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

get back to the hut. We’ll be up there when we’re done.’ Clutching the chicken under his shirt, Thomas did as he was told. The lines of battle had been drawn. The brutes would shout and curse and he would hold his tongue and do their bidding. But only until he could escape and get home.
    When the brutes appeared at the hut they were carrying two large ledgers, quills and a pot of ink. ‘There you are, Hill,’ said Samuel, ‘books of account. We need records of what we buy and sell and a tally of the slaves.’ He jabbed a filthy finger at Thomas. ‘You can write and figure, can’t you?’
    Thomas nodded. ‘I can.’
    ‘Just as well. When our partner visits, he’ll want to see the books. Make sure they’re right.’ So the brutes had a partner. A man who did not care much what company he kept. Johnproduced scraps of paper from a pocket. ‘Start on those.’ Thomas put the papers, the ledgers, the ink and the quills on his table. It would be better than working in that hellish kitchen. ‘When you’re done go to the kitchen and get our dinner ready.’
    Dear God, the kitchen again. ‘What do you wish to eat?’
    ‘Meat.’ And with that, the brutes departed, leaving Thomas to the ledgers.
    Might as well get started, he thought, testing the point of a quill on his finger. It was sharp enough but too flexible – certainly not from a duck or a swan. He tipped a little of the ink into the silver inkwell. It was thin stuff, nothing like his own writing ink made from good English oak apples. The ledgers, however, were surprisingly good. The paper was thick and they were well bound in red leather. The scraps of paper turned out to be bills of sale from suppliers of tools, barrels, wheels, pots and the many other things needed for the production and sale of sugar, and barely intelligible scribbles recording monies received for the sugar sold.
    Indifferent quills, watery ink, but it was the sort of work to which Thomas was accustomed and there was some pleasure in writing in the ledgers and creating an orderly set of accounts. Two hours later when he had completed the work, he closed the ledgers, made a neat pile of the bills, got up and stretched his back. He was astonished by the figures he had entered. The brothers Gibbes, brutish, evil, probably illiterate, were amassing a huge fortune. Where had they got the capital to buy the land and the equipment? Had they stolen it? And how had they learned about sugar? Where had they come from and when? If they were typical of planters on the island, it was a strange place indeed, where ignorant brutes could master a complicated process and rapidly become exceedingly wealthy.
    If they were out in the fields somewhere there would be another chance to explore his prison before having to go back to the kitchen. The more he knew about the place, the better. If he was going to run, he had best know where to run to. The well yielded another bucket of good water – he made a mental note to find out why it was altogether better than the brown stuff produced by the Romsey wells – and then he ducked through a narrow entrance into the circular building beside it. In the middle was a large stone furnace over which had been erected a steel frame, with broken pots strewn around it on the earth floor. John Gibbes had called it the boiling house although it was obvious that nothing had been boiled in it for years. Even empty, it was an unpleasant place, dark and threatening, and Thomas quickly retreated back through the entrance.
    Keeping an ear open for the sound of the returning Gibbes, he walked cautiously down the narrow path towards the fields. The ground was free of stones but, here and there, heavily rutted. On either side grew the same tall trees which he had noticed on the way from the harbour. High in their branches, a family of monkeys screeched a warning at his approach.
    When he reached the place where the path opened up, he stood quietly behind a tree and listened. Far off,