Page 15 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

Mrs Drake’s yard was the largest and busiest in Barnstaple.

Jed, who had never aspired to own more than one cart, took a certain jaundiced interest in seeing up close the operation of such a big yard, with its strings of packhorses, three long waggons, and diverse carts.

He might almost have enjoyed the experience—had he been a visitor and not a hired man.

“You’re late,” the head yardman said when Jed and Norris returned from Heasley Mill. “Stopped for a drink, did you?”

Jed bit down an angry retort. But Norris only shrugged. “Where do you want these reams?”

Once the rolls of cloth had been unloaded and counted, and the horses stabled, Jed went in search of Solomon. He found him in the tack room, hanging up harness. Bill was there too.

“—come on, I’ll bet you have a story or two in you,” he was saying to Solomon as Jed came in. “Left London in a hurry, from what I hear at the Boar?” He winked at the two grooms who sat polishing tack on a nearby bench.

Solomon gave Bill a broad, toothy smile quite unlike the little half-smile he usually bestowed on Jed. “You shouldn’t credit everything you hear,” he said easily, but Jed could see the tension in his jaw muscles.

“So who were you running from, eh?” Bill persisted. “An angry father or an angry husband?”

The two grooms sniggered.

Bill was holding one of the large, soft rags used for drying off the horses. Jed eyed it thoughtfully, then raised his voice. “That you as left the mare with the wet legs outside, Bill? Funny way to treat the beast.”

Bill scowled, but he did turn and leave the room. Solomon flashed Jed a little smile of greeting—his real smile, not the grimace he’d given Bill.

“You nearly done here?” Jed said, stepping forward to help Solomon hang up the last of the collars. They left the tack room together.

“Thanks,” Solomon said once they were outside in the yard.

Bill had already led his horse away to the stables, and they were alone.

“I suppose it’s only natural that he should be curious—as you too must be.

Every other man in the yard but Wallace and me must have been born and raised within thirty miles of here. ”

Jed was indeed damned curious; that was no lie. But it had not escaped him that Solomon didn’t like to talk about it. “None of my business,” he said.

Solomon gave him a look, but said only, “Did you manage to see Penwick’s agent?”

“Yes, much good that it did me.” Briefly, he told Solomon what Mr Morgan had said.

“I’m sorry, Jed. That’s a hard blow.”

“Hah, you’ve said it! I would have liked to punch that sour old bugger right in his sour old face.” Oddly enough, though, the worst of his anger had dissipated now that he had told Solomon about it.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t rightly know. I reckon I’ll have to see Penwick again—or better my sister, maybe.

But I daren’t return to the village as long as the press are at Minehead, and Penwick eager to summon them at any time.

I suppose I might get someone to write Carrie a note, asking her to meet me somewhere.

Are you much of a hand at writing, by any chance? ”

Solomon shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”

They broke off their conversation in order to skirt the group of townspeople who had gathered to wait for the weekly waggon from Taunton.

“I’m still hoping to find my cart lying around in some outbuilding on Penwick’s land,” Jed said when they came together again. “Because if it’s been sold, and Bess too, there’s no chance I can buy them back.”

“You wouldn’t say Penwick should buy them back for you? Or return you their worth in coin?”

“Well, the thing is…” This was a sore point that Jed had been brooding over.

“There’s also the matter of Carrie’s dowry, you see.

We had some savings put by for her marriage, but that’s a paltry sum compared to the dowry a woman of Penwick’s class would have brung him. And if, then, I go to him cap in hand—”

Solomon murmured his understanding.

Jed made a frustrated noise. “I just want to go back to my village, dammit. Back to my old life!” He exhaled. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not the only one who’s eager for the press to leave Minehead.”

Solomon hadn’t mentioned the press gang lieutenant since they’d arrived in Barnstaple, and Jed hadn’t asked.

But now Solomon said, “He’s the reason we left London. Lieutenant Vaughan, I mean. Bill weren’t so far off the mark when he guessed we were running away from someone.”

They had reached the far side of the yard by now, a quiet corner by the feed shed, and Solomon came to a stop, facing Jed.

“Oh,” Jed said. “I did wonder. So, he’s… I suppose it’s not pure chance that brung him to this part of the country?”

“I don’t know, and I hope never to find out.”

Solomon’s voice was tight. Jed didn’t want to press him on a subject he was clearly reluctant to discuss, merely to satisfy his own curiosity. But there was one question he had to ask. “You said he weren’t in the Impressment Service when you knew him?”

“No, he was a half-pay lieutenant, hoping for a ship.” Something in Jed’s expression put a wary note in Solomon’s voice. “Why?”

“It’s only that… I’m wondering how he ended up here.

The press gang officers are all men who are washed up ashore, you know.

They call them the Yellow Admirals—because their misfortune might be catching.

So if this fellow threw away any hope of a ship and volunteered for the press gang in this district…

He must badly want to find you, that’s all. ”

There was a long silence.

“Please don’t say that to Wallace,” Solomon said finally. “He’s uneasy enough as it is.”

“All right. I won’t. Indeed, I’m sorry I’ve said it to you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me.”

The Taunton waggon, with its team of six horses, came lumbering through the main gate, and suddenly the yard was a whirl of activity. Jed and Solomon stepped in out of the way of the grooms that came hurrying up to take the horses in charge.

“Speaking of Wallace,” Solomon said in what sounded like a deliberately lighter tone. “I wanted to ask—why don’t you come have a drink with us?”

“With you and Wallace?”

“Yes. I’d—well, I’d like you to meet one another properly. He’s that curious about you. Says I talk about you a great deal.”

“All right,” Jed said readily. He liked the sound of that. He was equally as curious about Wallace—and also harboured a secret hope that Wallace might satisfy some of his avid curiosity about Solomon. “Not tonight, though. You’re leaving with the mill waggons, en’t you?”

“Yes. I won’t be back for a few days.”

“A drink, then,” Jed said. “First chance we get. And then, perhaps, afterwards, the two of us—”

He met Solomon’s gaze, and the warmth there lit an answering glow in his belly.

They were standing rather closer than was perhaps wise, and Jed was very conscious of all the people around them: the stable boys going in and out of the feed shed, the two men harnessing a string of packhorses, the old fishwife sitting waiting with a trunk and a basket.

Jed wished very much there was somewhere in this busy yard that they could slip away to.

It was only a day since they’d ducked into the bushes together on the road to the mill, but it had already become something Jed craved.

It was absurd: during all those days travelling together, he’d very easily been able to suppress the occasional inconvenient flash of desire, but now, after only a day apart, it seemed impossible to do so.

Solomon swallowed, and Jed watched the column of his throat move; let his gaze fall to the neckerchief he’d like to tug loose—

“Dyer!” the yardman called. “I’ve been looking for you. En’t you leaving in half an hour?”

Solomon stepped away. “ Soon, ” he mouthed at Jed before he left, and Jed grinned to himself.

Jed was still sleeping at the boarding house—if you could call it sleeping. The long, close-packed line of beds reminded him uncomfortably of the crowded gun deck, and the men grumbled when he woke them with his nightmares.

After yet another unsettled night, he set off to walk to Drake’s yard.

It had rained overnight, and the streets glistened in the pale light of dawn.

Seagulls flocked around a baker’s cart on the street corner, hunting for scraps that had fallen into the gutter.

Their harsh cries stabbed at Jed’s aching head.

As he crossed the street in front of the merchant’s exchange, something terrifying caught his eye: shiny brass buttons on a blue coat, and the glint of the rising sun on a sword-hilt.

He stopped short, all the breath leaving his chest. There was nowhere to run. It would be foolish to run. Insane. It would only attract attention. But how could he stand here and risk being taken as a sea-faring man?

But even as these horrified thoughts chased through his head, he realised his mistake. It was no Naval officer, but only a smart young merchant, and the sword-hilt was only a large pocket-watch he’d pulled out to consult.

Jed sank onto a nearby stone step, his hands clenching his knees to stop his fingers trembling.

What the devil was the matter with him? It was several weeks now that he’d been free of the lash. More than long enough to be done with letting every little thing spook him like a road-shy horse.

But it was a long time before he could get to his feet and go on.

The town clock was striking seven as he reached the gateway that led to Mrs Drake’s yard.

Outside the inn next door, Solomon’s friend Wallace Acton stood on a ladder, cleaning the gutters.

The dark-haired barmaid was holding the ladder, and the two of them were deep in conversation, but Wallace broke off long enough to wave a greeting to Jed.

Jed, his mind still elsewhere, barely managed to gather his thoughts long enough to return the greeting. He turned through the gateway into the yard, stomach still taut with nerves.

A carrier’s yard was the perfect place to hear the news from all across the county: three smugglers pressed out of a lugger off Ilfracombe; a seaman arrested in Exeter for killing a ganger; the Minehead press gang seen as far inland as Taunton.

The danger of the press had always come and gone in waves, with the tides of war and decisions taken up in London. But now, after years of war, it seemed to be a hot press all the time, with no respite, and Jed was suffocating.

He and Norris were taking the Ilfracombe route that morning, and Norris was already in the yard, arguing with a man who wanted to send a live goat by the train of packhorses.

“Truss it up by the legs, it’ll be very well. Sure ‘tis only a small goat.”

“No animals bigger nor a hen, them’s the rules,” Norris said. “We en’t drovers, friend.”

He cast an appealing glance at Jed, who stepped in to deal summarily with the man, sending him packing with his goat trailing after him on a length of rope.

Norris eyed Jed. “Taking out all your spleen on him, were you?”

Jed shrugged.

“Well, so long as you don’t take it out on me,” Norris said. “Come on, we’ve any number of parcels to strap up.”

As they loaded the train of packhorses with the parcels and packages for Ilfracombe, Jed’s burst of temper cooled.

“I was a bit short with that man with the goat, weren’t I?” he said finally.

“Just a bit, yes,” Norris said.

Jed ruminated on that. Something must be ailing him, for he never used to be so ill-tempered. He wished he could find the man again and apologise to him.

“Uneasy about going to Ilfracombe, are you?” Norris said. “Being just along the coast from Minehead as it is.”

Jed looked up sharply.

“Uneasy about the press gang, I mean,” Norris clarified.

“En’t you?”

“Not as such. Even if I do have the ill luck to run into the gang, I’m a carter, not a man who uses the sea.

They’ll see that clear enough. Odds are they won’t bother me, unless they be in desperate great need of men that day.

” He gave Jed a sympathetic look. “Of course, I’m not an old seaman like you. ”

Jed fumbled the parcel he was holding and almost dropped it. He put it down carefully. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, something in the way you walk, maybe. That seaman’s gait.

” At Jed’s look of dismay, he added quickly, “Or maybe I’m just imagining that.

I mean, I already had a good idea you were a seaman.

Mrs Drake’s clerk said you’d been away for years and just come back, and you’re always perking up your ears at any mention of the press gang. ”

Did he really still walk like a seaman? Surely not. Jed shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t set out to worrit you,” Norris said. “Don’t you fret your head about Ilfracombe. We en’t even going anywhere near the seafront.”

Frowning, Jed stooped to pick up the parcel he’d set down. “Let’s not dawdle here, making ourselves late.”

In the end, the trip to Ilfracombe proved as uneventful as Norris had promised, to Jed’s enormous relief. By the time they returned to Barnstaple, Solomon had left for Taunton. Jed only saw him briefly over the next few days, Solomon driving into the yard as Jed drove out.

But on Thursday morning, Jed arrived at dawn to find Solomon standing outside the office with Mrs Drake and the head yardman. Mrs Drake waved to Jed to come and join them.

“—should heal soon enough, he thinks,” she was saying as Jed reached them. “But he won’t be able to drive for another week at least, I reckon.” She turned to Jed. “Trevithick, I’m sending you and Dyer to Exeter, leaving right away.”

Jed met Solomon’s gaze. Exeter was more than a day’s journey away by the large, ponderous carrier’s waggon used on that route. They’d be overnight on the road together. The glint in Solomon’s eye said that he was thinking the same thing.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jed said, eyes still on Solomon.