The King's Exile (Thomas Hill Trilogy 2) Read Free Page A

sit. The bread was stale and the meat rotten and he could only swallow them in tiny mouthfuls. But taking his time and returning frequently to the water, he made himself eat it all. No point in dying of hunger while waiting for justice to be done.
    Quite suddenly the wind strengthened. The square sails on each of the three masts responded and the ship picked up speed. It bucked and rolled, once again hurling men to the deck. Timbers creaked and waves splashed over the sides. Thomas, still sitting on the deck, looped his arm through a length of rope tied to the ship’s side and hoped that the
Dolphin
was as sturdy as she looked. Around him, prisoners were flailing about, swearing lustily and demanding God’s assistance in keeping them safe, while the ship’s crew, showing no sign of discomfort or surprise, pointed at them and laughed. Suddenly an elderly man came careening down the deck on his backside. With his free hand, Thomas grabbed a leg and held on until the fellow could right himself and find ahandhold. He nodded his thanks to Thomas and promptly threw up over his arm. Not wanting to risk losing his grip on the rope, Thomas made no effort to wipe the stuff off.
    Gradually most of the prisoners were able to regain their footing and stumble to the hatch. Thomas helped the old man to the ladder and then lay on his stomach to lower him down. He was about to stand up and climb down himself when his ankles were seized and he was tipped headfirst into the hold. He managed to break the worst of the fall with his forearms and found himself in a heap at the bottom. He looked up to see a sailor’s face grinning down at him.
    ‘There you are,’ shouted the sailor over the roar of the waves, ‘safely back in your hole. No need to thank me. Always happy to help.’
    Thomas picked himself up and stumbled to his hammock, scraping the vomit off his arm. He shut his eyes. How in the name of heaven was he going to survive this?
    He tried in vain to wipe the sweat from his eyes and the image of Margaret and the girls from his mind, and lay listening to the wind turn from a stiff breeze to a howling storm. He could only imagine the scene on deck – sailors scrambling up the rigging to reduce sail and frantically tying down whatever could be tied down, while officers yelled at them to make haste. He hung on to his hammock and waited for the storm to die down or the ship to sink. If it did, would he find wood for a raft and be blown to land by the wind? Or would he be trapped in the hold and drown?
    More than once the
Dolphin
listed so sharply that he was sure it would tip on to its side, but each time it somehow righted itself. While they lay helpless in the hold the storm went on and on through the rest of the day and the night until, as dawn shed alittle light through the cracks in the timbers of the deck above them, its power waned enough for the hardiest of the prisoners to tumble out of their hammocks and get to a bucket. To Thomas’s sensitive nose, the stench was unspeakable. He pressed his face to the side of the ship and tried to smell timber. When that did not work, he buried his face in his coat and thought of lavender.
    It was still breezy when at last the hatch was opened and a sailor peered in. ‘Any fish food down there?’ he shouted cheerfully. There was none. All the prisoners had survived the night. They filed unsteadily up the ladder and into the sea air, clinging on to whatever they could for safety. The buckets were taken up and emptied over the side. The masts were still bare of sails and the deck was a jumble of rope, canvas and crates. The sailor divided them into two groups, each overseen by three guards. Thomas’s group was put to sorting out the tangled ropes, then washing down the hold with buckets of seawater. All the time the wind still blew strongly enough to make the work dangerous and each man took at least one tumble.
    The nimbleness that had made Thomas a much sought-after dancing partner while