Page 18 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

“Any word of the press gang in town?” Jed asked the boy at the provisioner’s yard, where he’d come to buy a tub of axle grease.

Exeter, like Barnstaple, was a river port. Jed knew its narrow streets well. But familiarity didn’t breed contempt: a port meant seamen, and seamen might meant the press gang, for Exeter, unlike Barnstaple, didn’t have the advantage of a local magistrate hostile to impressment.

The boy pulled a face. “They pressed four men out of a tavern on the quays last week, I heard tell. But that was a gang from a ship anchored out in the Exmouth, and it’s since sailed, I expect. You want anything else with that axle grease?”

Jed shook his head. He hoisted the wooden tub onto his shoulder and set off through the streets of Exeter, back to the place where he had left Solomon and the waggon. They had arrived in town earlier that afternoon, and he’d been looking over his shoulder ever since.

He was in a narrow lane under the old city wall, uncomfortably close to the coal quays, when he heard a commotion up ahead.

Around the corner marched an adolescent midshipman in uniform, followed by a gang of burly armed men. In their wake came a group of angry women, shouting and throwing stones. They fell back whenever one of the gangers turned to brandish a cutlass at them, then surged forward again.

Jed froze, fear choking off his breath. The lane was almost deserted. A few yards ahead of him, another man ducked prudently into a doorway. But Jed had nowhere to hide.

He knew better than to run; he’d only draw attention to himself. After a moment of frozen panic, he set down the tub of grease and crouched over it, turning his back to the gangsmen. Head bent, he fiddled with the wooden clasp that held the tub closed. His heart thudded in his throat.

Marching footsteps grew nearer. Then they stopped. Jed held his breath.

“In here, men,” the midshipman cried. “The bosun must have cut off the other entrance by now.” And Jed looked up to see the gang pile into the doorway of a grubby little alehouse, the women following.

An eery hush filled the lane. No one else was in sight.

Slowly, Jed straightened up, light-headed with relief. With shaking hands, he picked up the wooden tub and hurried back down the lane the way he’d come.

When he finally reached the waggon, after taking the long way round, he found Solomon in conversation with a matronly woman, five children clustered about her skirts. Solomon’s eyes widened when he saw Jed’s face.

“You go ahead and get the children settled,” he told the woman. He ushered the whole family towards the waggon, then drew Jed to one side. “What happened?”

Jed grimaced. “Ran into the press gang.”

“What?”

“Gave me quite a turn.” His voice was coming out gruff instead of trembling, thank Heaven. “They’re probably dragging some poor buggers off to sea as we speak.”

“You all right?”

“Yes, I’m all right.” Jed wiped a hand over his face. “It, uh, it weren’t the gang from Minehead, I don’t think. Weren’t the same officer, anyroad.” Maybe they’d come off a ship anchored off Exmouth. “Christ, the whole country is infested with them.”

Only now was it sinking in. He’d run into the press gang. He’d known it was a risk, of course, coming to Exeter. But thousands of men lived out their whole lives in the town without ever getting pressed.

He stood motionless, stricken dumb.

Solomon took the tub of axle grease from his hands. “I’ll put this under the box,” he said briskly. “You get that cider on board”—he nodded at the barrels as he spoke—“and I’ll see to the passengers.”

Numbly, Jed did as he was bidden. As he was loading the last barrel, someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he jumped two feet into the air.

It was the clerk Mrs Drake employed to take parcels and sell tickets at this end of the route. The man gave him an odd look. “Another parcel just came in at the last minute,” he said, holding it out. “And here’s the waybill.”

Jed stared at him blankly, his heart still pounding.

Solomon stepped up. “There’s space for that under the box,” he said, taking the parcel. He murmured in Jed’s ear, “We’ll be out of here in less than ten minutes.”

And, thank Heaven, so they were.

“I tried to run twice in my first month,” Jed said. He still had the scars from the floggings on his back. This morning, Solomon had traced them with his fingers. “Then I settled down to plan my escape properly. Learnt to swim. Squirrelled away money and supplies.”

It was dusk, and they were sitting on a fallen log at the edge of a field a stone’s throw from the inn where they’d stopped for the night.

They had nine passengers in the waggon for the return journey from Exeter: two farm servants, a down-on-his-luck clerk, and the matronly woman with her five children.

And all of them had announced their intention to sleep in or under the waggon overnight, to Jed’s frustration.

At least he and Solomon had managed to slip away together for a few minutes to sit here in this quiet, out-of-the-way place.

“You were five years at sea, I mind?” Solomon said. Their shoulders were pressed together, and Solomon was warm and solid against him.

“Yes. Something always happened to stop me running. Shipwreck sent my savings to the bottom of the ocean once. Then we spent a year on blockade without ever coming within ten miles of the shore… Sometimes I was so miserable I just wanted to jump and swim to shore, any shore, even if it meant years in a French or Dutch prison.”

The words were pouring out of him now.

“When we made sail for England last summer, I thought we’d be paid off.

I could see Portsmouth from the ship’s deck.

Could see the smoke rising from the chimneys.

But we were turned over directly from the Canterbury to the Nonsuch without being let set foot ashore.

Then the Nonsuch was ordered to Bristol, and we learnt as how we’d be sailing for the East Indies again. ”

Bile rose in his throat at the memory of how it had been, the horror that had settled over him when he realised he was leaving England once more.

“So I knew I had to jump before we were clear of the Severn. Left behind everything I’d prepared, everything that would weigh me down in the water. The landsman’s garb, the trinkets I’d thought to pawn… everything. I just jumped. I didn’t care if I drowned.”

Between them, hidden by their voluminous carter’s smocks, Solomon had slipped his hand into the crook of Jed’s elbow, and now his fingers tightened on Jed’s forearm. “But you didn’t. And now you’re free.”

“Yes.”

The trees’ long evening shadows darkened the field, chilling the air. In the distance, a fox barked. Jed shivered, his old fears painting a cold trail down his spine.

But, as Solomon said, now he was free. He managed a grin. “Could’ve been worse. At least I came ashore in a place I knew well. Unlike yourself, lost in a part of the world you’d never before set foot in.”

“I was lost, sure enough. But it en’t strictly true that I’d never been in Somerset. I think I must have crossed the county at least once, as a baby, for I know I was born in Barnstaple.”

Jed stared at him. “You were born in Barnstaple?” His voice sounded odd to his own ears.

“Well, yes. But I was a babe-in-arms when my parents left town.” His voice trailed off at the sight of Jed’s expression. “What’s the matter?”

“Just… you never mentioned.”

“Well, maybe not…” Solomon sounded uncertain now. He loosened his arm, drawing back from Jed to better see his face. “What of it?”

“Nothing. It’s not… Only that sometimes I think I don’t know you very well.”

There was an odd silence.

Jed thought Solomon was going to brush it off with a smile and a lightly spoken quip. But then Solomon said, “I think perhaps… it has become a habit with me to guard my tongue, in recent times. I didn’t mean to take that out on you.” He paused. “What would you like to know?”

“Nothing. That is, I didn’t mean…” Frustration made Jed’s voice come out louder than he intended. Deliberately, he broke off. It was surely the height of stupidity to say he didn’t know anything of a man who’d lain naked under him a day earlier. “I spoke without thinking.”

“My parents were followers and servants of a travelling preacher,” Solomon said.

“I think I’ve mentioned that before now.

They left Barnstaple to follow him. My father was his manservant, and my mother kept house for him as he travelled about from town to town.

He drew crowds of thousands everywhere he went.

People would flock from miles around to hear him preach. ”

This wasn’t what Jed wanted to know. He wanted to know what made Solomon tick, not what manner of life some old churchman had led.

He wanted to know what put the nervous tension in Solomon’s face, and what could take it away.

How long he could hope to go on enjoying Solomon’s company, and whether Solomon thought about that too.

“Good preacher, was he?” he said instead.

“I suppose.” Solomon’s lips twisted in a wry smile.

“I reckon many of them were there for the entertainment of it. He knew how to rouse a crowd. Fire and brimstone and the Second Coming. Better nor a play, I’m sure.

” He shrugged. “I don’t rightly know what the crowd thought of him… We weren’t allowed to talk to them.”

“We?”

“His inner circle. His twoscore and ten most faithful followers. We were forbidden to speak to people outside of the Converted.”

Jed blinked. That sounded downright miserable—and not a little strange.

“I’m not one of the, ah, Converted,” he pointed out. “But then, you said as how you left when you were sixteen.”

“I did say that,” Solomon agreed. Surprise tinged his voice, as though he didn’t realise that Jed had noted and memorised every scrap of information Solomon had ever let slip.