Assassin's creed : Black flag - Bowden Oliver - Страница 58

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In his hand appeared a small dagger and he never took his eyes from mine as he used it to make his thumb bleed, then placed the red-beaded finger into a tiny recess by the side of the door. It began to open.

All six of us looked at one another. Only Bart Roberts seemed to be enjoying himself.

“And the door opens,” he said with the voice of a showman, “after almost eighty thousand years.”

He stepped to one side and ushered his men through. The nervous crew members looked at one another, then did as their captain ordered and began to move towards the door . . .

Then, for some reason known only to himself, Roberts killed them, all four of them. With one hand he buried his dagger in the eye of the leading man and pushed his body aside at the same time he drew his pistol and fired into the face of the second man. The last two crew members had no time to react as Black Bart drew his second pistol and fired point-blank into the chest of a third man, pulled his sword and ran the final man through.

It was the same man who had brought the chest on deck, who’d looked to Roberts for some words of praise. He made an odd, choking sound and Roberts held him there a second, then slid the cutlass home to the hilt and twisted it. The body on his blade went taut and the deck-hand looked at his captain with imploring, uncomprehending eyes until his body relaxed, slid off the steel and thumped to the ground, chest rising once, twice, then staying still.

So much death. So much death.

“Jesus, Roberts, have you gone mad?”

He shook blood from his cutlass then fussily cleaned it with a handkerchief.

“Quite the contrary, Edward. These wags would have gone mad at seeing what lies beyond this gate. But you, I suspect, are made of sterner stuff. Now, pick up that chest and carry it hither.”

I did as he asked, knowing that to follow Roberts was a bad idea. A terrible, bloody idea. But I was unable to prevent myself from doing it. I’d come too far to back out.

Inside it was like an ancient temple. “Dirty and decrepit,” said Roberts, “not quite as I remember. But it has been over eighty millennia.”

I shot him a glare. More mumbo jumbo. “Oh rot, that’s impossible.”

His look in return was unknowable. “Step as if on thin ice, Captain.”

On stone steps we descended through the centre of The Observatory, moving into a large bridge chamber. All my senses were alive as I looked around and took in the vast openness of the space.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Roberts in a hushed voice.

“Aye,” I replied and found I was whispering, “like something out of a fairy-tale, one of them old poems.”

“There were many stories about this place once. Tales that turned into rumours, and again into legend. The inevitable process of facts becoming fictions, before fading away entirely.”

We entered a new room altogether, what could only be described as an archive, a huge space lined with low shelves on which were stacked hundreds of small vials of blood, just like the ones in the coffer—just like the one I had seen Torres use on Bartholomew Roberts.

“More blood vials.”

“Yes. These cubes contain the blood of an old and ancient people. A wonderful race, in their time.”

“The more you talk, man, the less I understand,” I said irritably.

“Only remember this; the blood in these vials is not worth a single reale to anyone anymore. It may be again, one day. But not in this epoch.”

We were deep within the bowels of the Earth by then, and walked through the archives into what was the main theatre of The Observatory. Again it was astounding and we stood for a second, craning our necks to gaze from one side of the vast domed chamber to the other.

At one side of the chamber was what looked like a pit, with just a sloshing sound from far below to indicate water somewhere, while in the middle of the chamber was a raised dais with what looked like a complicated pattern carved into the stone. As Roberts bade me put the chest down a low noise began. A low, humming sound that was intriguing at first but began to build . . .

“What’s that?” I felt as though I was having to shout to make myself heard although I wasn’t.

“Ah yes,” said Roberts, “a security measure. Just a moment.”

Around us the walls had begun to glow, letting off a pulsing white light that was as beautiful as it was unsettling. The Sage walked across the floor to the raised platform in the middle and put his hand to a carved indent in the centre. Straight away the sound receded and the room around us was silent again though the walls still glowed.

“So what is this place?” I said to Roberts.

“Think of it as like a large spyglass. A device capable of seeing great distances.”

The glow. The blood. This “device.” My head was beginning to spin, and all I could do was stand and watch open-mouthed as Roberts reached into the coffer with practised fingers, as though it was something he’d done dozens of times before, then pulled out a vial and held it up to the light, just as he had on the day we took possession of the chest.

Satisfied, he bent to the raised dais in front of him and placed the crystal inside. Something happened then—something I still can’t quite believe—the glow on the walls seemed to ripple like mist, coalescing, not into fog but into images, a series of opaque pictures, as though I were looking through a window at something, at . . .

FIFTY-SIX

Calico Jack Rackham, as I live and breathe.

But I wasn’t looking at him. No. It was as though I was him. As though I were looking through his eyes. In fact, the only reason I knew it was Calico Jack was the Indian fabric of his coat sleeve.

He was walking up the steps towards The Old Avery. My heart leapt to see the old place, even more careworn and dilapidated than ever before . . .

Which meant that this wasn’t an image from the past. It wasn’t an image I had ever experienced myself because I’d never seen The Old Avery in its current state of disrepair. I hadn’t visited Nassau since the true rot set in.

And yet . . . And yet . . . I was seeing it.

“This is bloody witchcraft,” I spluttered.

“No. This is Calico Jack Rackham . . . Somewhere in the world at this moment.”

“Nassau,” I said, as much to him as to myself. “This is happening right now? We’re seeing through his eyes?”

“Aye,” said Roberts

It wasn’t as though I returned my attention to the image. It was simply there in front of me. As if I were part of it, inside it. Which in a way I was, because when Calico Jack turned his head the image moved with him. I watched as he looked towards a table where Anne Bonny sat with James Kidd.

A long, lingering glance over Anne Bonny. Over certain parts of Anne Bonny. The dirty bastard. But then, oh my God, she looked over from the table where she sat with James Kidd and returned his look. And I mean a real proper, lascivious look. That roving eye I told you about? She was giving old Calico Jack the full benefit.

Bloody hell. They’re having an affair.

Despite everything—despite the wonders of The Observatory—I found myself suppressing a chuckle to think of James Bonny, that treacherous turncoat, wearing the horns. Calico Jack? Well, the poxy git had marooned me, hadn’t he? So there was no love lost there. But he did give us our weapons, ammunition and grub and, well, he did have Anne warming his bed, so you had to hand it to him.

Now, Calico Jack was listening to Anne and James chatting.

“I don’t know, Jim,” Anne was saying, “I haven’t the faintest idea how to pilot a ship. That ain’t work a woman does.”

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