“Hello.”
He was close enough to hear the children shyly chorus a greeting back.
Then one small poppet said, “You have very pretty hair.”
“Thank you.” Aileen looked at the older boys and girls. “What game are you playing?”
It was apparently their version of pirates versus the navy. Robert felt his lips twitch. While he could have given them chapter and verse on that particular story, Aileen made a surprisingly good show by asking several of the right questions. By the time the children had described the play-world they’d created in sufficient detail to satisfy themselves that they’d done their creativity justice, the group had drawn close around Aileen.
She’d gained their trust in a little more than ten minutes; Robert silently owned to being impressed.
Then she said, “We’ve heard that some children about your age have gone missing from their homes near here.” She looked around the group. “Have any of your friends gone missing?”
The children studied her for a second, then one of the older boys shook his head. “Nah. We’re too smart to want to go off looking for our fortunes—that’s something we do in our games, and we can still go home to our mams at night.”
“But you’ve heard of children going off to seek their fortunes?” Aileen asked.
Many heads bobbed.
“Not our lot, though,” the tallest girl said. “The ones that go off with the men from the jungle are all from the group as plays at the Far End.”
The way she said “Far End” made it clear the words designated a place.
Aileen tipped her head. “The Far End—where’s that?”
“Way over there.” The boy who’d spoken pointed along the beach to the east. “There’s another group as plays in the middle, ’bout the old beached buoy, but far as we’ve heard, none of them have gone. But the Far End is the biggest lot of children about here, and lots of them have gorn off.”
“I see.” Aileen rose. “So right at the end of this stretch of beach?”
Many children nodded.
“You can’t miss it,” the tall girl said. “There’s a pile o’ rocks reach into the water there—the Far End children play on and about them.”
“Thank you.” Aileen took a step back. “I’ll let you get back to your game.”
The children grinned. Within seconds, even before Aileen, trudging back over the sands to Robert’s side, reached him, an argument had broken out over who had held the advantage before the interruption in hostilities.
Aileen halted beside him and arched a brow. She looked down the length of the beach. “I can see the beached buoy, but I can’t see any rocks. Can you?”
He was nearly a foot taller than she. “Just. They’re nearly as far past the buoy as the buoy is from here.”
She sighed and started walking.
He directed her down to the ribbon of washed and more firmly packed sand edging the waves. “The going will be easier down there.”
At first, they walked in silence.
Aileen paced by his side, her skirts shifting with each step. Her gaze remained trained on the sand before her feet. Eventually, she said, “They really have nothing beyond their own imaginations—not even wooden swords.”
“And,” he replied, in much the same reflective tone, “very likely those sticks will soon be claimed for some fire.”
In the sand above the beached buoy, they saw another group of children, these a trifle more bedraggled in appearance than the group playing about the boats, building what appeared to be a small village of sand castles. Their implements were their hands and several bits of broken crockery.
The group noticed them—suspicious glances were directed their way—but when they didn’t stop, the children paid them no further heed.
Aileen frowned. “It seems odd that these children”—she glanced at those they’d just passed and waved back toward the boats—“have instinct enough to be suspicious of any men trying to lure them away.” She looked ahead to where, several hundred yards farther along the sands, a dark gray jumble of rocks marked their destination. “Yet apparently, the children playing about the rocks are susceptible to whatever story the slavers are spinning.”
After a moment, he said, “Children usually have good instincts when it comes to evil. But I suspect we’ll discover that the children who play about the rocks are, in general, older, and that they’ll also be feeling more desperate. Desperate for themselves and also for their families. Desperation can overcome instinct—that’s what the slavers or any like them count on.”
Puzzled, she glanced at him; his expression, usually deceptively mild, looked faintly grim. “Why do you say that? That these children will be more desperate.”
He met her gaze, then tipped his head toward the ramshackle houses bordering the sands. “Because I suspect each group of children hails from one section of the slum, and we’ve been heading east—away from the settlement’s center. The families who wind up on the edges of the slum—farthest from the amenities of the settlement and its protections—are almost certainly the most destitute, the most downtrodden.”
“Ah.” She nodded and faced forward. “The most desperate.”
“Indeed.”
There was an edge to the word that told her that he didn’t approve of the situation any more than she did, but they were both too old to imagine they could help everyone.
Today, they were looking for a way to help a group of children—those missing as well as those at risk of being taken. One did what one could when the opportunity offered; in cases like this, that was all they could do.
The rocks proved to be something of a natural breakwater. They jutted up through the sands, reaching almost to where the line of dwellings edged the beach.
With a touch on her arm, Frobisher directed her up the beach and around the spine. They stepped clear and immediately spotted a group of children playing in and about a conglomeration of flat rocks that held tidal pools cluttered with flotsam and jetsam.
Aileen halted beside Frobisher in the shadows thrown by the rocky breakwater and studied the group.
It differed from the previous two in several respects. The children were more numerous—Aileen counted well over twenty heads—and their clothes were more ragged and their limbs more sticklike.
The instant she looked at the harshness in their faces—the gauntness deprivation had already etched in their features—she knew this group would require a different approach. There were no games in these children’s world.
She pulled up her reticule and wriggled the drawstring open. “How many pennies do you have on you?”
Frobisher didn’t question her, just reached into his pocket and pulled out his coin purse.
Between them, they had over thirty pennies—enough for her purpose.
She handed him her coins. “You hold them. Follow me, but as you did with the others, stand back and don’t frighten them.”
After pulling the strings of her reticule tight and letting it fall to dangle from her wrist, she picked up her skirts and started down the beach.
As before, the children saw them coming. And as before, they noted that she was in the lead. That left them unsure of whether the approach constituted a threat.
She smiled and halted some yards away—enough to make it clear that she wasn’t about to try to corner them. This time, she didn’t open with any hello. She let her skirts fall, clasped her hands at her waist, and calmly stated, “I have a proposition for you all.”
Immediately, they gathered before her, still wary enough to keep their distance, but their expressions made it clear they were entirely willing to hear her out.
“I”—she glanced over her shoulder to where Frobisher had halted several paces up the beach; he was scanning the beach and not—overtly, at leas
t—looking their way, very much a man on guard and, by implication, no threat to her or the children—“we would like some information.” She returned her gaze to the children and let her eyes roam over them as if assessing their ability to deliver.
One of the older boys shuffled forward half a step. “’Bout what?”
She studied him for a second, then said, “We’ve heard that some children have gone missing from around here.” Awareness rippled through the group; glances were exchanged. “We’re not after the children themselves,” she hurriedly added. “We wish no harm to them or any other children whatsoever. However, we would like to know where the children went—how, with whom, and why they left.”
That they’d come to the right people—those who had answers—was apparent in the considering, assessing looks the children gave both her and Frobisher, and also each other.
Eventually, the boy who’d spoken rubbed his hand over his mouth, then said, “If’n we tell you, what’s in it fer us?”
She let her gaze sweep the grubby, still faintly suspicious, yet oddly innocent faces. “One penny. Each. A penny given to each of you, for your own.”
The boy frowned. “But I can tell you everythin’—you can just pay me.”
“No!” Another boy pushed forward. “I’ll tell yer.”
“Me—pick me!” came from multiple throats as several of the older children jostled to stand before her.
Aileen held up her hands, palms out—and waited with unshakeable patience for the pushing to stop and the shouting to cease...
The children got the message.
When they were once more lined up and quiet, listening, she stated in a tone that brooked no argument, much less disobedience, “One penny to each and every one of you. Those are our terms. We don’t care who answers our questions, only that we get the answers—all of the answers we want.” She glanced over her shoulder; Frobisher had edged a touch closer, but remained a good three paces away. “I will ask the questions, and when we’re satisfied we’ve heard all we need to learn”—all you can tell us—“you will line up, youngest to oldest, and this gentleman will give you each a penny.”
That way, the younger ones would have a chance to run home and hide their penny before any of the older ones could take it from them.
Satisfied she’d arranged the situation to the best of her ability, she returned her gaze to the group. “So—first question. The children who’ve gone missing—how many came from your group?” She waved to the rocks around them. “From the children who play around here?”
The children traded looks, then one girl started rattling off names, counting on her fingers. The others called additions. When the roll call finally ended, they’d recited nineteen names—two more than Mrs. Hardwicke had known of.
Aileen nodded. “Very well—nineteen. Now, were any of you about when these children left?”
Lots of nods. Virtually every head bobbed.
“Did the children leave with some men?”
Another round of nods.
“Not all at once,” one of the girls said. “Those that went with the men went off three or four or five at a time.”
“Aye.” One of the boys loitering at the rear of the group caught Aileen’s eye. “The men come and tell us about how they have work for us, and ask how many of us would like to go with them and make some money.” There was more than a hint of cynicism in his tone.
“What they say,” another of the older boys put in, “is if we go with them into the jungle, we’ll make our fortunes, just like explorers an’ all do.” His gaunt face lit with nascent hope. “When next they come, I might just go.” He threw a challenging glance at the boy at the back of the group. “Better’n just hanging around here getting nothin’ but older.”
Aileen swallowed the impulse to insist he do no such thing; she needed to be careful. “These men—who are they?”
Several children shrugged. “Don’t know, do we?” the first boy said. “It’s all a big secret—this...project of theirs. They don’t want others learnin’ of it and trying to fight them for it, do they?”
“What do these men look like?”
Bits and pieces of description tumbled forth.
“Big—big bruisers, some o’ them.”
“Mostly like us, English or mix, not natives.”
“They carry knives—big knives and cutlasses on their hips.”
“One had a pistol.”
“There’s one as comes and talks to us—s’plains things to us. It’s usually him as talks.”
The picture the children painted was of a group of four or five men, usually English, who came to visit the children by walking along the beach as Aileen and Frobisher had. Sometimes the men approached from the west, sometimes the east, and sometimes through the slum itself. They departed with the children they’d recruited by walking either east or back through the slum. The man in charge was the one who spoke with them, making promises of gainful employment; it was transparently clear that, somehow, that man had succeeded in winning the trust of most of the children.
“Do you know—have you heard—any of the men’s names?” Aileen asked.
But that was too much to hope for.
She thought rapidly, then asked, “Do the men take any of you who want to go?”
Heads were shaken. “They pick and choose,” one of the girls said. “They want strong ones. When Robbie wanted to go”—she nodded at one of the boys—“they wouldn’t take him ’cause he had a broken arm.”
“I’m waiting for them to come back.” Robbie held out his skinny arm and flexed the elbow. “Right as rain now.”
His eager expression had Aileen biting her tongue while she rapidly thought of how to ask the most vital question. “I would have thought,” she said, “that your beds here, no matter how shabby, would be better than slaving away in the jungle, who knows how far away from your families.”
“Aye, well.” The older boy who’d first spoken shrugged. “It comes down to what they’re offering, don’t it?”
An older girl with wispy pale hair shot him a look, then faced Aileen. “We’ve families, see? Our mams are working as hard and as long as can be, but there’s not much work to be had, even for them, and there ain’t no jobs nor nothin’ for us to do to help, but the little ones have to be fed, and the landlady has to be paid. And all we can do is hang about and wish we could do something useful, but we can’t.” She fixed her gaze on Aileen’s face. “So when the men come...some of us take the chance they’re offering and go. It might be hard work, but if we can make some coin to help our mams and the little ones...well, why wouldn’t we?”
Aileen understood—all of it. That the men who were taking the children were trafficking in hope, preying on these children’s innocent and wholly laudable wish to help their struggling families.
She drew in a deep breath and inwardly lectured herself that she couldn’t simply issue orders and make these children’s world right. She exhaled. “I see. Very well—one last question. Have any of the children who’ve gone come back?”
She was certain she knew what the answer would be, but hoped that through articulating it, some, at least, of the older children tempted to go with the men might think—might use their innate wariness to consider what the answer might mean.
The boy at the rear of the pack, the one with world-weary cynicism far too deep for his years etched into his face, snorted and looked away.
“Nah,” Robbie answered. “None who’ve gone have yet come back, but then the project’s still going, ain’t it?” His grin suggested he was glad it was, because that meant he still had a chance to join those who had gone, and “make some coin.”
Aileen felt anger burn, but ruthlessly tamped it down. Railing at the children, trying to make them recognize the danger and stay away from the men...
/> She wouldn’t succeed—arguing against hope was always a losing proposition—and worse, she would put the children’s backs up by attacking something they equated with helping their families.
She drew in another breath, then turned her head and glanced at Frobisher.
He looked as grim as she felt, but from the watchful—warning—look in his eyes, she gathered he read the situation in the same way and saw the same danger she did. “Anything more?” she asked him.
“Do the men come at regular times?” His deep, resonant voice rumbled over her and the children. “Or do they come after a certain number of days?”
She turned back and looked at the children, and arched her brows.
“They usually come in the afternoons.”
“But if you mean which days, they’re not regular-like at all.”
“Can’t even remember when last they came—must be weeks ago now.”
“They’ve only come about four times.”
“Maybe once a month?”
“Always in the afternoons.” Several nodded.
When nothing more was forthcoming, either from the children or Frobisher, Aileen nodded. She stepped back and waved toward him. “Form up in a line, then—youngest first. And no arguing—I won’t believe that you don’t know who is younger than whom.”
The children gave her a careful look, but did as she bid them.
Having apparently divined the purpose behind her organizational strategy, Frobisher handed out the pennies literally one by one, pausing between each to give the most recent recipient time to depart.
Which they all did, clutching their penny and racing over the sand to disappear into the slum.
Aileen followed the last lad—the one who had shown his suspicions of the men most clearly—as he approached Frobisher.
The lad took his penny and ducked his head.
As he started to step away, Aileen said, “You don’t think going with the men is a good idea.”
The lad cast her a glance from dark eyes. “No, mum. Plain as a pikestaff they’re up to no good—why else would men come ’specially to seek out the likes of us? If they was offering honest work, there’re hundreds in the settlement would line up to do it. Don’t make no sense.” The lad’s gaze hardened. “But you was right to say nuffin of what you think—I saw you holding it in.” He darted a glance at Frobisher, but immediately looked back at Aileen. “It don’t do no good to try to make ’em see. I got the bruises to prove it. They think I’m a coward for not going—the men asked me once’t, and I said no.”