The King's Exile (Thomas Hill Trilogy 2) by Andrew Swanston Read Free Book Online

whip on your back.’ His whip was a vicious-looking thing with a leather strap and a tongue like a viper’s.
    ‘I was finding my way around,’ replied Thomas unsteadily.
    The other one, John, stuck his face into Thomas’s and spat. ‘We’ll tell you when to find your way around, you little turd. Get back to the hut now.’
    ‘I have no business being here. I was wrongly arrested and I demand to see a magistrate.’
    John Gibbes roared. ‘Demand to see a magistrate, eh? What do you think of that, brother?’
    ‘I think Master Hill needs a lesson,’ snarled Samuel, raising his whip. Its tongue flicked across Thomas’s cheek, slicing the skin, and Thomas cried out in pain. He put his hand to his face and felt blood. ‘Now get back to your hut, Hill, or you’ll be sorry.’
    There was nothing to be gained by arguing. Thomas walked slowly back to the hut, gingerly feeling his cheek and trying not to stumble. God have pity, he thought, what a pair. Vicious, repulsive, barely human. The red one is the ugliest man I’ve ever seen. More warts and carbuncles than Cromwell. The black one’s no better. A pair of brutes. Red brute and black brute. How in the name of heaven did they come to buy me? And how do I escape from them?
    The Gibbes soon followed him back up the path. ‘Next time we find you sniffing about the slaves, you’ll get what they get. A proper taste of the whip and a day on the boiling house ring,’ growled Samuel, pointing with his whip to a rusty iron ring set at head height into the wall of the round building. ‘Understand?’ Thomas understood. These men were dangerous. ‘Now get down to the kitchen and get us our breakfast. There’s work to be done.’ Without waiting for him, they strode off to the house. Thomas followed them.
    Outside the hovel, where they evidently did their eating and drinking, there were four rickety chairs and a battered table. Samuel kicked aside another mangy dog asleep in the morning sun and climbed two steps to a patched-up door. John told Thomas to follow his brother and sat down.
    Thomas climbed the steps and went inside. There were two rooms. One with a wooden bed on either side, a heap of sacking, a stack of tools and a barrel in the middle of the floor. The other, reached by a door between the beds, was a kitchen. A roasting spit stood over a smoking hearth, there was another barrel in one corner and a heap of filthy platters, knives, spoons, glasses and wooden cups, all piled up on a small table. On a shelf were hunks of meat, loaves of bread and huge jars of sugar. Joints of mutton and pork hung on hooks attached to a roof beam. Around and under the table and on either side of the fire were dozens and dozens of bottles. The dog wandered in through a back door and began licking the earth floor.
    ‘Meat and bread,’ ordered Samuel, ‘and wine. Enough for two.’ And went to join his brother.
    He would not get home any sooner by refusing so Thomas inspected the bottles and found one that contained a thin redliquid that might once have been claret. He took it out to the brutes with two glasses and returned to fetch meat and bread. From the shelf he took a dusty loaf and a slab of half-eaten mutton and took them out on wooden platters. The brutes appeared content and were soon tearing at the meat and bread with their hands and drinking the wine from the bottle. The glasses had been tossed aside. Revolting as the food looked and smelt, Thomas was starving and needed to eat. He found a piece of cooked chicken, sniffed it, wiped it on his breeches and took a tentative bite. It was old and tough but it was food. Water from the well would wash it down. He stuffed the chicken under his shirt and awaited further instructions.
    They came almost immediately. ‘More wine, damn you, and be quick about it,’ shouted one of the brothers. Astonished, Thomas took out another bottle. Two bottles of claret for breakfast. How many might there be for dinner?
    ‘Put it there and