‘Quite so. You are, however, nearly twenty-one, and it’s time you found a husband. Do you have anyone in mind?’
Mary looked up sharply and saw the twinkle in her brother’s eyes. ‘Possibly, Adam. I shall give the matter thought.’
Over the following days, Polly and Lucy, as he expected they would once they were comfortable with their uncle again, demanded to know every gruesome detail of Thomas’s voyage and of his indenture to the brutes.
‘Was the red one really uglier than Cromwell?’ asked Lucy, when they were sitting in the parlour one morning. ‘He must have looked like a pig if he was.’
‘He behaved like a pig too,’ replied Thomas, ‘and so did his brother. And they were a good many other things besides. I made a list of all the adjectives I could think of to describe them. Here it is.’ He took the torn-out page from the ledger from his pocket and passed it to her. Both girls studied it, laughing at some of the words.
‘What does “carnivorous” mean, Uncle Thomas?’ asked Polly, looking up from the page.
‘Oh, come now, surely you know what carnivorous means. Have you learned nothing while I’ve been away?’
‘Of course we have,’ said Lucy.
‘What about carnivorous, Uncle Thomas?’ asked Polly again.
‘Meat-eating. Like a wolf.’
‘Or a brute.’
‘Exactly. And since you have learned nothing in the last three years, I shall take the opportunity presented by our voyage home to repair at least some of the omission. We will study mathematics, English and Latin. It will help to pass the time on the ship.’
Both girls groaned. Uncle Thomas alive and well was one thing; mathematics, English and Latin, quite another.
One week later, at exactly midday, the ship on which Thomas, his family and two sturdy chests full of the Gibbes’s gold were to sail to England raised its anchor and began the long voyage. Among those waving them off was Francis, Lord Willoughby of Parham, who had recently stepped down as governor of Barbados. Lord Willoughby had happily agreed to Adam Lyte’s request for two letters to be written and signed by his lordship, and presented to Thomas Hill.
The first gave a brief account of the valuable services Thomas had performed by decrypting the intercepted message and by sending word that it had been settlers, not soldiers, who had arrived at the island. This letter he recommended Thomas keep safely until the day England again had a king. The second letter officially recorded the deaths of Tobias Rush and Samuel and John Gibbes and granted Thomas immediate release from his indenture.
Adam and Mary Lyte were there and so was Charles Carrington. After much embracing and bidding of farewells, they stood on the quay and watched the ship raise its anchor, cast off and sail slowly out of the harbour. Thomas had promised to write to confirm their safe arrival, Mary had instructed Margaret to find Thomas a wife before the year was up and both Polly and Lucy had begged to be allowed to stay in Barbados to marry Charles Carrington. Thomas shook hands solemnly with Adam and Charles before embarking. ‘Let us hope,’ he said, ‘that when we meet again, England is at peace and the king has been restored to his throne.’
‘When the king is restored to his throne,’ replied Charles, ‘you may be sure that I shall be there to see it. Perhaps, by then, with Mrs Carrington.’ Thomas looked at Mary and raised an eyebrow.
Having stowed the two chests safely in his cabin and settled the girls into theirs, Thomas and Margaret returned to the deck to watch until first the harbour and then the coastline shrank and finally disappeared behind them. It was a time for tears and sentiment but Thomas found he could manage neither. Barbados had been his prison. After four years he was going home and he had much to do. There was nothing to be gained by looking backwards. But as he stood there, Montaigne whispered in his ear once more. ‘Take care, Thomas. Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.’
‘I shall take care, monsieur,’ replied Thomas silently, ‘particularly not to put my name to any more pamphlets.’
Epilogue
A LITTLE OVER five weeks later, their ship passed the Lizard and began to make its way up the Channel. The Atlantic voyage had been swift and uneventful, their captain having made good use of the prevailing westerly winds and no other sail having been sighted until they approached the Scillies.
The lessons in mathematics and Latin had lasted a week and then been abandoned in favour of reading and story-telling, and the girls had amused themselves with drawings of Tobias Rush, whom they called ‘The Crow’. For these, they used paper taken from the ship’s log and supplied by the captain, and charcoal from the ship’s cook. They had also learned how to tie a reef knot, a clove hitch and a running bowline, and Thomas had remarked proudly to Margaret that if the voyage had been any longer they would have taken over the navigation and steering.
Thomas and Margaret stood on the larboard side and watched the hazy coastline of England pass by. ‘From half a mile out to sea, it looks peaceful enough,’ remarked Thomas. ‘Serene, even.’
‘Would that it were. But since the latest news we have is more than six months old, who knows what we shall find?’
What they found as the ship made its way up Southampton Water early on a beautiful May morning was a bustling port with a dozen vessels anchored in the harbour, their cargoes of sugar, spices, livestock, timber and tools being loaded and unloaded in a chaotic muddle of noise, movement and smells. No visitor from a distant land would have guessed that England had been suffering from years of bloody civil war.
While they waited for their ship to manoeuvre its way to a berth, they watched screeching gulls swooping, grunting seamen lowering barrels and crates down from deck to quayside and ill-tempered carters cursing them for their carelessness. Their ponies stood quietly in their traces, depositing their dung where they stood and adding its stench to the rich mix of salt, fish and sweat.
Having made sure Margaret and the girls were safely ashore, Thomas supervised the offloading of their baggage, most of which had been crammed into the two chests which held the Gibbes’s gold – a fortune in guineas, guilders and louis d’or. If the brutes had accumulated this much, how much more had Rush taken and what had he done with it? Thomas had known from keeping the ledgers that the estate was turning them all into Midases; what he had not known was how much gold the brutes had tucked away before he arrived. Not that it mattered; he had more than enough to do what he planned.
The chests were heaved off the ship by four struggling seamen and loaded on to one of the carriages waiting to take returning passengers home. Thomas agreed a steep fee with the coachman and the ladies were handed up to make themselves as comfortable as they could for the journey to Romsey. Before joining them, Thomas took a last look round the harbour. Among the piles of rope and mountains of barrels a small group of merchants stood waiting for their goods to be offloaded. An image of the group he had seen the day he left sprang immediately to his mind. He could not have known it then but now he was sure. Tobias Rush, black cloak around his shoulders and black hat pulled low over his face, had been one of them.
The road from Southampton to Romsey followed the river Test for most of its eight miles. While the girls, tired and cross from weeks of travelling, squabbled over the ropes they had been given by the captain for practising their knots, Margaret and Thomas watched the Hampshire countryside pass slowly by. The Test shone in the morning sun, the fields were shades of green and yellow and the oaks were in full leaf. ‘There’s nothing quite like it, is there?’ mused Thomas. ‘I missed the seasons, even the frost and the snow. One can have too much sunshine.’