“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.”
Chapter Five
Solomon said very little as they set off the following morning.Jed eyed him covertly, wishing he knew what to say to dispel that tight-lipped frown.But he had a feeling that, if spoken to, Solomon would snap like a frayed rope.
They made good time on the road, in part thanks to a dairyman who took them up in his cart and left them six miles further west.By mid-afternoon, the marshy Levels lay behind them, and the road climbed, slowly but steadily, under a clear blue sky.
Jed’s heart lifted as the road climbed.He had a sturdy pair of boots on his feet, coins in his pocket, and a haversack laden with food from Mrs Farley.Around them, everything was peaceful.There was no sign of the press gang in these parts.Men worked without fear in the fields.
Solomon had been mostly silent all day, but when they stopped by the roadside to eat, he asked, “Do you know Barnstaple well?What manner of town is it?A place where a man might easily find a situation?”
“It’s a fair-sized town.A river port.You’ll have no trouble finding work, by my count.”
“And the press?”
“The magistrate and aldermen are no friends of the gang.Ran them out of town, I mind, when they came pressing five or six years ago.”He studied Solomon with curiosity.“How comes it that you’re bound for Barnstaple, if you know nothing about the place?Is it your friend who’s a local man?”
“No, no more nor I am.But—we wanted to leave London, and we had heard mention of the town, and it seemed as good a place as any.”He shrugged.“What of yourself?What awaits you at journey’s end?”
Jed eyed him.Two hundred miles was a long way to travel to reach a town that most Londoners had never heard of.But he recognised Solomon’s question for the redirection that it was, and did not insist.Instead, he said, “I lived with my sister, my aunt, and her son.I expect Carrie—that’s my sister—will have took over my carrier’s route with our cousin Robert’s help.He must be nigh on eighteen years old by now.”
They both fell silent.Jed was thinking about Carrie, imagining her face when he would knock on the cottage door.How had she fared, since last they met?Perhaps she would have married.She had sometimes seemed to have an understanding with the youngest of the three brothers who had grown up in the cottage next door.
He was impatient to see her again, to lift her up and swing her round like when they were children.To tell her of everything that had befallen him, and hear all her own news.
It was a painful thing, howsomever, to have been away five years and be coming home with only a few shillings in his pockets.When he thought that the King owed him almost thirty pounds in back pay, and he’d never see the colour of it—!
But he couldn’t be downcast, not when he was so close to home.
That night, they stopped at an inn on the far side of the Quantocks.Jed had slept here before on occasion.It still had the cracked pane in one of the front windows, and the set of three gleaming horseshoes over the taproom fireplace.Jed let his hand linger on the worn wooden counter where he had often sat and enjoyed a drink after a long drive.Every day was bringing him closer to home.
And closer to the day when he would bid Solomon farewell.His heart pinched at the thought of it.
They slept comfortably that night, sharing a wide bed with an impoverished curate on his way between parishes, and woke to a heavy downpour.The yard had been transformed into a sea of dirt, and at the front door Jed met two miserable travellers tracking mud into the house.Their coats were soaked through, poor sods.
