The Golden Redepennings

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What could possibly go wrong? on WIP Wednesday

This, my friends, is a jack knife — a useful sailor’s tool.

 

My favourite question when writing is ‘what could possibly go wrong’? And then I make it happen. This week, I’m talking about those defining points where the story takes a twist to make things worse. Share me yours in the comments. Mine comes from a scene I wrote this morning in Unkept Promises. Lady Carrington, who you may remember as the villainess if you’ve read Farewell to Kindness, has a position with the French spy agencies. She has persuaded Murat, her spymaster, to let her return to England to fetch the fortune she was forced to abandon when her husband decided to get rid of her at the end of Farewell to Kindness. To help her get to her hiding place safely, she takes Jules Redepenning, my hero, who is a prisoner of war after being pushed off his ship by someone in the pay of the man who wants to abduct his son. (It makes sense in the book, I promise. And, after all, what could possibly go wrong? Right?

Though the sky was clear and the moon full, still, everything was grey on grey, and in the shadows, it was black as Lady Carrington’s heart.

“We will need transport,” Jules pointed out.

Lydia smirked. A moment later, a man leading a horse turned a corner further along the lane and began walking towards them. Four more horses followed behind, all strung together.

“Tha be the ’uns for these ’ere ’orses?” he asked, his eyes a suspicious squint as he looked from one man to another, ignoring Lydia, until she stepped towards him and held out a pouch.

“Your next payment,” she told him. “As promised, the third will be ready for you tomorrow night, when we return the horses. We will leave on the high tide, whether you are here or not.”

The man touched his cap; a response to her cultured tones. “I be here,” he said, his sourness not abated by the purse he weighed thoughtfully in one hand. “See that tha be.”

He disappeared back into the gloom, and Lydia ordered the disposition of the horses. Jules was ordered to take position between the two French officers, his horse on leading reins. Lydia led the fifth horse, which had been supplied with a pack saddle and paniers.

“If you lead us into a trap, Julius,” the Baroness said, “Pierre will shoot you without blinking.”

“You have my word,” Jules told her indignantly. After all, she was not privy to his inner justifications for abandoning her. “However, I cannot lead you tell you tell me where we are going.”

“Iron Acton will do for a start,” Lydia said. Iron Acton was five miles from Chipping Niddwick. Further confirmation that Lydia’s stash was hidden at the Carrington Castle, or nearby.

“I take it you want to avoid villages and farm dwellings. Very well. If we head south on this lane,” he pointed the direction he meant, “we will come to a turn inland in about seventy-five yards.”

Lydia nodded at his two escorts, and they wheeled their horses to follow his directions. There had never been any doubt about who was in charge.

He kept them to lanes that avoided the villages and towns. Little used except for stock movements and farm carts, they were mostly in poor repair, and recent rain had frozen in every rut and hollow, so that their way was marked by the crackle of breaking ice. Going was slow. From Iron Acton, the Baroness directed them toward Highwayman’s Hollow, a place just off the Yate to Chipping Niddwick road where, or so local legend had it, highwaymen used to lurk, waiting for a rich prize.

“We shall take a rest,” the Baroness announced, dismounting. Jules and the two silent Frenchmen followed her example. She beckoned the three of them. “Come closer so we can talk without me shouting.”

Sound did carry in the night air. Still, Jules thought she was being too cautious. Unless things had changed since he was last here, there wasn’t a dwelling anywhere within ten minutes’ walk.

Nevertheless, he joined the group, ready to hear their next destination. He wasn’t ready to be seized by Pierre and Victor, one on each side. He struggled, but he was soon bound to a tree and gagged for good measure.

“I know the way from here,” the Baroness told him. She caressed his cheek, a parody of affection. “I cannot trust you near people who might help you. We will be back, Julius, and you shall see us to the coast as you promised, and then I shall release you as I promised.”

Unable to comment, Jules merely glared. The Baroness laughed, and leaned towards him her lips puckered. He twisted his face, so that the kiss fell on his ear rather than his lips. She laughed again, and groped at his fall. “He is hardly a man at all,” she told her French lovers. “Such a disappointment. One expected better of a Redepenning.”

Jules raised a sardonic eyebrow. Lydia tipped her nose in the air and walked away to remount her horse. Pierre followed, and then Victor but only after a vicious punch to Jules’s stomach. “That is for disrespecting madame,” he hissed.

Jules had no choice but to keep his response to himself. He gave the Baroness precisely the respect she deserved. Probably as well he couldn’t speak. Another couple of blows like that, and he’d be in real trouble.

He watched them ride away before testing his bonds. Good. They’d left enough play for him to work with, and the jack knife he’d stolen on the ship was still concealed in his sleeve. He sneered after them. No sailor would have made such a mistake.

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Honest work on WIP Wednesday

One of the things I need to consider when forming my plots is ‘how does the character’s everyday job affect their time and their location?’ In the Regency era, peers of the realm worked: they’re sort of like the ceo of a company, in charge of the direction, making the tricky decisions, approving the strategy and the budgets. They were also eligible to sit in the House of Lords, and many had vigorous political careers. Ladies might be expected to be decorative, but that could be work, too. Wives, sisters, and daughters managed households, which could be massive and have huge numbers of staff. They were also expected to be responsible for dispensing welfare to the less fortunate.

Younger sons of the very wealthy might be the equivalent of today’s idle rich, depending on someone else’s money for their affluent lifestyle, but everyone else needed to have some way to keep fed, housed and clothed.  I love putting snippets of this into my writing, and I’ve written whole books starring characters with what we’d recognise as a job. I have a maker of invalid chairs, a chef, a house flipper, a horse breeder and others.

I’m currently thinking and imagining a couple of books ahead, and discovering some main characters who are not peers or their families. One, Lucas Mog, appeared in Farewell to Kindness, has a part to play in the current Work in Progress, Unkept Promises, and will be the hero of the next Redepenning book, Flavour of Their Deeds. He is a gamekeeper — but who is he really? One makes a living in a morally objectional fashion. He was an assassin for the British during the Napoleonic Wars, and now kills for a price and to order. He’ll be the hero of an as yet unnamed book for the Common Elements Project. One was tutor and minder to a lonely English boy in far off Naples while the boy had surgery. Now the lad is grown up, an earl, and married, Peter needs a new job. (Yes, this hero has a part in The Beast Next Door, my novella in Valentine’s From Bath.)

This week, give me an excerpt of a character at work — or at least of one who works. Mine is from Unkept Promises. My hero is a naval captain who has been lost from his ship, thank to the machinations of my villain.

Bruised and battered, every muscle aching, sick to the stomach from the sea water he had unwillingly ingested, Jules wanted nothing more than to lie on the sand just above the reach of the waves. But he was wet to the skin and cold to the bone. He needed to move before he froze, and he also needed to find cover before sunrise, because this was almost certainly a beach in enemy France.

He forced himself to his feet. In the dark, all he could do was set his back to the waves and start walking, feeling for each step, his hands before him to fend off any obstacle before it connected with his face. The rain had started again, which at least let him suck in a few drops of fresh water to ease his thirst.

He found a low bank by stumbling over it, stepping up from the sand onto a stiff grass that crunched under his feet. A few yards further on, his hands met leaves. Bushes, and when he pushed between them, they seemed to extend for some distance. He found a hollow in the ground surrounded by the foliage, hoping it would be enough to hide him until he could see well enough to find better concealment and make a plan.

It was a miserable wait for dawn, but at last the landscape emerged from the darkness. He would stick to the coast, he decided, in the hopes of finding a sail boat he could steal. England wasn’t above thirty miles away, though hidden in the persistent drizzle. He would probably not need to sail all the way; the channel was constantly patrolled by British ships.

He kept to the cover of bushes as much as he could, running across any open areas while scanning for other people. In the rain, they could have been almost upon him before he saw them, but all the more reason he would himself stay unobserved.

He also kept an eye out for better shelter; with luck, somewhere he could find dry clothing, or even something to wrap himself in while his own clothing dried. This must be the most deserted, Godforsaken piece of coast in all of France.

Then all of a sudden it wasn’t. Out of the mist came a column of marching soldiers, and Jules was surrounded before he could convince his tired bones of the emergency.

Someone shouted at him: a command by the tone. If it was a question, it was peremptory. I should have paid attention in French lessons, Jules thought. “My regrets, sir,” he said. “I do not understand.”

A rifle butt descended, and he sank into blackness.

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Parenting on WIP Wednesday

This is my idea of how Marshanda Redepenning might look.

I like to have children in my stories, which means one or more of my characters are parents — and all of my characters have had parents (many still do). In today’s post, I’m asking for comments with excerpts that are somehow to do with parenting. It might be a secondary character or a main protagonist; parenting in action or thinking about the actions of a parent; the character as parent or the character as child.

In the excerpt I have today, from Unkept Promises, Mia sees her husband with his children by his mistress. Backstory: they married many years ago, when she was still a school child, for the sake of her reputation, and he sailed straight away for the Far East to return to his mistress, Kirana, and their children. Kirana and Mia became friends by correspondence, and Jules has just arrived home from a sea voyage to find that Mia has been in his house for a week and has taken over running it.

Adarinta suddenly remembered that Jules had not yet disgorged his gifts. “Where are my…” she broke off, sneaking a glance at Hannah, who had been impressing the little girls with the unexpected information that they were ladies. Marshanda stuck her nose in the air. “Ladies,” she informed her sister, “do not ask. Ladies wait to be offered.”

Jules frown over her head at Mia. “Who has been telling you that?” he asked.

Adarinta, however, was not to be deflected. “I like presents,” she announced. “It makes me very happy when people give me a present. Ibu Mia brought presents for me and Marsha. I expect she brought presents for you, too, Dan. I do like presents.”

Faced with this flagrant attempt to get around the ‘ladies do not ask’ rule, the adults were struggling to maintain their gravity. Even Jules, who was holding onto whatever grudge had blown in with him, couldn’t resist a twinkle. “I happen to have some presents,” he commented.

Adarinta, climbing off his knee, stood before him, her hands clasped before her, her wide eyes pleading. “Oh Papa,” she pleaded, then looked back at Hannah again and chewed thoughtfully at her upper lip. Her eyes lit, and she said, “I have been very good, Papa, have I not, Hannah?” Then added mournfully, “Not as good as Marsha.”

“Dan, would you fetch my duffel?” Jules asked his son, shifting slightly to allow the boy to pass.

“Perhaps, you might take your father up to the nursery, young ladies?” Mia suggested. “Hannah could bring you up some scones. I am sure your father would like a scone his daughters have made.”

Jules, who had his mouth open — Mia was certain — to repudiate the suggestion, shut it again.

“Oh yes, Papa. Come and see.” Marshanda took one of Jules’s hands, and Adarinta, not to be left behind, took the other. “Hannah made us some curtains, Papa. And Ibu Mia bought us a table and chairs to do our schoolwork. I can read, Papa. Truly.”

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Rough drafts on WIP Wednesday

My writing has speeded up marvellously since I learned a simple trick. If there’s something I don’t know, or a sequence I can’t quite visualise, I make a note and move on.

Below, I’ve included an excerpt from Unkept Promises, the next Redepenning novel, full of notes to myself

How about you? What do you do in your rough drafts, and are you game to post an example in the comments?

Fortune and Hannah met them at the dock gates with the break, a large open carriage capable of taking the entire family along the coast to eat the picnic that was undoubtedly in the covered baskets Jules could see tucked under the seats.

[check where a picnic might take place. During drive, Jules abstracted, thinking about what the girls and Mia have told him. Dan pointing out all the different types of ship in the harbour, where they might have come from and be going, and what they were good for. Girls asking questions until he gets to one he can’t answer and askes Jules who shakes off his mood and attends.]

Hannah and Mia set the picnic up in the shade of a tree [rock?? Pavilion they brought with them???] and soon they were all enjoying [etc. Not sure what I want to do with this part of the scene. Girls need to ask politely to be allowed to leave the …. blanket? ]

[Hannah produces a ball, suggests a game. Girls against boys. Dan scathing about the girls’ likely ability.]

“Could we sit this one out?” Jules asked Mia. “I’d like for us to talk, if you do not mind.”

“Of course,” Mia said. “Hannah, you and the others go ahead.”

In moments, the game was underway, Hannah and the girls against Fortune and Dan. Dan’s confidence took a swift knock when Fortune failed to catch the ball Dan had thrown and Marsha raced in front of him and kicked it to Hannah, who in her turn kicked it between the rocks they had marked as the girl’s goal.

He rallied, though, and the next round of play saw him sneaking the ball from under Marsha’s nose and kicking his own goal.

“This will do the girls a world of good,” Mia decided. “I have not wanted to venture beyond the boundaries of town without an escort, and there is no where there they can run and romp like this without censure from the biddies.”

“You are determined to turn them into English gentlewomen.” Jules tried to keep the censure from his voice. He would allow his unaccountable wife her chance to make her case, but what the hell was she thinking?

“I am determined to make sure they know Society’s expectations,” Mia corrected. “I know how it feels to be at sea, knowing that something you have done has drawn disapprobation, but having no idea what it is or how to correct it. I will not leave them as ill prepared as I was.”

What had happened to Mia to fuel the vehemence of her tone? He supposed he understood. The child he’d met in the smuggler’s cave had been raised by a reclusive scholar — or had raised herself while ignored by her father.

“I thought my father and Susan would look out for you,” he said. They should have. He had trusted them to do so.

“It was not their fault, Captain.” Mia smiled, and reached out as if to pat his hand where it rested be-side hers on the blanket. If that was her intent, she thought better of it and instead folded it in her lap with its counterpart. “They are part of Society. They grew up knowing all the habits of courtesy your kind take for granted, and all your silly little rituals. It never occurred to them that I was as ignorant of what to them seemed natural behaviour. They were always there to tell me what I had done wrong, and they tried to predict my next mistake and prevent it — but I made so many!” The last was said with a laugh, but Jules could sense pain beneath it, and his heart ached for the little girl he had abandoned.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I had no idea.”

“I will not have that happen to Marshanda and Adarinta.

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Arrivals on WIP Wednesday

This week, I’ve picked arrivals for my theme. Your choice. An arrival at a ball or dinner. The end of a long journey. Any kind of arrival, and from anyone’s point of view. Mine is Mia, the captain’s wife from Unkept Promises, meeting her husband again after seven years, when she comes to South Africa to look after his dying mistress. Ever since her own arrival, Mia has been expecting Jules back from his patrol in the seas off southern Africa.

Dear Heavens. The man was gorgeous. In the seven years since Mia had last seen him, she had managed to convince herself her memories had played her false. She had been alone and frightened, trapped by smugglers and locked up in a cave. And then a golden god had wriggled through from the cell next door. He had kept her company in the darkness, comforted her when her father died, fought the smugglers to win her safety, and then married her to save her reputation and give her a home.

Of course she adored him. She very likely would have developed a major crush even if she’d met him socially — she had been fourteen, had grown up largely isolated by her father’s social position as a poverty-stricken scholar of good family.  It was no surprise she fancied herself in love with the first young man she had ever properly talked to.

Handsome is as handsome does, she warned herself as she made her way down to the kitchen. But even in a taking about something, as he clearly was, he was unbelievably handsome. Mia thought she was immune to handsome men. Her brothers-in-law were all good-looking, and Mia had been propositioned at one time or another by most of London’s rakes, who clearly believed that a wife who hadn’t seen her husband in seven years must be in need of their attentions. None of them made her breath catch, her heart beat faster, and her insides melt.

Jules did, destroying all her preconceptions. Mia had assumed that, in the renegotiation of their marriage, she and Jules would be equally dispassionate. So much for that. Even grumpy; even with most of his attention on another woman, even with all that she’d heard about him to his discredit, she wanted him.

In the kitchen another handsome man, this one only twelve, took pride of place in Cook’s own seat, being waited on by his two adoring sisters. Marshanda was shuttling between the table and the chair, refilling the plate from which Adiratna was feeding her brother, who was sampling scones topped with different flavours of jam with the judicious air of a connossieur.

Marshanda saw her first. “Ibu Mia,” she announced, then ducked her head. She was not fond of being noticed, whereas her little sister wanted to be the star of every occasion.

Adiratna patted her brother on the cheek as a means to get his attention. “Ibu Mia is Mami’s sister, and our elder mother, Mami says.”

Perdana narrowed the beautiful eyes all three children had inherited from their mother, examining Mia thoughtfully.  Then he lifted Adiranta from his knee and stood to bow. “You are the Captain’s wife,” he announced. “Has the Captain arrived, Ibu Mia?”

Mia nodded. “He is with your mother, children,” she told them. “Give him a few minutes, my dears, and I am sure he will be down to find you.”

Adiratna was already on her way to the door, but she stopped obediently when Mia said her name. She turned and stamped her foot. “But I want my Papa now,” she whined. “He has been gone for ever so long. I want to show him the doll that you brought me from London, Ibu Mia.”

“And so you shall, darling,” Mia reassured her. “But we cannot properly greet Papa without just a little noise, can we? And noise makes Mami so tired.”

“Yes, Ada,” Marshanda said, her bossy streak overcoming her reticence. “You know you will squeal when Papa gives us presents. You always do.”

Adarinta’s eyes widened and sparkled. “Presents!” In moments, she was back across the room, tugging on Perdana’s hand. “What has Papa brought me, Dan. You know, I know you do.”

“Lumps of coal, like the Black Peter we saw on St Nicolas Day,” Perdana answered, promptly, “And a switch to beat you with, for you have undoubtedly been a great trouble for Mami and Ibu Mia.”

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Consequences on WIP Wednesday

In Greek tragedy, the terrible events that unfold have their source in some wrongful action of the protagonist. The sense that ‘if only I had taken this action or avoided that one’ haunts literature still, perhaps because it haunts our lives.

Today, I’m thinking about consequences in romance. To me, the suffering is even more tragic if they in some way could have avoided it by being more careful or more kind. Do you have such a moment in your stories? A thoughtless, impulsive, or even cruel action that results in some learning experience for your hero or heroine? Share either the mistake or the consequences in the comments.

Mine is from Unkept Promises. Captain Julius Redepenning has been a careless man, and is about to meet an ex-lover in the presence of his wife and his children by his mistress. The meeting is both a consequence of previous actions and a trigger for further consequences.

Jules and Dan retreated to one corner of the room to stand over their packages, sending Fortune back to the house for the buggy.

It was there Gerta van Klief found Jules, mincing over using her parasol as a walking stick, and standing far too close. When had he discovered a preference for small slender ladies, who kept their charms discreetly covered, thus letting his imagination supply what his senses could not provide? He had been celibate for far too long, but Gerta did not set his pulse pounding the way it did at one glance from his wife.

“Why, Captain,” Gerta hummed, the musical tones that had once intrigued him now sounding forced and artificial. “I did not expect to see you here. Are you planning presents, perhaps?”

She tipped her head coyly to one side and smiled sweetly, an expression at odds with her calculating eyes. What had he ever seen in her?

“Mrs van Klief. I was not aware you intended to travel to Cape Town.”

She laughed, another practiced and false sound. “That doesn’t sound at all welcoming, dear Captain.” She walked her fingers up his chest and dropped her voice half an octave. “Let us find somewhere more private to… chat, Captain.” Her whole demeanour changed as she half turned to address a glowering Dan. “Boy! Watch your master’s packages. And be sure not to lose anything.” She dropped her voice to a purr again. “You must count your packages before we leave, dear Captain, so the boy here doesn’t sell some of them.”

Jules’s distaste turned to active dislike. They’d had an off again—on again affair for three years, and the woman still didn’t know the first thing about him. Mia’s disgust at his fornicating was well deserved.

“Good day, Mrs Van Klief. I am not free for a… chat. My son and I are attending our ladies.”

Before she could voice the spite he could see forming in her eyes, they were interrupted by his daughters, converging to take a hand each. Hannah and Mia then passed the widow, one on each side, turning to flank the girls.

“ But Jules, darling, you are here with your family,” Gerta crowed with every evidence of delight. “Aren’t they charming?” She narrowed her eyes at Mia, elegant in London fashions that made every other lady in the room appear poorly dressed. “But you didn’t tell me you had an English daughter, Jules. Do introduce us.”

Mia’s smile managed to be both gracious and feral. “Yes. Do present your acquaintance, dear Captain.” In the last two words, she reproduced Gerta’s tone and accent precisely, showing she had heard more of the conversation than was comfortable.

“The woman is of no account, Mrs Redepenning,” Jules replied. “Have you finished your shopping?”

Gerta flushed scarlet at the rude dismissal.

After one swift look of compassion, Mia answered Jules. “Not quite, Captain. Our daughters need your arbitration. They both want the same ribbons, and they insist only you can make the decision.”

“Please, Papa,” Ada begged, and on the other side, Marsha echoed the plea.

“How dare you?” Gerta’s loud voice silenced the room, as people craned to see what was going on. “After all we have been to one another? How can you treat me like this, Jules. I have given you…”

Mia interrupted before Jules could blister the infernal woman. “A word of advice, Mrs van Klief. In British society — and the Cape colony has become British — a woman of breeding does not confront her lover in public, and certainly not in front of his wife and children.” Her own voice was pitched to reach the avid onlookers. At some level beyond his anger and his embarrassment, he admired her strategy.

“It is a matter of self-protection,” she explained, kindly. “However unfair it might be, going public with revelations about irregular relationships always leads to more censure for the woman than for the man.” She dropped her voice, but not enough to prevent the audience from hearing every crisp word. “Believe me, I understand why you feel bereaved, but you must have known your lover was a married man, Mrs van Klief. Your arrangement was never going to last.”

Was Gerta bereaved? Jules looked at her sharply. It had just been about the physical encounter, had it not? For both of them? And, for Gerta, the value of his gifts, of course. Her husband had left her with little, and the presents of her lovers made up the shortfall between gentile poverty and comfortable living.

But the widow met his eyes, her own bleak.

“Goodbye, Mrs van Klief,” he said firmly, unwilling to give her any reason to think he might soften.

She looked from him to Mia and back again, and seemed to wilt. Without another word, she turned and walked away, beckoning as she left to a coloured maid who had been standing by the door and who hurried to followed.

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Out of the mouths of babes on WIP Wednesday

One of the excellent roles children can play in fiction is truth teller. Too young to consider consequences or balance risks, they blurt out whatever they find interesting, and then we have the fun of writing our characters reaction. So in this week’s WIP Wednesday, I’m looking for excerpts that involve a child telling the truth when one or more listeners would prefer them to remain silent.

My excerpt is from Unkept Promises.

The captain had arrived home in the early hours of the morning. Mia had to admit he had been considerately quiet, and she would not have heard him if she’d not been lying awake. Once she was up, she ordered the servants to be quiet about their work. Let the man sleep in on the first full day of his leave. If nothing else, an hour or two’s extra sleep might grease the path of the conversation she and Jules needed to have.

She was reserving judgement about their future: unwilling to risk a dream, afraid of wasting the opportunity. Perhaps he had good reasons for all the actions that offended her, as with going out to dinner on the first night he and she were in the same country in seven years.

Last night, Adarinta was muttering bitterly about her father’s defection and Mia was silently agreeing with her, though trying not to let a hint of her opinion show, when Perdana stopped his sister’s compaints. “The captain did not wish to leave us, Ada, but he is an officer in His Majesty’s Navy, and when the admiral orders him to come to dinner, it is his duty to obey. You are an officer’s daughter. It is your duty not to complain.”

Mia avoided letting her wince show, too, she hoped. Or perhaps not, for Adarinta appealed to her. “But it is unfair, is it not Ibu Mia? I wanted Papa to stay with us.”

“The Royal Navy protects the seas for the King,” Mia replied. “That is what your father does, and your Uncle Rick, and the admiral too. Imagine if the ships could not sail because a captain wanted to stay with his little girls, and Napoleon sailed past in his ship with all his soldiers!”

“That would be bad,” Perdana agreed. “Our ships are the oak wall that protects Britain and all of its lands, at home and abroad.”

“Yes,” Mia agreed. “And the mothers, wives, and children of our brave sailors must let them go, and smile, and never complain at their leaving.” She had learned that lesson in her father-in-law’s household. He and her brothers-in-law were all naval or army officers. Her sister-in-law was a naval widow; her husband having been killed in the North Sea in a battle against French ships. Men needed to go heart-whole to war, confident that their women would provide a safe and welcoming home to which they could return.

Perdana rewarded her sentiment with a smile. “Ibu Mia knows,” he told his sisters.

 

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Rounding the Cape of Storms

Action off the Cape of Good Hope by Samuel Scott

The English twice took over the Cape Colony at the southern end of Africa, first in the late 18th Century and then in the early 19th when they came to stay. Both times, it was part of the war with the French. Both times, the intent was to secure an important refueling spot on the sea route to India, and to secure the route against enemy shipping.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) had the first of these goals very much in mind when they founded the colony in the 17th century, nearly 200 years after the first Europeans sailed into the region.

In the fifteen century, the Silk Roads — the land route for trade with the East — was becoming more difficult for European traders. The captain of that first expedition, Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias  called the point off which the route turned East Cabo de Boa Esperanca, the Cape of Good Hope, because he hoped the route would clear the way to India, avoiding the land route. The name was bestowed on the way back. Stormy conditions meant he didn’t see the Cape on his way east, but once he had sailed far enough to confirm that the coast had turned to head northeast, he returned, and had a clearer view on the way back.

The Cape is the point at which a warm current from the Indian Ocean meets a cool current from the Antarctic, so storms are common and dangerous, which won the Cape its other name, Cape of Storms.

Problems and miscommunications with the local people, the Khoi, made the Portugese wary, and it was another 100 years before the Dutch took the plunge and founded a settlement on the west coast just north of the Cape of Good Hope.  The VOC initially intended a supply station, but when company servants asked for dispensation to set up private farms, they changed their minds. They brought in slaves and settlers, and built a fort to protect the colonists from invasion.

In 1795, the French took over the Netherlands, and the exiled Prince of Orange asked his English hosts to secure the colony, which they cheerfully did, gave it back when a peace was signed, then reinvaded after Napoleon took over the Netherlands again.

This time, they were there to stay, with many more storms in their future.

(I’ve been half living in the Cape colony in 1812 all this month. My hero is stationed there as part of the naval force patrolling the waters.)

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Slavery in the Cape Colony

The slave lodge in which the Dutch East India Company (VOC) kept its slaves. The lodge was built in 1679, and was used to house slaves until 1811, when the new British government converted it into government offices.

The first slaves arrived in the Cape Colony in 1658. Slavery was abolished in 1834 — in what was to become South Africa as well as in the rest of the British Empire. In between, thousands — as many as 71,000  — of people from India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Indonesia and the East African coast were brought here to work as slaves.

Their diverse origins and therefore languages, the fact that they were mostly scattered and isolated on farms in the hinterland, and the skewed gender balance (four men for every woman) meant that, unlike in other slave-owning cultures, they didn’t develop their own slave society until the nineteenth century, and then mainly in Cape Town.

Life on the isolated farms was brutal, encouraging  many to attempt escape despite the punishment that would follow if they were caught.

Slaves in the countryside ate food grown on the farms. Sometimes they also ate fish and rice. Some slave owners took advantage of the lack of legislation and gave their slaves food of a very poor quality. One visitor wrote in 1804 that: “black bread, half sand, and the offal of sheep and oxen are their general fare”. On the other hand, on some farms, slaves had small pieces of land where they grew vegetables for their own use. Domestic or house slaves usually received better food than the slaves who worked in the fields.
(https://slavery.iziko.org.za/slaveexperience)

Some did better in private ownership in Cape Town itself, as a Dutch sea captain suggests in a possibly exaggerated account written towards the end of the 18th century.

“I would reckon that a white servant in Europe does twice, or even three times more work than these ‘slaves’; but I would also be certain that, in a house where everything is well ordered, four or at most six slaves can easily do work. However, I believe that, except for the least substantial burghers, there are many houses, large and small, where ten or twelve are to be found. As they divide tasks, they are necessary. One or two have to go out each day to fetch wood, which takes all day. If the mistress leaves the house, there must be two for the sedan chair. The slave who is cook has an assistant in the kitchen. One does the dirtiest work every day . . . and two are house slaves. Many Cape women do not gladly sleep without a maid in the room, and thus one is kept for this and, better clothed than the others, also has the job of lady’s maid and carries the Psalm Book behind on visits to church. If there are children, each has a maid, although sometimes two daughters share. Small children need one to themselves. This is without one who washes and makes the beds, a seamstress and a knitter, as three or four are always kept busy that way, and I still have none for the stable.”
(C. de Jong, ‘Reizen naar de Kaap de Goede Hoop . . . 1791-1797’, 3 vols (Haarlem, 1802-3), pg. 143-4.)

On the other hand, how hard slaves worked even in the town, and how they were treated, depended entirely on the disposition of their owner. Those retained in the slave lodge either worked for the company or were hired out for labour.  They lived in terrible conditions.

The Slave Lodge was dark, wet and dirty. A subterranean stream flows under the Slave Lodge and this stream flooded the cellar of the Lodge during winter. The roof also leaked which led to hardship in the wet winter months. The slaves only received blankets after 1685. Before then, they had nothing to cover themselves against the cold. However, Höhne, the Slave Overseer, reported in 1793 that the bedding stayed wet in winter and that the slaves never had time to properly wash and clean their belongings. Statistics show that the death rate was higher during winter than in summer. The building was very dark and without adequate air circulation. There were no windows in the building, only slits in the walls with bars. Only a few of these slits faced the outside of the building. Louis Michel Thibault, the building inspector, reported in 1803 that the building was so dark inside that one needed a lantern even in the day.

Furthermore, the Lodge was very dirty. Mentzel wrote in 1785 that the stench was unbearable in the Lodge. The stench was especially bad in the vicinity of the eight toilets next to the quarters of the mentally ill. Pigs were kept in the courtyard and fattened on garden refuge to be sold to the free citizens to earn an income for the slaves.
(https://slavery.iziko.org.za/slavelodgelivingconditions)

Women faced sexual exploitation, of course. The shortage of female slaves was echoed by the shortage of women overall. From late in the seventeenth century, the VOC issued regulations forbidding relations between Europeans and female slaves. They didn’t stop European men visiting the slave lodge, however, which was known to operate as a brothel. Mulatto children and cases of men who purchased a slave’s freedom and married her suggest  no-one took the regulations very seriously.

In the book I’m writing at the moment, the British have taken over the Cape Colony for the second time (after returning it to the Dutch a few years earlier). The slave lodge has been closed, but slavery is still legal, and slaves still outnumber free people in the colony by around three to one.

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Surprises on WIP Wednesday

Surprising my characters, and therefore my readers, is such fun. I’m working on three different projects at the moment — Unkept Promises, in which my heroine surprises her errant husband by turning up in the Cape Colony to look after his dying mistress and her children (my couple haven’t met in seven years); Never Kiss a Toad, the ongoing saga Mariana Gabrielle and I are publishing on Wattpad, in which the villain surprises the heroine in a dark alley and is surprised in his turn when she pulls a gun on him; and The Beast Next Door, in which my heroine flees her pushy family but finds her usual sanctuary has been invaded by a suspiciously well-cared-for dog.

Post an excerpt with one of your surprises in the comments. Meanwhile, here’s a surprise for Mia from Unkept Promises.

Mia turned left, but the servant darted in front of her, his arms wide. “Missus can’t go in there,” he said. “Missus go away. Come back another day. Captain wouldn’t like it.”

She raised her brows and glared. “The Captain is my husband, which makes this my house. Out of my way. Now.”

The glare, copied from her more formidable sisters-in-law, did the trick. He faded sideways.

“And you can make yerself useful,” Hannah said, “by bringing in Mrs Captain’s luggage before every street scamp in the town takes off with it.”

Mia had her hand on the door handle before the servant mustered another protest, and had turned it by the time he finished. “Miz Kirana, she not there.”

One glance in the room made that clear. A European girl lolled on the bed spooning fruit and cream into her mouth from a bowl — Scots or Irish by her pale skin and flaming red hair. Much of an age with Mia, at a guess, whereas Kirana was Eurasian, and in her early thirties, only a few years younger than Mia’s husband.

The girl confirmed her origins when she opened her mouth, her Irish accent plain. “Who’re ye, bustin’ into me bedchamber? Japheth, who is this gobermouch? And why did ye let ‘er in?”

“I am Mrs Julius Redepenning,” Mia said in her driest tones, “and you, I take it, are my husband’s most recent bed partner.” She ignored her sinking heart. It had been easy to overlook Jules’ attachment to Kirana, who had been his mistress for years before Mia met him. But were her hopes of making a real marriage to founder before she had a chance to even see him again?

A harrumph from Hannah. Her low opinion of men made her dubious about that part of Mia’s mission, but Mia would not give up. Not yet.

She looked around at the room, untidily strewn with clothing and jewellery. The woman had clearly been trying on garments in front of the large mirror before dropping onto the bed.

“Tidy up in here before you leave the room,” Mia instructed. “And do not think to take a thing that is not your own. My husband no longer requires your services.”