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

reached the house Thomas was in urgent need of water. First, however, he had to carry the sacks into the kitchen and unload them while the brutes unsaddled the ponies and kicked the saddles and bridles under their beds.
    ‘Take the ponies back to the field, Hill,’ ordered Samuel, ‘then cook dinner. Roast that piglet. We won’t be far away, so don’t try anything.’
    Try what? Thomas asked himself, as he walked the ponies up the path. Even if I run, how do I escape from an island prison if I can neither swim nor fly? Daedalus’s wings? Noah’s Ark? Realizing that the heat and thirst were already sapping his spirit, he shook his head, breathed deeply and ordered himself not to despair. He would find a way.
    After a sweltering afternoon in the kitchen turning the piglet on the spit over the fire, Thomas sat outside the house and waited for the Gibbes to return from the fields. When they did, he brought out the piglet and four more bottles and left them to it.
    Back at his hut he drank from the well, washed, scraped his beard with the little knife, examined his face in the inkwell and lay on his bed. Before he fell asleep, he took the knife and cut another notch in the table. Two notches. Two days. How many more would there be?

C HAPTER 7

    SINCE THE WAR had erupted again Tobias Rush seldom left London. Travelling was dangerous and it would be all too easy to get caught up in a skirmish or attacked by a gang of clubmen. It was not that he was afraid, just that such a thing would be a nuisance. He planned carefully and disliked his plans being disrupted. From the safety of his house in Cheapside he kept himself informed by regular reports from his agents, which were much more reliable than London tittle-tattle or the newsbooks.
    For this task, however, he had no choice. He had to make this journey himself. Fortunately, his luck held and they encountered no difficulties on the road from London to Winchester and thence to Romsey. When they reached an inn on the outskirts of the town he instructed the coachman to stop and to arrange stabling for the horses and the best room available for himself. The coachman would sleep with the horses. It was always wise to have a means of escape prepared, just in case. Carrying his silver-topped cane and a slim leather case containing the papers, he walked the rest of the way.
    He had no difficulty in finding Love Lane or the shop. As much out of habit as for fear of being observed he walked up and down the lane twice before stopping to peer through the shop window. He waited outside until a customer left clutching a book, let himself in and quietly locked the door behind him. The woman sitting at the desk at one side of the shop looked up. ‘Good morning, sir,’ she greeted him. ‘May I assist you?’ But for the strain etched into her face and the tiredness in her eyes she would have been good-looking. He could see the resemblance.
    ‘On the contrary. It is I who may assist you. Are you Margaret Taylor?’
    She peered at him. ‘I am. Are you selling books?’
    Rush scoffed. ‘Do I look like a seller of books? No, I have come about another matter.’
    ‘What matter would that be?’
    ‘Your brother.’
    Margaret was immediately on her feet. ‘Thomas? What do you know of Thomas? Where is he? Is he alive?’
    ‘We will come to that. Where are your daughters?’ His tone was icy and suddenly Margaret was frightened.
    ‘With a friend. Why?’
    ‘I wish us to be undisturbed. Sit down and you will find out why I am here.’ Margaret sat. Rush picked up a book and turned it round to read the title. Then he glanced around the shop. This was a moment he had been looking forward to and he was going to savour it. He took his time until eventually he looked Margaret in the eye and smiled his thin smile. ‘My name is Tobias Rush.’
    The blood drained from Margaret’s face. She knew the name at once. Tobias Rush was the traitor whom Thomas had exposed in Oxford. The murderer of