The Lady of Bolton Hill

Chapter 20





With Eddie Maguire’s lead about the Locust Point harbor, Daniel armed himself with a contingent of hired guards to search through the warehouses that rimmed the waterfront. There were over a hundred buildings, each standing between two and four stories in height, each containing dozens of rooms where a small, frightened hostage might be stashed away.

Clyde and Daniel spent the day going from building to building, searching through hundreds of storage rooms. Each time they forced their way into a building, a terrible squeezing pressure clenched Daniel’s chest. He didn’t know what he was looking for—Clara and Manzetti bound and gagged in a corner? A bloody spot on the floor? It had been almost four days since Clara had been kidnapped, and the likelihood of finding her alive was dwindling with each hour, but he forced his mind to remain rational. Methodical.

It was past midnight when they discovered the warehouse where Clara had been held captive. The oversized room looked like dozens of others they had searched, but the canary yellow dress, crumpled in a wad in the corner, had belonged to Clara. On shaking legs, Daniel knelt on the dusty floor and held the dress to his face. He was too late. He closed his eyes and tried to draw another breath into his tortured lungs.

“That was the dress she was wearing when Manzetti picked her up,” Clyde confirmed, his face white as parchment. Everything was here—her corset, her petticoats. Even her dainty suede pumps were tucked beneath the dress.

Clyde snatched the dress from Daniel and held it up before a flickering lantern. “There are no bloodstains here. And the buttons are not torn or missing.”

On some level that ought to be comforting. Clara had not been bleeding or thrashing about when those animals had stripped the dress from her. She would have to be unconscious or dead to have permitted those dozens of tiny buttons to be unfastened without a struggle.

Before the white haze of rage could cloud his mind, Daniel pushed himself to his feet and began pacing the grim warehouse, scanning the empty crates and makeshift kitchen area, anything that might give a clue as to where the occupants had come from or where they went.

“Check everything here,” Daniel ordered. “Open every crate, look through every pile of garbage. Look for papers, receipts, maps . . . anything that might show where they came from or where they are going next.” Daniel strained to see in the flickering light of the lantern, sickened that this filthy hole was where Clara had been forced to spend her last hours on this earth. His gaze was snagged by something odd on the table. A knife pinned a single sheet of paper to the scarred wooden surface.

He pried the knife free and held the document before a lantern. It was a bill of lading for the HMS Albatross. Clyde moved to stand beside Daniel.

“The Albatross must be a ship, correct?”

Clyde nodded. “Most likely. Those numbers are for the positioning of crates in the cargo hold. I’ve shipped enough medical supplies to know that.”

Then the people who had been in this warehouse had either come or were going to The Albatross. It was all Daniel needed to set the next stage in motion. “Get some men stationed here to guard this space until the police can get here. We are going to the docks.”





The Albatross was a two-masted brigantine and was still tied up to the dock. A network of piers stretched several acres out onto the harbor, a clockwork of right angles to which boats and skiffs and cargo ships were tied. Clara’s and Bane’s boots made hollow thudding sounds as they walked down the pier toward The Albatross. Over her shoulder Clara lugged a huge bundle, and Bane carried an even larger one. She clutched the burlap sack so tightly her hands threatened to cramp up. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

There was that verse again, giving her comfort in surely the most frightening moment of her life. As she and Bane approached the ship, two faces appeared over the edge. The men had thick necks and suspicious eyes. Bane took off his cap, his white-blond hair glowing in the thin moonlight. “Zeidermann, get down here,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir, Bane.”

A rope ladder was flung over the side and the sailor made his way down the twisting ladder and hopped down onto the pier. Clara’s heart sank. She had no idea she would need to climb a flimsy ladder like that while lugging this huge sack of wadded-up cloth. It wasn’t heavy, but Bane had instructed her to hunch over as though she was burdened by great weight. Dead weight, as it were. As instructed, she turned her face toward the sack and tried not to wince at the sight of the blood soaking through the burlap. It was Bane’s blood. He’d sliced the inside of his ankle and let the blood seep onto the fabric—“for a little added authenticity,” he had told her.

Mercifully, Bane had a solution to the problem of the flimsy ladder. “We need the gangway lowered,” he told Zeidermann. “We’ve got too much weight here to climb a rope ladder. And listen, you and whoever else is on that ship need to get off for a few minutes. We don’t need any witnesses.”

Zeidermann hesitated. “I don’t know, Bane. The cargo that’s on board ought to have a couple of rifles guarding it at all times.”

Bane’s voice was silky in its calmness. “I don’t want any witnesses while I take care of a private matter, Zeidermann. In the next fifteen minutes I need to dismember the contents of these two sacks into small, unidentifiable pieces. Then I am going to dump the pieces to the bottom of the ocean floor. Do you really want to witness this?”

The man’s eyes grew round and color drained from his face. Bane tended to have that effect on people. Zeidermann cleared his throat. “No, sir. I suppose we can guard the ship from the entrance to the pier. Just a moment while I get the gangway lowered.” He cleared his throat again. “Sir.”


Zeidermann scrambled up the ladder, and within moments a gangway was lowered over the edge. Clara picked her way up the slatted boards, weaving as The Albatross rose and sank on the gentle waves. When she arrived on board she kept her eyes fastened on the deck, her face turned away from the crew. She could see three pairs of boots shuffling toward the gangway. One of the men was grumbling about leaving their post, but Zeidermann was adamant. “Just do it . . . don’t ask questions, just do it,” he said in a fierce whisper.

As the men hit the pier, Bane leaned over the edge and called a warning. “You didn’t see anything. You didn’t hear anything.”

“That’s right, Bane,” a fear-roughened voice replied.

Two minutes after boarding The Albatross, she and Bane were alone. “Follow me,” he said. The hold was only a few steps away, and immediately upon descending the short flight of steps, Clara was assaulted by the sweet, pungent odor she had come to know too well over the past few days. The hold was entirely dark except for the narrow rectangle of moonlight coming from the door behind her. Bane struck a match and lit a small kerosene lantern, casting an eerie yellow glow over the crates stacked in the hold.

“What now?” she asked.

“Can you lift one of these crates up to the gunwale on your own?”

“What’s a gunwale?”

Bane sprang up the short flight of steps onto the deck, and rapped the uppermost rail on the ship’s side. “The top edge of the ship,” he clarified.

Clara wrapped her hands around the rough oak crate and waddled up the stairs. She lifted it to balance on the gunwale. Heavy, but manageable. She nodded to Bane.

“Good. Put it down, then, and we’ll move the crates up to the portside of the ship where they can’t be seen from the shore. Then we dump them all at once. Move.”

Clara needed no further prodding. Navigating the stairs was easy in her boy’s clothing, and she carried a steady stream of crates almost as quickly as Bane could move them. In less than ten minutes they had thirty-four crates of opium lined up along the portside of the ship, ready for pitching into the swirling waters below. Bane squatted down and lifted a crate, which he balanced on the railing of the ship. Just before tossing it overboard, he looked at Clara.

“I think this is the first purely decent thing I’ve done in my entire life,” he said. His face wore a quizzical expression, as though it had never occurred to him that doing something positive with his life was in any way a worthwhile endeavor.

“Perhaps it will set a trend,” Clara said. She prayed that it would. If Bane turned his skills toward the good, there would be no end to the things he could accomplish.

“Let’s find out,” Bane said as he heaved the first crate over the side of the ship. Clara winced at the splash, a crash of noise punctuating the night air. “Keep moving,” Bane said. “They know to ignore any sounds they hear of cargo being dumped, but let’s make this fast.”

Clara wrapped her hands around another crate, wishing she had worn a pair of gloves as the rough wood cut into her hands. She had to stand on tiptoe to hoist the crate onto the ledge of the ship; then she shoved it forward with all the strength she could muster. A moment later came the satisfying sound of the splash as twenty-five pounds of opium dissolved in the salty water of the ocean.

Bane continued to heave crate after crate over the side of the ship. Clara tried to keep up, but Bane was dumping the crates at twice the rate she could manage. Just as they were nearing the end of the dumping, a terrible sound interrupted their rhythm.

A clattering of footsteps sounded behind her, and a groggy voice called out, “Zeidermann, is that you?”

Bane froze and his gaze fastened on someone behind her. “Keep your face turned to me,” he whispered fiercely. Then he stood up and raised his voice. “And what are you doing here, Hansen? I told Zeidermann to clear everyone off this ship.”

Fear kept Clara immobilized as she hunched over a crate. There were only two other crates remaining on the deck of the ship. Bane moved to stand before one of the crates, partially obscuring the view from whoever had just stumbled up onto the deck, but anyone with a functioning brain would be able to figure out what they were doing.

“I fell asleep in the forecastle and thought I heard something sloshing around,” the blurry voice said. “What you got there, Bane?”

Bane’s voice lashed out like a whip. “None of your business, Hansen. If you want to live another sixty seconds, you’ll dive over the side of this ship. Otherwise, I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

She prayed the sailor would cooperate, but behind her came the dreaded sound of approaching footsteps. “Are you out of your mind?” the man said. “That’s prime opium you are dumping. The Professor will have our heads for this.”

And in an instant, Bane broke the tension. He shoved the revolver into his belt and reached down to hoist another cask. “You think I’m dumping opium? You idiot, it’s the minced up pieces of what is left of that fool Richards. That’s why I didn’t want any witnesses.” Bane tossed the crate overboard, and Clara did likewise with the crate she still clutched. One crate left.

But Hansen was on to them. He darted to the hold and tore open the door, revealing the empty cargo space. “You dumped the opium, you insane maniac!” Hansen ran for the side of the ship, cupping his hands around his mouth as he called out to shore. “Bane is dumping the opium! Get back here, you fools! Bane is dumping—”

Before he could finish the sentence Bane had rushed the sailor and flipped him overboard. Clara hoisted the final crate and tossed it over, then looked to Bane for instructions.

“Run!” was all he said. He tugged her arm so fiercely she thought it might be pulled from her socket as he yanked her to the gangway. She toppled down the gangway, landing on her knees on the pier, but Bane hauled her upright as they made a dash for the shore. Directly ahead of her were the four men from the shore who had heard Hansen’s warning, running straight at them like a herd of enraged beasts.

Going the way they had come was suicide, and Bane dragged her down a different pier. The height of the ships tied along the docks made it difficult for their pursuers to track them as they darted through the maze of interconnecting piers, trying to find a way to reach the shore.

So fast were they dashing down the pier that Clara barely noticed that the planking abruptly stopped, creating a dead end. With another two hundred yards to the shoreline, they could proceed no farther and their pursuers were gaining quickly. Manzetti had seen what was happening and had moved the wagon into place, but reaching him was hopeless.

The only remaining pier that reached the shore was on the opposite side of the old schooner they were stranded beside. “We’re going to have to climb aboard and make a leap for the opposite side,” Bane said. Their pursuers were still trying to navigate the correct path through the maze of piers to reach them, but it would only be seconds before they figured it out.

Bane grabbed a rope and pulled himself upward to scramble aboard the schooner. Clara didn’t know if she’d have the strength to haul herself up in a similar manner, but the sound of pounding footsteps on the planks behind her gave her the surge of energy she needed to heave herself up and swing a leg over the edge of the ship. Bane reached an arm around her waist and finished hauling her aboard. He pulled up all the ropes that dangled from the ship to the pier. “Quickly,” he said the moment the last rope had been pulled up before they dashed to the other side of the ship.


The pier was at least ten feet from the side of the ship and Clara’s heart plunged in defeat. “We’ll never make it,” she said, certain they would plunge into the bay no matter how hard they leapt away from the ship.

Bane grabbed her hand. “Trust me” was all he said. With the grace of a cat he leapt onto the lip of the gunwale and held a hand out for her to follow.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Clara said.

Bane didn’t budge. “This time you are just going to have to trust me,” Bane said. He bent at the waist and took her hand in his. Clara let him help her up on the gunwale of the ship. She could hear their pursuers trying to figure out a way to board the ship without the aid of the ropes.

“On the count of three, push off as hard as you can on your right foot,” Bane said. “We’ll keep our hands locked and make a flying leap for it. Either we both make it, or we both go in the drink.”

And at that moment, with hardened criminals just a few feet behind her and the prospect of breaking her neck on the pier below, that odd sense of calmness settled over Clara once again. She smiled and nodded her assent toward Bane, and when he counted to three, she leapt forward with all of her strength.

Just as she was landing on the pier, her hands scraping against the rough, dry surface of the planking, the crack of gunshots rang out, and Clara looked in horror as Bane collapsed against her, a bloom of blood spreading across his shirt.





Daniel heard the smattering crack of gunshots before they had even arrived at the harbor. He leaned low over his horse’s neck, urging the beast on faster. The thin moonlight made it almost impossible to see. Daniel squinted at the ghostly silhouette of ship riggings swaying in the harbor. Dozens of ships and a forest of masts lined the docks, making it impossible to tell which of these ships was The Albatross. They’d have to go ship to ship looking for it, just as they had done with the warehouses.

A clatter of horses’ hooves and wagon wheels penetrated his senses. Daniel wheeled his horse to a stop, his eyes widening in disbelief as a wagon careened toward him.

Manzetti?

The giant of a man was standing as he cracked the whip over the two wild-eyed horses pulling the wagon. Manzetti barely spared him a glance as he passed them. All he did was point to the pier and cry out, “Clara!” Daniel’s gaze swiveled out to the harbor, where he saw two figures in the dim light hurtling down the pier, one leaning heavily on the other. Before he could make sense of the pair, they stopped, and one of the men paused to toss something behind him before they turned and raced toward the shore.

The explosion lit up the sky. In that instant he could see everything perfectly, the silhouettes of the ships, the outlines of the planking, and two figures racing down the pier toward the shore, one man practically dragging the other.

Daniel spurred his horse forward to follow Manzetti, who pulled the wagon to a halt at the base of the pier. Manzetti leapt from the wagon to lower the back hatch.

Daniel gritted his teeth in frustration as he scanned the maze of ships and docking. “Where is Clara?” he demanded.

“On the pier! On the pier!” Manzetti shouted in reply.

Daniel squinted at the harbor, searching in vain for someone besides the two men running toward them. And then it happened. In the struggle to drag the man ashore, the cap fell from the smaller man’s head and a tumble of golden hair fell down her shoulders.

“Clara!”





The tremendous boom was so loud it hurt Clara’s ears and drove both her and Bane to their knees. She caught herself on the palm of her hand, and Clara felt a shudder run along the planking of the pier. A shower of sparks fell about them like falling snowflakes and Clara feared the pier was about to collapse. When she turned to look behind her, she could see the section of the pier surrounding the schooner was completely destroyed, making it impossible for their pursuers to follow them to shore.

“Keep moving,” Bane said. “I don’t know how long the rest of this pier will hold.”

A surge of excitement flooded through her. She and Bane had risked everything to take on the demons, and they had won. The shoreline was less than ten yards away. Clara braced her shoulder beneath Bane’s arm and ran toward Manzetti, who was waving frantically at them. Her eyes widened at the sight of two men standing alongside him. It was hard to see in the dim light, but it looked like . . . could that possibly be Daniel waiting on the shore? His stance was wide and he was staring at her as if she were a ghost, and it made Clara run faster down the pier. He had come for her!

Before she reached the shore Daniel had snapped from his trance and bolted toward her. “Clara!”

He bounded to her and he cupped her face between both his hands. Whatever horrible anger had raged between them the night his house burned was obliterated by the pure relief of being alive. She ought to say something to reassure him, but the exuberance was still bursting inside her and she was shaking too hard to speak.

Manzetti showed up a moment later and scooped up Bane, taking him away to the back of the wagon.

At last Clara found her voice. “It’s okay, Daniel, we got away . . . we got away. . . .” At least that is what she tried to say; he had wrapped his arms around her so tightly it was hard to draw a breath. Her feet left the ground as she felt herself being rocked in Daniel’s strong arms.

“Oh, Clara, I love you more than life itself, and I’m getting tired of you leaving me.”

Tears pricked the back of her eyes. “I love you, too, Daniel. I was afraid I would never be able to tell you that.” His arms tightened around her, and she felt his ragged breathing against her neck. She wanted to stay here within the warmth and safety of his arms forever. She wanted to laugh and cry and listen to Daniel tease her. Tears spilled down her face, for even as relief washed through her, she knew she and Daniel would return to a life with all their old problems of faith and mistrust between them. But at least the Lord had given her the opportunity to try to repair that damage.

She swiped the tears from her face. “Alex is hurt and we’ve got to get him out of here,” she said once she was able to pull out of Daniel’s embrace. He gave a quick nod and strode with her to the wagon. By the time they reached the shore, Manzetti had already dumped Bane into the back of the wagon and was holding the reins of Daniel’s horse, which was shifting and stamping nervously in the street. Daniel mounted the horse and then stretched a hand down toward her.

“Hop on up, Clara. You can ride behind me.”

Clara paused just for an instant and cast a glance at Alex, who lay propped in the bed of the wagon. Clyde was squatting beside him, applying pressure to the wound in the boy’s side. There was no room for Clara. The horse was twitchy, still spooked by the explosion. It would make the horse even madder when she tried to mount up behind Daniel, and she gazed longingly at the small seat in the front of the wagon.

“Daniel, I’m afraid of horses.”

A pained burst of laughter came from the back of the wagon.

“What are you laughing about, brat?” Manzetti growled.

“Clara,” Bane gasped. “After all you’ve been through in the past few days, you are too afraid to get on the back of a horse?”

It did seem ridiculous.

Clara’s gaze flitted between Daniel and the horse. She straightened her shoulders. “I can do this,” she said. “Help me up.”






Bane tensed, struggling to remain still while the cart rocked with each bump along the cobblestone streets. Every jolt and lurch of the cart sent white-hot pain spiraling through his body. The man named Clyde, who Manzetti said was a doctor, kept a hand pressed over the bullet wound in Bane’s waist. Maybe the pressure was helping, but from Bane’s point of view, the hand pressing his wound was torture.

Just as bad as the pain was listening to Tremain gush over Clara. Ever since they had left the docks, there had been a steady stream of conversation coming from the pair riding on horseback beside the cart. It sounded like Tremain had it bad. He kept vowing never to let Clara ten feet out of his sight, telling her how beautiful she was, how brave, how precious.

“How long am I going to have to listen to that syrupy mush?” Bane asked Clyde.

“Tell me about it. She is my sister” was all he said.

Bane tried not to laugh. “I suppose that makes it even worse.” But the doctor wasn’t paying attention to him; he was taking Bane’s pulse and concentrating on keeping steady pressure on the howling mass of agony in his side. Bane closed his eyes, trying to blot out the blinding joy on Clara’s face when she saw Daniel Tremain again. Bane had no business hankering after someone like Clara. It was not the fact that she was so much older than he that was the problem; it was simply that Clara was way too good for someone like him. That didn’t stop the longing, though.

The cart hit a pothole, and Bane was embarrassed by the whimper that escaped his clenched teeth. Waves of pain rolled from his stomach, causing the beginning of a convulsion.

“Are you going to throw up?” the doctor asked.

The agony made it too difficult to reply. “Nod if you want me to roll you over,” Clyde said. “I don’t want you choking.”

As bad as he felt, Bane didn’t want the doctor to roll him over. Turning on his side would cause the pain to rip him wide open. “No,” he managed to gasp. “I’m fine.” He tried to concentrate on the stars overhead, anything other than dwell on the seething pain that radiated through his entire body.

Freedom had come to him tonight . . . hadn’t it? No matter how grim his fate looked at this particular moment, he never had to return to that sinister mansion in the Vermont woods again. He had broken away from the Professor’s iron fist and was now free to make his own way in the world. It was different than his original plan, but it was better. A smile curved his mouth, and a feeling of joy started to bloom as Bane experienced the meaning of freedom for the first time in his life.

“I’m going to lift my hand and check if you are still bleeding,” Clyde said. Bane gasped as the doctor released the pressure from his throbbing wound. The stars tilted, grew dim, but then another rush of agony seized him as Clyde replaced his hand. “Still bleeding. Hold on there, son.”

Bane tried not to smile. Did this man have any idea whom he was talking to? Clyde’s look of concern would probably turn to horror if he knew he was up to his wrists in the blood of a vicious criminal.

But that wasn’t really true, was it? He was now walking a new path. He tried to remember how Clara had put it. “You can begin building a life of valor,” she had said. Bane fought against the wave of nausea that rolled through him. He was ready for his new life. He wanted that life of valor Clara spoke of. He wanted to slay dragons and climb mountains and do something noble with his life. The next few years would be consumed with simply trying to outwit the Professor’s army of assassins, but eventually he would gain a foothold and stop running. The world Clara was showing him was too enticing to let the Professor ruin.