The older one answered. ‘She is at the market, sir. She will be back soon.’
‘Who are you, sir?’ squeaked the younger one. ‘We should not open the door to strangers when our mother is out. She said so.’
‘I am Tobias Rush. Has your mother mentioned me?’
The girls looked at each other and shook their heads. ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ replied the older one. ‘Are you a friend of hers?’
Rush relaxed. The woman had held her tongue. ‘Indeed I am. And I shall wait here for her to return. I have an important matter to discuss with her.’ He walked around the desk and sat on the chair behind it. ‘Why don’t you come and sit beside me?’ Again the girls looked at each other.
‘You go upstairs, Lucy,’ replied the older one, ‘I will wait with Master Rush.’ Lucy did not need a second bidding. She disappeared through a door at the back of the shop and ran up the stairs. ‘May I fetch you anything while you wait?’
‘Nothing, child. What is your name?’
‘Polly Taylor, sir. If you are a friend of our mother, did you know our uncle, Thomas Hill?’
Rush suppressed a grin. The woman had done as she was instructed and told them he was dead. ‘I did not.’
The door opened and Margaret walked in carrying a basket. She took one look at Rush and immediately put herself between him and Polly. ‘Where is Lucy?’
‘She is in the bedroom,’ replied Polly from behind her. ‘Master Rush wanted to wait for you.’
‘Go and join her. I will speak privately to Master Rush.’ When Polly had gone, Margaret continued, ‘Have you brought the word?’ Rush took the torn-out paper from a pocket and handed it to her. Margaret looked at it and, satisfied, tucked it into her basket. ‘So he is alive.’
‘He certainly was when I last saw him, and being well looked after.’
‘Rubbish. As an indentured man he will be treated like a slave. It is all I can do not to kill you where you sit.’ She took the pistol from her basket and aimed it at Rush’s forehead. He did not move.
‘If you do, you will never find out where he is.’
‘I know he is in Barbados.’
Rush smiled. ‘In fact, you do not. It is true that he was taken there, but there are other colonies crying out for indentured men – Jamaica, Virginia, Grenada – and he might have been sold on to a planter in one of them.’
Margaret was horrified. Thomas ‘sold on’ like an animal and the little knowledge she had of him now in doubt. ‘Has he been?’
‘Perhaps. Why not make more enquiries? You were so clever before.’
Margaret replaced the pistol in the basket. Much as she wanted to, killing the creature would not get Thomas back.
‘Very wise.’ Rush stood up. ‘Such a pleasure to meet your daughters. Delightful children. Do take care of them, won’t you?’
Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and was gone.
Margaret went to the kitchen and wept.
Since Rush had been away London had become quieter. The war had taken its toll – shops had closed, the streets were empty and there were few vendors hawking their wares. He had been clever enough to profit from the war, others had not. Now, however, he must look for pastures new. The only serious fighting going on was in Scotland, so demand for soldiers’ woollen jackets had dried up, and land prices had yet to recover their former levels. They would, of course, and his venture in Barbados was doing splendidly. Nevertheless it was time to try something new.
When his black carriage drew up outside the house in Seething Lane, Rush ordered the coachman to return in an hour and jumped out. He was admitted at once and shown into the living room. No fire had been lit but the thin-faced man sat in the same chair in front of the hearth, smoking a pipe. ‘Tobias Rush,’ he said, without rising, ‘to what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘I have a proposition for you.’
‘And what might that be?’
Rush took the seat opposite him. ‘I have recently returned from Barbados, where sugar is making men rich.’
‘So I believe. Excellent sugar it is too. Greatly superior to the Egyptian stuff.’
‘Quite. Demand for it increases by the week. There is only one thing preventing the planters from getting even richer.’
‘And what is that?’
‘The useful life of an African slave or an indentured man is short. The work breaks them quickly. There is profit to be had from supplying them with younger bodies.’
The man scratched his chin. ‘I can see that. Boys who will adjust more easily to the work and last longer. But this is not my sort of work. What do you propose?’
‘I would prefer not to be personally involved in the harvesting. I propose that you hire a man who will assist us and that we share the profits of the venture. Do you know such a man?’
‘Perhaps. Let us discuss terms.’
For an hour they thrashed out an agreement. When Rush rose to leave, they had agreed a price he would pay for each healthy boy between eight and twelve years old harvested from the streets of London. The boys would be loaded on to a ship at Rotherhithe and held on it until the cargo was complete. Rush would arrange the transportation and disposal of the cargo in Barbados. It was a venture with great potential.
Chapter 18
THE FIRST NEWS of serious trouble came on the day of the dinner party, when Charles arrived at the Lytes’ house to find Thomas sitting in the parlour with Adam and Mary.
‘There’s been a raid on the Morgan estate in St Lucy,’ he reported, ‘a bad one. Three men killed and two house slaves with their throats cut. Three heads left impaled on stakes. Morgan was away. They took muskets and powder. One of Morgan’s men reported that there were about thirty of them, armed with flintlocks to bill hooks.’
‘It was bound to happen,’ said Mary. ‘Private militias, unguarded estates, runaway slaves. We’ve only ourselves to blame. Swearing oaths, indeed. What’s the point? Walrond’s caused nothing but trouble and trouble breeds trouble.’
‘It could easily happen to us. We must be prepared.’
‘What are you doing about defences, Charles?’ asked Adam.
‘As you know, after the rebellion three years ago I took certain precautions and I’ve posted sentries around the estate and made sure my men are adequately armed. I am content to leave matters in the hands of my steward, who is so ferocious that I suspect he was once a pirate. You’re much more vulnerable and there’s Mary to think of. These men are vicious.’
‘What do you suggest we do?’
‘I suggest that as soon as we’ve finished the excellent dinner that I can smell cooking, we make plans. Then we can get to work tomorrow. No time to lose with those savages on the loose.’
While they enjoyed Patrick’s roast leg of lamb, they talked of Walrond and the Assembly, of his absurd insistence on oaths of loyalty, of the inevitability of the island now being dragged into the war at home and of the likely effects on trade.
‘The man’s a dangerous lunatic,’ said Charles, mopping up claret sauce with a hunk of bread. ‘He’s putting it about that anyone who opposes him is plotting to murder every Royalist on the island and turn us into some form of Parliamentary tyranny. He’s even accusing Drax and Middleton of being in league with Cromwell.’
‘All he’s done,’ agreed Adam, ‘is to set landowner against landowner, freeman against freeman and servant against servant. What’s more, landowners leave their estates to take up arms and their slaves and indentured men run off into the woods.’
‘And attack the rest of us,’ said Mary. ‘What do you make of it, Thomas?’