“And was he?”Jed asked, already knowing the answer.
Wallace sounded apologetic.“No.I’m sorry.She did say, well, she thought it would probably be something of a long shot.”
Jed grunted.Emma had read Carrie’s letter.She must have known just how much of a long shot it was.It warmed his heart to think that she had tried anyway.
“But Mrs Penwick did mention something about Hugo Vaughan as might be of use to us—” Wallace broke off as Jed came to a halt, holding up a hand.They had reached the end of the street where the Blacksmith’s Arms stood.“I’ll tell you later.”
“Wallace, you want to stay here?”Solomon suggested.“Keep watch for anyone coming up from the harbour?”
Jed, Solomon and the longshoreman left Wallace hidden in the shadow of a gatepost and advanced towards the inn.To Jed’s immense relief, the wing used by the press gang seemed entirely deserted.No lights burned in any of the windows.
They pushed open the front door.The large downstairs room was empty.
“Christ, will we have to search the whole house?”the longshoreman said.Until now, he had seen no part of the building but the ground floor and the cellar.But Jed and Solomon could lead him directly to the room Vaughan used as an office.
It was a matter of a few minutes to break down the door, and then to break open the locked chest where Vaughan stored all his papers.Solomon kept watch at the top of the stairs while Jed and the longshoreman knelt to rifle through them.
Jed found what looked like a list of names, dates and ages.
“Give us a look,” the longshoreman said.He cast a quick glance over it.“This is it.There are about three dozen names here, dates going back two weeks—I think that must be everyone.”
Jed took the candle they had been using to light their way and crouched at the empty hearth to feed the papers into the flame.
“Hey, look at this,” said the longshoreman, who had continued to rummage in the chest.Jed looked over his shoulder to see the man holding up a locked money-box.
“That belongs to the Crown,” Jed said.“I’m not touching that.We’d be lucky to escape with our necks.”
So far tonight, nothing they had done had crossed the line that was sure to bring the retribution of the law down on their heads.Many other men had fought the press gang and got away with it.Jed had no intention of doing anything that might cross that line.
“You know what don’t belong to the Crown?”the longshoreman said wistfully.“That leather pouch they were putting the bribe money in.”
In the fireplace, the papers were reduced to ashes.Jed straightened up.“Let’s go.”
Emma Yates burst into the room, panting for breath, Solomon on her heels.
“That bastard Vaughan is downstairs!”she gasped.“I left Wallace outside.”
Jed blew out their candle, plunging them into darkness.He rushed to the door.The light of Vaughan’s candle was already visible in the stairwell.
He ran to the other end of the corridor, but it ended shortly afterwards in a locked door.He fell back into the office, where Solomon and the longshoreman were wrestling with the heavy wooden shutters on the window.
“What a catastrophe,” Vaughan’s voice came up the stairs.“They’ve all vanished into the night.Disappeared into the moors and gone to ground like so many rats.We’ll never find them, and who’s left holding the bag now?Yours fucking truly.”
Another man’s voice spoke in a murmur, and then Vaughan’s voice came again.
“Yes, I know, but—”
Vaughan appeared in the office doorway, accompanied by his chief ganger.He looked in a bad way: he had thrown his coat on over a nightshirt and wore no stock or cravat.His skin was grey, his expression bleak.Even in the midst of his terror, Jed felt a flash of satisfaction.Vaughan would be facing a court martial for tonight’s events.Jed had seen officers broken for less.
For a long moment, they all stood frozen, four facing two.
Vaughan’s gaze ran over them, resting on Emma for a puzzled second before moving on to eye the men with satisfaction.He looked suddenly more cheerful.
“Aha!So I’m not left entirely without something to show for tonight.What do I have here?The chief instigators of the mutiny that has caused me so much trouble tonight, hmm?I expect I can make that swing.Make you swing too, perhaps?”
“Go to hell,” the longshoreman said, though his voice was not as firm as his words.“You’re not pinning that on us.We escaped when everyone else did, that’s all.”
Vaughan wasn’t armed, but the ganger had drawn his cutlass.The two of them stood in front of the doorway, blocking the way out.Jed and the others had no weapons, not even their pocket knives.They hadn’t wanted to run through the town with billhooks or pitchforks and risk encountering a night watchman.But if the four of them rushed the doorway—
