The Trail of Chains: A serialized historical Christian romance. (Sonnets of the Spice Isle Book 5)

by Lynnette Bonner

  She scrunched her eyes shut. No! She wouldn’t let this trial steal her faith. Hadn’t Christ Himself faced the trial of the cross? She opened her eyes and studied the stars above. Yes. God had a plan for her. And apparently this journey was a part of it. So for now, she would just have to keep on trusting and trying to help those around her as best she could.

  Her thoughts turned to Mother. Papa had asked her to forgive Mother. To try to understand what had driven her spitefulness over all these years. And now she might never see her again.

  Father, help her to know that I forgive her.

  The tears did come then, slipping back into the hair at her temples as she studied the moisture-distorted stars spangled across the velvety blackness of the heavens. If she could just see Mother one last time, she would tell her how utterly sorry she was for the pain her presence had brought each time Mother looked at her.

  Asha’s “soon” turned out to be five days. They came upon the larger caravan midafternoon on a sticky humid day that had kept RyAnne busy swiping at her brow to keep the sting of sweat from trickling into her eyes. Exhaustion clung like a heavy burden. This was multiplied as they crested the top of a hill and caught sight of the vast stretch of valley teeming with long lines of people chained together, most of them packing a tuck of ivory on their heads. The adults she had expected, but it was the vast amount of children that stole her ability to put one foot in front of the other.

  Asha prodded her from behind. “No resting yet. We must reach the valley.” He tossed a glance behind them, and RyAnne recognized his concern over the rogue lion.

  As they descended the trail into the valley, RyAnne couldn’t help but voice her shock. “So many children, Asha. So many boys.”

  He turned his gaze to the valley, let it linger, his lips pressed together grimly. “They will be made into eunuchs. Sent to the palaces of the East.”

  “But that’s illegal!”

  He gave her a look, eyes narrowed to point out her naiveté.

  RyAnne swallowed and returned her focus to the valley. This was what Trent had been searching for—evidence that Khalifa was involved in illegal activity, and if so, whom he worked for. She clenched her teeth. Trent was no longer able to carry out that mission. But maybe she could find out more and somehow get a message to Commodore Cornwall.

  “Asha, you must let me sleep near the children tonight. Some of them may need medical care.”

  He nudged her forward. “I must do nothing. And you should not get close to the children. Nine out of every ten of those boys will die from the castration.”

  RyAnne gasped. Surely he exaggerated? “How did you come to be the slave of such a man, Asha?”

  He swept a hand down his face, and a look filled with so much emotion crossed his expression that she felt the impact of it.

  “I was one of the boys who lived.”

  The port of Mombasa bustled with activity as stevedores unloaded a fleet of ships recently in from India.

  The scents of curry and sandalwood mingled with other not-so-pleasant odors common to any port city—sewage, bilge water, and decaying wharfs. Along the beach, a string of camels being loaded with supplies bellowed and grunted their displeasure, while men alternately yelled and prodded or cajoled the beasts to cooperate.

  In the dark hull of one of the ships, Hakim Chadha hefted another crate of spices and thanked the gods he’d been assigned this task instead of the one of sluicing down the last slave ship that had docked.

  He emerged on the deck and made his way toward the gangway, but Anju, the stevedore ahead of him, had stopped and was staring out to sea. Hakim adjusted his hold on his crate and looked to see what had caught Anju’s attention.

  A galleon flying a British flag tacked toward the wharf—a sight not strange in and of itself. It was the speed at which it approached that was strange!

  Anju glanced over. “It comes with too much speed, yes?”

  Hakim swallowed as he nodded. He assessed their position in relation to where the ship was going to crash. “Clear the docks!” he yelled to those below. Boatmen, porters, and hawkers carried on about their business. Hakim dropped his crate and ran to the ship’s rail. “Clear the docks! You there! Move!” The turbaned sailor glanced up. His eyes grew round as he screeched warnings to those nearby and scrambled to escape the quickly looming disaster.

  The ship plowed into the docks, sending wood, crates, and men flying in all directions. The ship Hakim and Anju stood on shook violently and heaved on the waves, but thankfully the ties stuck fast.

  The British galleon now had a gaping hole in its hull and was rapidly taking on water.

  Simultaneously, Hakim and Anju rushed toward the injured ship. They were halfway down the gangplank of their own ship when, from the pilot house of the other, a man stumbled to the rail. Even from this distance Hakim could see that his face was gray and pasty with sweat. The man leaned on the rail for a moment, and then he collapsed, slipping out of sight behind the gunwale.

  He was dead by the time Hakim and Anju reached the deck.

  Had the choice been left to Hakim, he would have tugged the galleon out into the water and set the ship afire. But the choice was not his. Seeing as how there wasn’t a living soul left aboard the ship, the port master claimed the contents of its hold as recompense for damages to his wharf. He set several men to unloading the galleon, while others were immediately dispatched to fetch new lumber for the repairs that would be needed.

  Hakim once again thanked the gods that he’d drawn lumber duty. He didn’t get paid enough to have to deal with dead bodies—especially ones that stank as badly as a few of the corpses aboard the galleon. The last man alive had obviously been weakened enough by the sickness that he couldn’t hoist the corpses overboard.

  Hakim was even more thankful that he’d been sent off on lumber duty when, three days after the unloading of the galleon, the first of the dockworkers assigned to that task fell ill. When the man died two days after that, Hakim packed up his rucksack and hired aboard the first ship that would take him.

  It was headed to Zanzibar with the morning’s tide.

  Good enough.

  Life was too short for him to stick around this cursed port.

  He would have one last drink with his comrades, and then he would move on to bigger and better things. Hakim found them at their regular alehouse and sank down at the table with them, ordering a draft.

  Little did he know that the keg he was served from had only last week arrived in port aboard the British galleon.

  Trent awoke with a groan. So much pain. He didn’t dare open his eyes yet. First he must assess. Remember. Where was he? What had happened? Everything seemed to be moving, and he just wanted it to be still. To let him rest. There was a repetitive squeak, squeak, squeak and…heat. So much heat. His head lolled first to one side, then to the other, and a jostle of whatever bed he was lying on zinged pain through his shoulder and forced a gasp from his lips.

  The jostling stopped. And suddenly blaring sunlight hit his face.

  Even though his eyes were still closed, the light made him scrunch them tighter and lift a hand as a shield.

  A moment later a deeper shadow settled above him.

  Slowly Trent squinted open one eye. A worried face hovered above his own. Trent tried to say “Kako? Is that you?” but he feared it came out more like a garbled moan.

  “The god you serve has saved you then?” Kako poked him in the chest, a quick jab almost as though he half expected Trent to be a spirit being.

  “Ow!”

  With a gasp, Kako leapt back.

  The sun slammed into Trent’s eyes once more.

  “Ah!” Trent winced and covered his face with both hands. This lying on his back with the sun blazing directly above him was no good. He’d be blind as well as half dead if he didn’t find the strength to sit up soon. Whyever was Kako acting so strangely? Trent stretched out one hand. “Kako, help me sit up, please?”

  “He has saved y
ou!” Kako took his hand and gently pulled him into a sitting position.

  Trent didn’t have the gumption to try and decipher Kako’s strange behavior. His tongue felt like a stick in his mouth. “Water. Please.” He pried his eyes barely open, wanting to give himself time to adjust to the bright sunlight.

  He wasn’t sure why the light would be so bright. The last thing he remembered… What was the last thing he remembered? Nyimbo had been on his bedroll. He’d been sitting by the fire.

  Kako pressed an open canteen into Trent’s hands. “We have been traveling for days, mzee. We thought we had lost you.”

  Trent pondered on that while he lifted the canteen to his lips. His hand trembled. Since when had a canteen grown so heavy?

  His eyes were more accustomed to the light now, and he glanced around them. They were not in their encampment back under the trees by the village. He took another swallow from the canteen, savoring the liquid as it spread over his tongue despite the warmness of it. After a moment he pegged Kako with a look and realized that June and Nyimbo were standing on either side of him. All three of them had eyes nearly as wide as the mouth of the canteen in his hands.

  “We are not at our camp.” He frowned. It wasn’t like him to so blatantly state the obvious. He tried again. “Where are we?”

  June clapped both hands to her mouth, and a look of glee filled her eyes. “He lives!” she exclaimed.

  Trent actually tossed a glance over his shoulder to see if she might be talking about someone else, but no. It was apparent her comments were made with regard to him.

  “What happened?”

  Nyimbo threw both her small hands into the air and danced a little jig as she spun in a circle. “He lives! He lives! He lives!” she shouted, hips swaying and knees protruding at odd angles.

  With a degree of frustration, Trent tamped home the cork of the canteen. “Yes. I live. Now if one of you could be so kind as to fill me in on where we are and why you are so happy to see me alive, I would greatly appreciate it.”

  Silence and wide eyes were all the answer he received.

  Realizing his strength was fading quickly, he gave up and plunked the canteen down on the wooden board that had apparently been his bed for the past few days. He eased back onto his elbows and studied the contraption he was lying on. It was a rickshaw of sorts with a tented frame above it. Tied over the frame was a somewhat burnt-about-the-edges piece of canvas. It had several charred holes in it but had apparently been his shelter from the sun as they’d been traveling.

  He gave his head a little shake, trying to dislodge any memories of the past few days from the depths of his mind. But all he could conjure was blankness. “So weak.” He let himself collapse all the way back to a prone position, no longer even caring about the sun in his face.

  He heard some bustling about and then blessed shade covered him. But June crawled up onto the plank beside him. She jostled his shoulder. “Before you sleep, mzee, you must eat a little. For days you’ve had nothing but a little broth dribbled between your lips.”

  “Too tired, June.” He tried to brush her away.

  “Only a few bites. Then I will leave you to sleep again.” She nudged his lips with a wooden spoon, and he tasted the bland cornmeal mush that was a breakfast staple in these parts.

  If only to get her to leave him alone, he took the first mouthful. But then it was as if his body realized its need for sustenance, for he greedily slurped the next spoonfuls that she offered him.

  “Not too much. Here, have more water.” June held the canteen for him this time, and he drank several more swallows.

  She said something else to him, but the black tug of sleep had already too far encroached for him to make sense of her words.

  The next time Trent awoke, he was cognizant of only one thing: he couldn’t fellowship with his own odor for even one more minute. He needed a bath, and he needed it now. The cart wasn’t moving, and the air felt comparatively cool, though he could see it was still light outside the charred canvas covering. “Kako?”

  The flap of canvas flipped back, but it was Nyimbo’s face that peered in at him.

  “Kako.” He gestured for the child to go get him.

  She only shook her head.

  “June then?”

  Nyimbo shook her head again.

  Trent frowned and struggled to sit up. The effort took all of his strength, and he was puffing for air by the time he got his spine straight.

  The cart was parked beneath a lone acacia tree in the middle of a vast plain of brown savannah. Whatever direction he looked—north, south, east, or west—there lay nothing but sepia swaying grasses. But there to the south he could see a dip in the grassland, and now that he could see it, he also heard the dulcet trickle of water.

  Blessed water! Perhaps God yet remained on His throne. The irreverent thought brought an immediate prick of conscience. He angled a glance toward the heavens. Forgive me, Father. But I think even You would admit that my circumstances of late haven’t offered the best proof that You watch over the righteous and promise to bring about the destruction of the wicked, aye?

  He judged the distance between himself and the stream. Considered how much strength it had taken for him just to sit up, and realized the water was too far for him to make it there and back again.

  Nyimbo stirred something over a small fire not too far distant.

  “Where are they?” he called to her.

  She looked up, shrugged, then chattered something in her native Chewa, spoken too quickly for him to grasp. He caught “Kako” and “June” but couldn’t decipher anything until she said, “Miss Hunter.”

  A sheer jolt of energy infused him. Had they caught up to the slave caravan? How many days had he been slipping in and out of consciousness while they traveled? He glanced around again as he tested his ability to move his injured shoulder. There was still pain when he moved the limb, but nothing like it had been at first. With time and continued limbering by movement, the shoulder would be next to new again.

  Movement caught his eye. Several miles to the north he could see two people picking their way through the grass. June and Kako were returning. So whatever news the child had just been chattering, he would soon have it from Kako himself.

  Nyimbo brought him a bowl of thin stew. There wasn’t much in it but broth, but he used his own hand, shaky though it was, to spoon the sustenance into his mouth and was thankful for the bolstering of it. He had just finished when Kako and June stopped next to the cart.

  June’s smile stretched like a white moon across her face. “You have come back to us from the very teeth of death.”

  Trent returned her smile and tried not to feel too keenly the pain pulsing through his newly worked shoulder. “That feels about right.” He handed his empty bowl and the wooden spoon to Nyimbo with a nod of thanks, then took in Kako’s grim expression. “What do you find?” He pointed with his chin in the direction they had just been.

  Kako and June exchanged a glance.

  Kako’s words were measured when he said, “Less than half a day’s journey to the north and east we have come across a wide trampled path made by many people.”

  That had to be the slave caravan. But Trent’s strength was nowhere close to what it needed to be to win out in a confrontation with Khalifa. “How far behind them are we?”

  Kako shrugged. “Perhaps eight suns? But they seem to be moving fast. So…it may be a few more.”

  Eight days. Much too long. And yet, when he assessed his injuries, not nearly long enough. And then there was the other looming dilemma they were up against. “How many days until they reach Bagamoyo?”

  Kako looked grim. “I spoke to a man once who told me of this trail to Bagamoyo. He described that mountain there, the one with the smoke coming out of the top.”

  Trent glanced over at the small volcanic mound wisping steam into the sky. “Yes. And?”

  “He told me that from here it was less than ten moons to Bagamoyo.”

&nb
sp; Terror clambered through Trent’s chest. They must mount their rescue before the caravan reached the town, for there would be too many in Bagamoyo who would side with the slavers, no matter that RyAnne was more white than black, or that most of the other slaves had neither been at war nor part of a raiding party when captured.

  Trent’s heart thudded in his chest. Less than a week and he might be able to pull RyAnne into his arms once more, or he would lose her forever! “We must reach them before they get to Bagamoyo. We must travel a little further than normal each day. And I must exercise and begin to get my strength back. We can also travel for a portion of the cooler nights.”

  Kako shook his head. “That would be most unwise, mzee. I found the carcass of one who had been attacked by a lion, and our party is small.”

  Trent swallowed. A rogue lion would definitely be a reason to stay in camp close to a blazing fire each night. He slammed his palm against the wood of the rickshaw. Could nothing go his way lately? He sighed. There was naught for it but to press on and pray he wasn’t too late to save her.

  He nodded at Kako. “Fine. Right. We should not travel at night in that case. But let’s try to make the best time we can during the days. For now, help me.” He motioned to the streambed. “I intend to rid myself of this deathbed stench.”

  Kako, June, and Nyimbo were all staring at Trent when he awoke the next morning. He blinked sleepily and scrubbed one hand over his face, hating the itch of the several-weeks-old beard.

  He sat up, finding that after having eaten the nourishing stew the evening before, he was much better able to handle that task this morning.

  Still the three of them stared at him.

  Trent lifted a hand of question. “What can I do for you?”

  Three pairs of feet shuffled, and June and Nyimbo turned their focus onto Kako.

  Kako cleared his throat. “You must tell us what we have to do as servants of your great spirit.”

  Trent’s brows lifted. “Truly?” Wouldn’t Dr. Hunter be overjoyed if he could hear this conversation? How many times had they sat about the fire on their way inland to Kako’s village with Dr. Hunter expounding on the truths of the Scriptures to the men traveling with them, yet none of them had ever shown the slightest inclination of turning from their traditions. Yet now this…