Assassin's Creed: Unity Part 5

"If he would not be able to resist, then how can it be right to steer him otherwise?" I pleaded, though my reasons for doing so were more personal than based on beliefs. "How can it be right for us to go against what fate has in store for him?"

Father fixed me with a hard look. "Do you want Arno to be your enemy?"

"No," I said, impa.s.sioned.

"Then the best way to be sure of that is to bring him round to our way of thinking."

"Yes, Francois, but not now," interrupted Mother. "Not just yet. Not when the children are so young."

He looked from one protesting face to the other and appeared to soften. "You two," he said with a smile. "Very well. Do as you wish for the time being. We shall review the situation later."

I shot a grateful look at my mother.

What will I do without her?

v.

She fell ill soon after that and was confined to her rooms, which stayed darkened day and night, that part of the house out of bounds to all but her lady's maid, Justine, my father and I, and three nurses who were hired to look after her, who were all called Marie.

To the rest of the house, she began to cease to exist. My morning routine stayed the same, spent with my governor, then in the woods at the edge of our grounds, learning sword fighting with Mr. Weatherall. I no longer whiled afternoons away with Arno; instead, I spent them at my mother's bedside, clasping her hand as the Maries fussed around us.

I watched as he began to gravitate toward my father. I watched my father find comfort away from the stress of Mother's illness in being Arno's guardian. My father and I were both trying to cope with the gradual loss of Mother, both finding different ways to do it. The laughter in my life gradually faded away.

I used to have a dream. Only it wasn't a dream because I was awake. I suppose you'd have to say a fantasy. In the fantasy I was sitting on the throne. I know how it may sound, but after all, if you can't admit it to your journal, when can you admit it? I am sitting on the throne before my a.s.sembled subjects, who in the daydream have no ident.i.ty but I suppose must be Templars. They are a.s.sembled before me, the Grand Master. And you know it's not a particularly serious daydream because I'm sitting before them as a ten-year-old girl, the throne way too big for me, my legs sticking out and my arms not even long enough to reach over the arms of the chair. I am the least monarchlike monarch you can possibly imagine, but it's a daydream and that's the way daydreams go sometimes. What's important about this daydream isn't that I turn myself into a king, nor that I have brought my ascendance to Grand Master forward by decades. What's significant about it for me, and what I cling to, is that sitting at either side of me are my mother and father.

Each day that she grows a little weaker and closer to death, and each day that he gravitates closer toward Arno, the impression of them at my side becomes more and more indistinct.

15 APRIL 1778.

"There's something I have to tell you, Elise, before I go."

She took my hand and her grip was so frail. My shoulders shook as I began to sob. "No, please, Mother, no . . ."

"Hush child, be strong. Be strong for me. I am being taken from you and you must see that as a test of your strength. You must accept it is G.o.d's purpose and see it as a test of your strength. You must be strong, not only for yourself, but also for your father. My pa.s.sing makes him vulnerable to the raised voices of the Order. You must be a voice in his other ear, Elise. You must press for the third way."

"I can't."

"You can. And one day you will be the Grand Master, and you must lead the Order abiding by your own principles. The principles in which you believe."

"They are yours, Mother."

She dropped my hand and reached to stroke my cheek. Her eyes were cloudy and the smile floated on her face. "They are principles founded on compa.s.sion, Elise, and you have so much of that. So much of it. You know, I'm so proud of you. I couldn't have hoped for a more wonderful daughter. In you, I see the best of your father and the best of me. I couldn't have asked for more, Elise, and know now that I will die happy-happy to have known you and honored to have witnessed the birth of your greatness."

"No, Mother, please, no."

The words were spoken, spoken between sobs that wracked my body. My hands gripped her upper arm through the sheets. Her so-thin upper arm through the sheets. As though by holding it I might prevent her soul departing. Her red hair was spread across the pillow. Her eyes fluttered. "Please call your father, if you would," she said in a voice that was too weak and too soft, as though the life was slipping out of her. I rushed to the door, flung it open, called for one of the Maries to fetch Father, slammed the door shut again and returned to her side, but the end was coming quickly now, and as death settled over her she looked at me with watering eyes and the fondest smile I have ever seen.

"Please look after each other," she said. "I love you both so very much."

18 APRIL 1778.

i.

I have frozen. I wander rooms, breathing the fusty smell I had come to a.s.sociate with her illness and know that we will have to open the drapes and fresh air will banish the scent but not wanting that because it will mean she is gone and I can't accept that.

When she was ill I wanted her back to full health. Now she is dead I just want her here. I just want her in the house.

This morning I watched from my window as three carriages arrived on the gravel outside and valets lowered steps and began to load them with trunks. Shortly afterward the three Maries appeared and began giving each other kisses good-bye. They wore black and dabbed their eyes and of course they grieved for Mother but it was a temporary grief by necessity, because their work here was over, payment made, and they would go to tend to other dying women and feel the same pa.s.sing sadness when that next appointment came to an end.

I tried not to think of their departure as being in indecent haste. I tried not to resent their leaving me alone with my grief. They were hardly alone in not knowing my depth of feeling. Mother had made Father promise not to observe the usual mourning rituals, and so the drapes of the lower floors stayed open and the furniture was not cloaked in black. There were newer members of staff who had only known Mother briefly, or never met her at all. The Mother I remembered was beautiful and graceful and protective, but to them she was remote. She wasn't really a person. She was a weak lady in bed, and a lot of households had one of those. Even more than the Maries their mourning was nothing more than a brief pang of sadness.

And so the household carried on almost as though nothing had happened, just a few of us truly grieving, the few who had known and loved Mother as she was. When I caught Justine's eye I could see in her a reflection of my own deep pain. She had been the only member of staff allowed in Mother's rooms during the sickness.

"Oh, mademoiselle," she said, and as her shoulders began to heave I took her hand and thanked her for everything she'd done, a.s.suring her that Mother had been so grateful for her care. She curtsied, thanked me for my comfort and left.

We were like two survivors of a great battle sharing memories with our eyes. She, I and Father were the only three remaining in the chteau who had tended to Mother as she lay dying.

It has been two days since she died and though Father had held me at her bedside on the night of her pa.s.sing, I haven't seen him since. Ruth told me that he has remained in his rooms, weeping, but that very soon he will find the strength to emerge and that I shouldn't worry for him; I should think of myself. She clasped me to her, pulling me into her bosom and rubbing my back as though trying to wind me.

"Let it out, child," she whispered. "Don't keep it all inside." But I wiggled away, thanking her, telling her that will be all, a bit haughty, the way I imagine May Carroll speaks to her maid.

There's nothing to let out, is the problem. I feel nothing.

Unable to stand the upper floors any longer, I left to wander the chteau, pa.s.sing through the hallways like a ghost.

"Elise . . ." Arno lurked at one end of a hallway with his hat held in his hand and his cheeks red as though having just been running. "I'm sorry to hear about your mother, Elise."

"Thank you, Arno," I said. The corridor seemed too long between us. He was hopping from one foot to another. "It was expected, not at all a shock, and though of course I'm grieving, I'm grateful I was able to be with her until the end."

He nodded sympathetically, not really understanding, and I could see why because everything in his world remained unchanged. To him a lady he barely knew, who had lived in a part of the house he wasn't allowed to visit, had died, and that made people that he cared for sad. But that was it.

"Perhaps we could play later," I said, "after our lessons," and he brightened.

He was probably missing Father, I reasoned, watching him go.

ii.

I spent the morning with the governor and met Arno again at the door as he entered to begin his own lessons. Out timetables were ordered so that Arno should be with the governor while I trained with Mr. Weatherall, so that he would never see me sword fighting. (Perhaps in his own journal one day he will talk of signposts toward that moment when the penny dropped. "It never occurred to me to question why she was so adept at sword fighting . . .") I left by a rear door and walked along the line of the topiary until I came to the woodland at the bottom and took the path to where Mr. Weatherall sat on a stump waiting for me. He had used to sit with his legs crossed and the tails of his jacket arranged over the stump, cutting quite a dash, and where before he had bounded from it to greet me, the light dancing in his eyes, a smile never far from his lips, now his head was bowed as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Beside him on the seat was a box about a foot and a half long, a hand wide.

"You have been told," I said.

His eyes were heavy. His bottom lip trembled a little and for a horrible moment I wondered what I would do if Mr. Weatherall were to cry.

"How are you taking it?"

"It was expected," I said, "not at all a shock, and though of course I'm grieving, I'm grateful I was able to be with her until the end."

He handed me the box. "It's with a heavy heart I give you this, Elise." His voice was gruff. "She hoped to give it to you herself."

I took the box and weighed the dark wood in my hands, knowing already what was inside. Sure enough a short sword lay within. Its sheath was soft brown leather with white st.i.tching along the sides, and the belt a leather strap designed for tying at the waist. The blade of the sword took the light; the steel was new, its handle bound tight with stained leather. There by the hilt was an inscription. "May the father of understanding be your guide. Love, Mother."

"It was always to have been your going-away present, Elise," he said flatly, glancing away into the woods and discreetly pushing the ball of his thumb into his eyes. "You're to use it for practice."

"Thank you," I told him and he shrugged. I wished I could move forward to a time when the sword thrilled me. For now I felt nothing.

There was a long pause. There wasn't going to be any training today, I realized. Neither of us had the heart for it.

After a while, he said, "Did she say anything of me? At the end, I mean."

I only just managed to hide my startled look, seeing something in his eyes I recognized as a cross between desperation and hope. I'd known his feeling for her was strong, but until that moment I hadn't realized quite how strong.

"She asked me to tell you that in her heart was love for you, and that she was eternally grateful for everything you had done for her."

He nodded. "Thank you, Elise, that's a great comfort," he said, and turning, wiped tears from his eyes.

iii.

Later, I was summoned to see Father and the two of us sat on a chaise longue in his darkened study, he with his arms around me, holding me tight. He had shaved, and outwardly was the same as he always was, but his words emerged slow and forced and brandy clouded his breath.

"I can tell you're being strong, Elise," he said, "stronger than I am."

Inside us both was a hollow ache. I found myself almost envying his ability to touch the source of his pain.

"It was expected," I said, but was unable to finish because my shoulders shook, and I gripped him with hands that trembled, allowing myself to be enveloped by him.

"Let it out, Elise," he said, and began to stroke my hair.

And I did. I let it out. And at last I began to cry.

EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL OF ARNO DORIAN.

12 SEPTEMBER 1794.

Guilt-stricken, I laid down her journal, overwhelmed by the pain that poured off the page. Horribly aware of my own contribution to her misery.

Elise is right. The Madame's death hardly even gave me pause for thought. To the selfish young boy I was, it was just something that prevented Francois and Elise from playing with me. An inconvenience that meant that until things returned to normal-and Elise was right, because of the house opting not to mourn, things did seem to get back to normal more quickly-I had to make my own entertainment.

That, to my shame, is all the Madame's death meant to me.

But I was only a little boy, just ten.

Ah, but so was Elise, just ten. And yet so far ahead of me in intelligence. She writes of our time with the governor, but how he must have groaned when it was my turn to be taught. He must have packed away Elise's textbooks and reached for my more elementary versions with a heavy heart.

And yet, in growing so quickly-and, as I now realize, in being "groomed" to grow so quickly-Elise was forced to live with a burden. Or so it seems to me reading these pages. The little girl I knew was just a little girl, full of fun and mischief and yes, like a sister, inventing all the best games, being handy with the excuses when we were caught out of bounds or stealing food from the kitchen or in doing whatever other j.a.pes she had planned for the day.

Little wonder, then, that when Elise was sent to the Maison Royale de Saint-Louis school at Saint-Cyr in order to complete her education she ran into trouble. Neither of those two opposing sides of her personality were suitable for school life, and predictably she hated the Maison Royale. Hated it. Though it was just under thirty kilometers away from Versailles, she might as well have been in a different country for all the distance she felt between her new life and her old. In her letters she referred to it as Le Palais de la Misere. Visits home were restricted to three weeks in the summer and a few days at Christmas, while the rest of her year was spent submitting to the regimes of the Maison Royale. Elise was not one for regimes. Not unless they suited her. The regime of learning sword with Mr. Weatherall was a very "Elise" kind of regime; the regime of school, on the other hand, was a very "not Elise" kind of regime. She hated the restrictions of school life. She hated having to learn "accomplishments" such as embroidery and music. So in her journal there is entry after entry of Elise in trouble at school. The entries themselves become repet.i.tive. Years and years of unhappiness and frustration.

The way things worked at the school was that the girls were split into groups, each with a head pupil. Of course Elise had clashed with the head of her group, Valerie, and the two had fought. At times, I read with a hand to my mouth, not sure whether to laugh at Elise's daring or be shocked by it, they literally fought.

Time and time again, Elise was brought before the hated headmistress, Madame Levene, asked to explain herself, then punished.

And time and time again she would respond with insolence and her insolence would make the situation worse and the severity of the punishments was increased. And the more the punishments were increased the more rebellious Elise became, and the more rebellious Elise became the more she was brought before the headmistress and the more insolent she was and the more the punishments were increased . . .

I'd known she was often in trouble, of course, because although we rarely saw each other during this period-s.n.a.t.c.hed glimpses through the windows of the tutor's window during her all-too-brief holidays, the odd regretful wave-we corresponded regularly. I, an orphan, had never been sent letters before, and the novelty of receiving them from Elise never faded. And of course she wrote of her hatred for school, but the correspondence lacked the detail of her journal, from which pulsed the scorn and contempt Elise felt for other pupils, for the teachers and for the hated headmistress, Madame Levene. Even a huge fireworks display to celebrate the school's centenary in 1786 could do nothing to lift her spirits. The king had apparently stood on the terraces at Versailles to enjoy the huge display, but even so it was not enough to cheer Elise. Instead, her journal was filled with a sense of injustice and of Elise at odds with the world around her-page after page and year after year of my love failing to see the vicious circle into which she was locked. Page after page of her failing to realize that what she was doing wasn't rebelling. It was mourning.

And reading on, I began to discover that there was something else she had withheld from me . . .

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF ELISE DE LA SERRE.

8 SEPTEMBER 1787.

My father came to see me today. I was called to Madame Levene's office for an audience with him and had been looking forward to seeing him, but of course the witchy old headmistress remained cackling in the room, such were the rules of Le Palais de la Misere, and so the visit was conducted as though for an audience. With the window behind her offering a sweeping view of the school grounds that even I had to admit was stunning, she sat with her hands clasped on the desk in front of her, watching with a thin smile as Father and I sat in chairs on the other side of the desk, the awkward Father and his rebellious daughter.

"I had rather hoped the path to complete your education would be a graceful canter rather than a limp, Elise," he said with a sigh.

He looked old and tired and I could imagine the chattering Crows at his shoulder, constantly badgering him-do this, do that-while to add to his woe his errant daughter was the subject of irate letters home, Madame Levene detailing my shortcomings at great length.

"For France, life continues to be hard, Elise," he explained. "Two years ago there was a drought and the worst harvest anyone can remember. The king authorized the building of a wall around Paris. He has tried to increase taxes but the parlement in Paris supported the n.o.bles who defied him. Our stout and resolute king panicked, withdrew the taxes and there were demonstrations of celebration. Soldiers ordered to fire into the demonstrators refused to do so . . ."

"The n.o.bles defied the king?" I said with a raised eyebrow.

He nodded. "Indeed. Who would've thought it? Perhaps they hope that the man on the street will be grateful, pa.s.s a vote of thanks and return home."

"You don't think so?"

"I fear not, Elise. I fear that once the workingman has the bit between his teeth, once he has a taste for the power-the potential power of the mob-then he will not be content merely with the withdrawal of some new tax laws. I think we may find a lifetime of frustration flooding out of these people, Elise. When they threw fireworks and stones at the Palais de Justice I don't think they were supporting n.o.blemen. And when they burned effigies of the Vicomte de Calonne I don't think they were supporting n.o.blemen then either."

"They burned effigies? Of the controller-general of finances?"