Read Yesterday's Promise for Free Online

responsible. Caroline wanted to go on the trek with me. She was an adventurous young woman
.
    When I went to produce this letter from Honoria to show Lady Brewster the thoughts of her other niece, the letter was missing. Did Julien find it and destroy it? He was there in the estate at Pietermaritzburg. Lady Brewster now believes I have the B.D. She is backing Julien in refusing me a shilling of my rightful inheritance. Curse the day old Ebenezer Bley made every family member’s inheritance contingent on the agreement of Julien and Lady Brewster. It will become even worse when Lady Brewster passes on and Julien becomes the sole arbitrator
.
    10 November
    Storms. Will we even make it home alive to beloved England?
    The infant cries constantly. Thank Providence she’s with the nursemaid and not with me!
    January 1880

Home in England, Rookswood
    I’ve delivered the baby to the London Missionary Society before arriving at Rookswood. I have requested they make arrangements with Junia Varley’s sister, Grace Havering, to take her. All seems to be going well in that regard, but it is wise the baby’s whereabouts remain a secret from those in Capetown. I’ve told this to Vicar Edmund Havering. I have given some white diamonds secretly to the good vicar to raise the baby well
.
    3 August
    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