Despite George’s reasons for joining, Thomas was glad he had. He’d distracted Thomas with funny stories on the long train and ferry rides and during their march to Ypres when images of James lying dead on some foreign battlefield crept into Thomas’s thoughts. But he didn’t trust George. If there was a chance that sharing Thomas’s secret would earn George favor with Bagger or the rest of the crew, Thomas had no doubt the London con would betray him.

No. He couldn’t risk telling anyone. He would have to find James on his own.

Bagger nudged Thomas’s shoulder with a sausage-link finger. “Take off your boots. All of you. You can leave them in here.”

Thomas, George, and Charlie immediately started unlacing their boots.

Frederick, however, did not. “You just warned us in the trenches not to let our feet get wet.”

“Boots make noise, Eton. Socks don’t. Everyone except our kicker works in socks.” He nodded to the largest man snoring away on a low bunk and then turned to walk onward.

“But won’t our feet get wet?” Frederick pressed, still refusing to remove his boots.

Bagger stopped in the entranceway. His meaty hands balled into fists the size of sledgehammers.

Thomas stepped away from Frederick, distancing himself as far as he could in the confined space in case Bagger decided to knock some respect into the quarrelsome boy.

Charlie slid behind George, who shook his head and rolled his eyes at Frederick’s continued need to question everything and everyone.

But Bagger didn’t hit Frederick. He didn’t even turn around. His broad shoulders rose and fell as he took a long, irritated breath. “I’ve been digging tunnels since before you were born, Eton. Mole and I were some of the first tunnelers Hellfire Jack recruited for this war. What we lack in experience on the battlefield, we more than make up for in the tunnels beneath it, so when I tell you to take off your boots, you take off your boots. There are far worse things to worry about than trench foot in these tunnels.” Relaxing his fists, he motioned for the boys to follow. “Come on. Time to show you what you’ll be doing down here. There’s no talking in the lower galleries. Not a sound. The tunnels have ears, and they’re always listening. One sound. One word. One small cough can signal your death and the death of everyone in your crew, so I don’t even want to hear you breathing, understand?”

Thomas didn’t dare nod in case his neck, stiff from the train ride, creaked.

“Got that, Eton?”

“Yes, Bagger, sir,” Frederick mumbled as he unlaced his boots.

Thomas, George, and Charlie followed the crew leader down the tunnel to the top of a watertight steel shaft that cut straight down through layers of soil, water, and wet sand to a layer of clay. A minute later, Frederick joined them and, one by one, they descended the shaft ladder to a lower gallery. Thomas was used to working beneath the earth. He’d spent the last three years in a coal mine in Dover, but he’d never feared silence until he descended the tunnels beneath no-man’s-land.