Assassin's Creed: Underworld (29 page)

Evie sat and brooded. True, she had been pleased
to hear of Jacob’s progress. He had dispensed with the bank owner Twopenny, putting a
crimp in the Templar’s financial pipeline, for one thing. Other smaller sorties had proved
similarly effective.

Her own work had met with less success.

On the one hand, she had the opportunity to spend
more time with Henry Green, and even Jacob’s taunts could not take the edge off that
particular pleasure. She and Henry were growing closer all the time.

But on the other, their investigations had
yielded little of merit. The more they buried themselves in books and the more they pored over
the material that Evie had taken from the crate, the less, it seemed, they learnt.

She mulled over Lucy’s words. How the
Shroud offered eternal life. They already knew the Shroud of Eden was, quote, ‘supposed to
heal even the gravest injury’, but eternal life?

And now Lucy Thorne had Evie’s key.

‘What good is a key if you don’t know
what lock it opens?’ she said one afternoon, as she and Henry wasted another fruitless
afternoon in the company of candlelight and mystifying literature.

‘I daresay Miss Thorne is in the same
predicament,’
Henry said dryly, not even bothering to lift his head
from the journal he was reading.

It was a good point. One that Evie acknowledged
with a sigh and a heavy heart, her eyes going back to her own work. And then – just as she
did so – she saw it. There in front of her was …

‘Henry,’ she said quickly. She put
her hand to his arm, then just as quickly dropped it once more, clearing her throat of the
sudden embarrassment of contact. ‘Here. This is it.’

Henry saw an image of the key beneath her finger.
So that was it.
Galvanized, he reached to a pile for another book, mind instantly
making connections.

‘This matches the collection owned by the
queen,’ said Henry, flicking through the pages. He found what he was searching for and
looked at her, eyes shining with excitement. ‘It’s kept in the Tower of
London.’

Hours later, with the city cowering beneath a
curtain of darkness and fog, Evie Frye crouched in the crenulation of a wall overlooking the
inner ward of the Tower of London. To her left were the darkened windows of Lanthorn Tower,
which had been gutted by fire in the great blaze of 1774 and was still in need of repair. For
that reason it remained an uninhabited, badly lit and mostly unguarded corner of the Tower
grounds. Perfect for Evie to take stock.

Squatting there, she was able to see over into
the central complex where the White Tower stood – ‘the keep’, presiding over
the smaller structures surrounding it. Dotted around were the familiar figures of the Yeoman
Warders, the beefeaters who guarded the Tower day and night. Among them would be a man that
Henry counted as an ally. Finding this man was her next task.

As she crouched, watching, she stretched out her
muscles. Four hours she had been waiting, and it had given her ample opportunity to study the
movements of the Warders. What struck her was a sense of two distinct groups. Something was
afoot, she thought. And she believed she knew what it was.

And then her attention was arrested by the
arrival of Lucy Thorne.

Evie clung even more tightly
to the shadows as her nemesis stepped from a carriage and crossed the courtyard to the lower
steps of the great keep. The Templar woman’s gaze swept around the walls surrounding the
inner ward and Evie found herself holding her breath as it passed her hiding place. Then Lucy
Thorne ascended the steps and stepped inside the keep.

Evie decided to bide her time some more. Below,
the Ceremony of the Keys was taking place, but she was watching something else. Away from the
ceremony two guards were dragging a constable away. The man was protesting in no uncertain
terms, but his curses fell on deaf ears.

Except, not quite on deaf ears. Down below was
another Yeoman Warder. Evie saw him looking on fretfully as the constable was frogmarched
towards the Waterloo Barracks at the western end of the complex.

The look in his eyes. That was him. That was her
man.

Spurred into action, she climbed down from her
perch and into the ward close to where he stood, still a picture of indecision. From the shadows
she attracted his attention with a low whistle, identified herself as a friend of Henry and
watched a look of grateful trust overtake his features. ‘Thank heavens you’ve
come,’ he said, and went on to tell his tale.

What emerged was a picture of the Templars
extending their tendrils into the Tower hierarchy itself. Many of the beefeaters were Templar
imposters. Many were still loyal to the Crown, but gossip and suspicion reigned and the balance
of power was being tipped.

‘That Thorne woman has gone into St
John’s Chapel.’
He jerked a thumb towards the keep, where the
apse of the chapel was visible. ‘I could help get you in.’

She nodded.
Do your worst.

‘All right, for this to work, you’ll
have to pretend to be my prisoner.’

And with that, he took hold of her arm and
marched her across the apron of the ward towards Waterloo Barracks, manoeuvring her over the
threshold and then into the main entrance hall.

Straightaway she could see the extent of the
Templar infiltration. They mocked her with it as she was led through the barracks.

‘Nice to see an Assassin in chains for
once,’ called guards.

Taunting her.

‘The Templars own London, Assassin.
Don’t forget it.’

The ally led her into a passageway for the cell
block, closing the door on the men in the outer barracks.

Here there were two sentries standing guard at a
door in the far end. Like the others, the sentries were goading her. But now Evie Fry made them
eat their words. Pretending to slip free of her captor, she sprang forward in a fencing stance
and triggered her blade in the same instant, thrusting it through the tunic of a startled guard.
The second man never stood a chance. Still low, Evie punched forward with the blade, jabbing him
quickly in the thigh then taking advantage of him doubling over in pain to thrust upwards into
the space between his collarbone and neck. He gurgled and slumped to the stone. Dead.

Her ally had watched, given her the thumbs up and
with the quiet assurance that he would organize the fightback slipped
away. In moments she would hear the sound of battle from outside.

In the meantime the short battle had been fought
to the accompaniment of anguished cries from the other side of the locked cell door. The
constable had been making his presence known for some time now, and sensing action a short
distance away, called, ‘Is someone out there?’ Voice muffled by the thick wooden
door.

She came to it, put fingertips to the wood, lips
close to it. ‘Yes, a friend.’

‘Oh, that’s good. Say, friend, could
you get me out?’

Evie was a good lock-pick. Her father had made
sure of that, and she made short work of the door, finding herself in the grateful presence of a
red-faced, excitable constable.

‘Thank you,’ he told her.
‘It’s treason, is what it is. And desecration of the chapel. Miss Thorne told me to
be grateful they didn’t kill me outright. The nerve.’

‘She’s after an object of great
power,’ Evie told him. ‘She can’t be allowed to steal it.’

The constable’s face fell. ‘Not the
Crown Jewels?’

Evie shook her head. ‘Something much more
important.’

Henry’s friend had seen to it that the
barracks had been made safe. Blood-soaked bodies were testament to that. The western section was
theirs. Outside, the constable spoke to his men. ‘All right, gentlemen,’ he told
them, ‘we are facing an enemy we never expected – traitors in our midst,’
before outlining a plan of action and series of signals for when the men should strike back at
the Templar stooges.

The men dispersed and then,
at a signal from Evie, launched their attack. In the ribbons of the inner and outer ward and in
the courtyard outside the keep, the constable’s men descended quickly upon the Templar
guards. There were minor skirmishes but Evie could see the battle would be short and easily won.
She was not even required to activate her blade as she made her way to the entrance of the White
Tower.

There, she ran quickly and nimbly up the steps,
then knocked on the door, praying those inside were still unaware of the rebellion taking place
in the wards.

She tensed, waiting, ready to dispatch whoever
was unfortunate enough to answer. However, no answer came. Steeling herself, she tried the great
handle of the door and found that it turned. Next, she slipped inside.

Damn
.

Straightaway she felt the point of a pike at her
neck and realized she’d walked into a trap. At the same time, the razor-sharp edge of a
Wilkinson sword was placed to her forearm, just above the gauntlet, prohibiting any movement.
She felt a warm droplet of blood make its way into the collar of her jacket, but the pain was
nothing compared to her chagrin at being so easily caught.

‘Looks like we’ve caught ourselves an
Assassin,’ sneered one of the three men, ‘only for real this time. There’ll be
no slipping your guard. No freeing the constable so that he can rally his men. We’ll be
taking you to Miss Lucy Thorne. Let’s see what she wants to do with you.’

She wants to kill me
, thought Evie. But
even so, they say that every cloud has a silver lining and here was hers. Lucy
was in the chapel right now and she was searching for the Shroud.
Certainly
,
thought Evie.
Take me to Lucy Thorne. You’re only taking me closer to it.

Any plans she had for escape were swiftly
shelved. Instead she relaxed, allowing the blade of the pike to remain where it was, the sword
to stay in place. The last thing she wanted to do was draw their attention to her gauntlet.

They did exactly as she wanted them to do. They
brought her into the chapel.

Knocking and entering, they came upon Lucy
Thorne, who was startled by their entrance and looking unusually flustered. Evidently
she’d failed to find the Shroud of Eden, and her cheeks were flushed as she turned to
Evie, flanked by her guards in the doorway of the darkened chapel.

‘Welcome, Miss Frye,’ she hissed.
‘Would you care to tell me where the Shroud is?’

Evie said nothing. There was nothing she could
say.

‘As you wish,’ said Lucy. ‘I
shall find it without your help. And then I’ll strangle you with it.’ She stalked
across the room, hands going to the panelling, pressing her ear close to the wood to listen for
telltale hollowing and the sound of secret compartments within.

At the same time, Evie was readying herself for
battle, sizing up her enemy. In the chapel were four opponents, but Lucy Thorne had already
fought Evie once and lost. She was depending on the Yeoman Warders, who were off their guard.
They thought that having delivered Evie into the custody of Lucy Thorne their job was done.

Evie allowed her arm to drop a fraction, removing
it from the immediate threat of the Wilkinson sword and
then, all at once,
dropped to one knee, engaged her own blade and buried it into the groin of the man standing
nearest to her.

It was ugly but it produced a lot of noise and
blood and, as she had often been taught, a lot of noise and blood is as helpful as surprise when
it comes to a successful attack.

The guard fell screaming; his comrades shouted.
But the pike had already been removed from her neck and with one gloved hand on the stone floor
she was pivoting in order to face the second man. It was as though she punched him in the
stomach, only with blade and gauntlet, and the blow drove him across the room, clutching at a
stomach wound that would bleed out in a matter of seconds.

When it came to the third man, she wasn’t
so lucky. He had not been able to bring his pike to bear but instead used the pikestaff,
swinging it round to clobber her on the side of the head. She staggered, knowing the lack of
pain for what it was – a delayed agony – and slicing wildly with the blade.

She caught his clothes, opened a gash, but it
wasn’t nearly enough to finish him off. He darted to one side, more agile than he looked,
and tried to hit her again with the pikestaff, aiming once more for the side of her head.

This time, however, he missed but she
didn’t. Her strike was true, and she rammed it into his heart so that he fell, dead almost
before he hit the floor. The other two men writhed and screamed, their final death throes noisy,
but Evie was launching herself at Lucy Thorne, blade out, knocking aside the boot knife that had
appeared, relishing the surprise and fear in her opponent’s eyes, knowing the
battle was won and allowing herself the grim satisfaction of feeling her
blade strike home.

And now, at last, Lucy Thorne lay dying. Evie
regarded her, almost surprised at her own lack of pity. ‘You sought a tool of healing in
order to extend your own power,’ she said simply.

‘Not mine, ours. You are so short-sighted.
You’d hoard power and never use it, when we would better the condition of humanity. I hope
you never find the Shroud. You have no idea what it truly can do.’

Curious, Evie bent to her. ‘Tell me
then.’

It was as if, in the last moment, Lucy Thorne
decided against it. ‘No,’ she smiled, and died.

Evie reached into her jacket for her
handkerchief, which she carefully spotted with Lucy Thorne’s blood, folding it and
replacing it. Next she retrieved the key then stared dispassionately around St John’s
Chapel. The warders were dead in pools of their own blood; Lucy Thorne lay looking almost
serene. Evie paid them silent compliment, then left and made her way back along the flickering
passages of the keep until she reached the entrance. There she stood at the top of the steps and
looked out over the courtyard, where the constable and Henry Green’s Yeoman ally were
rallying their men now the battle was won.

The Shroud was not here, she thought. But the
Tower of London had been returned to the Crown, and that at least meant a job well done for Evie
Frye.

During her journey back to base her thoughts went
to Lucy’s last words. It was true, Evie had thought of it as an instrument of healing.
Naively, perhaps, given the Templars’
interest. But then she had
learnt it gave eternal life – and now this. Was it possible that Lucy Thorne had known
something Evie didn’t? Mulling over it, she remembered something she had read once, a long
time ago. And then later, as soon as she was able, Evie put pen to paper and wrote to George
Westhouse.