"Would that put paid to the theory that the Crows were conspiring against your mother and father?"

I followed his line of reasoning. "No, it could just mean that some of them were conspiring against my mother and father."

He chuckled, scratched his beard. "That's right. 'An individual,' according to the letter. Only, as far as we know, none have yet made a bid for Grand Master."

"No," I said quietly.

"Well, here's the thing-you're the Grand Master now, Elise."

"They know that."

"Do they? You could have fooled me. Tell me, how many meetings have you had with your advisers?"

I gave him a narrow-eyed look. "I must be allowed to grieve."

"n.o.body says different. Just that it's been two months now, Elise. Two months and you've not conducted one bit of Templar business. Not one bit. The Order knows that you're Grand Master in name but you've done nothing to rea.s.sure them that the stewardship is in safe hands. If there was a coup-if another knight were to step forward and declare himself Grand Master, well, he wouldn't have much of a challenge on his hands, now, would he?

"Grieving for your father is one thing, but you need to honor him. You're the latest in a line of de la Serres. The first female Grand Master of France. You need to get out there and prove you're worthy of them, not be hanging around your estate moping."

"But my father was murdered. What example would I set if I were to let his murder go unavenged?"

He gave a short laugh. "Well, correct me if I'm wrong but you ain't exactly doing one thing or another at the moment, are you? Best course of action: you take control of the Order and help steer it through the hard times ahead. Second best course of action: you show a bit of de la Serre spirit and let it be known that you're hunting your father's killer-and maybe help flush out this 'individual.' Worst course of action: you sit on your a.r.s.e moping about your dead mum and dad."

I nodded. "So what do I do?"

"First thing is to contact Lafreniere. Don't mention the letter but do tell him you're keen to take command of the Order. If he is loyal to the family, then he'll hopefully show his hand. Second thing is, I'm going to find you a lieutenant. Someone I know we can trust. Third thing, you should think about going to see Arno as well. You should remember that it wasn't Arno who killed your father. The person who killed your father was the person who killed your father."

8 JULY 1789.

A letter has arrived: My dearest Elise, Firstly, I must apologize for not having replied to your letters before now. I confess my failure to give you the courtesy of a reply has been mainly out of anger that you deceived your way into my confidences, but on reflection there is much we have in common and in fact I am grateful that you chose to confide in me, and would like to a.s.sure you that your apologies are accepted.

I am most gratified that you have taken my brother's writings to heart. Not solely because it justifies my decision to give them to you but because I believe that had he lived, my brother might have gone on to achieve some of his aims, and I hope that you might do so in his stead.

I note that your intended, Arno, can boast an a.s.sa.s.sin heritage and the fact that you are in love with him bodes well for a future accord. I do believe you are right in having misgivings over your father's plans to convert Arno, and while I also agree that your misgivings may have their roots in rather more selfish motives, that doesn't necessarily make them the wrong course of action. Equally, if Arno were discovered by the a.s.sa.s.sins, the Creed might be persuasive enough to turn Arno. Your beloved might easily become your enemy.

On this note, I have information that may be of use to you. Something that has appeared in what I can only describe as a.s.sa.s.sin communiques. As you can imagine, I would not normally involve myself in such matters; what information on the Creed's activities I receive in pa.s.sing tends to go no further, as much a function of my own disinterest as any particular discretion. But this particular tidbit may be of importance to you. It involves a high-ranking a.s.sa.s.sin named Pierre Bellec, who is currently imprisoned in the Bastille. Bellec has written to say that he has discovered a young man possessing enormous a.s.sa.s.sin gifts. The communique names this young prisoner as "Arnaud." However, as I'm sure you can imagine, the similarities in the names struck me as more than coincidental. If nothing it may be something worth your looking into.

I remain,

Yours truly,

Jennifer Scott

14 JULY 1789.

i Paris was in a state of uproar as I made my way through the streets. It had been this way for over two weeks now, ever since twenty thousand of the king's men had arrived in Paris to put down disturbances, as well as threaten Count Mirabeau and his Third Estate deputies. Then, when the king dismissed his finance minister, Jacques Necker, a man who many believed was the savior of the French people, there were more uprisings.

Days ago the Prison de l'Abbaye had been stormed to free the guardsmen imprisoned for refusing to fire on protestors. These days it was said that the common soldier was giving his loyalties to the people, not the king. Already it felt as though the National a.s.sembly-now called the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly-was in charge. They had created their own flag: a "tricolor," which was everywhere. And if ever there was a symbol of the a.s.sembly's fast-growing dominance, that was it.

Since the Abbaye prison revolt the streets in Paris had been thronged with armed men. Thirteen thousand of them had joined a people's militia and they roamed the districts looking for weapons, the call to find arms becoming louder and louder and more intense. This morning, it had reached a crescendo.

In the early hours of the morning the militia had stormed the Htel des Invalides and got their hands on muskets, tens of thousands of muskets, by all accounts. But they had no gunpowder, so now they needed gunpowder. Where was there gunpowder?

The Bastille. That's where I was heading. Early morning in a Paris boiling over with repressed fury and vengeance. Not a good place to be.

ii Looking around as I hurried through the streets, I saw that the crowds, though a mingled-together, rushing, pushing pell-mell of bodies, actually fell into two distinct groups: those intent on preparing for the oncoming trouble, protecting themselves, their families and their possessions, fleeing the trouble because they wished to avoid the conflict or, like me, because they were concerned they might well be the target of the trouble.

And those intent on starting the trouble.

And what distinguished the two groups? Weapons. The carrying of weapons-I saw pitchforks, axes and staffs brandished and held aloft-and the locating of weapons. A whisper had become a shout had become a clamor: where are the muskets? Where are the pistols? Where is the gunpowder? Paris was a tinderbox.

Could all of this been avoided? I wondered. Could we, the Templars, have prevented our beloved country reaching this dreadful impa.s.se, teetering above a precipice of previously unimagined change?

There were shouts-shouts for "freedom!"-mingled with the whinnies and brays of scattering, fl.u.s.tered animals.

Horses snorted as they were driven at dangerous speeds through crowded streets by panicked drivers. Herders tried to take wide-eyed, frightened livestock to safety. The stink of fresh dung was heavy in the air but more than that there was another scent in Paris today. The smell of rebellion. No, not of rebellion, of revolution.

And why was I on the streets, and not helping the staff to board up the windows to the de la Serre estate?

Because of Arno. Because even though I hated Arno, I couldn't stand by-not while he was in danger. The truth was I'd done nothing about the letter from Jennifer Scott. What would Mr. Weatherall, Mother and Father have thought about that? Me, a Templar-no, a Templar Grand Master, no less-knowing full well that one of our own was close to being discovered by the a.s.sa.s.sins and doing nothing-not a thing-about it? Skulking around the unpopulated floors of her Paris estate like a lonely old eccentric widow?

I'll say this for rebellion, there's nothing like it to spur a girl into action, and even though my feelings for Arno hadn't changed-it wasn't as though I'd suddenly stopped hating him for his failure to deliver the letter-I still wanted to get to him before the mob.

I'd hoped that I might arrive before them, but even as I rushed toward Saint-Antoine it became apparent that I was not ahead of a tide of people going in the same direction; rather I was part of it, joining a throng of partisans, militia and tradesmen of all stripes, who brandished weapons and flags as they moved toward that great symbol of the king's tyranny, the Bastille.

I cursed, knowing I was too late, but staying with the crowd, darting between knots of people as I tried, somehow, to get ahead of the pack. With the towers and ramparts of the Bastille visible in the distance, the crowd seemed to slow down all of a sudden and a cry went up. In the street was a cart bristling with muskets, probably liberated from the armory, and there were men and women handing them out to a sea of waving, upstretched hands. The mood was jovial, celebratory, even. There was a sense that this was easy.

I pushed past, through rows of tightly packed bodies, ignoring the curses that came my way. The crowds were less dense on the other side but now I saw a cannon being wheeled along the highway. It was maneuvered by men on foot, some in uniform, some in the garb of the partisans, and for a moment I wondered what was happening until the cry went up: "The Gardes Francais have come over!" Sure enough I heard tales of soldiers turning on their commanders; there was talk that men's heads had been mounted on pikes.

Not far away I saw a well-dressed gentleman who overheard the same. He and I shared a quick look and I could see the fear in his eyes. He was thinking the same as I was: was he safe? How far would these revolutionaries go? After all, their cause had been supported by many n.o.bles and members of the other estates, and Mirabeau himself was an aristocrat. But would that mean anything in the upheaval? When it came to revenge, would they discriminate?

The battle at the Bastille began as I came to it. On the approach to the prison I'd heard that a delegation of the a.s.sembly had been invited inside to discuss terms with the governor, de Launay. However, the delegation had been inside for three hours now, eating breakfast, and the crowd outside had become more and more restless. Meanwhile, one of the protestors had climbed from the roof of a perfume shop onto the chains that held the raised drawbridge, had been cutting the chains, and as I rounded the corner and brought the Bastille into view, he finished the job and the drawbridge fell with a great wallop that seemed to reverberate around the entire area.

We all saw it fall onto a man standing below. A man unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, who one moment was standing on the bank of the moat, brandishing a musket and egging on those who were trying to free the drawbridge, and the next moment had disappeared in a mist of blood and tangle of limbs protruding at horrible angles from beneath the drawbridge.

A great cheer went up. This one unfortunate life lost was nothing compared to the victory of opening the drawbridge. In the next instant the crowds began to flood across the open drawbridge and into the outside courtyard of the Bastille.

iii The reply came. I heard a shout from the battlements and a thunderclap of musket fire was followed by a smoke cloud that rose like a puff of powder from the ramparts.

Below, we dived for cover as musket b.a.l.l.s zinged into the stone and cobbles around us, and there were screams. It wasn't enough to disperse the crowds, though. Like poking a wasps' nest with a stick, the gunfire, far from deterring the protestors, had only made them more angry. More determined.

Plus, of course, they had cannons.

"Fire!" came a shout from not far away, and I saw the cannons buck into huge billows of smoke before the b.a.l.l.s tore chunks out of the Bastille. Moving forward were more armed men. Muskets held by the attackers bristled above their heads like the spines of a hedgehog.

Militia had taken control of buildings around us, and smoke was pouring from the windows. The governor's house was ablaze, I was told. The smell of gunpowder mingled with the stench of smoke. From the Bastille came another shout and there was a second volley of gunfire and I ducked behind a low stone wall. Around me were more screams.

Meanwhile the crowd had made its way across a second drawbridge and was trying to negotiate a moat. From behind me planks were produced and used to form a bridge into the inner sanctum of the prison. Soon they would be through.

More shots were fired. The protestors' cannons replied. Stone fell around us.

In there somewhere was Arno. With my sword drawn I joined the protestors flooding through into the inner sanctum.

From above us, the musket fire stopped, the battle won now. I caught a glimpse of the governor, de Launay. He had been arrested and there was talk of taking him to the Htel de Ville, the Paris city hall.

For a moment I allowed myself a moment of relief. The Revolution had maintained its head; there was to be no l.u.s.t for blood.

But I was wrong. A cry went up. Idiotically, de Launay had aimed a kick at a man in the crowd and, incensed, the man had leapt forward and plunged a knife into him. Soldiers attempting to protect him were pushed back by the crowd and de Launay disappeared beneath a seething ma.s.s of bodies. I saw blades arcing up and down, plumes of blood making rainbows and heard one long, piercing scream like that of a wounded animal.

Suddenly there was a cheer and a pike rose above the crowd. On it was the head of de Launay, the flesh at his torn neck ragged and b.l.o.o.d.y, his eyeb.a.l.l.s rolled up in their sockets.

The crowd whooped and hollered and looked upon their prize with happy, blood-spattered faces as it bobbed up and down on the pike, paraded back along the planks and drawbridges, over the mangled, forgotten body of the protestor crushed by the drawbridge and out onto the streets of Paris, where the sight of it would inspire further acts of barbarism.

There and then I knew it was the end for us all. For every n.o.bleman and -woman in France it was the end. Whatever our sympathies, even if we'd talked of the need for change, even if we'd agreed that Marie Antoinette's excesses were disgusting and the king both greedy and inadequate, and even if we'd supported the Third Estate and backed the a.s.sembly, it didn't matter, because from this moment on none of us were safe; we were all collaborators or oppressors in the eyes of the mob and they were in charge now.

I heard more screams as more of the Bastille guards were lynched. Next I caught sight of a prisoner, a frail old man who was being lifted down a set of steps leading up to a prison door. And then, with a rush of mixed emotions-grat.i.tude, love and hate among them-I saw Arno high up on the ramparts. He was with another older man, the pair of them running toward the other side of the fortress.

"Arno," I called to him, but he didn't hear. There was too much noise and he was too far away.

I screamed again, "Arno," and those nearby turned to look my way, made suspicious by my cultured tones.

Unable to do anything, I watched as the first man came to the edge of the ramparts and jumped.

The jump was a leap of faith. An a.s.sa.s.sin leap of faith. So that was Pierre Bellec. Sure enough, Arno hesitated then did the same. Another a.s.sa.s.sin leap of faith.

He was one of them now.

iv I turned and ran. I needed to get home now, send the staff away. Let them get clear before they were caught up in the trouble.

Crowds were moving away from the Bastille and to the city hall. Already I was hearing that the provost of the merchants of Paris, Jacques de Flesselles, had been slaughtered on the steps of the Htel de Ville, that his head had been hacked off and was being paraded through the streets.

My stomach churned. Shops and buildings were burning. I heard the sound of smashing gla.s.s, saw people running, laden down with stolen goods. For weeks Paris had been hungry. We on our estates and chteaux had eaten well, of course, but the common man had been driven almost to the brink of starvation, and though the militia on the streets had prevented any full-scale looting, they were powerless to do so now.

Away from Saint-Antoine the crowds had thinned and there were carriages and carts in the road, mostly driven by city folk wanting to escape the trouble. They'd hastily shoved their belongings onto whatever mode of transport they could find and were desperately trying to escape. Most were simply ignored by the crowds, but I caught my breath to see a huge, two-horse-drawn carriage, complete with liveried groom at the front, slowly trying to make its way through the streets, knowing straight away that whoever it was inside was asking for trouble.

This one wasn't inconspicuous. As if the simple sight of this sumptuous carriage wasn't enough to incense the mob, the groom was shouting at bystanders to clear the road, waving at them with his crop as though trying to clear a cloud of insects, all the while being goaded by his red-faced mistress, who peered from the window of the carriage, wafting a lace handkerchief.

Their arrogance and stupidity was astounding, and even I, whose veins ran with aristocratic blood, took a measure of satisfaction when the crowd paid them no mind at all.

Next, though, the mob turned on them. The situation had been inflamed enough and they began to rock the carriage on its springs.

I considered moving forward to help but knew that to do so would be to sign my own death warrant. Instead, I could only watch as the groom was pulled from his imperious perch and the beating began.

He didn't deserve it. n.o.body deserved a beating at the hands of a mob because it was indiscriminate and vicious and driven by a collective desire for blood. Even so, he had done nothing to guard against his fate. The whole of Paris knew that the Bastille had fallen. The Ancien Regime had been crumbling but in one morning it had fallen completely. To pretend otherwise was madness. Or, in his case, suicide.

The coachman had run. Meanwhile, members of the crowd had clambered on top of the carriage, ripped open trunks and were tossing clothes from the roof as they delved for valuables. The doors were ripped open and a protesting woman dragged out. The crowd laughed as one of the protestors planted a foot on her behind and sent her sprawling to the ground.

From the carriage came a shout of protest. "What is the meaning of this?" and my heart sank a little further to hear the usual tone of aristocratic indignation in his voice. Was he that stupid? Was he too stupid to realize that he and his kind no longer had the right to such a tone of voice? He and his kind were no longer in charge.

I heard his clothes rip as they tore him from the carriage. His wife was sent on her way, screaming down the street, driven by a series of kicks to the backside, and I wondered how she would fare on her own, in a Paris that was topsy-turvy to the one she had known all her life. I doubted she'd last the day.

As I continued on my way my hopes began to sink. It seemed that looters were pouring out of the houses on both sides of the thoroughfare. In the air was the crackle of musket fire and the sound of breaking gla.s.s, triumphant cries from those able to get their way, dismayed screams from the unlucky ones.

I was running by now, sword still drawn and ready to face anyone who stood between me and my villa. My heart hammered in my ears. I prayed that the staff had got clear, that the mob had not yet reached our estate. All I could think of was my trunk. Among other things it contained Haytham Kenway's letters and the necklace given to me by Jennifer Scott. Little trinkets I had collected over the years, things that meant something to me.

Arriving at the gates I saw the butler, Pierre, standing with a case of his own hugged to his chest, his eyes darting to and fro.

"Thank G.o.d, mademoiselle," he said, catching sight of me, and I looked past him, my gaze traveling along the courtyard up the steps to the front door of the villa.

What I saw was a courtyard strewn with my belongings. The door of the villa stood open and I could see devastation within. My house had been ransacked.

"The mob were in and out within minutes," said Pierre breathlessly. "The boards were up and the locks were bolted, but they captured the gardener Henri and threatened to kill him unless we opened the doors. We had no choice, mademoiselle."

I nodded, thinking only of my trunk in my bedchamber, part of me wanting to dash there straightaway, another part of me needing to put this right.

"You absolutely did the right thing," I a.s.sured him. "What about your personal effects?"

He hefted the case he held. "All in here."

"Even so, it must have been a frightening experience. You should go. Right now is not a good time to be a.s.sociated with n.o.bility. Make your way to Versailles and we shall see to it that you receive recompense."

"And what about you, mademoiselle? Won't you come?"

I glanced toward the villa, feeling steely-hearted to see my family's belongings discarded like rubbish. I recognized a dress that belonged to my mother. So, they had been to the upper floors and had rampaged through the bedchambers.

I pointed with my sword. "I'm going in there," I said.

"No, mademoiselle, I can't allow that," said Pierre. "There are still some of the bandits inside, drunk as lords, sifting through the room for more things to steal."

"That's why I'm going in there. To stop them doing that."

"But they're armed, mademoiselle."

"So am I."

"They're drunk and vicious."