As Altair fought, he thought of Maria and of those who had died on the orders of the Templar, but he stopped those memories turning into the desire for vengeance. Instead he let them give him resolve. The smile had fallen from Bouchart’s face and, as Altair remained silent, the Templar Grand Master was grunting with the exertion – that and frustration. His sword swings were less co-ordinated and failed to meet their target. Sweat and blood poured from him. His teeth were bared.
And Altair opened more wounds, cutting him on the forehead so that blood was gushing into his eyes and he was wiping his gauntlet across his face to clear it away. Now Bouchart could barely lift the sword and was bent over, his legs rubbery and his shoulders heaving as he fought for breath, squinting through a mask of blood to find the Assassin, seeing only shadows and shapes. He was a defeated man now. Which meant he was a dead man.
Altair didn’t toy with him. He waited until the danger was over. Until he was sure that Bouchart’s weakness was not feigned.
Then he ran him through.
Bouchart dropped to the ground and Altair knelt beside him. The Templar looked at him and Altair saw respect in his eyes.
‘Ah. You are a… a credit to your Creed,’ he gasped.
‘And you have strayed from yours.’
‘Not strayed… expanded. The world is more complicated than most dare admit. And if you, Assassin… if you knew more than how to murder, you might understand this.’
Altair frowned. ‘Save your lecture on virtue for yourself. And die knowing that I will never let the Apple, the Piece of Eden, fall into any hands but my own.’
As he spoke of it, he felt it warm against his back, as though it had awoken.
Bouchart smiled ironically. ‘Keep it close, Altair. You will come to the same conclusions we did… in time…’
He died. Altair reached to close his eyes, just as the building shook and he was showered with falling debris. Cannon fire. The Templars were shelling the archive. It made perfect sense. They wanted to leave nothing behind.
He scrambled over to Maria and pulled her to her feet. For a moment or so they looked into one another’s eyes, some unspoken feeling passing between them. Then she tugged at his arm and was leading him out of the grand chamber just as it was shaken by more cannon fire. Altair turned in time to see two of the beautiful pillars crumple and fall, great sections of stone smashing to the floor. Then he was following Maria as she ran, taking the steps two at a time as they climbed back up the shaft to the sunken archive. It was rocked by another explosion, and masonry smashed into the walkway, but they kept running, kept dodging until they reached the exit.
The steps had fallen away so Altair climbed, dragging Maria up behind him to a platform. They pushed their way out into the day as the shelling intensified and the building seemed to fall in on itself, forcing them to jump clear. And there they stayed for some time, gulping clean air, glad to be alive.
Later, when the Templar ships had departed, taking the last of the precious archive with them, Altair and Maria were walking in the dying light in Limassol port, both lost in thought.
‘Everything I worked for in the Holy Land, I no longer want,’ said Maria, after a long pause. ‘And everything I gave up to join the Templars… I wonder where all that went, and if I should try to find it again.’
‘Will you return to England?’ asked Altair.
‘No… I’m so far from home already, I’ll continue east. To India, perhaps. Or until I fall off the far edge of the world… And you?’
Altair thought, enjoying the closeness they shared. ‘For a long time under Al Mualim, I thought my life had reached its limit, and that my sole duty was to show others the same precipice I had discovered.’
‘I felt the same once,’ she agreed.
From his pack he took the Apple and held it up for inspection. ‘As terrible as this artefact is, it contains wonders… I would like to understand it as best I can.’
‘You tread a thin line, Altair.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I know. But I have been ruined by curiosity, Maria. I want to meet the best minds, explore the libraries of the world, and learn all the secrets of nature and the universe.’
‘All in one lifetime? It’s a little ambitious…’
He chuckled. ‘Who can say? It could be that one life is just enough.’
‘Maybe. And where will you go first?’
He looked at her, smiling, knowing only that he wanted her with him for the rest of his journey. ‘East…’ he said.
Part Four
48
15 July 1257
Maffeo has this habit of looking at me strangely sometimes. It’s as though he believes I’m not quite furnishing him with all the necessary information. And he has done this several times during our storytelling sessions. Whether watching the world go by in the busy market of Masyaf, enjoying the cool draughts in the catacombs beneath the citadel or strolling along the ramparts, seeing birds wheel and dip across the valleys, he looks at me every now and then, as if to say, ‘What is it you’re not telling me, Niccolo?’
Well, the answer, of course, is nothing, apart from my lingering suspicion that the story will eventually involve us in some way, that I’m being told these things for a reason. Will it involve the Apple? Or perhaps his journals? Or the codex, the book into which he has distilled his most significant findings?
Even so, Maffeo fixes me with the Look.
‘And?’
‘And what, brother?’
‘Did Altair and Maria go east?’
‘Maffeo, Maria is the mother of Darim, the gentleman who invited us here.’
I watched as Maffeo turned his head to the sun and closed his eyes to let it warm his face as he absorbed this information. I’m sure that he was trying to reconcile the image of the Darim we knew, a man in his sixties with the weathered face to prove it, with someone who had a mother – a mother like Maria.
I let him ponder, smiling indulgently. Just as Maffeo would pester me with questions during the tale, so of course I had pestered the Master, albeit with a good deal more deference.
‘Where is the Apple now?’ I had asked him once. If I’m honest, I had secretly hoped that at some point he would produce it. After all, he’d spoken about it in terms of such reverence, even sounding fearful of it at times. Naturally I had hoped to see it for myself. Perhaps to understand its allure.
Sadly, this was not to be. He met my question with a series of testy noises. I should not trouble myself with thoughts of the Apple, he had warned, with a wagging finger. I should concern myself with the codex instead. For contained in those pages were the secrets of the Apple, he said, but free of the artefact’s malign effects.
The codex. Yes, I had decided, it was the codex that was to prove significant in the future. Significant in my future, even.
But anyway: back in the here and now, I watched Maffeo mull over the fact that Darim was the son of Altair and Maria; that from adversarial beginnings had flourished first a respect between the pair, then attraction, friendship, love and -
‘Marriage?’ said Maffeo. ‘She and Altair were wed?’
‘Indeed. Some two years after the events I’ve described, they were wed at Limassol. The ceremony was held there as a measure of respect to the Cypriots who had offered their island as a base for the Assassins, making it a key stronghold for the Order. I believe Markos was a guest of honour, and a somewhat ironic toast was proposed to the pirates, who had inadvertently been responsible for introducing him to Altair and Maria. Shortly after the wedding the Assassin and his bride returned to Masyaf, where their son Darim was born.’