“I gave the gangers six shillings yesterday not to press my men, then came home and found the two fools had run off anyway.Can’t blame them, I suppose.But in the meantime, my west field is water-logged.”
“You won’t find us wanting, ma’am,” Solomon said.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully.“It will take you four or five days, I should think.I’ll give you bed and board as long as is needed, and six shillings apiece when you’re done, and”—she nodded at Jed—“a good pair of old boots.What say you?”
Relief flooded Jed.“That will suit us very well, ma’am.”
They shook hands with her on it.She called for another woman, a farm servant who showed them the hayloft where they would sleep, and brought them a bowl of hot broth apiece and a jug of small ale.
They ate in one of the outbuildings, among crates of apples and sacks of potatoes.Jed wolfed down the broth, happy to have something warm in his belly.He set the bowl aside.
Solomon had already finished eating and sat sprawled on the ground, propped against one of the crates.The room was dim, the last of the day’s sunshine filtering in through cracks between the wall’s rough wooden planks.Solomon was staring reflectively into space.
Jed tapped his shoulder, and Solomon jumped, startled.For all that he had been lounging, languid, against the crate, Jed thought he was wound tight as a spring on the inside.
Silently, Jed held out the jug.Solomon shook his head, so Jed drained the last of the ale.
“I’m going to turn in,” he said, getting to his feet.
Solomon looked up at him.His eyes were unreadable in the dim light.“I want to get back on the road as soon as may be.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that head.”
He held out his hand, and Solomon grasped it, letting Jed pull him to his feet.They stood facing each other for a second, hands clasped, and then Jed dropped his hand, turning to leave the shed.
In the barn, they clambered up an old wooden ladder to a hayloft that looked to Jed like the most comfortable resting place he’d known in years: dry straw, a watertight roof, and plenty of blankets to spread on the hay.You couldn’t beat a hammock for comfort, but it came with ever-present damp and mildew, and two hundred other men packed tight around it.
In the hammock on his left, for the past three years, there had slept Bobby Lewis, a short, scrappy Welshman with a ready grin.On the right slept Little Dodd, who snored like a foghorn and who was always ready to lend a listening ear to his messmates’ troubles.They must be a hundred miles off Land’s End by now, never to cross Jed’s path again.
Solomon had already stripped to his shirt and wrapped himself in a blanket, and Jed quickly followed suit.It was now two bells in the first watch.The officer of the watch would be on the quarterdeck, and Bobby, Little Dodd and the rest of Jed’s messmates would be at the capstan, ready to race aloft the instant an order came.
“This en’t half bad,” he said, with forced cheer.“And we won’t be woken by that old peddler’s snores.”
Solomon chuckled softly.“My heart bleeds for his poor son.How he ever gets a wink of sleep, I can’t imagine.”
Jed fell asleep as soon as he lay down.He woke a few hours later to the sound of the bosun’s pipe rousing all hands on deck.He tried to jump from his hammock, and found himself sprawled on the wooden boards of the hayloft, tangled in a blanket.
For a long moment, he lay there panting, mind’s eye still blinded by confused memories of a storm at sea, a violent gale lashing the deck, the waves higher than the foremast, and that heart-stopping moment when he realised the man beside him on the yardarm had been swept overboard before his eyes—
The noise came again: not the whistle of the bosun’s pipe, but only the wind sneaking through some hole or crack in the barn below.Jed let out a long, shuddering breath.
The cadence of Solomon’s breathing showed that he too was awake.There came the rustle of blankets in the darkness as he sat up.
“Sorry,” Jed whispered.“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“It’s no surprise, I suppose.I en’t had a whole night’s sleep in five years.On watch, off watch, all hands on deck…”
Solomon made a sympathetic noise in his throat.
It was very calm and still in the hayloft, and something about the confessional atmosphere of the darkness prompted Jed to go on.
“I spent five years dreaming of escape.Vowing to escape.But my mind don’t seem able to accept that I’ve done it…” He broke off.“Sorry, you don’t want to hear about that.”
Solomon said quietly, “You won’t shake off five years in five minutes.No one could.”
Jed grunted.He was already regretting opening his mouth and making a fool of himself.
