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

a student at Oxford stood him in good stead. He fell only once and was quickly back on his feet. After an hour of unravelling ropes and climbing up and down the steps with buckets, they were herded back into the hold. Having slept not at all during the night, most of them were snoring within minutes. Thomas lay awake and urged the wind to blow harder. The harder it blew, the sooner they would arrive in Barbados and the sooner he would get home.

C HAPTER 3

    FOR TWO MORE days and nights the
Dolphin
battled her way westwards along the south coast of England towards the Lizard. Twice each day the hatch was opened and the prisoners climbed the ladder to the deck, where they were given hard bread and biscuits, scraps of meat and bits of maggoty cheese, and allowed to stretch their legs. They were guarded by sailors with short swords and pistols. There were about twenty sailors in the crew, each as rough as the next. Thomas assumed that their quarters were in the other half of the hold. As he did with his fellow prisoners, Thomas spoke to them only when he had to.
    In between the hours on deck and bouts of vomiting, he lay in his hammock and seethed. Like an African slave, he had been torn from his home on another man’s whim, leaving his family to fend for themselves, and thrown on to this stinking ship on the way to a distant island where he would doubtless be worked to death in a matter of weeks. He had heard accounts of the Caribbean islands, of the heat and sickness and of the landowners’ treatment of theirslaves and indentured servants, and he knew he would not last long. He must find a way to get home and he must find out who had done this to him and why.
    Once they had rounded the Lizard, the wind picked up again and they flew across the Irish Sea to Cork, where they picked up another twenty men – Catholics imprisoned by the army of Parliament and by all accounts savagely treated. Several carried the scars of torture, one had lost an eye, another wore the black habit of a Dominican. The youngest was a boy of no more than fourteen. The priest took the empty hammock beside Thomas’s, and spent his time mouthing silent prayers and crossing himself. Fortunately he was as disinclined to talk as Thomas was.
    At first, the Irishmen kept to themselves. Then they started to mix with the other prisoners and a hierarchy of sorts emerged. Its currencies were food and knowledge. Despite the meagre food, the weakest were willing to trade some of their ration in return for protection. Two squat Irishmen set themselves up as protectors and offered, for payment in food, to keep predators at bay. Among forty-three men, all taken from some foul gaol, there were a good number of rogues and scoundrels and one or two who would, if they had the chance, use a younger man like a woman. Thomas saw all this, said nothing and kept out of trouble. The two Irishmen, for some reason, did not bother him. Perhaps they haven’t noticed me, he thought, or perhaps they think a little fellow with receding hair has no hope of lasting more than a week. And they might be right.
    From his position at the side of the ship, Thomas noticed that barriers were breaking down and the prisoners were beginning to make friends. It occurred to him that in such an environment man’s instinct to survive takes over. Some, like him, withdrew intotheir private worlds, others formed alliances. Much like the solitary cat on one hand and the pack-loving hound on the other. Thomas Hill, philosopher, devoted uncle and erstwhile cryptographer at the king’s court in Oxford, was very much the cat.
    He forced himself to use the hours on deck to walk and stretch. This not only helped to keep his legs from stiffening up but also cleared his head of the sounds and smells of men forced to live cheek by jowl for twenty-two hours a day. He did his best to keep clean, although with only seawater to wash in it was a losing battle. His scalp and beard itched and his clothes were filthy.