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Hat and veil first; carriage and trustworthy driver second.
Once she’d succeeded in securing both... “Then I’ll be ready to keep watch and see who comes calling on Undoto.”
CHAPTER 4
Darkness had fallen. The slum area in which Lashoria lived had no lighting to illuminate its winding alleys.
Robert paced steadily up the passageway that Declan had told him led to the priestess’s red door. Somewhere in the shadows behind him lurked Benson and Coleman. Both men were past masters at trailing others. Even though he knew they were there, Robert couldn’t hear or in any way sense them; if he glanced around, he knew he’d see nothing.
It was a slow climb. Long enough for him to feel the atmosphere of the slum—of such a density of close-packed humanity—close around him. The smells and sounds rifled his senses, tickling and pricking them to higher awareness. The smothering heat, a solid warmth from which there was no escape, didn’t help. As most locals did, he’d dispensed with his coat. Unfortunately, in the gloom of the slum, the relative whiteness of his linen shirt made him feel like a walking target.
To distract himself, he thought back to his afternoon, to Undoto’s service. Admittedly, he was predisposed not to approve of Undoto, but the man’s belligerent, overconfident—almost bellicose—delivery had set his teeth on edge. At least he and his men would now be able to recognize the priest.
After taking a thorough look at the congregation, noting especially the Europeans attending, he’d confirmed via Sampson that Hopkins’s sister hadn’t been present. Once that was established, he’d spent the rest of the hour thinking of various ways in which he could send the overinquisitive lady packing.
He glimpsed a flash of bright red ahead on the right.
A minute later, he stood facing what was patently Lashoria’s door.
Neither Declan nor Edwina had said anything about the brilliant red being splotched with black.
The black looked recent.
There was no light showing through the thick material covering the window of the front room. Neither Declan nor Edwina had mentioned curtains, either; instead, Declan had said he’d been able to look into the alley while seated on the love seat inside that room.
The fine hairs at Robert’s nape stirred.
He drew in a breath, climbed the two steps to the front door, and rapped sharply.
He had to knock a second and a third time before he heard shuffling footsteps—too light to be a man’s—approaching from deeper inside the house.
Then the door was flung open, and he found himself facing an old woman, her face haggard and worn.
“What do you want?”
The demand was aggressively made, but the woman’s voice sounded rusty, scratchy.
Before Robert could reply, her dark eyes drifted over him—then flicked back to lock on his face.
The old woman’s eyes narrowed. “You...no, your brother. He was here before. With his pretty wife.”
Robert nodded. “Yes. He and his wife spoke with Lashoria. I need to speak with her, too.”
The old woman’s eyes widened. For two seconds, she stared at him.
Then she glanced furtively down the alley as she reached out, gripped his sleeve, and tugged. “Come inside. Quickly.”
Robert needed no further urging. He stepped over the threshold and past her. He watched as she shut the door, then wrestled two heavy bolts across.
She turned and slipped past him. She beckoned. “Come. To the back.”
She led him down the corridor Declan and Edwina had described, but instead of going into the room at the end—Lashoria’s consulting room, as Edwina had termed it—the old woman turned left and led the way down a flight of crude steps cut into the earth. Robert had to duck to pass under the lintel at the bottom of the steps; straightening, he found himself in a small chamber carved into the ground. A wood oven built into one wall marked it as the kitchen. It was transparently the old woman’s domain.
She perched on a stool at one end of the narrow wooden table that took up most of the floor space. “Here.” She pushed a low stool his way. “Sit.”
A single candle in a holder on the table cast a small circle of golden light.
As Robert complied with her order, taking the place to her left, the old woman folded her hands on the table and met his gaze. “They killed her—the beasts. They killed my Lashoria.”
Robert had suspected as much—why else the black on the door?—but the wealth of emotion in the old woman’s voice, the virulent hatred he could see burning in her eyes, made him still. Then he drew breath and asked, “Who?”
“The slavers who work with Undoto.” The old woman’s fingers gripped tight. “They killed her because she spoke of their evil to others.”
“Their evil?”
Robert didn’t have to ask more questions; just that was enough to fracture the dam wall. The old woman poured out her hatred of those she termed “the beasts.” Robert let her rave, let her sob and rail; she remained dry-eyed throughout, as if she had no more tears to shed.
He waited silently, unjudging, just being there. When she finally fell silent and simply breathed, he quietly said, “My brother and his wife had nothing to do with Lashoria’s death. They were attacked when they left here.”
The old woman waved dismissively. “You think I don’t know that? That I would speak to you if I believed...?” She shook her head. “I know it was not them. I was here.” She pointed over their heads. “I was in my room upstairs when Lashoria showed your brother and his wife out of the back door. I peeked out and saw them go down the hill. But then there was a pounding on the front door, and Lashoria...she went and opened it. They came in—the beasts. I could hear, but not see. They struck her, then pushed her into her room. They beat her.” The old woman exhaled a shuddering breath. “They did not stop until she was dead.”
The simple words held a weight of helpless fury.
The old woman’s gaze had grown distant, her hands once again gripping tight. “There was nothing I could do to save her—my lovely Lashoria. The beasts did not know I was here, under the same roof, or they would have killed me, too.”
Robert heard the guilt. He wondered if he was wrong to do so, yet... “There was nothing you could have done then.” He met the old woman’s gaze. “But if you know who did this, tell me. I cannot promise swift justice, but justice can be served in many ways.”
She considered him in silence for a full minute, then she nodded. “Lashoria spoke, and they killed her. I am a very old woman—now that they have killed her, I have little to live for. So why not speak?”
Robert said nothing; he was far too old a hand at negotiating to push.
The old crone regarded him for several more moments, then she nodded again, this time decisively. “It was Kale and his men. I heard his voice, and I am sure it was he.”
“Who is Kale?”
“He is the leader of one band of slavers. I know him from long-ago days. Many years ago now, my husband, he was one of them, so I know of Kale, although he was only a young one then.”
“Do you know where Kale’s camp is?” Robert held his breath. Surely it wouldn’t be that easy.
The old woman shook her head. “Not now. Now Kale is in charge, and he is an arrogant beast. Everything is his way. New ways.”
“Tell me what you know of this Kale. What does he look like?”
“He is English, but not just Anglo. A mix. He does not look that much different from many others, not until you look into his eyes or hear him speak. His voice was damaged in the fight in which he killed the last leader of their band. But Kale...he is a snake of a man, quick with his fists and blades, and cunning and clever, too.”
“How do the slavers operate? Lashoria told my brother that Undoto was involved.”
“Yes!” The word was hissed. “He is a snake of a different skin, that one. But he is not the leader—that is Kale, without any doubt. Undoto is his...procurer. Yes, that is the word. Undoto points and says, ‘That one.’ And Kale and his men, they take that one. That is how it works.”
Robert recalled the point Declan and Edwina had made about those taken being selected, not chosen at random. Facts shifted in his brain. Lady Holbrook had known the background of virtually every English person in the settlement. She told Undoto which ones would fit his bill, and Undoto then pointed Kale their way. But who had told Lady Holbrook or Undoto which types of people were needed?
With no answer to that, Robert set the point aside and turned his mind to the other end of the slavers’ operation. “You said your husband used to run with the slavers. What are the steps the slavers take once they seize someone in the settlement?”
“They will take them first to their lair.”
“Lair?”
The old woman huffed out a breath. “The slavers do not usually walk the streets during the day. That would be inviting too much attention, and snatching people in daylight is more difficult. More risky. So they wait for the darkness to hunt their prey. But their camps are too far out in the jungle”—the old woman flung out a hand—“for them to come in every night from there. So they have a lair—a place where they can wait during the day. And they gather any they snatch in one night there before taking them out to the camp.”
“Do you have any idea where Kale’s lair is?”
“No. It will be in one of the slums somewhere. I do not think it is in this one, but I cannot be certain.”
Robert reviewed what he now knew, then he looked at the old woman. “What can you tell me about Kale’s camp? Anything at all will be helpful.”
She pulled a face. “Few who visit a slavers’ camp return to tell of it. All I know is from my husband, and that is from years ago. The camps must be out in the jungle a long way. They have to be beyond the areas your soldiers patrol, and also outside any villages’ or chieftains’ boundaries, or the chiefs will cause trouble.” She met Robert’s eyes. “The villagers around do not hold with slavery—very few in this area do.”
Robert nodded. He knew that some tribes from the north were wont to assist slavers who preyed on natives from deeper in the interior, but with the West Africa Squadron sailing out of Freetown, he’d assumed this area was less troubled by the scourge.
The old woman had been studying his face. “For what it is worth, this business of stealing English men and women is very different from the usual trade.”
“How so?” Robert tipped his head, inviting her to explain.
She took a moment to order her thoughts. “Kale has been a slave trader for years and years, yet only now, in this business with Undoto, has he started to take Europeans. That has never been normal anywhere, but especially not here. With the fort so close and the ships, too, why risk the wrath of the governor and his men? So that is one mystery. And the care to pick the people—this one and not that one—is also unheard of. A man is a man—why do they need to choose so carefully?”
So that they took only those whose disappearance would be unlikely to raise any, or at least not too much of, an alarm. Robert didn’t say the words, but he was sure enough of that.
The old woman straightened from the table and raised her hands. “There is no rhyme or reason to this. No sense in it at all. It is very peculiar to choose to play this game right under the English governor’s nose.”
A nose that had been singularly unresponsive to date, but that, Robert was starting to realize, had been very carefully arranged.
He was starting to believe that Holbrook was entirely innocent of any complicity in the scheme.
The old woman looked tired, even more worn out. Robert could think of no more to ask her. He rose. When she looked up at him, he half bowed. “Thank you for speaking with me.” He hesitated, then reached into his pocket. “If you will not take it amiss...” Hauling out three sovereigns, he laid them on the table. “For your help.”
The old woman’s gaze had fallen to the coins. She studied them for a long moment, then she reached out a hand and covered them, and drew them to her. “Beggars cannot be choosers. Thank you.”
Robert hesitated. “I don’t expect it will be any real consolation, but the help you and Lashoria have given will, in the end, save many lives.”
The old woman’s head came up. Some of her earlier hate sparked in the darkness of her eyes. “Kale. Be careful of him. He is like a rabid dog—do not take your eyes from him. But if you and your people can end Kale’s life, I will die happy.”
Robert held her gaze for a moment more, then nodded. “I’ll see what we can do.” He stepped back from the table. “I’ll show myself out, but please bolt the door once I’m gone.”
She nodded.
He didn’t wait for more but climbed the rough steps, strode along the corridor, slid back the bolts, opened the door, and stepped outside. He pulled the black-blotched red door closed behind him, then went down the steps.
In the alley, he paused, breathing deep of the air that, although still cloyingly humid, felt much less smothering than the air in that kitchen, weighted as it had been with so much helpless emotion—powerful emotions that had no outlet. When he caught the scrape of the bolts sliding home again, he straightened his shoulders and set off to walk back down the long passage.
He felt nothing more than a stir in the air at his back as Benson and Coleman fell in at his heels.
“Learn anything?” Benson murmured.
“Enough to be going on with.” As he strode down the slope, Robert used what he now knew to construct what he thought must be the slavers’ operation. Some of the slavers would be waiting in their lair. Undoto, or perhaps Lady Holbrook when she’d been there, would send to summon them, directing them to this victim or that. The slavers waited until night, then seized their victim. They returned to the lair—possibly to report, also possibly to combine their victims—then either on the same night or the next, the slavers ferried said victims out of the settlement and took them to their camp.
It was the location of the camp Robert needed. But clearly, the first step toward finding the camp was identifying the slavers’ lair.
* * *
Night had fallen hours ago.
Seated in the small and entirely plain black carriage she’d finally chosen and hired for the duration of her stay in the settlement, Aileen fidgeted, impatient and restless.
She’d had her new driver, Dave—a cockney who, of the dozen coachmen she’d interviewed, had struck her as the most trustworthy—call for her at the boardinghouse at sunset. She’d directed him to drive on a roundabout route to eventually pull up in the tiny lane that joined the street above Undoto’s church almost directly opposite Undoto’s house.
From their position in the lane, through the forward-facing window beneath the coachman’s bench, she could look across the street. The entire front façade of Undoto’s house was within her field of vision, along with the extension of the narrow lane that ran down the right side of the house. She suspected—hoped—that meant she would see anyone entering or leaving from either the front or rear of the house.
The tiny lane was the perfect spot from which to observe all comings and goings from the priest’s abode. Well and good. But the waiting was getting on her nerves.
She shifted on her seat. She lifted her reticule, feeling the weight of the pistol inside it, then set it back down on the seat beside her. She had no idea if anything would come of this covert surveillance. If she was asked to explain what she expected to happen and what she hoped to achieve, she wouldn’t be able to formulate any real answer beyond that this was something she could do, and she had no other viable avenue to pursue.
And, deep down, some instinct—that conviction of the emotions her mother called a woman’s intuition—insisted that this was the way to go, the path to follow if she wanted to find Will.
Everything revolved about Undoto. Surely, through watching him, she would see something and learn something more.
Thus far, all she’d seen had been an old woman who had come out of the side gate into the narrow lane and fed table scraps to the neighborhood dogs.
Stifling a sigh, Aileen fixed her gaze on the front of Undoto’s house and lectured herself for the umpteenth time to be patient.
She heard the men approaching before she saw them; the tramp of heavy feet coming down the dusty street reverberated through the quiet and reached through the open carriage windows. Eagerly leaning forward, she peered out through the small window; she prayed Dave was following her instructions and pretending to be asleep on the box.
As it happened, the image Dave projected mattered not at all. The four large armed men who appeared from the left and turned off the street onto the path to Undoto’s front door didn’t spare even a glance toward the carriage. Their arrogant confidence was absolute, demonstrated unequivocally in their swaggering gaits, in the soft laugh they shared as the leader reached out to thump a meaty fist on the door.
The moon was high, casting a silvery light over the scene. Aileen studied the four men. Although all were deeply tanned, the leader appeared English, the others of mixed European heritage. They were at ease, relaxed, transparently at home. This was their territory, and in it, they reigned supreme; they didn’t expect to be challenged.
She had the sudden thought that if they’d known she was watching, they would merely have leered and shrugged it off as of no account.
The door opened, and Undoto stood framed in the doorway. Even though the narrow porch was poorly lit, she could make out his smile of welcome. He shook hands with the leader and stood aside to wave him and his three cohorts into the house, beaming and exchanging comments and claps on the shoulders with the men as they filed past.
Close acquaintances, at the very least. Almost brothers-in-arms.
Undoto stepped back and shut the door.
Aileen sat back.
Now what?
She was tempted to get out of the carriage, sneak across the street, and crouch beneath the single window of Undoto’s front room. But the house was long and narrow; there was no reason to assume Undoto was conversing with his guests in that particular room, and the risk...
