A Buccaneer at Heart

by Stephanie Laurens

  He considered the prospect; it gave his mind something to do while they mindlessly put one foot in front of the other. “If I’ve understood the relations between the slavers and the local chieftains—and I’m not at all certain I have, not correctly—then maintaining even temporary camps within a chieftain’s territory is unlikely.” He grimaced. “Sadly, it’s not impossible.”

  “Will we be able to tell if the camp we reach is the permanent one?”

  “Yes.” He was confident of that. He glanced back at her. “The buildings will be more solid, on some sort of foundations. A temporary camp will be something they can pack up and move at a moment’s notice.”

  She nodded and continued slogging doggedly along in his wake.

  He faced forward. “Regardless, whatever camp we find tonight, we’ll have to return to the ship.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her nod. “Your orders are to go no farther than the first camp and to return to London and report.” When he glanced at her, she caught his eye. “That’s correct, isn’t it?”

  He couldn’t hide a grimace. “Yes, but...my orders didn’t take into account a temporary camp.” He weighed his options, then said, “If the camp we reach tonight is merely a temporary staging post rather than the permanent jungle camp of this group of slavers, then we’ll still return to the ship tonight, but if Decker hasn’t yet sailed in, I’ll bring some of my men with me tomorrow, and we’ll follow the trail on. Hopefully, to the permanent camp.”

  He felt the sharp glance she threw him, but didn’t react, didn’t look back.

  As they walked on, slowing now and then, and halting when the group ahead of them halted, he recalled her comment that the slavers were carrying no supplies. In his estimation, that suggested they were expecting everything they needed to be at their camp—which increased the odds that it was the permanent camp the group was making for.

  The camp he’d been sent to locate.

  They crested a shallow rise in the path—and twenty yards ahead saw blue water glimmering in the sunshine. The jungle came to an abrupt end about fifteen yards ahead, leaving a short stretch of river sand running down to the water’s edge.

  They could see the slavers and the children milling in a group on the packed sand a little way to the right.

  Another smaller path angled away to their left, leading diagonally to the jungle’s edge. Robert reached back, grasped Aileen’s sleeve, and drew her in that direction. He didn’t take his eyes off the slavers until they were once more screened by trees and palms, but the three men didn’t seem at all alert, even to the chance that someone might have followed them.

  Then again, in this part of the world, few people would be fool enough to follow slave traders into the jungle.

  Exercising extreme caution, they crept to the edge of the trees and undergrowth, eventually crouching in a bed of smaller palms above the strip of muddy sand edging the tidal river.

  Aileen dismissed an errant thought that the palms were remarkably like those to be found gracing fashionable London ballrooms. Hunkered beside Robert, her shoulder against his, she peered out. Down on the sand, the three slavers were standing loosely around the five children while they waited for two other men to row a largish boat to shore.

  Also on the sand between their hiding place and the slavers’ group stood three natives. All carried spears. They wore loose trousers with the legs rolled up, but their chests were bare. The natives watched the slavers; without word or gesture, their animosity was apparent.

  The slavers knew the natives were there. Although they appeared to ignore them, all three slavers watched the trio from the corners of their eyes.

  With a crunch, the rowboat beached. It was a sturdy craft, big enough to hold perhaps ten adults. It was painted a blue-gray with green trim, and a crude depiction of the sun glowed brightly on either side of the prow.

  The pied piper immediately led the children to the boat and helped them, one after the other, to clamber in.

  The children were edgy, openly nervous, but when directed to sit on the benches, they obeyed.

  The three slavers pushed the boat off the beach, then scrambled in. The two men on the oars bent their backs and stroked, and the boat moved away from the shore. The pied piper grasped the tiller and turned the boat up the inlet. Two more oars were put in place, and the other two slavers sat and added their strength to the effort, and in short order, the boat glided smoothly away upstream.

  Aileen watched it go. She tensed to rise—Robert’s hand on her arm held her back. She glanced at him, a question in her eyes. He shook his head at her and mouthed, “Wait.”

  He looked at the three natives. She followed his gaze.

  The three men had started a low-voiced conversation in what sounded like one of the local tongues. After a moment, they seemed to come to some decision. Hefting their spears, they continued along the river’s edge in the direction the rowboat had gone.

  Only when the men had disappeared from sight did the weight of Robert’s hand ease from her arm. She straightened and shook out her skirt, then stepped back onto the path and walked the last yard down onto the sand.

  She peered up the inlet. “So do we walk along the sand?” She looked at Robert, who had halted beside her.

  He was consulting his map. “No.” After a moment, he looked up—along the sandy bank in the opposite direction to that in which the slavers had gone. “There’s supposed to be a small village on the shore of the inlet just downriver from here. Those three men must have come from there.” Refolding the map, he tucked it away, then reached for her hand. “With any luck, they’ll have a canoe we can hire.”

  She glanced up the inlet. “But won’t they get away?”

  “We couldn’t have followed over open water anyway—they would have spotted us, and there isn’t any feasible reason for us being here other than we’re following them.”

  She looked at him and frowned. “Then why the canoe?”

  He glanced at her, a faint smile playing about his lips. “You saw their boat. They’ll pull into shore somewhere.” He raised his head and, with his free hand, waved all around them. “How hard will it be to spot that boat? It’s not as if there are dozens of others we might confuse it with.”

  “Ah. I see.” After a moment, she added, “I’ve only paddled a canoe once. On a lake. I wasn’t especially good at steering it.”

  This time, his grin surfaced fully. He squeezed the hand he held. “Don’t worry. The knack will come back to you. And anyway, I’ll steer.”

  Robert started them walking along the inlet’s shore. He wasn’t at all sure how accurate his map was with respect to distances, so he was relieved to see huts lining a clearing above the shore roughly a quarter of a mile farther on.

  As he’d hoped, a small flotilla of lightweight canoes were upended in a regimented row along the bank. The natives along the coasts in these parts used canoes for river, estuarine, and sometimes even near-shore ocean fishing.

  Several natives approached as, with Aileen beside him, he halted beside the canoes. Most, he noted, were two-man canoes; he pointed at one, then, by way of sign language and a smattering of general-use pidgin, proceeded to hire a canoe for the rest of the day. He intimated that he expected to be out on the water until very late. The man with whom he’d been haggling waved the point aside and conveyed that as long as he had the canoe back by sunrise, all would be well. In return for several shillings, the men handed over a full water skin as well as one of the better canoes; they’d noted Aileen’s black reticule and seemed to find it exceedingly amusing.

  She’d done the right thing and remained slightly behind him, her eyes downcast, but he’d sensed she’d been following the exchange, alert for any hint of danger.

  After thanking the men who had set the canoe into the water in the shallows before the village, Robert
held the prow and, grasping Aileen’s hand, steadied her as, with her other hand, she swept up her skirts, then stepped into the bobbing craft.

  He held it steady while she settled on the forward bench. When she nodded, he shoved off and scrambled aboard. Swinging around, he adjusted his scabbard, then sat on the aft bench, seized his paddle, and stroked them back from the bank.

  With a sailor’s sixth sense, he took note of the currents—at that hour helpfully flowing strongly up the inlet—then started paddling.

  They were out in the center of the river when Aileen added her strokes to his. Gradually, her confidence grew, and then they were skimming swiftly up the river; it was more than a hundred yards wide at that point.

  They passed the spot where the slavers had boarded their rowboat. Soon after, the inlet narrowed. A little while later, after they’d rounded the next bend, Robert called softly, “You search the left bank. I’ll search the right.”

  “Given they got into a boat, won’t they have crossed the river?”

  “Not necessarily. If they’re heading much farther upstream, then going via the river would be faster, even if they could have reached the same place through the jungle.”

  He held to a course following the center of the gradually narrowing river, giving the eddies created by underwater snags closer to the banks a wide berth.

  They’d traveled perhaps a mile farther when Aileen shifted and sent the canoe wobbling. “There!”

  She was pointing to the left bank, just a little way ahead. Quickly, he slowed the canoe, then turned the prow toward the bank.

  “You have sharp eyes.” He could only just detect small patches of blue-gray through the branches the slavers had draped over the hull. They’d hauled the rowboat up the bank and upended it, concealing it above the high-water mark of the tidal river.

  As Aileen and he glided closer, they saw the gouge left by the hull as it had been dragged out—and just beyond, the opening to a shadowed path leading deeper into the jungle.

  Rather than beach at the same spot, Robert turned the canoe parallel to the bank and paddled some thirty yards back downstream. He slowed and nosed in to the bank where a tree jutted over the water. “This should do.”

  He caught the branches and pulled himself out and up onto the almost horizontal trunk. Once on the bank proper, he bent and pulled the canoe in, then helped Aileen use the same tree trunk to disembark.

  Together, they hauled the canoe out of the water and stowed it amid a thicket of palms. Robert slung the water skin over one shoulder, then they backtracked along the bank, ducking under palm fronds and dodging around trunks.

  They reached the rowboat. Via the sunburst on the prow, they confirmed it was definitely the slavers’ craft.

  They left the rowboat as it was and walked to where the path led onward. A large number of fresh footprints had recently churned the damp, dark earth at the opening to the path.

  Side by side, they stood and surveyed the dense conglomeration of fronds, trunks, and large pendant leaves to either side of the narrow path. The thickness of the jungle, the sense of impenetrability, was far greater on this side of the inlet than the other.

  Robert drew in a breath, then pulled out his fob watch. They’d left Mrs. Hoyt’s house at just after nine o’clock. They’d parted from Dave shortly after. Robert estimated they must have set eyes on the slavers with the children at about ten o’clock. He opened the watch and tilted the face to catch the heavily filtered light.

  “What time is it?” Aileen asked.

  “Just after two o’clock.” He closed the watch and returned it to his pocket. He met her eyes. “I thought it would be later.”

  She arched her brows. “So did I.” She looked back at the path leading onward. “How far do you think we’ll have to go?”

  “I have no idea.” He stared into the gloom. “But if those children can walk there, then we can.”

  He glanced at her in time to see her chin firm. “Indeed.” She met his gaze, held it for a second, then she tipped her head toward the path. “Shall we?”

  He couldn’t hold back the smile that lifted the ends of his lips. He reached out, closed his hand around hers, raised it and pressed a kiss to her gloved knuckles, then he lowered his arm, settled her hand in his, and walked forward.

  Together, they headed deeper into the dark of the jungle.

  CHAPTER 15

  If the morning had been humid and muggy, experienced from beneath the thicker canopy of the undisturbed jungle, the afternoon turned oppressively sultry. The heat seemed to hang like a leaden miasma, slowing them—forcing them to stop often and drink from the skin the villagers had so helpfully provided.

  They hadn’t caught up to the slavers and the children, but then, they hadn’t tried. Evidence of the group’s passing was easy enough to see in the footprints pressed into the soft earth of the path.

  At one point, Robert crouched and studied the traffic crossing one clearing. He rose and met Aileen’s eyes. “Lots of people, back and forth. And some of those imprints are old. I doubt this leads to any temporary camp.”

  She nodded.

  He retook her hand, and they continued on.

  Courtesy, no doubt, of that frequent traffic, the path remained clear. It was also relatively flat. Only the heat and the oppressive way the jungle seemed to weigh on their senses made the trek wearying.

  But it was definitely that.

  Although it had been years—nearly a decade—since he’d ventured into areas such as this, Robert recalled sufficient jungle craft to find several large, succulent fruit and numerous handfuls of berries. It was enough to keep them going, steadily forging on.

  Moving along the floor of the jungle was reminiscent of swimming underwater; the breeze stirring the canopies high above caused beams of light, highly filtered and muted, to shift almost dizzyingly around them—much as if they were drifting on errant currents.

  Occasionally, the harsh caw of a bird sounded. Several times they heard monkeys screeching. But for the most part, their journey was wrapped in a silence that felt thick—as if their senses were muted by invisible padding.

  He’d just checked his watch again, finding it to be nearly four o’clock, when they heard a boy’s voice.

  Robert and Aileen froze.

  From not far ahead came “It’s just a little farther—we’re almost there.”

  The pied piper. They listened as he continued to talk, cajoling the children into continuing walking. Judging from the sound of his voice and the occasional whine from the children, the band was still moving, but more slowly now.

  The commentary the pied piper instituted, no doubt to distract the flagging children, served to warn Robert and Aileen when they, along with the company ahead, neared the camp.

  Robert tightened his grip on Aileen’s hand. Still following the trail, but ever more cautiously, they reached a widening in the path. Robert halted; holding Aileen beside him, he cocked his head and listened.

  Then from ahead, they heard “Here we are! Welcome to Kale’s Homestead!”

  Robert widened his eyes, then he dipped his head and whispered to Aileen, “Kale is the leader of our particular gang of slave traders. Definitely not a nice man.”

  Aileen met his eyes. “But that means we’ve found the right camp, doesn’t it?”

  Struggling to mute a surge of triumph, he nodded. “So tramping all the way here has been entirely worthwhile.”

  “Now remember,” the pied piper went on, his distinctive voice floating through the jungle’s stillness, “this isn’t your new workplace. We’ll only be staying here a night or two—just to see if any others will be joining us. Then we’ll escort you on to your new jobs.”

  Robert scanned their surroundings, then tugged Aileen off the main trail onto a narrow, even more twisting r
oute in and out among the palms and trees. They moved slowly and silently, angling forward.

  Through the intervening leaves and shrubs, they caught glimpses of a large clearing ahead—presumably Kale’s Homestead. Then the troop of children came into view—still strung out in a line with the pied piper in the lead. They were marching into the large open area at the center of the camp; eyes wide, the children were looking around curiously, drinking in all they could see.

  Robert crouched behind a stand of finger-leaved palms.

  Her hand still in his, Aileen settled beside him. A narrow gap between various bushes and leaves afforded them a decent view of the camp.

  “Kale’s Homestead” was, indeed, a permanent jungle camp. Five solidly built huts were placed in a horseshoe arrangement, with two huts on one long side, two on the other long side, and a larger, longer hut—presumably the slave traders’ headquarters—across the head of the horseshoe. The open expanse between the huts played host to a large fire pit with logs serving as benches circling it.

  The path the children had been brought in on led into the open end of the horseshoe. Robert noted two other paths leading out of the camp—to the right and to the left of the main hut. By his estimation, the path to the right led more or less due east, deeper into the interior, while the path to the left of the hut angled north.

  “There are men in at least one of those huts.”

  Aileen’s whisper drew his attention back to the huts. And he saw what she’d noticed—at least two man-sized shadows moving inside the open door of the hut to the right of the main barracks.

  His mind had applied the word “barracks” instinctively. He looked back at the main hut, confirming that it was large enough to serve as both meeting place and dormitory for eight or even ten men, then he narrowed his eyes and studied the hut in which the shadowy men seemed to be congregating just inside the door.

  “There’s a barred gate blocking that doorway,” he murmured. “That’s not a hut—it’s a cell.”