‘Margaret would kill you before you touched the girls, Rush. As the king’s executioner should have and as I shall if you have touched her.’ Thomas could barely speak. The words came out in a croak.
‘No you won’t, Hill. You can forget your family or you can think about how much I’m enjoying myself with them. It matters not to me. You should have accepted my generous offer and come to London. You’d be a wealthy man and living in style, as I am. Instead of which, here you are on this foul island without a hope of escape. Never mind, my partners will take good care of you, won’t you, gentlemen?’
‘We shall, Tobias, you may be sure of it. Shall we start now?’
‘Before you do, I have a small task for Hill. Bring him into the hut.’ The Gibbes picked him up and dragged him to the doorway. ‘Sit him on the chair.’ When Thomas was seated, both arms still gripped by the Gibbes, Rush continued, ‘Your sister requires proof that you are alive, Hill. If you do not provide it, she will die and so will you.’ Thomas said nothing. ‘Write a word on a sheet of paper and give it to me. One word only.’
‘What word?’
‘She claimed you would know.’
John Gibbes put an arm around Thomas’s throat, let go his right arm and pushed the inkpot and box of quills across the table. Thomas picked up a quill, dipped it in the inkpot and wrote a word on a page of one of the ledgers. Rush peered over his shoulder, saw the word and carefully tore the page out. Thomas smiled. His sister was a clever lady. Only her brother would know that the word she expected to see was ‘Montaigne’.
‘Shall we continue now?’ asked Samuel.
‘Why not? I have waited long enough.’
Thomas was hauled to his feet, dragged to the old boiling house and tied by his hands to the ring on the wall. The first lash ripped his shirt and his skin. When the second bit into his shoulder, he screamed. Ten lashes later, he was barely conscious. They dragged him to the well and threw a bucket of water over him.
‘Excellent,’ said Rush, ‘just about right. Make him suffer but keep him alive. Dead men don’t suffer. Now bring the money. I’ll take it and be off.’
Despite the agony, Thomas hauled himself to his knees and lunged at Rush’s legs. Rush toppled backwards and Thomas was on top of him again. He screwed his thumbs into Rush’s eyes and would have blinded him as the monster had blinded others if the brutes had not grabbed his arms and pulled him off. Rush got unsteadily to his feet.
‘Another mistake, Hill,’ he spat, ‘for which you will pay. Hold him tightly.’ The Gibbes strengthened their grips on his arms as Rush pulled the thin blade from his stick. ‘You know what this can do, Hill. Struggle and I may miss my target. That would be unfortunate.’ Thomas ignored him and strained to free himself.
‘Very well, have it your own way.’ The point of the blade traced a circle of blood around Thomas’s left eye, then travelled slowly down his cheek. For a moment the blade was still. Then Thomas felt it cut a shape into his skin.
‘I have left you your eyes in order to do your work,’ hissed Rush, ‘but if you ever lay your hands on me again you will lose them. Is that clear?’ Thomas held his gaze. ‘Is that clear, Hill?’ Thomas blinked.
‘I shall assume that means it is. For now, you are marked with the sign of your owner. Me.’
Rush turned to the Gibbes. ‘And if he does it again, you two will pay as well. You’ll be back in a stinking gaol and next time I won’t be there to get you out. Back with your whore of a mother who’s probably still spreading her legs for that wall-eyed gaoler. Now get him out of my sight. I have work to do.’ They dragged Thomas to his hut and threw him inside. Unable even to wipe the blood from his face, he lay on the earth floor and passed out.
It was dark when he came to and struggled on to the cot. He knew he had been foolish and that Rush might easily have killed him. His face was caked in blood and one eye had closed. His back was on fire and he craved water. He seethed with hatred and frustration. Tobias Rush. Executed, burned and still alive. Tentatively, he put a finger to his face and traced the line cut in his cheek. It was in the shape of the letter ‘R’. Rush had branded him with his initial. God in heaven.
Chapter 16
THE BRUTES, THE whip, and now Tobias Rush and a face scarred by the monster’s sword. Yet if Rush was telling the truth, Margaret and the girls were in more pain and more danger than he was. And he was helpless to do anything about it. He went through the motions of cooking and bookkeeping because he had to but his mind was in Romsey. He cursed Rush with every waking hour. The traitor who had murdered and tortured, had tried to kill him and had cheated death by bribing his executioner. The gloating monster who had bided his time and then exacted cruel revenge by having Thomas indentured to two brutes as evil as he and by forcing his sister and nieces to do his bidding. One day Rush would answer for what he had done. One day.
He was in his hut when he heard a scream. It was like no other he had ever heard. It came from the direction of the boiling house and was followed by another and then another, each one exploding with agony. The screams of slaves with their fingers mangled by the rollers were not uncommon, but even at Newbury when he had watched two armies blasting and hacking each other to pieces Thomas had never heard screams like these. They were filled as much with fury and despair as with pain. He put down the bucket and listened. The screams went on and on, each as terrible as the last. He could not ignore them. He ran down the path and up the slope to the boiling house.
Outside the house a handful of naked slaves stood around a man sitting on the ground. By the time Thomas reached them, the injured man’s screams had turned to whimpers. He pushed his way through the circle of onlookers. From shoulder to wrist, the man’s left arm was covered in scalding brown sugar which had stuck to his skin like glue. Not knowing what else to do, Thomas knelt beside the man and examined his arm. The sugar had burned through the skin of his upper arm and was sticking to raw flesh. Below his elbow, where the heat had been a little less intense, the skin was torn and blistered. His right hand was streaked with sugar and skin from his arm. The man’s eyes closed and he lay down. Not one of the other slaves made any attempt to help him. Thomas looked up to see both Gibbes lumbering up from the cane fields.
‘Get back to work, you black bastards, or I’ll take the skin from your heathen backs,’ yelled Samuel, waving his whip at them. They left the man on the ground and went silently back into the boiling house. Thomas stood up and waited for the brutes to reach him.
‘What the devil are you doing here, Hill?’ demanded John, panting from the climb.
‘I heard screams and came to help,’ replied Thomas more calmly than he felt.
The Gibbes ignored him. Samuel nudged the injured slave with a boot. His eyes opened but there was no life in them. ‘Finished,’ he said. ‘Leave him there. He’ll be dead by tonight.’
‘That makes us one short for the boiling,’ said his brother. ‘I’ll fetch one from the cutting.’
‘I have a better idea. Hill came to help. Let him help. Strip off and take his place, Hill. And mind the sugar. Tobias won’t be pleased if we have to pay Sprot to take your arm off.’
Thomas stared at him. They were going to put him in the boiling house, the most dangerous place on the whole estate. They were mad. If Rush wanted Thomas kept alive, this was no way to do it. An accident with one of the copper kettles which held the boiling mixture or a nudge into the furnace and he was dead or crippled, just like the poor wretch on the ground in front of them. What indeed would Rush have to say about that?