‘I assure you it is so. The king was easily deceived about my death and your brother accepted his word. Fools, both of them.’ It was as if Rush had read her thoughts. He held up the silver-topped cane and slowly withdrew the slim blade. ‘Did he tell you about this?’ Margaret put her hand to her mouth. Not only had Thomas told her about it, there was another just like it in his bedroom. He had brought it back from Oxford. Rush slid the blade back into place and rested the cane within easy reach against a bookcase.
‘You have come to murder us.’
‘In fact, I have not. Not yet, anyway. I have come to show you these.’ He opened the leather case and withdrew the documents inside. Two of them he handed to Margaret. ‘Do not bother to destroy them. I have copies.’ Margaret spread both on the desk and read the first. Then she read it again, before turning to the second, much shorter one. Rush’s eyes never left her face as she read.
‘They are forgeries,’ she said calmly, without looking up.
Rush had expected this. ‘I deny it. In any case, forgeries or not, there are three reasons why they will be enforced. First, it cannot be proved that the letter and his signature on the contract are not in Thomas Hill’s hand, as they are a perfect match for it. Second, any attempt to show otherwise will result in his suffering greatly; and third, you have two lovely daughters.’
‘You would threaten my daughters?’ Margaret almost shrieked the words. Rush merely raised an eyebrow and stroked the top of the cane. ‘If my brother is alive, where is he? Tell me where he is.’
‘He is alive and in good hands. You do not need to know his whereabouts.’
‘Can you prove that he is alive?’
‘Can you take the risk that he is not?’
Margaret put her head in her hands. If Thomas was alive but in the hands of this monster, he would be better dead. And so would she. Tobias Rush. It was beyond imagining. Tobias Rush, the man Thomas had proved to be a murderer and traitor, and who had died in Oxford, was standing before her. So it was he who had arranged for Thomas to be arrested. And now he claimed to own the shop and the house. And he was right. The contract transferring the title to the property from Thomas Hill to Tobias Rush was properly sealed, witnessed and signed by both parties. Had she not known better, she would have taken Thomas’s signature to be his. It was a perfect forgery. As was the letter in his hand explaining to her that he had agreed the sale of the property to Tobias Rush because he was about to be deported to the colonies and trusted his old friend to take care of both the property and his family. If he did not return, their future at least would be secure. He instructed Margaret to do exactly as Tobias Rush told her. When she could speak, Margaret asked quietly, ‘What would you have me do?’
‘Fetch the deeds to the property and give them to me. And remember what I have said about your brother and your daughters.’ Despite her shock, Margaret knew she was trapped. Nothing would make her put Polly and Lucy at risk. She climbed the stairs to Thomas’s bedroom, reached under the bed and pulled out his strongbox. She used a key on her ring to open it, riffled through the documents inside, found the deeds and took them down to the shop. Without a word, she handed them to Rush. He checked that they were complete and tucked them into his case. ‘Excellent.’
‘My daughters will be home soon. Must they find you here?’
‘That will not be necessary. For now you will stay here and continue as before. Let it be known that your brother is dead. I have men in Romsey and you will be watched at all times. Any attempt to disobey my orders or to run away will be fatal. For all of you. Do you understand?’
Margaret nodded. ‘Will you tell Thomas we are well?’
Rush smirked. ‘I might.’
It had been as delicious as he had hoped. As he walked back to the inn, Tobias Rush swung his cane and replayed the encounter in his mind. Delicious.
Chapter 8
USING THE KNIFE taken from the kitchen, Thomas had scored a horizontal line through each group of nine notches on the table. When he scored through the fourth group, forty days had passed. Forty days in the kitchen, of making entries in the ledgers, of agonizing about Margaret and the girls, of solitude and anguish.
On his trips with the Gibbes to the market he had not met Patrick again and he knew little more about the island than he had when he first stepped ashore. His knowledge of its geography was limited to the road from Oistins to Speightstown. The Gibbes spoke to him only to give orders or make threats and neither the planters nor the traders ever addressed him.
Forty days of watching carts pulled by teams of slaves trundling backwards and forwards up the path towards the mill, empty on their way there, loaded with pots of sugar on their way back. Forty nights of nightmares, demons and biting insects.
Forty days and nights with not even Montaigne for company – his old friend had deserted him again just when he was needed most. Strangely, in the absence of Montaigne, the Franciscan friar Simon de Pointz had often come to mind. That unusual man, who had twice saved Thomas’s life in Oxford, had tempered his faith with what he called ‘pragmatism and humour’ – two most unfriarly qualities. Determined to survive whatever the brutes threw at him, Thomas found pragmatism straightforward; humour, however, well nigh impossible. Oh for Simon’s company in this distant, lonely prison.
Thomas had occupied himself with the ledgers and in cleaning out the kitchen and yard. He had dug a deep hole in the trees behind the hovel in which he had buried hundreds of empty bottles and mounds of rotting waste, and a second hole was already filling up. The yard was still home to legions of ants and cockroaches and used daily by the dogs, but he shovelled up the muck and kept it as clean as he could. He swept the kitchen floor whenever he was in there and protected the meat from the worst of the flies by covering it with linen cloths he had found stuffed in a barrel and had washed in rainwater. Bookkeeper to the brutes was bad enough; cook, cleaner and housekeeper, much worse.
In the forty days the weather had become hotter and wetter. Storm clouds now swept in from the Atlantic, bringing rain that turned hard earth into mud within minutes and filled the holes and ruts on the path with brown water; the winds that blew in the rain could fell a tree or lift a roof. Thomas struggled to plug the leaks in the roof of his hut, using whatever he could find to do the job. Palm fronds, branches, planks from old carts – all were pressed into service.
He had dug himself a privy behind the hut – at least the rain washed the muck away down the hill – and unless it was raining he cooked his meals on an open fire outside his door. He helped himself from the brutes’ kitchen and drank water from the well.
He had also experimented with the fruits that grew abundantly around the estate. Not knowing their local names, he had christened them himself. There were a greenish-yellow fruit in the shape of a hand – the finger fruit; a yellow-skinned fruit in the shape of a crescent moon, which hung in big clumps from the branches of its tree – the crescent fruit, and small green fruits which grew on bushes protected by spikes sharp enough to draw blood at the slightest touch, which he knew were limes. All of these, taken with a little sugar, were delicious. And there were cassava and sweet potatoes. If he made a hole in the shell of a coconut with his knife he could drink the water inside and then break the shell open with a stone to get at the white flesh. The first settlers on the island would have discovered all these things and many more twenty years earlier, but for Thomas each new discovery was a small triumph. He was not going to ask the brutes for advice and there was no one else. He dare not go down to the slaves’ huts – anyway, they would probably ignore him – and there had been no opportunity to talk to anyone in the market.