheep-farmer, before I knew anything of Assassins or
Templars, of Blackbeard, Benjamin Hornigold, of Nassau or The
Observatory, and might never have been any the wiser but for a
chance meeting at the Auld Shillelagh one hot summer’s day back
in 1711.
The thing is, I was one of those young firebrands who liked a
drink even though it got me into a few scrapes. Quite a few . . .
incidents, shall we say, of which I’m none too proud. But that’s
the cross you have to bear if you’re a little over-fond of the
booze; it’s rare to find a drinker with a clean conscience. Most
of us will have considered knocking it on the head at one time or
another, reforming our lives and perhaps turning to God or trying
to make something out of ourselves. But then noon comes around
and you know what’s good for that head is another drink, and so
you head for the tavern.
The taverns I’m referring to were in Bristol, on the south-west
coast of dear old England, where we were accustomed to fierce
winters and glorious summers, and that year, that particular
year, the year that I first met her, 1711, like I say, I was just
seventeen years old.
And, yes—yes, I was drunk when it happened. In those days, you’d
have to say I was drunk a lot of the time. Perhaps . . . well,
let’s not exaggerate, I don’t want to give a bad account of
myself. But perhaps half of the time. Maybe a bit more.
Home was on the outskirts of a village called Hatherton, seven
miles outside Bristol, where we ran a small holding keeping
sheep. her’s interests lay with the livestock. They always
had, so having me on board had freed him from the aspect of the
business he most despised, which was making the trips into town
with the merchandise, haggling with merchants and traders,
bargaining, cutting deals. As soon as I’d come of age, by which I
mean, as soon as I was enough of a man to meet the eye of our
business associates and trade as an equal, well, that’s what I
did. her was all too glad to let me do it.
My her’s name was Bernard. My mother, Linette. They hailed
from Swansea but had found their way to the West Country when I
was ten years old. We still had the Welsh accent. I don’t suppose
I minded much that it marked us out as different. I was a
sheep-farmer, not one of the sheep.
her and Mother used to say I had the gift of the gab, and
Mother in particular used to tell me I was a good-looking young
man, and that I could charm the birds off the trees, and it’s
true, even though I do say so myself, I did have a certain way
with the ladies. Let’s put it this way: dealing with the wives of
the merchants was a more successful hunting-ground than having to
barter with their husbands.
How I spent my days would depend on the season. January to May,
that was lambing season, our busiest time, when I’d find myself
in the barns by sun-up, sore head or not, needing to see whether
any ewes had lambed during the night. If they had, then they were
taken into one of the smaller barns and put into pens, lambing
jugs we called them, where her would take over, while I was
cleaning feeders, filling them up again, changing the hay and
water, and Mother would be assiduously details of the
new births in a journal. Me, I didn’t have my letters then. I do
now, of course; Caroline taught me them, along with much else
that made me a man, but not back then, so that duty fell to
Mother, whose own letters weren’t much better but enough to at
least keep a record.
They loved working together, Mother and her. Even more reason
why her liked me going into town. He and my mother—it was as
though they were joined at the hip. I had never seen another two
people so much in love and with so little need to make a display
of the fact. It was plain to witness that they kept each other
going. It was good for the soul to see.
In the autumn we’d bring the rams through to the pasture to graze
with the ewes, so that they could go on with the business of
producing more lambs for the following spring. Fields needed
tending to, fences and walls building and repairing.
In winter, if the weather was very bad, we brought the sheep into
the barns, kept them safe and warm, ready for January, when
lambing season began.
But it was during summer when I really came into my own. Shearing
season. Mother and her carried out the bulk of it while I made
more frequent trips into town, not with carcasses for meat but
with my cart laden with wool. In the summer, with even more
rtunity to do so, I found myself frequenting the local
taverns more and more. You could say I became a familiar in
the taverns, in fact, in my long, buttoned-up waistcoat,
knee-breeches, white stockings and the slightly battered brown
tricorn that I liked to think of as being my trade-mark, because
my mother said it went well with my hair (which was permanently
in need of a cut but quite a striking sandy colour, if I do say
so myself).
It was in the taverns I discovered that my gift of the gab was
improved after a few ales at noon. The booze, it has that effect,
doesn’t it? Loosens tongues, inhibitions, morals. . . . Not that
I was exactly shy and retiring when I was sober, but the ale, it
gave me that extra edge. Or at least that’s what I told myself at
the time. After all, the money from extra sales made as a result
of my ale-inspired salesmanship more than covered the cost of the
ale in the first place. Or at least that’s what I told myself at
the time.
There was something else, too, apart from the foolish notion that
Edward in his cups was a better salesman than Edward sober, and
that was my state of mind.
Because the truth was, I thought I was different. No, I knew I
was different. There were times I’d sit by myself at night and
know I was seeing the world in a way that was all my own. I know
what it is now but I couldn’t put it into words back then other
than to say I felt different.
Either because of that or despite it, I’d decided I didn’t want
to be a sheep-farmer all my life. I knew it the first day, when I
set foot on the farm as an employee, and not as a child, and I
saw myself, then looked at my her, and understood that I was
no longer here to play and would soon go home to dream about a
future setting sail on the high seas. No, this was my future, and
I would spend the rest of my life as sheep-farmer, working for my
her, marrying a local girl, siring boys and teaching them to
become sheep-farmers, just like their her, just like their
grandher. I saw the rest of my life laid out for me, like neat
work-clothes on a bed, and rather than feel a warm surge of
contentment and happiness about that fact, it terrified me.
So the truth was, and there’s no way of putting it more gently,
and I’m sorry, her, God rest your soul, but I hated my job.
And after a few ales, well, I hated it less, is all I can say.
Was I blotting out my dashed dreams with the booze? Probably. I
never really thought about it at the time. All I knew was that
sitting on my shoulder, perched there like a mangy cat, was a
festering resentment at the way my life was turning out—or,
worse, actually had turned out.
Perhaps I was a little indiscreet concerning some of my true
feelings. I might on occasion have given my fellow drinkers the
impression that I felt life had better things in store for me.
What can I say? I was young and arrogant and a sot. A lethal
combination at the best of times, and these were definitely not
the best of times.
“You think you’re above the likes of us, do you?”
I heard that a lot. Or variations of it, at least.
Perhaps it would have been more diplomatic of me to answer in the
negative, but I didn’t, and so I found myself in more than my
fair share of fights. Perhaps it was to prove that I was better
than them in all things, fighting included. Perhaps because in my
own way I was upholding the family name. A drinker I might have
been. A seducer. Arrogant. Unreliable. But not a coward. Oh no.
Never one to shrink from a fight.
It was during the summertime when my recklessness reached its
heights; when I would be most drunk and most boisterous, and
mainly a bit of a pain in the arse. But on the other hand, all
the more likely to help a young lady in distress.