A movement at the edge of the room caught his eye. It was someone he had not noticed before, watching from the shadows.

  The figure moved forwards a step, so the lamplight caught the curve of a flawlessly white cheek and a glittering eye. Skirts rustled. Rob gaped, the pistol forgotten. It was Sophie. She must have stolen into the room once the men were distracted. She did not participate but hung back in the darkness, her lips parted, her right hand rubbing herself between her thighs.

  Rob finally understood her. It was not pleasure she loved, or men, or even women. It was power. In that room, the women had been broken and the men debased to the level of animals. Sophie alone stood detached, undetected, all-seeing. And to her, that was the most erotic sensation of all.

  Rob lowered the gun. The sight of Sophie brought him back to earth. If he killed Coyningham, he would gain a moment’s satisfaction – but he would condemn Phoebe to a lifetime of Sophie’s cruelties. He could not let that happen.

  Phoebe turned her head towards the window. Whether it was a sixth sense – or perhaps a confluence of spirits, of need and consolation, like a child groping in its distress into the night – Rob did not know. But as she searched the darkness outside, her eyes met his. Her mouth widened in surprise to see Rob, though the hand pleasuring Coyningham never stopped moving.

  Rob put his finger to his lips and nodded towards the door. Phoebe understood. She whispered something in Coyningham’s ear.

  ‘More wine!’ Coyningham slurred his words so badly they were almost unintelligible. He was struggling to keep his eyes open.

  Phoebe rose and curtsied. Sophie did not stop her as she left the room. Coyningham barely noticed she’d gone. He slumped on the sofa, his trousers around his knees, his member slowly deflating, and started snoring.

  Rob went to the front of the house as the door opened. Phoebe stole out, still dressed in nothing but her loincloth. Heedless of their danger, Rob hugged her to him and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘I will kill them for what they made you do.’

  She gave him a look so bleak it cut through to his soul.

  ‘I have known worse. He was so drunk, he could barely rouse himself to touch me. I would have been there all night trying to finish him off.’

  Shouts sounded from the path from the beach. Bracewell’s men had found the overseers Rob had killed and maimed.

  ‘We must go,’ said Phoebe. ‘If they find me . . .’

  ‘Or me,’ said Rob. ‘I am under a death sentence now.’

  He glanced at the hills, ragged shadows against the starry sky. His only hope was to flee there and hope that Bracewell’s men could not track him.

  But he could not leave yet.

  ‘We must free the others. Where is Scipio?’

  He would not forget his debt. At Seabrook Bay, the Ebo warrior and his men had saved Rob’s life, along with the Perseus and all her crew. Rob had promised them their freedom; instead, they had been chained up like dogs in the hold and brought to this evil place. Rob had to make it right.

  Phoebe led him at a run towards the sugar works. The mill’s sails creaked as they spun freely in the night breeze. Next to it, firelight glowed in the boiling house where the work of processing sugar continued unabated. And beyond that, as dark as a tomb, the square white punishment house Rob had seen earlier.

  A breath of wind brought the smell of it to him. He knew the scent. It was the same stench of suffering and despair he had encountered in the torture room at Bracewell’s South Carolina plantation.

  Phoebe had paused. She pointed, trembling, to the punishment house.

  ‘Scipio?’ Rob guessed.

  ‘He tried to run as soon as we came ashore. Crow put him in there.’

  ‘Go and find the others,’ Rob told her. He could not bear to let her see what might be inside that place. ‘I will free Scipio and meet you at the slave grounds.’

  Phoebe ran off. The smell of the punishment house grew worse as Rob approached, then hit him with all its force as he opened the door. He stepped in – and almost went sprawling onto his face as his boot caught something on the floor. It was soft and warm, but motionless. Rob knew what it was even before he looked.

  It was a human body, lying face down. Rob kneeled and turned it over, terrified of what he would see. Was he too late? Had Crow murdered Scipio already?

  The dead man’s face was pale in the moonlight that flooded through the door. It wasn’t Scipio. It was Hugo Lyall.

  A livid red line circled his neck, oozing blood. His windpipe was crushed. He must have been garrotted. Rob wondered why. He had no reason to love Hugo, but he would not have wished this lonely, brutal death on anyone.

  He remembered Hugo’s last words to him in London.

  ‘I did not want it to end this way.’

  A groan sounded from deeper in the room. Rob peered forwards. As his eyes adjusted, he made out a figure with arms spread-eagled, hanging between two chains attached to the ceiling. His head seemed to have grown to twice its natural size, bobbing about like a balloon.

  It was Scipio. Rob ran to him and saw the full horror of his torture. What had looked like an enormous, distended head was in fact a huge iron collar clamped around his neck. The inside of the collar had a ring of sharp spikes pointing inwards. If the prisoner let his head drop, even for a moment, the weight of the collar would force the spikes through his neck.

  There were bloody scars on Scipio’s back, and more blood running down his neck and over his chest where the collar’s spikes had pricked the skin. He looked half-crazed, fighting to stay awake through the pain and fatigue so that the collar would not slip.

  Rob put down the pistol he held. He felt for the bolts that held the collar and the shackles in place. They were locked.

  ‘Where are the keys?’

  Scipio’s eyes opened wide, white in the darkness. He cursed and spat, defiant even in extremis.

  ‘Go to Hell, and burn forever,’ he groaned.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Rob. ‘I am going to get you out of here.’

  Slowly, recognition dawned on Scipio. He mumbled something that Rob couldn’t make out. Rob leaned in closer. Scipio’s cries became more urgent.

  ‘Crow,’ he said.

  ‘Crow has the keys?’

  A flash of pain exploded like lightning through Rob’s head, just as he realised Scipio had been trying to warn him. He dropped to his knees, but a hand grabbed his collar, hauled him up and spun him around. Rob saw Crow’s snarling face before a fist smashed into his jaw and sent him clattering against the wall.

  ‘Thought I’d get you here,’ said Crow in triumph. ‘So sweet on the darkies, you is, I knew you couldn’t keep your hands off him.’

  The blow to Rob’s head had stunned him. He fumbled for one of the pistols in his belt, but he was too slow. Crow kicked his hand away, then pulled both pistols out and threw them away to the dark corners of the room.

  ‘I’m going to kill you slow,’ he told Rob. ‘Slow like a darkie, while your friend watches.’

  ‘I’m a British officer,’ Rob mumbled.

  ‘You’re a deserter. A traitor. A thief.’ Crow punctuated each insult with a blow, sharp jabs to Rob’s ribs and sides that sent spasms of pain through his body.

  ‘I know what you done with Miss Sophie on the ship,’ he said conversationally. Another punch, this time to Rob’s jaw. ‘I was watchin’ you every time, through a knothole in the door.’ Cane juice ran down his chin. ‘Filthy, you was.’

  He hit Rob hard in his stomach. Vomit rose in Rob’s throat and spilled over his shirt front. He doubled over.

  ‘What you want with some flea-bitten darkie whore, when you could have a prime piece of cunny like Miss Sophie, I don’t know.’

  Crow completed his assessment of Rob’s shortcomings with three more swift punches that left Rob reeling. Before he could gather himself, Crow swept Rob’s legs from under him and dropped him to the floor.

  He gave Rob a keen glance. He saw a broken man doubled over in agony. It satisfied him. He turned away to take a knife from the rack on the wall.

  ‘Now I’ve tendered you up, time for some carving.’

  But Rob was not as helpless as he had let Crow think. Crow’s onslaught had bruised him, but Rob’s body was young and hard. The moment Crow turned away, Rob sprang to his feet.

  Crow was quick. He spun around, a knife gleaming in his hand. Rob could not fight him – but he did not intend to. He ran for the door, hurdled Hugo’s prone body and disappeared outside.

  Footsteps pounded the yard behind him, though Crow’s short, squat physique could not match Rob’s long legs for speed. Rob ran past the boiling house and the curing house. By the time he rounded the corner of the mill, he had a few valuable seconds’ lead. He ducked inside the mill’s open door.

  The noise of the machinery was deafening. Half a dozen slaves were at work, feeding fresh stalks into the relentlessly spinning rollers of the cane press. They paused and stared wide-eyed at Rob as he burst through the door.

  ‘Help me,’ he begged.

  They looked uncertainly at him. None of them knew him. The only time they had seen him was riding through the estate in Crow’s company, like one of the overseers. Perhaps they had heard that Rob had tricked the South Carolina slaves back into bondage. None of it made them willing to trust him.

  The door banged open again. It had not taken Crow long to find him. He strode into the mill, rolling the butcher’s knife in his hand.

  ‘Get out,’ he told the slaves.

  The mill workers knew what Crow could do to them. They fled. Rob and Crow faced each other across the mill. The empty rollers rumbled and hissed.

  ‘You think the darkies’d help you?’ sneered Crow. He advanced towards Rob, shaping two deft cuts through the air with his knife. ‘They won’t help a dead man.’

  He jabbed the knife at Rob’s stomach. For a big man, he struck as quick as a snake. If Rob had so much as blinked, he would have been stuck like a pig. He reacted just in time, knocking the knife aside with his bare arm. Not without cost. The sharp blade opened a wide gash in his forearm.

  Crow gave him no respite. He came at Rob again, and Rob had no defence. All he could do was retreat, leaving a trail of blood across the floor. Behind him, he heard the whirring of the cane press. Balling a fist, gritting his teeth against the pain in his arm, he managed to land a punch on Crow’s shoulder. Crow shook it off and drove at Rob again. Rob leaped back without looking where he would land. His foot landed on a pile of dry cane trash that the slaves had left on the floor. The husks skidded from under him, and he could not keep his balance. He fell heavily on the floor, so close to the crusher he could feel drops of cane juice spraying against his skin.

  Crow stood over him.

  ‘When I’m finished with you,’ he promised, ‘even my dogs won’t want to—’

  He broke off, jerking backwards. A hand had seized him from behind. Crow raised the knife, but before he could turn it on his assailant the hand pushed him away. Crow stumbled forwards. He tripped on Rob’s outstretched legs, and instinctively threw out his arms.

  His reactions were fast. He broke his fall. But it was only as he gathered himself that he realised what had stopped him. His hands had landed flat on the cane press.

  His eyes widened in horror. He tried to snatch his hands away, but the sweet juice made the rollers tacky.

  The rollers spun. Before Crow could even scream, his hands were dragged between them. He tried to pull himself free, but the remorseless machine tugged him in. Rob rolled away from under his feet as Crow was jerked forwards like a dog on a lead. In confusion, Rob saw Angus standing where Crow had been, but he had no time to wonder how his friend had got there.

  Crow had found his voice. He screamed in such torment Rob would never forget the sound of the strangled screech. It did him no good. An ounce of juice was a pound of profit, and the heavy rollers had been built to squeeze every drop from fat bundles of sugar cane. They made short work of flesh and bone. They crushed Crow’s hands, then his arms. His elbows gave the rollers a moment’s pause, then those snapped with a terrible crack like green wood splitting and were fed through the mill. He was wedged up to his shoulders.

  ‘Cut me free,’ Crow pleaded, a gurgling mash of speech that was barely human.

  He was trapped against the machine, held fast by the rollers. They spun against his face, stripping off the skin like ripping bark off a tree, so that his face became a mask of blood.

  Rob didn’t want him to die like this, but there was nothing he could do. Crow’s knife had gone through the rollers and been shattered. There were no other blades in the mill, and Rob could not pull him out of the rollers. There was no way he could put Crow out of his misery.

  Angus looked up. An iron hook hung on a chain from a beam, probably for hauling bundles of cane. Angus grabbed it. In a single motion, like a fisherman baiting a line, he hooked it into Crow’s mouth and pulled the chain taut.

  The sharpened point dug through the top of Crow’s palate and into the soft tissue of his brain. Crow spasmed, then went still. He dangled grotesquely on the end of the chain, the tip of the hook protruding through the top of his skull, while the rollers continued to spin over his mangled arms. Blood ran into the trough below and flowed away with the cane juice.

  Angus kneeled beside Rob and saw the gash Crow’s knife had left.

  ‘How’s your arm?’

  Rob looked at Crow. ‘Better than his.’ His mind was clearer, though he still had an electric pain throbbing between his temples. He stood, unsteadily. He noticed that Angus was dripping wet. ‘How in God’s name did you come to be here?’

  ‘I guessed there was trouble when I saw lights on the beach. Then I heard gunshots. The boatswain wouldn’t let us send the boat, so I swam ashore.’

  Rob knew the scars from the flogging had still not fully healed. He tried not to think how much it must have hurt Angus, the effort of swimming so far and the salt water stinging his wounds. ‘You should not have come.’

  ‘No more should you.’

  ‘I was already a condemned man. Coyningham will hang you if he catches you.’

  ‘Then we are in the same boat.’ Angus looked to the door. ‘So where next?’

  ‘We must rescue Scipio.’

  There was a ring of keys hanging from Crow’s belt. Rob unhooked them and led Angus back to the punishment house. Scipio was dangling in his chains, struggling against the weight of the infernal iron collar. Rob held him up, while Angus undid the locks with Crow’s keys. As he was released, Scipio collapsed into Rob’s arms.

  They took Scipio between them, hoisting him on their shoulders, and made for the door. They crossed the threshold and stepped over Hugo Lyall’s dead body again.

  ‘Who was he?’ Angus asked.

  Rob was too tired to explain. He still could not imagine what strange fate had brought Hugo to the plantation.

  ‘Another one of Bracewell’s guests.’

  ‘I’m beginning to get a sense of Mr Bracewell’s hospitality,’ said Angus.

  Rob nodded. ‘We should be away before we enjoy any more of it.’

  They walked away from the sugar works, the fresh air beginning to revive Scipio. He hoisted himself off them and stood free, rubbing his wrists where the manacles had bitten deep into the flesh.

  ‘I am in your debt,’ he said.

  ‘It was my fault,’ said Rob. ‘I had to set you free.’

  ‘And Phoebe?’

  ‘She is safe. She is waiting for us over there.’

  Rob pointed through the trees to the slave quarters. He could see lights kindled, and a crowd gathered in the open space between the houses. He hurried towards them.

  Though it was past midnight, it seemed every slave had been roused, even the youngest child. Sleeping babies cuddled in their mothers’ arms, oblivious to the noise around them. Phoebe stood at the front, dressed in a white shift she had found. She smiled with relief when she saw Rob and Scipio were safe – but it did not last long.

  ‘They do not want to go,’ she said. ‘They say Bracewell will hunt them down with dogs, or else the Maroons will sell them back to him. You know what happens to runaway slaves.’

  Rob surveyed the sea of faces. Some were hopeful, some confused. Many were openly hostile. He remembered how the slaves in South Carolina had behaved in a similar manner, so brutalised they couldn’t trust the offer of freedom. Rob had persuaded them otherwise. He had promised them liberty, but all he had led them to was more chains. Looking out at the crowd, he recognised the faces of those who had been brought with the Perseus. Like Scipio, some had fought beside him aboard the sloop, risking their lives to save the ship that then became their prison.

  Why should they trust him now?

  He stepped up onto a stone.

  ‘Some of you were with me at the plantation in South Carolina,’ he said. ‘I said you would have your freedom. I was wrong.’

  A murmur went through the crowd. Those who had been there had not forgotten. The others had already heard the story.

  ‘This time I promise you nothing. You know, in every scar and wound you carry on your bodies, what Bracewell will do if you try to escape and get caught. You also know what will happen if you stay. You must make your own decisions.

  ‘But I am the same as you. If Bracewell finds me, he will kill me. So I am going into the mountains.’

  ‘And after that?’ asked Angus softly.

  Rob shrugged. Jamaica was a large island: a man might be able to live undetected in those mountains. Or he might manage to steal a boat and sail back to England or Africa. At this moment, all that mattered was staying alive.

  ‘I have not thought further than surviving tonight,’ he whispered.

  He jumped down into the throng of slaves. Many were engaged in heated arguments; some were in tears.

  ‘Why do they hesitate?’ Angus wondered. ‘It is a choice between slavery and liberty.’

  ‘Liberty?’ said Scipio scornfully. He gave Angus a dark look. ‘They want to know how they stay alive.’

  ‘So do I.’