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

he could hear voices singing to a steady rhythm and he knew without looking that they were the voices of slaves cutting sugar cane and loading it on to carts. He peered round the tree. No sign of the Gibbes.
    About fifty yards away to his left he saw another, larger circular building, which he took to be a new boiling house, and beside it a windmill, its sails turning smoothly in the breeze, and a third building whose purpose he did not know. The stone base of the mill was much larger than any mill he had seen in England.The three buildings stood on a rise in the ground where the mill would catch whatever wind there was, and were partially hidden by a stand of thick trees with creepers hanging from their branches. That was why he had not noticed them that morning. Four ragged ponies were grazing in a field beyond the mill. With another look around to be sure he had not been seen, he climbed the slope to the mill.
    He made his way past a line of flat-bedded carts and around a mountain of barrels. The third building was empty but for hundreds of earthenware pots, from which a thick brown liquid was draining on to pans set below them. It must be where the sugar dried out until it was cured.
    It was too hot to stay there for more than a minute or two, so he went over to the mill and peered through a hole in its stone wall. Inside he saw two naked black slaves, their backs gleaming with sweat, feeding cane through three rollers driven by the windmill, and three more stirring copper cisterns into which the cane juice was being squeezed. The work looked back-breaking and dangerous.
    He walked over to the boiling house. The moment he reached it, a blast hit him and he had to turn his head away. When he could open his eyes again, he peered through the door of the building. If anything, the boiling house was worse than the mill. Half a dozen black bodies, all naked, were filling copper kettles of various sizes with cane juice. Two more were stoking a furnace over which the kettles hung and three more were tending huge vats into which the liquid sugar was being poured. Row upon row of earthenware pots lined the walls and a huge heap of broken shards had been dumped in one corner. The whole operation was being overseen by a large man with a whip. With a start, Thomas realized it was JohnGibbes, luckily with his back to the door. He stepped away hastily and trotted back to the trees.
    When he was safely inside the tree line, he stopped and turned. God’s wounds, what suffering went into a cupful of sugar. If people knew, would they still buy it? Alas, he thought, they would.
    He walked back up the path, past his hut and on to the house. The dog was asleep under the table and a fat rat scurried away at his approach. He went through the single room and into the kitchen. Like it or not, he would have to clean it up, especially if his own food was going to come from there. The Gibbes’s stomachs might be able to withstand the filth but his could not.
    Outside the kitchen door was an area cleared of trees and scrub and used for storage and rubbish. Yet more barrels and pots stood on one side and on the other was a mound of broken bottles, bones, rotting food and discarded tools. A privy had been built beside the rubbish heap with an open channel running from it down a slope into the trees behind. It stank. Thomas held his hand to his face and retreated hastily back into the kitchen. The kitchen he could cope with, this he would do his best to avoid.
    From the kitchen Thomas took a loaf of bread, two knives, a spoon and a cooking pot. One knife he would sharpen on a stone and use to trim his hair, beard and quills, the other, and the spoon, he would use for cooking and eating. He would cook his meals on an open fire outside the hut – the brutes could hardly object if it kept him out of their sight – and he would dig his own privy in the trees nearby.
    Feeling a little better for having done something positive, he hurried back to the hut.