The King's Exile (Thomas Hill Trilogy 2) (21 page)

‘I imagine not,’ said Adam, ‘not with demand in Europe growing as it is. Very shrewd of you, Charles.’

‘It was the merchant who was shrewd. He’s making more profit and getting more sugar from me. He told me that windmills are used by most of the Brazilian planters. They don’t eat like cattle do.’

‘But they need wind.’

‘There’s plenty of wind up here. The sails turn day and night when we’re harvesting.’

Sure enough, when they reached the windmill there was a good breeze and it was hard at work. A gang of men, black and white, was feeding cane through the rollers to extract the juice.

Charles proudly explained the windmill’s workings and answered their questions with aplomb. It was an impressive device but the cane still had to be fed in by hand.

‘Alas,’ said Charles, ‘I wish there were another way but I can’t think of one. I tell the men to take care but accidents happen and fingers are mangled. We have to send for Sprot, who removes the fingers and pockets my sovereigns.’

‘I wonder what he does with the fingers.’

‘I’ve heard that he sells them for fish bait. A guinea a dozen, I believe.’

Mary grimaced. She took Charles’s arm again and allowed him to lead her back down the path. ‘It’s time you were married, Charles. Anyone in your sights?’ she asked loudly enough for Adam to hear.

‘Good Lord, no. Can’t imagine anyone would have me. A younger son with no prospects and forced to try and make his way in the Caribbean. And we’re rather short of eligible ladies at present.’

If I could read your mind, Mr Carrington, thought Thomas, it would say something like ‘a pox on Perkins’, and I don’t blame you. Marry her at once is my advice, and damn the consequences.

‘Most impressive, Charles,’ said Adam, when they had returned to the house. ‘Will you give me the name of the Dutch merchant?’

‘Of course I will. In exchange for an invitation to dinner.’

‘I invite you, Charles,’ said Mary quickly. ‘Would a week today be convenient?’

‘It would. Very.’

TOBIAS RUSH HATED
being stuck on a ship and out of touch with his affairs. For six weeks he had paced the deck, barked at the crew and drunk more than he normally did. When eventually they docked in Southampton he found a carriage to take him straight to Romsey, where he would deal with the tiresome matter of the message before travelling on to London. He had an idea and another visit to Seething Lane was called for.

After an uncomfortable journey to Romsey, Rush was in an evil temper. When he found the door to the bookshop in Love Lane bolted, he rapped on it with his cane. Nothing happened so he picked up a stone and beat it with that. Still nothing happened so he beat it again. He was on the point of giving up when he heard the bolts being slid open. The door opened a few inches and he pushed his way in. The two girls who stood staring at him must be Hill’s nieces. Apart from their fair hair they favoured their mother. They were pretty children. ‘Where is your mother?’ he demanded.

The older one answered. ‘She is at the market, sir. She will be back soon.’

‘Who are you, sir?’ squeaked the younger one. ‘We should not open the door to strangers when our mother is out. She said so.’

‘I am Tobias Rush. Has your mother mentioned me?’

The girls looked at each other and shook their heads. ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ replied the older one. ‘Are you a friend of hers?’

Rush relaxed. The woman had held her tongue. ‘Indeed I am. And I shall wait here for her to return. I have an important matter to discuss with her.’ He walked around the desk and sat on the chair behind it. ‘Why don’t you come and sit beside me?’ Again the girls looked at each other.

‘You go upstairs, Lucy,’ replied the older one, ‘I will wait with Master Rush.’ Lucy did not need a second bidding. She disappeared through a door at the back of the shop and ran up the stairs. ‘May I fetch you anything while you wait?’

‘Nothing, child. What is your name?’

‘Polly Taylor, sir. If you are a friend of our mother, did you know our uncle, Thomas Hill?’

Rush suppressed a grin. The woman had done as she was instructed and told them he was dead. ‘I did not.’

The door opened and Margaret walked in carrying a basket. She took one look at Rush and immediately put herself between him and Polly. ‘Where is Lucy?’

‘She is in the bedroom,’ replied Polly from behind her. ‘Master Rush wanted to wait for you.’

‘Go and join her. I will speak privately to Master Rush.’ When Polly had gone, Margaret continued, ‘Have you brought the word?’ Rush took the torn-out paper from a pocket and handed it
to her. Margaret looked at it and, satisfied, tucked it into her basket. ‘So he is alive.’

‘He certainly was when I last saw him, and being well looked after.’

‘Rubbish. As an indentured man he will be treated like a slave. It is all I can do not to kill you where you sit.’ She took the pistol from her basket and aimed it at Rush’s forehead. He did not move.

‘If you do, you will never find out where he is.’

‘I know he is in Barbados.’

Rush smiled. ‘In fact, you do not. It is true that he was taken there, but there are other colonies crying out for indentured men – Jamaica, Virginia, Grenada – and he might have been sold on to a planter in one of them.’

Margaret was horrified. Thomas ‘sold on’ like an animal and the little knowledge she had of him now in doubt. ‘Has he been?’

‘Perhaps. Why not make more enquiries? You were so clever before.’

Margaret replaced the pistol in the basket. Much as she wanted to, killing the creature would not get Thomas back.

‘Very wise.’ Rush stood up. ‘Such a pleasure to meet your daughters. Delightful children. Do take care of them, won’t you?’

Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and was gone.

Margaret went to the kitchen and wept.

Since Rush had been away London had become quieter. The war had taken its toll – shops had closed, the streets were empty and there were few vendors hawking their wares. He had been clever enough to profit from the war, others had not. Now, however, he
must look for pastures new. The only serious fighting going on was in Scotland, so demand for soldiers’ woollen jackets had dried up, and land prices had yet to recover their former levels. They would, of course, and his venture in Barbados was doing splendidly. Nevertheless it was time to try something new.

When his black carriage drew up outside the house in Seething Lane, Rush ordered the coachman to return in an hour and jumped out. He was admitted at once and shown into the living room. No fire had been lit but the thin-faced man sat in the same chair in front of the hearth, smoking a pipe. ‘Tobias Rush,’ he said, without rising, ‘to what do I owe this pleasure?’

‘I have a proposition for you.’

‘And what might that be?’

Rush took the seat opposite him. ‘I have recently returned from Barbados, where sugar is making men rich.’

‘So I believe. Excellent sugar it is too. Greatly superior to the Egyptian stuff.’

‘Quite. Demand for it increases by the week. There is only one thing preventing the planters from getting even richer.’

‘And what is that?’

‘The useful life of an African slave or an indentured man is short. The work breaks them quickly. There is profit to be had from supplying them with younger bodies.’

The man scratched his chin. ‘I can see that. Boys who will adjust more easily to the work and last longer. But this is not my sort of work. What do you propose?’

‘I would prefer not to be personally involved in the harvesting. I propose that you hire a man who will assist us and that we share the profits of the venture. Do you know such a man?’

‘Perhaps. Let us discuss terms.’

For an hour they thrashed out an agreement. When Rush rose to leave, they had agreed a price he would pay for each healthy boy between eight and twelve years old harvested from the streets of London. The boys would be loaded on to a ship at Rotherhithe and held on it until the cargo was complete. Rush would arrange the transportation and disposal of the cargo in Barbados. It was a venture with great potential.

THE FIRST NEWS
of serious trouble came on the day of the dinner party, when Charles arrived at the Lytes’ house to find Thomas sitting in the parlour with Adam and Mary.

‘There’s been a raid on the Morgan estate in St Lucy,’ he reported, ‘a bad one. Three men killed and two house slaves with their throats cut. Three heads left impaled on stakes. Morgan was away. They took muskets and powder. One of Morgan’s men reported that there were about thirty of them, armed with flintlocks to bill hooks.’

‘It was bound to happen,’ said Mary. ‘Private militias, unguarded estates, runaway slaves. We’ve only ourselves to blame. Swearing oaths, indeed. What’s the point? Walrond’s caused nothing but trouble and trouble breeds trouble.’

‘It could easily happen to us. We must be prepared.’

‘What are you doing about defences, Charles?’ asked Adam.

‘As you know, after the rebellion three years ago I took certain precautions and I’ve posted sentries around the estate and made
sure my men are adequately armed. I am content to leave matters in the hands of my steward, who is so ferocious that I suspect he was once a pirate. You’re much more vulnerable and there’s Mary to think of. These men are vicious.’

‘What do you suggest we do?’

‘I suggest that as soon as we’ve finished the excellent dinner that I can smell cooking, we make plans. Then we can get to work tomorrow. No time to lose with those savages on the loose.’

While they enjoyed Patrick’s roast leg of lamb, they talked of Walrond and the Assembly, of his absurd insistence on oaths of loyalty, of the inevitability of the island now being dragged into the war at home and of the likely effects on trade.

‘The man’s a dangerous lunatic,’ said Charles, mopping up claret sauce with a hunk of bread. ‘He’s putting it about that anyone who opposes him is plotting to murder every Royalist on the island and turn us into some form of Parliamentary tyranny. He’s even accusing Drax and Middleton of being in league with Cromwell.’

‘All he’s done,’ agreed Adam, ‘is to set landowner against landowner, freeman against freeman and servant against servant. What’s more, landowners leave their estates to take up arms and their slaves and indentured men run off into the woods.’

‘And attack the rest of us,’ said Mary. ‘What do you make of it, Thomas?’

‘At Newbury I saw two armies blasting and hacking each other to pieces for no obvious reason. When they’d finished, the king went back to Oxford and Essex marched on to London. All was much as it had been a few weeks earlier except that several thousand men had been killed or wounded. For such a thing to happen on an island as small and as prosperous as this would be even more absurd.’

‘No doubt you are right, Thomas,’ agreed Adam, ‘but war will not be averted by such sentiments. We need common ground and common sense. Alas, I fear that the Walronds have no interest in either.’

‘Our immediate concern is Thomas.’ Mary smiled at him. ‘And if there is to be bloodshed, the sooner he goes home the better. Have you made any progress, Adam?’

‘Not yet. I have been busy. He is safe here for the moment.’

‘Not only safe. The food is good and the company excellent. Apart from my family, I could not ask for more,’ replied Thomas, thinking that he would trade both for news of Margaret and the girls.

‘None of us will be safe if we’re attacked by runaways,’ said Charles. ‘Now let’s discuss what’s to be done. What arms have you got?’

‘Not much,’ admitted Adam. ‘A few matchlocks, powder, shot, a sword or two.’

‘Right. I shall visit a Dutch friend in Bridgetown. He will equip us.’

‘What shall I do?’ asked Mary.

‘You, my dear, shall be our quartermaster. Or should that be quartermistress?’

‘What does a quartermistress do, Charles?’

‘She lays in ample stocks of food and drink in case of a long siege. She also prepares bandages and splints for wounds and sets aside a room where the wounded can be tended.’