Andrew Swanston - The King's Exile

‘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.’

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.’

‘We’ll see if you’re still saying that in November, Thomas,’ replied Margaret, knowing how much her brother hated the cold. ‘I assume we’re going to the bookshop?’

‘Where else would we be going?’

‘The shop is boarded up and it will be dark and dirty. We could spend the night in the Romsey Arms.’

‘Nonsense. We’ll soon put it in order and the girls would much rather stay there, wouldn’t you, girls?’

‘No,’ replied Polly, ‘we would not.’

‘Not if it’s dark and dirty,’ agreed Lucy. ‘Why can’t we stay at the inn?’

The reason, thought Thomas, is that in these two chests are tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of gold which I intend to keep my eye on until I can deposit it in a safe place. ‘Inns are no places for young ladies,’ he said sternly.

‘Really, Uncle Thomas,’ exclaimed Polly, ‘after four years without you, weeks cooped up like chickens on ships and the strain of looking after our mother, why do you imagine a night or two in an inn would inconvenience us?’

‘Thank you, Polly,’ replied Margaret tartly, ‘we will do as Uncle Thomas wishes.’

When the carriage reached Romsey, it turned left off the Southampton road into the street known as the Hundred, then right into Love Lane. It passed the baker’s shop where Thomas often stopped on his way back from the Romsey Arms to savour the aroma of new-baked bread and drew up outside the bookshop. The town seemed quiet and Love Lane was deserted. As Margaret had told him, the shop was boarded up, with stout planks nailed across the door and windows. Thomas jumped down and stood outside his shop. He wanted to see his books, feel their weight in his hands and inhale their leathery smells. Planks or no planks, they would find a way in.

With the help of the coachman, they managed to drag the chests off the carriage. Thomas promised him another guinea and sent him off to find four strong men to lever the planks off the door, force open the lock and carry the chests inside. He had not suffered, starved and killed, only to have the gold stolen from under his nose in Love Lane. He and Lucy sat on one chest, Margaret and Polly on the other.

The coachman was back within half an hour with four drinkers from the Romsey Arms, happy to earn a shilling each for a few minutes’ work. One of them, who carried an iron crowbar, looked familiar. When he saw Thomas he stopped and stared. ‘God’s wounds, Master ’ill,’ he exclaimed, ‘is that you? We all thought you was long gone.’

Thomas could not remember the man’s name. ‘It certainly is, my friend, alive and, I’m glad to say, home again. Now would you and your friends oblige us by opening up my shop and helping us get our baggage inside? I fear the chests are a trifle heavy.’

‘Certainly we will, sir,’ replied the man, ‘and it’s good to see you again.’ He tipped his hat to Margaret. ‘And you, of course, madam.’

It did not take long for the planks to come off and the door was barely open before Thomas was inside. He stood and stared. The dirt and dust he barely noticed — they were to be expected. What he had not expected were empty shelves. There was not a single book in the place. Not one. He shook his head in disbelief. Rush’s final act of revenge had been to steal his books. Not that he would have expected Thomas ever to know it; he must have planned to show the empty shop to Margaret.