Free Eye of the Wind by Jane Jackson

I escaped.’
    ‘Ah.’ The foreman nodded, ‘I was wond’ring about they. Not from round here, are you? How haven’t you gone home?’
    Gabriel was ready for this. ‘Can’t. Press gang.’ The cracked sounds emerging from his throat sounded more painful than they now felt. It occurred to him then that the limitations imposed on his speech were an asset rather than a liability. For, though he was Cornish-born, he had none of the working men’s rolling burr.
    The foreman’s eyes rounded. ‘They’d take you again?’
    ‘They’d try.’
    ‘Got a name?’
    ‘Ennis. Gabriel Ennis.’
    The foreman sniffed. ‘What’s your trade?’
    Mentally crossing his fingers, Gabriel rasped, ‘I’m a carpenter.’ He dare not say shipwright. For though that was the work he had been doing in the French yards, in England he would have been exempted from the press by the need for new ships and trained men to build them. ‘I worked on a big estate.’
    The foreman scrabbled about in the clutter, picked up a broken block and two other pieces of wood, and tossed them, one after the other, at Gabriel, whose swift reflexes, honed by months surviving in an enemy country, enabled him to catch them easily.
    It was a test. Glancing at each piece as he felt the grain and assessed the colour, Gabriel felt his tension ease. ‘The block is ash. This is oak, a split treenail.’ He pronounced it “trennal”, as the foreman would have done. ‘The broken spar is pine.’
    The foreman sniffed again. ‘When can you start?’
    ‘Now.’
    ‘You got somewhere to stay?’
    Gabriel nodded.
    ‘You heard what happened last night? The thieving?’
    Gabriel nodded again.
    ‘What you got to say about it?’
    Recognising the foreman’s suspicions, Gabriel held his gaze. ‘I’d guess whoever did it was starving. A man in work has no need to steal.’
    ‘I don’t suppose you got a farthing to your name, you just back from France and all.’ He frowned at Gabriel, who met the piercing eyes and waited, saying nothing. ‘So you give me a good day’s work, and I’ll pay you tonight instead of the end of the week. We got good shops in the village. Willy Bowden’ll see you right. He’s the grocer. Mrs Mitchell run the bakehouse since her Cyrus passed away last year. Tell them Tom Ferris sent you.’
    Gabriel knuckled his forehead. ‘Much obliged.’ Those two words didn’t even begin to express his relief and gratitude. But to say more risked compromising his identity and therefore his safety.
    Tom glared at him. ‘I won’t have no trouble.’
    ‘You’ll get none from me.’
    After a long moment and another hard stare, Tom nodded abruptly. ‘C’mon then, can’t hang around here burning daylight.’ With a sniff and a jerk of his head to indicate Gabriel should follow, the foreman set off across the yard to a long wooden shed with double doors at each end currently hooked back to admit maximum light.
    Bent over trestles and wooden cradles, two shipwrights assisted by two young apprentices were shaping spars amid a thick carpet of golden sawdust and pale shavings. As he inhaled the sweet, resinous scent of pine, Gabriel recalled the Swiss forests, and fought a rush of memories both pleasant and painful.
    Maintaining his slightly stooped, self-effacing posture, he quickly scanned the big shed. Each man’s tool bag sat on the heavy bench that ran the length of one wall. Other tools – saws, adzes, and chisels – were slotted in a wooden rack above the bench. On the opposite side of the airy shed were stacked different types, shapes, and sizes of wood. The stacks were lower than Gabriel expected. Much would have gone into the hull shored up on the slipway. Presumably there was another store from which they drew seasoned wood.
    ‘Here, you two, I got another carpenter. Name of –’ He turned to Gabriel. ‘Got a head like a sieve, I have. What did you say you was called again?’
    Another test? ‘Ennis. Gabriel Ennis.’
    At the hoarse