One of the music boxes
The Secrets of London were a collection of music boxes scattered throughout London by the Assassin Michel Reuge; inside the music boxes were discs, marked with the Assassin insignia, that acted as keys for Reuge's Vault, in which he presumably hid a Piece of Eden. 31 discs were accompanied with a poem—often an excerpt of the anonymously written 17th century poem Tom o' Bedlam—except disc number 15, which was found inside the Vault. Once the British Assassins Evie and Jacob Frye found all the discs, Minerva's Aegis outfit that she wore during the Human-Isu War was unlocked from the vault and Evie claimed it for herself.[1]
Secrets[]
But I will find Bonny Maud, merry mad Maud
And seek whate'er betides her
Yet I will love beneath or above
The dirty earth that hides her.
While I do sing, any food
Feeding drink or clothing?
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
With a thought a look for Maudlin,
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, Sky bless you all,
I befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never waked,
Till the rougish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stript me naked.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see stars as mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.
The moon embraced her shepherd,
And the Queen of Love her warrior,
While the first doth horn the star of morn,
And the next the heavenly farrier.
Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enraged
And of forty been three times fifteen
In durance soundly caged.
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips, ding-dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.
When I short have shorn my sour-face
And swigged by horny barrel
In an oaken inn, I pound my skin
As a suit of gilt apparel.
The moon's my constant mistress,
And the lonely owl my marrow;
The flaming drake and the night crow make
Me music to my sorrow.
The spirits white as lightning
Would on my travels guide me
The stars would shake and the moon would
Whenever they espied me.
And then that I'll be murdering
The Man in the Moon to the powder
His staff I'll break, his dog I'll shake
And there'll howl no demon louder.
With a host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end—
Methinks it is no journey.
The palsy plagues my pulses
When I prig your pigs or pullen,
Your culvers take, or matchless make
Your Chanticleer or sullen.
When I want provant, with Humphrey
I sup, an when benighted
I repose in Paul's with waking souls,
Yet never am affrighted.
The Gipsys, Snap and Pedro
Are none of Tom's comradoes,
The punk I scorn, and the cutpurse sworn
And the roaring boy's bravadoes.
The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle not nor spare not;
But those that cross Tom Rynosseross
Do what the panther dare not
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
I'll bark against the Dog-Star
I'll crow away the morning
I'll chase the Moon till it be noon
And I'll make her leave her horning.
I now repent that ever
Poor Tom was so disdain-ed
My wits are lost since him I crossed
Which makes me thus go chained.
So drink to Tom of Bedlam
Go fill the seas in barrels
I'll drink it all, well brewed with gall
And maudlin drunk I'll quarrel
For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam
Ten thousand miles I travelled
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
To save her shoes from gravel.
Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
Bedlam boys are bonny
For they all go bare and they live by the air
And they want no drink nor money.
I went down to Satan's kitchen
To break my fast one morning
And there I got souls piping hot
All on the spit a-turning.
There I took a cauldron
Where boiled ten thousand harlots
Though full of flame I drank the same
To the health of all such varlets.
My staff has murdered giants
My bag a long knife carries
To cut mince pies from children's thighs
For which to feed the fairies.
No gypsy, slut, or doxy
Shall win my mad Tom from me
I'll weep all night, with stars I'll fight
The fray shall well become me.
I've diced with many royals
And from their gilded palaces
With a crown of green, light feet so keen
I took a climb to Heaven
And saw the stars a-moving
In pirouettes and batonnets
For Galileo's proving.
I walked the world's four corners
And heard the roll of thunder
I smelled the rain and felt life's pain
And all the world's wide wonder.
Behind the scenes[]
Although secret #15 does not come with a poem in-game, the game files have the following poem associated with it:
- From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
All the sprites that stand by the naked man
In the book of moons, defend ye.
The game files also include database entries of Michel Reuge's journal dealing with finding the Aegis and his work on the music boxes.
Appearances[]
References[]