28 JUNE 1776
i
This morning I woke up in my lodgings with a start, sitting upright in bed and looking around the unfamiliar room. Outside the window, the streets of New York were stirring. Did I imagine it, or was there a charge in the air, an excited edge to the chatter that rose to my window? And, if there was, did it have anything to do with the fact that today there was an execution in town? Today they would hang . . .
Connor, that’s his name. That’s the name Ziio gave him. I wondered how different things might have been, had we brought him into this world together.
Would Connor still be his name?
Would he still have chosen the path of the Assassin?
And if the answer to that question was, No, he wouldn’t have chosen the path of an Assassin because his father was a Templar, then what did that make me but an abomination, an accident, a mongrel? A man with divided loyalties.
But a man who had decided he could not allow his son to die. Not today.
I dressed, not in my normal clothes but in a dark robe with a hood that I pulled up over my head, then hurried for the stables, found my horse and urged her onwards to the execution square, over muddy streets packed hard, startled city folk scuttling out of my way and shaking their fists at me or staring wide-eyed from beneath the brims of their hats. I thundered on, towards where the crowds became thicker as onlookers congregated for the hanging to come.
And, as I rode, I wondered what I was doing and realized I didn’t know. All I knew was how I felt, which was as though I had been asleep but suddenly was awake.
ii
There, on a platform, the gallows awaited its next victim, while a decent-sized crowd was anticipating the day’s entertainment. Around the sides of the square were horses and carts, on to which families clambered for a better view: craven-looking men, short women with pinched, worried faces, and grubby children. Sight-seers sat in the square while others milled around: women in groups who stood and gossiped, men swigging ale or wine from leather flasks. All of them here to see my son executed.
At one side, a cart flanked by soldiers arrived and I caught a glimpse of Connor inside, before out jumped a grinning Thomas Hickey, who then yanked him from the cart, too, taunting him at the same time, “Didn’t think I’d miss your farewell party, did you? I hear Washington himself will be in attendance. Hope nothing bad happens to him . . .”
Connor, with his hands bound in front of him, shot a look of hatred at Thomas and, once again, I marvelled at how much of his mother was to be found in those features. But, along with defiance, and bravery, today there was also . . . fear.
“You said there’d be a trial,” he snapped, as Thomas manhandled him.
“Traitors don’t get trials, I’m afraid. Lee and Haytham sorted that out. It’s straight to the gallows for you.”
I went cold. Connor was about to go to his death thinking I had signed his death warrant.
“I will not die today,” said Connor, proud. “The same cannot be said for you.” But he was saying it over his shoulder as the guards who had helped escort the cart into the square used pikestaffs to jab him towards the gallows. The noise swelled as the parting crowd reached to try to grab him, punch him, knock him to the ground. I saw a man with hate in his eyes about to throw a punch and was close enough to snatch the punch as it was thrown, twist the man’s arm painfully up his back, then throw him to the ground. With blazing eyes he looked up at me, but the sight of me glaring at him from within my hood stopped him, and he picked himself up and in the next moment was swept away by the seething, unruly crowd.
Meanwhile, Connor had been shoved further along the gauntlet of vengeful abuse, and I was too far away to stop another man who suddenly lunged forward and grabbed him—but near enough to see the man’s face beneath his hood; near enough to read his lips.
“You are not alone. Only give a cry when you need it . . .”
It was Achilles, a known Assassin.
He was here—here to save Connor, who was replying, “Forget about me—you need to stop Hickey. He’s—”
But then he was dragged away, and I finished the sentence in my head: . . . planning to kill George Washington.
Talk of the devil. The commander in chief had arrived with a small guard. As Connor was pulled on to the platform and an executioner fastened a noose around his neck, the crowd’s attention went to the opposite end of the square, where Washington was being led to a raised platform at the back, which, even now, was being frantically cleared of crowds by the guards. Charles, as major-general, was with him, too, and it gave me an opportunity to compare the two: Charles, a good deal taller than Washington, though with a certain aloofness compared to Washington’s easy charm. Looking at them together, I saw at once why the Continental Congress had chosen Washington over him. Charles looked so British.
Then Charles had left Washington and with a couple of guards made his way across the square, swatting the crowd out of his way as he came, and then was ascending the steps to the gallows, where he addressed the crowd, which pushed forward. I found myself pressed between bodies, smelling ale and sweat, using my elbows to try to find space within the herd.
“Brothers, sisters, fellow patriots,” began Charles, and an impatient hush descended over the crowd. “Several days ago we learnt of a scheme so vile, so dastardly that even repeating it now disturbs my being. The man before you plotted to murder our much beloved general.”
The crowd gasped.
“Indeed,” roared Charles, warming to his theme. “What darkness or madness moved him, none can say. And he himself offers no defence. Shows no remorse. And though we have begged and pleaded for him to share what he knows, he maintains a deadly silence.”
At this, the executioner stepped forward and thrust a Hessian sack over Connor’s head.
“If the man will not explain himself—if he will not confess and atone—what other option is there but this? He sought to send us into the arms of the enemy. Thus we are compelled by justice to send him from this world. May God have mercy on his soul.”
And now he was finished, and I looked around, trying to spot more of Achilles’s men. If it was a rescue mission, then now was the time, surely? But where were they? What the hell were they planning?
A bowman. They had to be using a bowman. It wasn’t ideal: an arrow wouldn’t sever the rope completely, the best the rescuers could hope for was that it would part the fibre enough for Connor’s weight to snap it. But it was the most accurate. It could be deployed from . . .