The Daredevil Snared

So she spoke for both groups, and Harriet was one of her deputies among the six women, most of whom had been taken for their ability to do fine work.

As she and Harriet continued their promenade, the hems of the drab, featureless gowns they’d been given to wear stirring fallen leaves, Katherine contemplated—as she was sure every one of their number did these days—the delicate balance they were striving to maintain. “I wish there was some easier—more obvious and less stressful—way we could manage this.”

Harriet grimaced, then smoothed her features into a mask of unconcern. “It’s a constant juggle. I know it weighs heavily on John.”

“And he’s doing a wonderful job—we wouldn’t have any hope if it wasn’t for him.” Katherine laid a hand on Harriet’s sleeve and lightly squeezed. “We all understand the dilemma. We have to keep giving Dubois diamonds enough to appease his masters—whoever the blackguards are—while at the same time holding back as much as we can to stave off the time when the deposit is exhausted and they decide to shut the mine.”

None of them harbored the slightest illusion about what would happen once a decision to close the mine was made. They would be killed. Lined up and shot—or worse.

Given the atrocities Dubois and his men had committed against one young girl early in the life of the mine, and the threats Dubois occasionally made when using one of the women or children to reinforce his control over the kidnapped men, worse, in this case, would be horrific. So horrific none of them dwelled on the prospect.

That was the other reason Dubois had arranged to have women and children added to the mine’s captives. Quite aside from their necessary contributions to the work, they were the perfect pawns with which to ensure the men’s compliance.

As the location of the mine dictated that Dubois’s impressed workforce had to be European and, given his source was Freetown, that meant mostly English, he’d realized he would need an effective means of controlling said workforce. Dubois was all about effectiveness and control—he was coldhearted, ruthless, and appeared to possess not a single scruple or finer feeling in his large, powerful frame.

Because the mine was located within one of the native chief’s lands, Dubois and his masters did not dare kidnap natives—not of any tribe. But the chief did not care about Europeans; in his eyes, they were not his concern. So Englishmen from Freetown it was. In addition, kidnapped English were also more useful in that all those taken had some training in skills required for the mine.

Captain John Dixon had been targeted because he was an expert sapper—an engineer skilled in the construction of tunnels. Several of the other men had carpentry skills; others were laborers used to wielding picks, and all of the women had some talent Dubois or his masters had deemed useful. The children hadn’t needed to be anything but children—quick and healthy, with small hands and keen vision.

They even had several men and women with medical and nursing experience, which had proved useful in treating the occasional injury. Mining was inherently unsafe, and accidents had occurred, but the compound contained a decently equipped medical hut.

Katherine cynically acknowledged that the one helpful aspect of Dubois’s rule—absolute and unchallengeable as it was—was that his single-minded quest for effectiveness and efficiency meant he considered keeping his workforce as hale, healthy, and able as possible to be in his and his masters’ best interests.

So regardless of his threats—which not a single one of them doubted he would carry out without a blink if they pushed him to it—he ensured that their needs were met so that they could continue to work and produce the raw diamonds his masters sought.

That was what Dubois was being very well paid to ensure—that the mine was properly exploited and the raw diamonds dispatched in secret to Amsterdam on behalf of his masters.

Just who those masters were, no one had yet learned. However, although Dubois was French and his band of mercenaries hailed from every quarter, the general consensus among the captives was that the blackguards behind the scheme were Englishmen.

Katherine dwelled on that for several seconds, then shook the thought aside. Time enough to focus on whom to blame after they’d escaped.

She and Harriet rounded the base of the tower, passing the supply hut and, beside it, the large kitchen with its wide, palm-frond-covered overhang beneath which three small fire pits with cook pots suspended above them were watched over by Dubois’s huge cook. The man was the grumpiest individual Katherine had ever met, perennially scowling at everyone—even Dubois.

They continued circling the mercenaries’ barracks, on their left passing the long barrack-like building in which all the women and children slept, followed by the compound’s double gates, as usual propped wide open with a pair of guards lounging, one to each side.

The roughly circular compound was crudely but effectively palisaded by planks lashed together with thick vines and wire. It appeared rather rickety in places and wouldn’t be impossible to break through, but if they escaped and fled, where would they go?

The simple fact that they had no real clue where they were and how far it might be to any form of safe harbor, along with the knowledge of the hideous retribution Dubois would unquestionably inflict on those left behind should any of them successfully flee, ensured that they continued apparently acquiescent in their captivity.

They were anything but, yet circumstances and Dubois had forced them to be pragmatic.

They couldn’t escape unless they got everyone out all at once and until they knew in which direction safety lay and how long it would take them to reach it.

Skirting the captives’ communal area—a circle of logs surrounding a large fire pit—Katherine and Harriet walked slowly past the long building where the men slept and on past the open maw of the mine. Unless dispatched on some other chore, all the male captives labored inside the tunnel, now more than fifty yards long, that had been hacked, inch by foot, more or less straight into the side of a steep hill that rose abruptly from the jungle floor, as if some elemental force had thrust it upward. The hillside above the mine entrance was relatively sheer.

As she and Harriet passed the mine, they both looked inside. Although lanternlight played on the walls, glinting off the roughly hewn planes, none of the men were presently visible; they would all be farther down, hacking out the remnants of the original deposit, or with Dixon supposedly examining the second pipe—a rock formation associated with diamonds—that Dixon had, thank the Lord, discovered to the right of the original find.

If he hadn’t found that second pipe, the mine would already be on its last legs, and they would be facing death.

That new deposit had given them a second wind, as it were, in that it held out the chance of surviving long enough to figure out some way to escape.

That it was up to them to save themselves was now accepted by all. Initially, they’d waited, simply surviving, in the expectation that help would arrive in the form of a rescue party sent from the settlement.

It had seemed inconceivable that this many adults, women as well as men, many with positions and connections in the community, let alone the small army of children, could be snatched from one place without any hue and cry being raised.

But weeks and then months had passed, and no rescue had come.

With their hopes dashed, for a while, they’d grown dispirited and despairing.

But they were English, after all. They’d rallied.

And grown increasingly resolute in their determination to survive and, eventually, escape.

They hadn’t yet figured out how to do it, but they would.

Katherine never wavered from that stance, because to do so would mean that there was no hope, not for her or any of the ragtag group of children she now considered as being in her care.

Part of that group lay ahead, mostly older girls crouched by a pile of ore that the boys, both younger and older, plus the few younger girls, had fetched out of the mine. That was the role the children played. The boys and young girls darted in and around the men as they worked, grubbing out and collecting all the rock pieces as they fell from the walls and loading the rock into woven baskets. They then lugged the filled baskets outside and upended them onto the pile the older girls were sorting.

The girls sat or crouched in the shade cast by a crude movable awning Katherine had persuaded Dubois to provide and steadily worked their way through the pile of ore dumped before them. The diamonds came out of the mine heavily encrusted with a mixture of ores. The girls examined each clump of broken rock, searching for the signs they’d been taught signified that a diamond lay within. They tapped the rock, listening for the sound, then searched for the lines where diamond met ore. The girls sorted and, eventually, passed the potential diamonds to the women, who more carefully cleaned each find using small chisels and hammers to tap off the encrustations, ultimately rendering the raw diamonds small enough and light enough for transport.

The captives had heard that the cleaned stones were sent to Amsterdam via ships passing through Freetown harbor.

The rocks the girls discarded they threw into another pile. Closer to the compound’s perimeter, a massive pile of discarded rocks testified to the amount the men had already hacked out of the earth, that the children had gathered and sorted.

Katherine and Harriet paused beside the girls, responding with gentle, encouraging smiles as several glanced up.

One of the older girls, fair haired and pale skinned, asked Katherine, “Will you be around later?” She pointed to the already large pile of discarded ore. “We’ll be getting through a good amount today.”

Katherine nodded; it was part of her Dubois-decreed duties to check over the discarded ore for any obvious diamonds the girls might have missed. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

The sound of approaching footsteps had Katherine and Harriet turning to see who was coming their way. Hillsythe, a tall, loose-limbed, brown-haired man, was walking from the medical hut in company with Jed Mathers, one of the carpenters. Hillsythe was a gentleman and, regardless of the rough clothes he now wore, was a commanding figure in their small community. He was also one of those with some degree of medical training, and Jed had a bandaged wrist.

As the pair drew level with Katherine and Harriet, Hillsythe slowed, then halted. He nodded at Jed. “Avoid using that hand for at least the rest of the day. Grab one of the boys to help you.”

“Aye. I’ll do that.” Jed dipped his head respectfully to Katherine and Harriet, then continued on his way to the mine.

Hillsythe lingered. His gaze on Jed, he murmured, “We’re going to have to move forward into the second tunnel soon. There’s too little of the first deposit left.”

“So I understand,” Katherine said. “I assume the principal question remaining is how we manage output from the second pipe once Dixon opens it for mining.”

Hillsythe inclined his head, both in agreement and in unconsciously elegant farewell. “Tonight, then. As usual after dinner.”

Katherine stood with Harriet and watched Hillsythe trail Jed back to the mine. Dixon had been the only officer Dubois and his masters in the settlement who were managing the scheme had intended to snatch. Because of his expertise, Dixon had been a necessity. What the schemers hadn’t counted on was that other officers would be dispatched to find Dixon. First had come Lieutenant William Hopkins, who’d been followed by Lieutenant Thomas Fanshawe, both navy men, and finally Hillsythe—who didn’t have a rank and wasn’t army or navy, yet was transparently someone of military background.

Initially, Dubois had been exceedingly unhappy about having more officers foisted upon him; he was far from a fool—he knew danger when he saw it. However, from Dubois’s point of view, the advent of Hopkins, the first officer to arrive after Dixon, had instead proved to be an unlooked-for bonus. The disconnected rabble of other men—many sailors or navvies snatched off the docks—had recognized the authority Will Hopkins carried as naturally as a cloak. Although he was only in his late twenties, Will’s grasp of command was innate, and the men had responded.

And Will had been clever enough to see that playing to Dubois’s liking for efficiency and smooth operations would, in the short to medium term, be to the captives’ advantage.

That had been the start of the charade they’d all, bit by bit, started to play for Dubois’s benefit. Just how much of their carefully constructed façade of appeasement and acquiescence Dubois actually believed, Katherine—and the others, too—would not have wagered on, but as long as his camp ran smoothly and he met his masters’ targets, Dubois appeared content to leave them be.

According to Hillsythe, Dubois was the epitome of a successful mercenary. He wouldn’t have reached the age he had, with the absolute control over his men he transparently wielded, without knowing how to best manage an operation like this. Efficiency and effectiveness were Dubois’s watchwords; as long as the work was done as he wished, he cared not a fig for anything else.

Under Dixon, Hopkins, and Fanshawe, the male captives had come together and formed a cohesive company, divided into four units under the three officers and Hillsythe. In addition, Hillsythe acted as their strategist. It was he who, once he’d learned the ways of the camp and Dubois, had sounded the alarm over the dwindling first deposit and had suggested that Dixon excavate more widely, searching for another.

If it hadn’t been for Hillsythe’s foresight, they would already have been in dire straits.

Subsequently, when Dixon had succeeded in finding the second pipe and they’d all heaved a sigh of relief, Hillsythe had again seen opportunity and had suggested that Dixon—with the full knowledge of all the captives—become increasingly spontaneously “helpful” to Dubois in matters relating to the mine. Hillsythe had explained that a man of Dixon’s background—an engineer with a true passion for his work—might believably have his initial loyalties eroded by his excitement over exploiting a second and even more fabulous diamond pipe.

Dixon had been reluctant, but they’d all seen the potential benefit and had urged him to try it.

With Hillsythe’s guidance, Dixon had tried being “helpful” over issues that didn’t really matter to the captives.

The result was that, having now accepted Dixon’s “conversion,” increasingly, Dubois trusted what Dixon told him about the mine. That had helped enormously in dragging out the opening of the second tunnel. At this point, Dixon couldn’t tell how extensive the second deposit was, so they’d decided to stretch out the mining of the first pipe for as long as possible—as long as a supply of diamonds adequate to appease Dubois’s masters was coming out of it—before opening the second pipe for mining.

Dixon had bought them the time by claiming a need for more careful and extensive testing around the second pipe so that when they hacked into the hillside, they didn’t unnecessarily risk either damaging the pipe itself or bringing down the hillside on top of it and them. Dubois had accepted the rationale and allowed the delay.

But now that the first deposit was almost mined out, they would have to start on the second. Dubois and his masters wouldn’t countenance the output of diamonds falling too low, and no one wanted to risk Dubois receiving an order to cull their company on the grounds that such a number was no longer required.

That was the sort of horrific act of which they all knew Dubois was fully capable.

Strangely enough, while everyone else had given up any hope of rescue, Hillsythe still entertained the expectation that someone would, at some point, come for them—that relief in some guise would eventually arrive. He didn’t make any point of it and nowadays rarely spoke of it, yet Katherine sensed that his quiet, unstated confidence still survived.

Which left her wondering about something Hillsythe had never explained—namely, who had sent him after Fanshawe.

As Hillsythe vanished into the mine, a pattering of feet drew her attention to a young boy who came pelting toward her from the direction of the kitchen. She turned with a welcoming smile. “Diccon.” As he skidded to a halt before her, she reached out and finger-combed his pale golden hair back from his forehead. “Are you off, then?”

“Aye.” Diccon held up the basket he carried. “And I’ll be sure to be back before the sun starts down.”

She kept her smile in place, but saw the shadow that passed through Diccon’s pale blue eyes. “I know you will. Off you go, then.”

She and Harriet stood and watched as, with a last fleeting grin, Diccon raced off toward the compound gate. Although tall for his age, he was only seven. Long and lanky, thin and bony, he’d been delivered to Dubois with a group of other children snatched from the Freetown slums. But Diccon hadn’t been able to bear the dust in the mine; he’d coughed himself into fits, and his health had quickly deteriorated.

When Dubois had contemplated killing the boy, deeming him a useless burden, Katherine had argued that Diccon wasn’t useless—he just couldn’t go into the mine. Instead, she’d pointed out that if Dubois wanted his captives to perform at their best and not fall ill unnecessarily, then all the children, and the adults, too, could do with more fruit—and there was plenty of fruit in the surrounding jungle. Fruit Diccon could fetch. Dubois had considered, then he’d agreed to let Diccon ramble for fruit every day, as long as he returned each afternoon before dusk.

Dubois had looked Diccon in the eye and had stated that if Diccon failed to return, Dubois would kill two children—Diccon’s closest friends.

That was the cause of the shadows in Diccon’s eyes. He enjoyed rambling in the jungle and had grown adept at finding fruit, berries, and nuts, but he worried all the time that something might happen to keep him from returning, and the deaths of his friends would be on his head.

It was just like Dubois to unnecessarily place such a Damocles’ sword over an impressionable boy’s head. No one in their right mind would imagine Diccon—who was by no means unintelligent—would attempt to run away. Where to? He would die in the jungle if he didn’t come back.

Her gaze on Diccon’s departing figure, Harriet sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to spend a day now and then out in the jungle.”

Katherine thought, then arched her brows. “Why don’t I ask his highness?”

Harriet glanced at her. “Do you think there’s any chance he’ll agree?”

“He might if I phrase the request correctly.” She paused, then added, “I’ve noticed he’s particularly fond of those large nuts Diccon brings in. Dubois keeps them all for himself.”

With Harriet, she turned, and they continued to the cleaning shed. It was time to return to their day’s labors. As they reached the steps that led up to the door, she made up her mind. “I can’t see any reason not to ask. I’ll suggest that one of us can accompany Diccon out each day, and that we’ll work an extra half hour each day—all of us—to make up for it.”

Harriet’s face lit. “That sounds perfect. And Lord knows, Dubois knows that none of us are fool enough to try to run away.”

Katherine pulled a face. “We don’t even know in which direction to run.”

She opened the door and went in. Harriet followed, and they resumed their places on stools about the long raised table that ran down the middle of the shed.

Mary Wilson looked up from the rock from which she was carefully chipping away aggregated ore. She flashed a smile at Katherine and Harriet, then looked back at her work. There were six women in total, all presently in the shed, and they’d banded together into a tight-knit, supportive group. They’d had to. While Katherine was the most confident and assured in dealing with Dubois, the others had backed her up on more than one occasion. Despite their disparate backgrounds—Katherine a governess, Harriet a young woman of good family searching for a position after coming out to Freetown following Dixon, Mary a shop assistant and part owner of a shop, Ellen Mackenzie another young woman who had arrived in the settlement looking for honest work, and Annie Mellows and Gemma Halliday, expert needlewomen who hailed from the slums—they’d all grown comfortable in the others’ company.

They’d come to trust each other.

A guard had come in fifteen minutes before Katherine and Harriet had left for their walk; the other women had gone for their walks, two by two, earlier. The guard was still there, leaning against one wall, bored and idly watching them.

Ten entirely uneventful minutes later, he stirred. A large male of indeterminate origin, he drawled, “Later, ladies.” Then he moved to the door and left, letting the panel slam shut behind him.

All six women looked up. Mary met Katherine’s eyes.

After a moment of straining her ears, Katherine nodded. Mary slipped from her stool, went to the door, and carefully eased it open enough to look out.

There was a grin in her voice as she reported, “He’s swaggering off to the barracks.”

They never knew when a guard might look in on them—and never quite trusted in them leaving and not hovering, hoping to hear something incriminating to report to Dubois. But this one had, as most of them did, taken himself off.

After shutting the door, Mary returned to her stool and hopped up again. She looked at Katherine. “Any news?”

“I’ve decided to ask Dubois if we—one by one, one each day—can join Diccon on his forays. Just to break up our days.”

“Ooh!” Gemma grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

They fell to discussing the pros and cons and how best to present the argument to Dubois. Katherine glanced at Harriet, but as she had, Harriet chose not to mention the issue of opening up the second tunnel.

Time enough to broach that later, after the leaders’ discussion that evening, when, no doubt, they would learn the hard facts.

* * *

Charles Babington stood on the worn planks of Government Wharf. Lounging in the shadows cast by a stack of cotton bales offloaded from some other vessel, he watched the Macauley and Babington inspector and the port’s customs officer as they peered down into the open hatch of The Dutch Princess, a merchantman bound for Amsterdam.

Impatience rode him, edged with desperation. His intended, Mary Wilson, had vanished too many weeks ago, and there seemed nothing of any substance that he could actually do. Robert Frobisher had given him hope, but Frobisher had vanished and had surely returned to England long since. Whether Frobisher had succeeded in advancing his mission—which might just result in Mary being found and returned to Charles and her uncle—Charles did not know. Short of writing to Frobisher, there was no way Charles could see to learn more.

And he had no idea where Frobisher, or even his brother Declan Frobisher, actually lived. A letter to the Frobisher Shipping Company in London or Aberdeen might, eventually, reach Robert. Perhaps.

But Charles had volunteered to do what little he could to ensure no diamonds—or gold if that was what was being mined, but his and the Frobishers’ money was on diamonds—slipped out of Freetown in some ship’s hold. He had the ability to order searches of the cargo of any ship bound for England or for ports nearby on the Continent. Amsterdam, long the home of the world’s diamond trade, was just such a port, and so together with all other Amsterdam-or Rotterdam-bound vessels, The Dutch Princess’s cargo hold was being searched by a gang of excise men.

Charles’s presence was not required—indeed, he had no real business being there—but the sense of helplessness that dogged his every waking moment had driven him to the wharf—just in case.

Just in case the search party stumbled on a cache of uncut diamonds.