Page 32 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

The cart jerked to a halt. Seagulls wheeled overhead, and the brine of the sea was sharp in Jed’s nose. He sat squeezed between two burly gangers. He couldn’t see Solomon, who must be somewhere behind him in the overcrowded cart.

Solomon. Jed let his mind turn to the thought, like probing a painful tooth.

He probably would have been pressed anyway, trapped in the hayloft as he was. But perhaps he could have lain silent. Perhaps he could have escaped.

Jed didn’t grudge Wallace his freedom. But he could not forget the way his heart had turned over at Solomon’s words. The gut-wrenching shock of betrayal.

He heard the midshipman’s voice, shouting to someone down on the beach. “What the devil happened to you three?”

Three voices answered at once. “We were set upon—We’ve been waiting for you, sir—Hardy is injured sir.”

“Silence! One at a time.”

“We found the seaman as expected, sir, in the house with green shutters, and took him away with us. But then a mob of his friends set upon us on the road and spirited him away.”

“I took a pitchfork to the shoulder,” an aggrieved voice piped up.

Jed, stuck in the cart, felt a flash of envy of this unknown seaman who was so fortunate in his friends.

“And then the driver you hired said this was more nor he was paid for, and he drove off without us.”

One of the gangers in the cart muttered, “This part of the country is getting too hot to hold us.”

“Silence,” the midshipman bellowed. “Bothwell, signal the schooner and have them send us a boat.”

The prisoners were dragged from the cart onto a sandy path leading down to the sea. Two gangers kept a tight hold on Jed. Solomon tried to get closer to him, his feet slipping in the sand, his body thrown off balance by the hands tied behind his back.

“Jed,” he called. “Listen—”

But the gangers dragged them apart. “No conspiring.”

The press gang had set up their Rondy at the Blacksmith’s Arms in Minehead. The tender anchored in Minehead harbour, and the prisoners were brought ashore. There were nine of them now: there’d been five longshoremen already imprisoned in the hold.

Jed had been identified as a troublemaker, and was kept under even closer guard than the others during the march up through the town.

Five years ago, he’d been terrified. He’d had no idea what was going to happen to him.

Now, dread sat heavy in the pit of his stomach.

He already knew what came next: temporary imprisonment in some convenient cellar, a cursory examination by a surgeon who was paid a shilling a head.

And then transfer to a receiving ship and off to sea, until the war ended or he died, whichever came first.

He absolutely must escape before he was sent to the receiving ship.

At the Blacksmith’s Arms, the gang had taken over one wing of the large and rambling inn. Outside the main room on the ground floor, two Marines stood on guard. Jed’s heart turned over. It was months since he’d last seen those hated red uniforms.

This was it. He could feel himself being dragged, powerless, back into the groaning, creaking, grinding machine of the Royal Navy. The machine that forced you to surrender all control, or be crushed.

Between the heads of the prisoners in front of him, Jed saw Lieutenant Vaughan at a table, an open ledger before him. As the first prisoner was pushed towards him, he dipped his pen in an inkpot, hardly glancing at the man. “Name, age, place of birth?”

Behind Jed, two of the longshoremen were conducting a low-voiced conversation.

“Should I give my real name?” one whispered.

“You should if you want your family to know what has become of you,” the other whispered back. “Collect your wages, too.”

The prisoners shuffled forward one by one. Jed was the next man to reach the table.

“Name, age, place—” Vaughan’s gaze fell on Jed and he broke off, upper body tensing and then relaxing as though he had only just managed to avoid leaping to his feet.

The midshipman stepped forward. “Got two of those men you put a warrant out for, sir. Found them quite by chance at a little inn on the Barnstaple road.”

“So I see,” Vaughan said, in a voice so calm that Jed suspected he was suppressing some strong emotion. He looked over Jed’s shoulder at Solomon. “And their accomplice? Tall, fair-haired, broad-shouldered?”

“?‘fraid not, sir. No sign of him.”

Vaughan’s lips tightened. His gaze flickered around the room, doubtless taking in all the listening ears. Jed wondered what tale Vaughan had spun to explain why he was looking for them.

“Seems this one’s an able seaman, sir,” the midshipman said, indicating Jed.

“An able seaman, you say?” Vaughan addressed himself to Jed. “What ship?”

Bugger off, was what Jed wanted to say. But he knew the consequences for talking back to an officer, and he’d had five years of practice at holding his tongue. He pressed his lips together.

Vaughan raised an eyebrow. “You won’t get very far in the Navy with that attitude.” He picked up his pen again. “Name, age, place of birth?”

Jed hesitated. If he didn’t give his real name… But no. It didn’t matter, because he would die before he let himself be pressed again.

He said nothing.

Vaughan scribbled a line in the register, saying out loud, “John Jones, thirty years old, born in Taunton.” He signalled to one of his men. “Take him away. Next!”

The cellar stank of piss and acrid, fear-tinged sweat, the air barely stirred by the draught from the tiny, barred window high up in one corner. There was no furniture. The dozen men held in these cramped quarters were sitting or lying around on the damp earthen floor as best they could.

One lay curled up in the corner, sobbing and hiccuping. Another man, a scrawny, pock-marked fellow, rose every ten minutes or so and climbed the stairs to pound on the cellar door, shouting, “This is all a mistake! I shouldn’t be here.”

“You might as well save your breath, friend,” one of the other prisoners said wearily. He was a longshoreman, one of the five who’d come in the tender with Jed. They’d been snatched from a harbour further along the coast earlier that day.

Jed sat propped against the wall near the stairs, eyes closed, legs bent to avoid the man lying stretched out by his feet.

He had choked down a slice of dry bread the longshoremen had given him, and now he had nothing to do but wait.

The rope around his wrists had been cut, and the raw skin there stung, but not badly enough to distract him from his more serious problem.

“How long do you think we’ll be here?” one man asked.

“Until a ship is ready to receive us,” Jed said. “Maybe today, maybe a week from now.”

“You’ve been through this before, have you?” one of the longshoremen asked.

Jed nodded, and they all stared at him as though he were a fount of wisdom.

“What kind of life is it? Is it true they make you swab the deck every day? Is it true they bring women aboard in every port? Is it true they flog you at the drop of a hat?”

Jed only shook his head. He could not bear to think or talk about that just now.

“At least you get paid,” said one man, a half-starved-looking creature who was probably a volunteer.

Jed let out a bitter laugh. Yes, about two years late, he thought but didn’t say. There was no need to sink the poor wretch’s spirits; he would learn soon enough. Jed himself had only ever received a quarter of the pay that should have been due to him.

“Let’s say, at least you’re well fed,” he said aloud.

There was no sign of Solomon. Was he with Vaughan? Was he in danger? Despite his resolution to avoid thinking about Solomon, Jed felt a pang of sharp, painful worry.

“Did they offer any of you fellows the bounty?” one man asked the room at large. “I heard that’s what they do—let you agree to be a volunteer, and then go halves with you on the bounty. I have to say, I’d go for it.”

“No, but they said they’d let me go for ten pound,” another said.

“Ten pound! They asked me for twelve, the dirty bilkers. Not that it makes any difference one way or the other, for I haven’t even ten shillings to my name.”

“I heard they only give bounties for quota men,” another voice piped up.

“No, that en’t true—”

An argument broke out over the question.

Jed closed his eyes. He needed to plan when to make a break for it.

He knew he’d only get one chance at it; he’d already been labelled as someone to be closely watched.

Should he run when they took him out to be seen by the surgeon?

Or wait till they were marched back down to the harbour?

That way he could disappear down some lane or alley in the town.

He knew Minehead fairly well: it was only twenty miles along the coast from Ledcombe, and he’d come here in his carrier’s cart every Monday and Thursday.

Or maybe he should have tried to run already. Maybe it was already too late. He shifted restlessly, his fingers digging into the damp earth he sat on.

The cellar door opened, and two gangers came through. One of them stayed at the top of the steps, brandishing a drawn cutlass, while the other held up a lantern, shining it here and there in the room, peering at each man’s face. He stopped when he found Jed.

“That’s him. Come on, my lad, you’re coming along of us.”

In one of the upstairs rooms, Lieutenant Vaughan sat behind a small table that served as a desk. Solomon stood nearby. He had no guard, but his hands were still tied behind his back. He tried, unsuccessfully, to catch Jed’s eye.

The room had been turned into a makeshift office. Scattered across the desk were sheets of paper, an inkpot, an officer’s bicorne, and the remains of a fish pie. In one corner stood a locked chest and two valises. In another there lay coils of rope, hemp sacks, and other odds and ends.

“Leave us,” Vaughan said to the men who had brought Jed.

“You sure, sir? This devil almost took our heads off when we pressed him.”

“Very well. Tie him to the chair.”