Read Yesterday's Promise Online

Authors: Linda Lee Chaikin

Yesterday's Promise (6 page)

Old Ebenezer Bley still had his wits about him when on his deathbed he gave his son, Julien, controlling interest over the family inheritance. The
security of the diamond investments motivates all of Julien's ruthless decisions. Family members are of little consequence to Julien Bley. Be cautious of him. When Julien perceives the diamond company is at risk, he can be as deadly as a provoked cobra. Julien sees himself a guardian angel over all, but angel of greed fits his patriarchal charade far better
.

I remember the way his one good eye looked at me on a particular morning I entered his office at Cape House last year. How he told me I would receive no assistance for the gold expedition to the Zambezi. On that instance the Black Diamond was sitting on his desk. It glittered under the light of his lamp! As big as a hen's egg!

We got into a discussion about a loan for my next expedition, and that led to bitter disagreement. “It was Sir George Chantry, my father and Lyle's, who found the Black Diamond back in 1868,” I told Julien. “Lyle and I both want what belongs to us,” but Julien scoffed. “Everyone suddenly claims to have found the Black Diamond. I have witnesses who swear by the law that I found it, and the Kimberly mine as well.”

He does have authority behind him, he and some others in De Beers Consolidated, including Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, by all accounts, controls Kimberly. When I told Julien I discovered gold and needed some of my own money to stake an expedition to the Zambezi region, he mocked me. Henry's Folly, he called my gold claim. One day he will be striving to gain control of Henry's Folly. When I insisted on a loan, he actually drew a pistol on me and ordered me out of Cape House and out of his life
.

31 October 1884

I'm remembering an incident about Julien that lately has been troubling me. I walked into his library office at Cape House in 1875, and I caught him unprepared. He sat at his desk with that black patch over one eye, his face fixated upon a set of sixteen bones, called hakata, sitting there in front of him. I recognized them at once. I've had experience with the dark superstitions of the nganga, or witch doctor, on my various
treks deep into Mata beleland and Mashonaland. I don't know where Julien got the hakata bones. But a nganga uses the hakata for different things, including “sniffing out” an evil spell, an omen, a necromancer, or a caster of spells
.

I saw Julien, that stalwart Englishman who attends the Anglican Church, paying heed to those bones. They're made of wood, from the mutarara tree, the tree that keeps evil spirits away. It's often planted over graves for that purpose. All this may seem mere mumbo jumbo, but witchcraft abounds. To this day I do not know what Julien was doing with the hakata. Katie once told me that Julien was studying about the Umlimo, a god of the Ndebele, who they believe lives in the Matopos Mountain Range by the Bulawayo region. There is a spirit guide who lives in the caves who reportedly speaks dark sayings for this god. I still ask myself why Julien would be studying about the Umlimo, and about bone casting for divination
.

Of this I am certain. When it comes to diamonds and gold, I'd trust him no more than a banded cobra
.

Rogan looked up from the yellowing sheets. The ship's groaning timbers gave voice to mental images of Sir Julien Bley engaged in divination. The idea seemed ludicrous from what Rogan knew of him. Odd…was it so? Sir Julien Bley involved with African witchcraft? Old practical Julien would have been the last person he'd ever suspect of dabbling in superstition. Was there power in such nonsense? Rogan tried to think back to his growing-up years in the church under Vicar Edmund Havering. He couldn't recall the vicar ever discussing anything diabolical.

I'll have a look into this myself. Derwent might know a few things. Does the Bible speak about it? Just what was Julien trying to do when Henry walked in on him?

Rogan drew his brows together. Along with his blood uncle's warnings, his own suspicions grew stronger. Henry had his faults, but he had never been ruthless in the hardened way Julien was.

Julien's presence at Rookswood made Rogan wary, even as a boy.
After Henry's will was read and his bequest of the map known to the family, Julien would come from Capetown and seek him out alone to “have a small chat.” By the time Rogan turned twelve, he didn't trust Julien. He would sense being “watched” from the shadows of the mansion, or in the garden. Julien would come to Rookswood each year to visit “the dear family,” something he had never made much of before the reading of Uncle Henry's will. More than clever for his age, Rogan began to turn the tables on Sir Julien. He would follow him at night to the third floor and watch him enter Henry's old rooms to search time and again.

Was Henry killed for the Black Diamond, or the map? Was it Uncle Julien who murdered Henry? With his powerful influence, Julien could have easily arranged things at Grimston Way to cover over anything that might point to him.

Rogan reached for the other item on his desk, perhaps the more important, the map. The ship pitched again, and Rogan held a column to steady himself. He squinted for perhaps the hundredth time at the emblem of a bird—or birds. He'd long pondered the meaning of the symbols Henry had drawn on the map. Could it represent a falcon, a hawk, or some fowl peculiar to that area? Perhaps he was making too much of it. In all the meticulous research he'd done in London since locating the map, he had yet to find anything significant about a bird in the region north of the Limpopo River. Henry had also drawn a lion and a baobab tree.

Perhaps the trek itself would shed light on any obscure meanings contained in the wildlife symbols. Was it possible that Henry had nothing more in mind than adding a touch of artistic flair to the painting? If so, its application here would merely have detracted from his usual clarity.

Rogan's thoughts roamed to his grandfather, Sir George, who died at sea on a return voyage from the Cape in 1869. Rogan knew him only by his grandiose portrait displayed above the stairwell in the Great Hall at Rookswood with the rest of the Chantry squires.

Soon after discovering the map, Rogan had asked about his grandfather. One day he found his father busy writing a history of Rookswood. He looked up from his books with typical impatience, brows twisted as though hooked together over the bridge of his aristocratic nose.

“My father found the Kimberly Diamond? Balderdash! What is this, Rogan, more of Henry's Folly? I wish that will of his had never mentioned leaving you a map.”

Rogan held his questions and, after that meeting, never again went to his father on the subject. Had he tried to justify himself, showing the map or diary pages, the news would soon have reached Julien in Cape House. Rogan had long been rankled by the way he saw his father submit to his stepbrother. All through the years he had grown up at Rookswood, he had longed to see his father confront Julien head-on. But whenever opportunity arose, his father, Lyle, always backed down, insisting, “Conflict is foolish,” and would withdraw to another room to lose himself in his private interests.

Rogan replaced the map and diary pages into a leather envelope he wore on his person to guarantee safety, then glanced at his pocket watch. It was close to midnight. Tomorrow the ship would be entering the Cape harbor. That is, if the storm did not delay them. Sir Lyle or Aunt Elosia would have wired Cape House that he was aboard the HMS
King George
. Would Julien be waiting? More than likely he would be riled that Rogan had not completed a full year in the family diamond business in London. Rogan knew his uncle would assume he had found the work too tame and, longing for action, had grown restless.

To occupy time alone in the cabin, he picked up a pencil and turned his attention to his personal journal. He had begun writing down what he knew of Henry's death when he'd departed London. Then, as ideas accumulated, he grew interested in trying to make more sense of his mysterious death.

Rogan scowled. He looked at the last entry he'd made the night before, dated the first week of July. He mused over his own words as he reread them.

Henry Chantry was not the manner of man to snuff out his own life. He was not prone to any emotional disheartenment that might provoke such an act. He would be the first to scoff at such a notion if he could have attended his own inquest. He was too bold to leave his burdens behind for others to carry
.

As far as I know, my uncle was not a religious man, but he did respect the church. I do not believe he would look upon the doorway of death as an escape, if he were unsure what lay ahead for such a man as he. Taking his life would be too easy for my uncle. He had fought wildly and bitterly to stay alive when under attack by Shona tribesmen on his last expedition near the Zambezi. He had lost his guide, Bertrand Mornay, and a bushman called Sam in a wild scramble to survive. No, Uncle Henry would not have committed suicide
.

Then what happened that night?

Members of every branch of the family were all reported to be in London at a family wedding the night of his death. But I have ridden the late train from London to Grimston Way enough times to know that any one of them might have done the same, taking the short trip to Rookswood and then returning without being missed
.

Henry had been working at the estate in his upstairs rooms. The murderer must have known this and gone up to the third floor. But who?… Julien, Anthony Brewster, Lady Camilla? Yes, even my own father Lyle or my maiden aunt, Lady Elosia? Any one of them might have come to meet with Henry about the Black Diamond or the map on that fatal night
.

If I hadn't been so young, I might have been awake to hear footsteps
inching their way up the stairs, across the second floor hall, and the steps up to the third floor… I might have heard the pistol go off. If only…

Rogan tapped his chin and sighed. He snapped the journal closed and placed it inside his leather satchel. Outside, the wind increased. Restless and eager to disembark, he stood up just as the ship pitched violently, and losing his balance, he struck his head on the protruding cabin bulkhead. Leaning on one knee while propped against the wall, he narrowed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
One thing I am glad of. I won't ever need to be a sea captain!

He crawled to his bunk and tied himself in for the rough night.

He thought of Evy Varley…those amber eyes with green flecks, and wavy, tawny hair… Where was she now? What was she doing? He imagined her playing her piano. Was she also remembering him?

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

Capetown

Even though Rogan was out at sea, the distant sight of Table Mountain, appearing to rise above the watery horizon, with white clouds draping its flat top, roused his imagination. Later that afternoon he was standing on the ship's deck with his back to the stiff landward breeze as they neared Table Bay and Capetown, when an old sailor he'd spoken to on the voyage came up beside him and gestured to the mountain range.

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