The King's Exile (Thomas Hill Trilogy 2)

by Andrew Swanston

  ‘Excellent turkey, Thomas,’ he said, adding with a grin, ‘and I daresay the piglet was good too. Eh, Samuel?’

  ‘What? Yes, yes. A decent pig. Better than your last effort, Hill. More flavour. Now bring us the milk pudding. And we’ll need more wine.’

  He fetched the wine and then returned with a large pudding from the kitchen. He had made it with the milk bought at the market, the juice of ten limes and a good deal of stirring. ‘Will the pudding be good, Thomas?’ asked Carrington with a wink.

  ‘Oh yes, sir. Very good, I should think.’

  ‘Excellent. Better have some then, eh, Adam?’

  While they were tucking into the pudding, Thomas sat outside and listened to the four of them talking about the sugar that had already made them rich, and about the soaring value of land which was making them richer still. When two or more planters were gathered together, even bedfellows as strange as these, he supposed that the conversation would invariably turn to the price of land and the production of sugar. Planters would speak of sugar as churchmen speak of faith – as if there were nothing else.

  For all the squalor and debauchery, the Gibbes knew about making money from sugar and could hold their own on anything to do with the intricate processes of planting, harvesting, milling, boiling and curing. Oddly, they became rational and coherent when discussing business. Before dinner, they had taken their guests to inspect the windmill and had tried to persuade them to form a partnership to build another for their shared use. Lyte and Carrington had wisely asked for time to consider the matter, although Thomas had the impression that had the proposal been made by anyone else they would have jumped at it. Windmills must be expensive to build and would need to be kept busy. A shared one made sense.

  The vexed issue of labour got the Gibbes really heated. Thomas had heard it all before. ‘We have fifty acres planted and we need at least thirty men to work them and more to man the mill and the boiling house. We need slaves, and lots of them. A black slave is better suited to the work than an indentured man and he’s a better investment. He’s here for life and if we want him to, he breeds more workers.’

  Adam Lyte spoke mildly. ‘You may well be right, Samuel, and of course you know your business best, but Mary and I have mixed views on slavery and we’ve been fortunate with our indentured men. Most of them chose to come here as indentured servants, none of them has been involved in an uprising and, as far as we can tell, none of the convicts was guilty of anything more serious than petty theft or poaching. They know they’re better off here than starving in some prison at home and they’re good workers.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but indentured men cost a good twelve pounds each and they’re only here for a few years. We’d rather do without them.’

  ‘What about your man Hill?’ asked Lyte. ‘Where did he come from?’

  ‘Hill’s our only indentured man. We bought him because he can write and figure and he can cook. He keeps the books and cooks when we tell him to. We bought him from an agent who got him from Winchester gaol. Can’t stand the prissy little scab myself but he’s useful enough.’

  ‘I daresay he’s better than the Irish they send us, although that isn’t difficult.’ John Gibbes, half comatose from the drink, stirred himself to join in. ‘They’re coming over in shiploads now, men and women, the women no better than whores, and they’re troublesome pigs. They hate honest Englishmen and don’t mind saying so. Land of papists, Ireland is. Papist pricks and poxed whores. They have a word for being sent here. Barbadosed. Barbadosed, my liver. It’s Hellosed they deserve.’

  ‘Hellosed. Ha. That’s a good one, brother. Hellosing for the Irish. Fine idea.’ Samuel paused in drunken thought for a moment, then let out another bellow. ‘Hill, Hill, get off your arse and bring us a bottle of that excellent rum we made from the molasses last year. A glass of rum, gentlemen, before you go? Fetch the rum, Hill. Or is it Hell? Ha, fetch the rum, Hell, or to hill with you.’ Now completely drunk, Samuel was delighted at his own wit.

  Thomas fetched the rum and four glasses. If that doesn’t finish them off, nothing will, he thought. Sweet Barbados rum was fierce stuff and on top of all that claret must surely bring the dinner to an end within the hour. God willing, it might even bring the brutes to an end.

  ‘Your sister’s much admired, I do hear, Adam.’ John was slurring his words but could still just about string them together intelligibly. ‘A lovely girl by all accounts. It’s a wonder she’s not married. Queues of young men at the door, eh? There’s taverns-full of them to choose from. What is she, nineteen, twenty? Perfect age for a woman. Fully grown in every department but still fair and supple. Just the thing to keep a man happy on a hot night.’ Thomas, cringing behind the tree, reckoned that this would break up the party even sooner.

  ‘Mary will be nineteen in June.’ Adam’s voice was icy. The thought of either uncouth Gibbes so much as thinking of touching his sister must be abhorrent.

  ‘Expect you’ll be wanting a young wife to warm your bed soon, Charles. Could do worse than Adam’s sister, eh? The Lyte family after all, no paupers, good breeding stock and a fine-looking woman, they say. Might be willing to take her on myself.’

  That should do it, thought Thomas, and about time. He risked a look around the tree.

  ‘I do not have the honour of knowing Miss Lyte at all well,’ replied Charles with quiet force, ‘but on the few occasions that I’ve had the pleasure of her company, I have found her to be a lady of charm and virtue. I believe she merits the respect of all, not lewd suggestions.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ agreed Adam, ‘but she needs little guidance from me. Mary is an honourable and spirited lady. She would deal swiftly with any unwanted attentions.’

  John Gibbes was unabashed. Incapable of embarrassment, he leered suggestively and took another swig of rum.

  Charles rose to go. ‘Time for us to take our leave, Adam. I thank you, gentlemen, for your hospitality if not your conversation.’

  ‘As do I.’ Adam managed, just, to remain civil but he was already on his feet. ‘My thanks for dinner. And kindly thank Hill for his excellent pudding.’ Thomas knew that thanking Hill was not something that either brute would be doing.

  The two guests walked briskly to a stand of trees where their horses were tethered in the shade. Darkness was falling and the tiny frogs had begun their chorus. They stood there for a moment and spoke loudly enough for Thomas to hear. ‘God in heaven, Charles, never again. It may be our duty to do what we can to keep the peace and protect our trade but I for one am not willing to sacrifice myself like that again. If our prosperity breeds animals like those two, better that we are poor.’

  ‘Fortunately, my friend, there are few in Barbados as evil as the Gibbes but, of course, you’re right. They are gross and despicable. I pity poor Hill; he’s plainly a decent man and well educated. I hope he’s stronger than he looks or the climate and the work may get the better of him. Now enough of them. How’s Mary?’

  ‘Well, thank you. She sends her compliments.’

  ‘Please return them,’ said Charles, ‘and if either Gibbes so much as looks at her you will have to be quick to run him through before I do.’

  Adam laughed. ‘I know. Let us pray it does not come to that.’

  ‘Goodbye, Adam,’ said Charles, mounting his horse. ‘Let us meet again soon.’

  ‘Indeed. Go safely, Charles.’ Behind his listening tree, Thomas kept quiet. There had been no mention of helping him. Perhaps Patrick had not yet had a chance to speak to Adam Lyte.

  As soon as his guests were out of earshot, Samuel spat on the floor and swore loudly. ‘What a pair of pomposetting pricks. Royalist piss-pots think they’re too good for us. I’ll wager the girl’s been bedded by half the young men in Holetown. And a few filthy slaves too, I shouldn’t wonder. What was it? Mixed views about slavery? My eye. That’s the last time we give them turkey and pork, by God. And we’ll see about “unwanted attentions”, eh, brother?’

  But his brother w
as past caring. Snoring loudly, his big, red, louse-infested head resting on his arms, he had passed out. Samuel shrugged, left him there and staggered off to his bed.

  Thomas slipped off to his hut, expecting to be asleep within seconds. But exhausted though he was after an afternoon in the sweltering kitchen, he found, when he lay on the bed, that his thoughts skipped from one thing to another, as a restless man’s do, and images of people and places flittered in and out of his mind’s eye, returning repeatedly to his home and the horrors of a war as bloody and pointless as any war could be. He tried not to dwell for the hundredth time on his arrest and imprisonment, the sudden separation from his family or on the miserable voyage that had brought him here. It had happened. Now survival was everything. He must hope Patrick could persuade Adam Lyte to help. He must hope.

  CHAPTER 9

  1649

  IT HAD STARTED well enough. The king, having been ferried by barge from St James’s Palace to Whitehall Steps, was marched into Westminster Hall by a troop of halberdiers. Two hundred men stood guard inside the hall, and two hundred more outside. There was barely an inch of space.

  For the king’s trial it had been stripped of the low partitions that usually separated one court from another, and of the booksellers’ stalls and coffee shops among them. In their place a stage had been erected at the north end of the hall, on which sat the Lord President of the Court and the rows of commissioners who would decide whether or not the prisoner should be allowed to live. Rush had bought a seat in one of the stands set up around the hall rather than be forced to stand with the rest of the audience behind a screen high enough to obscure all but the king’s head. No one knew how long the trial would last and he did not relish the prospect of having to mingle with the common herd for any length of time. He really should have been about his business but the prospect of the entertainment on offer had been too much of a temptation.

  While the Lord President opened the proceedings by describing the king as ‘the principal author’ of ‘the evils and calamities’ brought upon the country, and the Solicitor General read out the lengthy charges, accusing him of ‘high treason and high misdemeanours’, the king sat impassively in a red velvet chair facing the stage, feigning lack of interest and tapping his cane on the floor. Just like Rush’s, the king’s cane was embellished with a silver top, although Rush doubted if it hid a sword of the finest Toledo steel. He smiled in anticipation of the humiliation to come for the fool who had ordered him to be interrogated and tortured and thought him dead.

  But the day dragged on wearily. First the king refused to recognize the authority of the court to try him, then he refused to plead. After more exchanges, he refused to plead again. It was tiresome and repetitive and the pleasure of anticipation soon turned to frustration. It had taken Parliament far too long to bring the man to trial and now that it had, a day of verbal jousting had achieved next to nothing. Apart from some interventions from the spectators, there had been precious little entertainment and the obstinate little man on trial had shown not a sign of remorse or fear. It was most disappointing. If he would not defend himself, of course he would lose his head. For all the deference of the court, the solemn legal argument and the insistence on proper procedure, that was what would happen. The disappointment was that he did not seem to care.

  When the court was adjourned Rush left his seat, made his way past the halberdiers and through the enormous crowds outside the hall, and walked briskly to the carriage waiting for him nearby in Axe Yard. All London was in a fever about the most dramatic event in its history and he had been bored. There had been no fear, no pain, no humiliation. He ordered the coachman to take him straight home. He would not come again the next day. The judges’ decision would be announced soon enough.

  He had to wait just two days to learn the inevitable verdict and another two to hear that the king’s execution would take place in Whitehall on the thirtieth day of January. He laughed out loud when he read that the king’s request to justify his actions to the court had come too late and had been dismissed by the judges. Sentence had been passed and the prisoner was no longer permitted to speak. It was typical of the man. He would not speak when asked to do so and would speak when told he could not. A foolish, arrogant man who deserved what was coming to him.

  On the appointed day, Rush arrived early in Whitehall in order to secure a place at the front of what was bound to be a large crowd. The trial had been dull but the punishment would surely make up for it. Tobias Rush had cheated death, and now the man who had ordered it, the King of England, was on the way to his own.

  During the morning the crowd grew until it entirely filled the space on three sides of the scaffold which had been erected outside the Banqueting Hall. The scaffold was draped in black and guarded by a row of pikemen who kept the crowd well back from it. Some who had come to watch stood on boxes for a better view; a few had actually arrived on horseback. The windows of the hall and the parapet on its roof were crammed with onlookers, as were the windows of every house with a view of the scaffold. While they waited, men and women hopped up and down and blew on their hands against the cold. ‘A bitter day in more ways than one, sir,’ said a round little man standing beside Rush. When there was no reply, he tried again. ‘A bitter day for England, don’t you agree, sir?’

  Rush turned his head towards his neighbour and peered down at him. ‘I think not, sir. A man found guilty in a court of law must pay the penalty for his crimes.’

  ‘Surely, sir, he should not have been tried in such a court. He is the king.’

  ‘That, sir, is exactly the opinion that has brought him to this end,’ replied Rush, turning his back on the little man. He was spared further irritation by the arrival on the scaffold of the executioner and his assistant, both hooded and heavily disguised.

  When the king, in cloak, doublet and white cap, stepped through one of the tall windows of the Banqueting Hall on to the scaffold, the crowd came to life. There were cheers and groans and cries of ‘Long Live the King’. The little man beside Rush jumped up and down, holding out his hands as if trying to reach the king. ‘Do not permit this, sire,’ he cried. ‘It must not happen.’

  The king stood and faced the crowd, scanning the faces he could make out at the front. At the moment the king’s gaze alighted on him, Rush doffed his hat and inclined his head. The king’s change of expression was so fleeting that not another man in the crowd would have noticed it. Rush did. It might have been recognition, it might have been disbelief, it might have been horror. But it was there.

  After trying in vain to address the crowd, the king spoke for a few minutes to his attendants on the scaffold. When he removed his cloak and doublet before putting the cloak back on, the crowd went silent. He handed the badge he wore to an attendant and knelt down with his neck on the block. For a few moments his lips moved in prayer and he looked up to the sky. Then he extended his arms and the axe fell. The crowd groaned. The executioner held up the severed head and the crowd groaned again. Men wept openly. Women and children screamed. Tobias Rush suppressed a smile. He made his way through the crowd, out of Whitehall and walked home.

  That evening, having enjoyed a bottle of his very best Spanish wine, Rush sat in front of the fire in his living room. The year had begun well. The king was dead. Hill was enjoying the hospitality of the Gibbes brothers, while his sister was living in fear for her daughters and her brother. And his wealth grew by the day. In the spring he would pay another visit to Romsey. Then he would travel to Barbados. It was time he inspected his investments in both places.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE NOTCHES WERE mounting up and still there had been no news. Every morning Thomas woke hoping that he would hear something and by every evening he was disappointed. He had not even seen Patrick again.

  He was at the ledgers when John Gibbes arrived at the hut and growled at him. ‘We need a new place to shit, Hill. Get a shovel and follow me.’

  Thomas followed him to a place a few yards from the
stinking hole that served as their privy. A shallow trench running from the hole down to a gully in the woods allowed the rain to wash away the contents. In the dry season buckets of water were occasionally tipped in to help the stuff on its way.

  ‘Dig it there and run a new trench to meet the other one over there.’ Gibbes pointed to the spot. ‘Make it run downhill or we’ll be covered in shit. And so will you. Now get on with it.’

  Thomas set about digging. He doubted if the brutes would notice if they were covered in shit but he would make the hole about three feet deep, with the trench dropping by another foot. He reckoned it would take him all morning. He had no idea why they had suddenly decided a new privy was needed. The old one still served. It was probably just another bit of spite at his expense.

  At midday he stood back and examined his work. It looked serviceable but to be sure, he threw a bucket of water into the hole and watched it wiggle its way down the new trench. Satisfied, he returned wearily to his hut to wash and eat. Heavy digging on an empty stomach had made him ravenous.

  He had barely finished a bowl of broth made from chicken bones when both Gibbes came thundering up the path. ‘Hill, get off your arse and go down to the market. We need meat and bread. Tell them we’ll pay next week.’ There was ample meat and bread in the kitchen store but there was no point in arguing. Down the hill he would go and back he would trudge with bread and meat. Privies, pork, perspiration and pain today, Thomas, and not a scrap of pleasure. Another day in hell but no complaining. Off you go and get it done. Survive and hope.

  An hour later, two bulging sacks slung over his shoulders, Thomas started for home. His eyes stinging from the sweat of his brow, his hands blistered from digging and his feet aching, he decided first to sit on the little beach for a while. It was deserted but, to his surprise, the water was not. ‘Patrick,’ he called, ‘is that you?’