“Do you want a room, boy?” the innkeeper asked.
I shook my head. “Just a bite to eat. Then I’ll be on my way.”
He set a bowl of fishy soup and two biscuits in front of me, and I ate it all so fast, I hardly tasted it. I drew a few coins from my pocket, and the man gave me another heaping scoop and a bit more bread. He plunked a tankard down and made to fill it, but I shook my head and slapped my hand over the rim. “No thank you, sir. Just water, please.”
He shrugged and acquiesced, but he took in my satchel and the musket slung across my back. “You looking for work, lad?” he asked.
“I’m looking to join the army,” I answered. “Is there a muster underway?”
“They will’na take you,” he growled. “Yer barely weaned, and the war is all but over. But the captain there, in the corner, he’s looking for a cabin boy.”
I turned to survey the room, trying to see to which man he referred, though I had no interest in the job. The man in the corner had his head bowed over his drink, his forearms on the table, but there was something familiar about the line of his cheek and the set of his brow. He looked up, as if he heard himself mentioned, and I turned back to the bar, avoiding his searching gaze, and finished my meal.
“You’d best be moving on, boy.” The woman named Dolly was back, wedged in beside me, but facing the bar as though she waited to speak to the barkeep.
“You don’t want a drink or a poke. That’s good,” she murmured, and once again I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me. “You’re too young for women or for soldiering. But you don’t want any part of that either.” She cocked her head toward the corner of the room. “Samson’s a mean one.”
“Samson?” I gasped.
She kept her eyes forward, and I couldn’t tell whether she was lying or if she was simply afraid.
“He doesn’t know whose side he’s on. Nobody can trust him. Plus, when you get out on the open sea, there’s nowhere to run, and no one will notice if you don’t come back to port.”
“His name is Samson?” I pressed, disbelieving, but she ignored that, speaking quickly.
“Go to Bellingham. The bounty is fair and recruits harder to come by. They’ll take you. I know the muster man; he’s a good sort. Tell him Dolly sent you.”
I took another coin from my pocket. I really couldn’t spare one, but I did anyway, sliding it across the bar to the woman. She tucked it between her breasts and moved away without a backward glance, and I did as I was advised.
But I could not leave without knowing.
The day was warm and my belly full, and I found a patch of grass where I could shrug off my pack and rest myself, watching the door of the Buzzard Inn and waiting for the man named Samson to appear.
I didn’t have to wait long. He strode out, his gait almost rolling, like he’d not adjusted to the land beneath his feet, or maybe he’d just had a drink too many.
I called out to him. “Jonathan Samson, is that you?”
He turned sharply, almost spinning around, and when he saw me and realized it was I who had spoken, he raised his hand to shield his eyes.
Had I not recognized myself in his face, I might not have believed it was him. My memories were faint and fraught with unhappiness. But he was the same tall, long-boned, fair-haired, hazel-eyed man, though his skin was weathered and his back slightly bent.
I stood up, needing my own height to steady me. I’d been warned away from him, but I was calm. Eerily so, the blood barely moving in my veins. I was not at all concerned that he would know me. He never had. He never would.
He looked at me with eyes like mine, eyes that didn’t know which color to be.
“Who are you? Are you Ephraim?” he asked. “You’re not Robert. Robert looked like a Bradford, not a Samson.”
I wore my musket across my back, and it wasn’t loaded, but he’d noted its presence. I’d said my piece and seen all I needed to see. I picked up my satchel and began walking in the opposite direction.
“Who are you, whelp?” he insisted again, angry, but he made no move to follow me.
“I am more a man than you’ll ever be,” I said, tossing the words over my shoulder. “I’ll tell Mother I saw you. She told us you were lost at sea.”
It was foolish of me. I was taunting him and endangering myself. I should have never engaged with him at all. I well knew the proverb about perverse tongues falling into mischief. I had proven it true time and again, and that day on the docks in New Bedford would come back to bite me.