Free The King's Exile (Thomas Hill Trilogy 2) by Andrew Swanston

then come down to the beach by the jetty. I sometimes take a bath there. Then I’ll help you up the hill with your sacks.’
    Thomas decided to take a risk. ‘Let’s go down to the beach first, Patrick. There is something I want to discuss with you.’
    Patrick looked surprised. ‘Very well. Then we’ll find a turkey and a shoat worthy of your talents in the kitchen.’
    On the beach, they stripped off their shirts and waded into the sea. Patrick handed Thomas a small earthenware pot. ‘There, try that. It’s aloe, very good for washing. It grows everywhere.’
    The aloe was indeed good for washing and Thomas, for the first time since leaving England, felt clean. ‘Now what is it youwant to discuss, Thomas?’ asked Patrick, when they were back on the beach. ‘Remember that I’m only a slave and may not have much to offer.’
    Thomas saw the twinkle in his eye and smiled. ‘I doubt that.’ He paused. ‘Patrick, I’ve been here for forty days and I can stand no more. I must escape.’
    ‘Escape from the brutes or from the island?’
    ‘Both. I must get home to my family before the brutes finish me off. I need a magistrate who will listen.’ Before Patrick could reply, there was an agonizing scream from the market. ‘Good God, what was that?’
    ‘That, Thomas, was the result of a magistrate listening to the complaint of an indentured man. The misguided wretch was sentenced to a public flogging for his trouble.’
    ‘For complaining?’
    ‘The magistrates are landowners themselves. They discourage complaints from indentured servants.’
    ‘But I have committed no crime and I am not a prisoner of war. It’s monstrous.’
    Patrick sighed. ‘Thomas, you are hardly the only indentured man on the island who claims that he was wrongly arrested and deported and that he is badly treated. It would do you no good.’
    ‘Then I must find a ship and work my passage home. Will you help me?’
    ‘Alas, my friend, even if you found a ship you would almost certainly be locked in the hold, taken to another island and sold there as a slave. It happens often.’ There was another scream from the market. Thomas put his head in his hands and tried not to scream himself. How in the name of God was he to get off this island?
    He felt Patrick’s hand on his arm. ‘Thomas, let me speak to the Lytes about you. Perhaps they can help.’
    ‘Would they? What could they do?’
    ‘Adam Lyte is a member of the Assembly. He’s a decent man and a strict upholder of the law. He might be willing to do something. At least do nothing rash until I’ve spoken to him.’
    Thomas sighed. What choice did he have? ‘Very well, I’ll try to survive until then.’
    ‘Good. Now let’s go and find your dinner.’
    Having chosen a turkey and a piglet, they loaded them with Patrick’s sacks on to his pony and set off. Much relieved at not having to carry the sacks, refreshed by his bath and allowing himself to hope that Adam Lyte would be willing to help him, Thomas took the opportunity to put to Patrick all the questions he had been wanting to ask.
    By the time they reached the turning to the Gibbes’s estate he could recognize an aloe plant, he knew that limes rubbed on the skin kept mosquitoes away, that the fruit shaped like a hand was a carambola, that the yellow fruit growing in bunches was a plantain and that the creepers hanging off the tree under which he often sat when the Gibbes were in the fields were actually its roots and that it was called the bearded fig, from which had come the name of the island. And he knew that the creatures which made such loud whistling noises at night were tiny frogs.
    He also knew that Bridgetown was the largest town in Barbados, the Assembly consisted of thirty elected members and the name of the governor was Sir Philip Bell. He felt foolish not knowing these things but, as he explained to Patrick, he had spent forty days in a state of ignorance and isolation.
    ‘The brutes do not much care for