Page 6 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

“Course we did! Scrambling over the rocks and into the cave as far as we dared.”

“Have you lived in the same village all your life, then?”

Jed nodded. “It’s a little fishing village on the north coast, between the moors and the sea. My father was carrier there before me, and his father before him. How about you? Where were you raised?”

“Oh, everywhere and nowhere. We moved around a deal. I’ve seen every part of England from the Severn to the Fens.” In answer to Jed’s obvious curiosity, he added, “My father and mother were servants to a travelling preacher.”

Jed had been hesitant to press him with questions.

He hadn’t forgotten the reaction he’d received a few hours earlier.

But Solomon seemed less reserved tonight.

Maybe he was willing to talk about everything but the circumstances of his journey.

Maybe it was the drink loosening his tongue, or maybe, like Jed, he was affected by the intimate atmosphere of their little circle of lanternlight in the darkness.

“So you’ve been all over?” Jed prompted. “You must have heard a mint of good yarns.”

“Only if you count the lives of Christian martyrs. Fiction and romance are the work of the Devil, you see. Or so I was always told.”

“Oh.” Jed had never heard of such a thing. “But, uh, now you live in London?”

“I went up to Town when I was sixteen. Wanted to see if it was all it was cracked up to be: a Den of Vice, a Pit of Sin.” He said it in a light, mocking tone.

“And did you find it to be so?”

Solomon stretched, and there was something about the movement that spoke of self-indulgence and the gratification of the senses. “I’d say so, yes.”

Jed’s low hum of arousal had subsided, but now it flared to life again. He shifted, looking away.

“London, the Capital of the World,” Solomon said musingly. “Ever been there yourself?”

“No, no. I’ve never been further nor Bristol.” He laughed, realising how daft that sounded. “On land, I mean.”

Solomon rolled over and propped himself up on one elbow to see Jed better. “You must have been halfway round the world.”

“I have, yes.” He’d seen more than he’d ever expected to in a lifetime.

It was one of the few things he didn’t regret about those five lost years.

“Most of the time, though, we weren’t allowed to leave the ship in case we should run.

I was never one of the Captain’s ‘trusted men,’ as they say.

I did my damnedest to become one—thought it would be easier to run that way. ”

“Maybe he saw right through you.”

“Mm, I reckon so.”

It was quiet in the barn, with only the scratch of some small animal—mouse or vole—scuttling across the floor below them.

“Did you always plan to run?” Solomon asked.

“Yes, always, from the moment they got me.” Jed lay back, closing his eyes.

“It weren’t the going to sea that I minded.

I grew up by the sea. But I minded being yoked like oxen to a cart.

I thought I should die of it.” Bits of hay had crept into his blanket, and he tugged hard at a stalk of it, breaking it between his fingers.

“That’s not to say that I spent five years bucking against the yoke.

At first I thought I would. I’d refuse to do anything they ordered. But everyone submits in the end.”

“Each for reasons of his own?” Solomon said quietly.

“That’s it. Fear of the lash. Dreams of prize money and glory.

And some men, I make no doubt, are truly there to fight the good fight agin the King’s enemies and all that.

At first I thought the officers were all there for King, Country, and Gold.

But it’s more complicated nor that. Ofttimes, they’re afraid too…

not of the lash, of course, but of other things.

Being cast ashore as a penniless half-pay officer, for instance.

” His voice trailed off. “Sorry. You didn’t want to hear all my half-baked thoughts.

But I’ve had a gurt deal of time for thinking, and I couldn’t open my mouth when I was aboard ship—not without being labelled a troublemaker. Or leastways, more nor I already was.”

He turned his head to see Solomon watching him with an expression that Jed couldn’t quite read. “So what was your reason?” Solomon asked.

“Oh, I was in the first group. Fear of the lash. ‘Course you don’t have to go to sea for that.”

He had seen the scars—white, faded welts—on Solomon’s back.

Much older than those which Jed knew must crisscross his own back, from the three times he’d been seized to a grating and flogged on captain’s orders.

Of course, he’d never asked where Solomon’s scars were from.

Such things were not uncommon. Maybe his father had had a heavy hand, or maybe he’d been whipped for petty theft or vagrancy in his youth, or something of that sort.

“Seems to me…” Solomon said slowly. “That there’s another group. Those that submit—only for the now. Biding their time. Until they can escape.”

Escape! It was the word that dreams were made of. Jed made a noise of agreement.

A comfortable silence fell between them. The ale jug was almost empty now, and Jed’s eyes were growing heavy. But he didn’t want to turn in; he wanted to prolong this moment.

Solomon still lay sprawled in the hay, the blanket slipping off his bent knee. The fabric of his breeches stretched tight across his thighs. His gaze was on Jed.

“You’ve no tattoos, have you?” he said. “I noticed.”

When had he noticed that? While they were stripped to the waist and washing at the pump, no doubt. A pleased shiver ran down Jed’s spine.

“No, I don’t. There’s no quicker way to identify someone as a seaman, and I always intended to run.”

Solomon’s half-smile glinted in the darkness. “And now you have.”

“Yes.”

They both fell silent. Jed shifted position so that the folds of the blanket better hid his stiffening prick.

Only the lantern and a few feet of hay-strew wooden boards lay between them. The air seemed heavy with the promise of an unasked question—or was it only Jed who felt it?

Then Solomon leaned forward to pick up the jug, breaking the tension. “Here’s to escape, then,” he said, lifting it into the air. He took a swallow and passed the last of the ale to Jed.

“To escape,” Jed echoed.

By the following afternoon, the ditch was three feet deep, water flowing down into the main rhyne, and the land all around was firm enough to walk on.

Jed tossed aside a final shovelful of mud, then threw down his shovel, straightening up. He met Solomon’s gaze and saw his own satisfaction reflected there.

“Let’s get Mrs Farley to come take a look.”

Their route back to the house took them across the open fields below the farmyard, and past a reed-fringed pond that had formed at the bend of the stream that ran behind the dairy.

They were just crossing the grassy area between the pond and the chicken coops when raised voices reached them, coming from around the corner of the dairy.

“Dreadfully sorry to impose on you, ma’am.” It was a gentleman’s voice.

Solomon stopped in his tracks, grabbing Jed’s arm.

“What—” Jed began.

The colour had drained from Solomon’s face. He dragged Jed close, pressing a hand over his lips.

“It’s the press gang,” he mouthed, almost inaudible.

Jed froze. If they turned back the way they came, they would be crossing open fields, visible to anyone who stepped around the corner of the dairy. There was nowhere to hide, unless they crouched behind the chicken coops.

The gentleman was still speaking. “…heard reports of a seafaring man living up here on your farm.”

Jed looked around wildly. His gaze fell on the pond, with its overhanging bushes screening part of it from view.

Solomon, with the same idea, was already dragging him towards it.

They slipped in among the reeds, as silently as possible, until they were standing immersed up to their waists, clinging to a tree root, hidden from view by overhanging branches of dogwood.

The bare, leafless branches offered only a small space in which to hide, and the muddy pond bed was soft and yielding. Jed almost lost his footing. Quickly, he hooked one hand around a root and the other around Solomon’s waist, pulling him in and holding him in place under the bushes.

How had Solomon so quickly known that the gentleman they’d heard was with the press gang?

But there was no time to worry about that now.

Clinging to the dogwood root, Jed strained his ears to hear what was happening in the farmyard.

The gangers must have come with a horse and cart. How many of them were there?

There came the crunching of feet on gravel, and someone rounded the corner of the dairy. He was a burly man, not in uniform. Through the branches, Jed could just make him out—and the wicked-looking cutlass in his belt. Jed stood perfectly still, Solomon’s frozen body pressed against his.

“It’s all open fields here, sir,” the man called. “No one in sight.” He disappeared from view, returning back the way he had come.

Still, Jed didn’t dare stir.

Finally, after a painfully long time, Mrs Farley appeared. With a hand above her eyes, she stood peering across the marsh with a worried air. Then she began to search around, poking through the long grass.

“Are you there, fellows? They’re gone.”

Jed let out a long, shuddering breath. He loosed his hold on Solomon, and they both hauled themselves out onto the bank. Jed found he was shivering: from the cold water or from the shock, he hardly knew.

“Are you sure they’re gone, ma’am?”

“My son followed them down as far as Baker’s Cross.

They’ve gone off back to Minehead in their cart.

” She hustled the two of them along. “Come along, come along, let me find you some dry clothes. Oh, those dogs! I thought they were going to press my Alfie, and he’s never set foot on a boat in his life. ”

She bustled back towards the house, calling to them over her shoulder to hurry up.

Jed hung back, casting a sharp look at Solomon, who was still a pasty white, and shivering even worse than Jed was.

“How’d you know that gentleman was a ganger ere he said a thing about it?”

Solomon didn’t answer.

“Come along, boys,” Mrs Farley called. “Get them wet clothes off. I won’t have you dripping on my clean floor.”

“We’ve finished clearing the ditch,” Jed said as they joined her at the kitchen door. “We were on our way back to tell you that. And now I’d liefer be gone from here as soon as may be, so—”

“Yes, yes, Alfie will go out there with you as soon as you’ve dried off a bit.

” She disappeared into the house, calling for Alfie, then reappeared shortly afterwards with blankets and old clothes.

She thrust them into Solomon’s hands. “Go on, go and change in the barn. Oh, you are drenched, poor boys!”

As soon as she’d left them alone, Jed rounded on Solomon. “How did you know it was the press?”

Solomon was staring into the distance. He hadn’t spoken since they climbed out of the pond. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck .” His knuckles were white around the clothes clenched in his fists.

Jed was alarmed. “Wait. Come here.” He led Solomon off to one side, to a quiet corner of the yard. Under his hand, the muscles in Solomon’s arm were painfully tense. “Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

“I recognised the officer’s voice. As I suppose is obvious to you.”

This was all bloody peculiar. “Had a run-in with the press before now?”

“No, no. He wasn’t even in the impressment service when I last saw him. But he was a Naval officer: a half-pay lieutenant in London, hoping for a ship.”

Jed gave him a look. “A fellow you knew in London just happens to turn up here. On the far side of the country.”

Solomon’s mouth twisted miserably.

Jed didn’t like being kept in the dark; he’d had enough of that when he was at the bottom of the Naval hierarchy. But there was something very alarming about this crack in Solomon’s usual self-possession. Jed bit his lip. “It makes me nervous to think of you being friendly with the Navy.”

“Friendly is not the word. I promise I want to avoid the press just as fervently as you do. More so, even.” He essayed a smile. “If that’s possible.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, no.” He studied Solomon’s face. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. No. I don’t want to talk about it.” He grimaced. “So… I was thinking of leaving at dawn. I mean, if we’re still…?”

Jed realised they were standing close together, his hand gripping Solomon’s arm. He dropped his hand, stepping back.

“We’re still going in the same direction. Might as well stick together on the road.”

Solomon relaxed. “All right. Good.”

Jed took the clothes Mrs Farley had given them. “Come on, I’m bloody freezing.”