“She’s not too far away,” Charles told me. And did I imagine it, or did I feel my pulse quicken a little? It had been a long time since any woman had made me feel this way. My life had been spent either in studying or moving around and, as for women in my bed, there had been nobody serious: the occasional washerwoman during my service with the Coldstreams, waitresses, landlords’ daughters—women who had provided solace and comfort, physical and otherwise, but nobody I’d have described as at all special.
This woman, though: I had seen something in her eyes, as if she were something of a kindred spirit—another loner, another warrior, another bruised soul who looked at the world with weary eyes.
I studied the camp. “The fire’s only just been snuffed, the snow recently disturbed.” I looked up. “She’s close.”
I dismounted but, when I saw Charles was about to do the same, I stopped him.
“Best you return to Braddock, Charles, before he grows suspicious. I can handle things from here.”
He nodded, reined his horse round, and I watched as they left then turned my attention to the snow-covered ground around me, wondering about my real reason for sending him off. And knowing exactly what it was.
ii
I crept though the trees. It had begun to snow again, and the forest was strangely silent, but for the sound of my own breathing, which billowed in vapours in front of me. I moved fast but stealthily, and it wasn’t long before I saw her, or at least the back of her. She was kneeling in the snow, a musket leaning against a tree, as she examined a snare. I came closer, as quietly as I could, only to see her tense.
She’d heard me. God she was good.
And in the next instant she had rolled to her side, snatched up the musket, thrown a look behind her then taken off into the woods.
I ran after her. “Please stop running,” I called as we flew through the snow-blanketed woodland. “I only wish to talk. I am not your enemy.”
But she kept on going. I dashed nimbly through the snow, moving fast and easily negotiating the terrain, but she was faster and next she took to the trees, raising herself off the hard-to-negotiate snow and swinging from branch to branch wherever she was able.
In the end, she took me further and further into the forest and would have escaped were it not for a piece of bad fortune. She tripped on a tree root, stumbled, fell, and I was upon her at once, but not to attack, to come to her aid, and I held up a hand, breathing hard as I managed to say, “Me. Haytham. I. Come. In. Peace.”
She looked at me as though she hadn’t understood a word I’d said. I felt the beginnings of a panic. Maybe I’d been wrong about her in the cart. Maybe she couldn’t speak English at all.
Until, suddenly, she replied with, “Are you touched in the head?”
Perfect English.
“Oh . . . sorry . . .”
She gave a disgusted shake of her head.
“What do you want?”
“Well, your name, for one.” My shoulders heaved as I gradually caught my breath, which was steaming in the freezing cold.
And then, after a period of indecision—I could see it playing across her face—she said, “I am Kaniehtí:io.
“Just call me Ziio,” she said, when I tried and failed to repeat her name back to her. “Now tell me why it is you’re here.”
I reached around my neck and took off the amulet, to show her. “Do you know what this is?”
Without warning, she grabbed my arm. “You have one?” she asked. For a second I was confused, until I realized she was looking not at the amulet, but at my hidden blade. I watched her for a moment, feeling what I can only describe as a strange mixture of emotions: pride, admiration, then trepidation as, accidentally, she ejected the blade. To her credit, though, she didn’t flinch, just looked up at me with wide brown eyes, and I felt myself fall a little deeper as she said, “I’ve seen your little secret.”
I smiled back, trying to look more confident than I felt, and raised the amulet, starting again.
“This.” I dangled it. “Do you know what it is?”
Taking it in her hand, she gazed at it. “Where did you get it?”
“From an old friend,” I said, thinking of Miko and offering a silent prayer for him. I wondered, should it have been him here instead of me, an Assassin instead of a Templar?
“I’ve only seen such markings in one other place,” she said, and I felt an instant thrill.
“Where?”
“It . . . it is forbidden for me to speak of it.”
I leaned towards her. I looked into her eyes, hoping to convince with the strength of my conviction. “I saved your people. Does this mean nothing to you?”
She said nothing.
“Look,” I pressed, “I am not the enemy.”
And perhaps she thought of the risks we had taken at the fort, how we had freed so many of her people from Silas. And maybe—maybe—she saw something in me she liked.
Either way, she nodded then replied, “Near here, there is a hill. On top of it grows a mighty tree. Come, we’ll see if you speak the truth.”
iii
She led me there, and indicated below us, where there was a town she told me was called Concord.
“The town hosts soldiers who seek to drive my people from these lands. They are led by a man known as the Bulldog,” she said.
The realization dawned. “Edward Braddock . . .”
She rounded on me. “You know him?”
“He is no friend of mine,” I assured her, and never had I been more sincere.
“Every day, more of my people are lost to men like him,” she said fiercely.
“And I suggest we put a stop to it. Together.”
She looked hard at me. There was doubt in her eyes, but I could see hope as well. “What do you propose?”
Suddenly I knew. I knew exactly what had to be done.
“We have to kill Edward Braddock.”
I let the information sink in. Then added, “But first we have to find him.”
We began to head down the hill towards Concord.
“I don’t trust you,” she said flatly.
“I know.”
“Yet you remain.”
“That I might prove you wrong.”
“It will not happen.” Her jaw was set. She believed it. I had a long way to go with this mysterious, captivating woman.
In town, we approached the tavern, where I stopped her. “Wait here,” I said. “A Mohawk woman is likely to raise suspicions—if not muskets.”