London in Chains (6 page)

‘Don't look so frighted, girl! I hope you'll have no trouble, but it never does harm to take care. Now, as to what you're to do . . .' He went to one of the laundry lines and took a paper from it. ‘Have you helped to make books before?'

‘No, sir,' admitted Lucy, looking at it with some alarm. She'd imagined that books were printed page by page and that it would be straightforward to stitch them together. This sheet, however, was larger than the Bible in a parish church and it was covered on both sides in dense blocks of print. Obviously, you had to manipulate it somehow before you had pages.

‘Ah. Well, this is the first sheet. It's printed in
octavo
, which means that it must be folded to make
eight
pages, thus.' He took the sheet to the table, took a kind of bone spatula from his belt and proceeded to fold the paper, flipping it one way, then another with the edge of the blade and smoothing the creases with the flat. ‘When you've done it properly, the pages will run in sequence.' He handed her the folded sheet, and pointed out the page numbers in the corners. ‘This pamphlet is fitted to a single sheet, so there's no need of more stitching than that.'

She studied it delightedly: what he'd just done seemed like a magic trick. ‘I stitch it here?' she asked, running a careful finger down the left-hand side.

Mr Browne smiled back. ‘No.' He took the booklet and opened it out again, then picked up a box from under the table and removed a needle on a stick. He punched a series of holes along the crease of the paper, using his bone spatula as a guide. ‘You stitch it there, along the crease.'

He had her fold some sheets herself, to make sure she had the way of it, meanwhile telling her more about how to make a book. He used a lot of strange words:
folio
and
quarto
;
recto
and
verso
;
quire
and
signature
. As far as she could see, however, her instructions boiled down to folding the sheet, then punching and stitching the crease. He showed her the needles and the fine linen thread, and he watched as she stitched the first sheet – the first
signature
, it was called, once it was folded; when it was stitched it was a
quire
.

‘No need to be so careful!' he told her cheerfully. ‘This isn't a gentleman's shirt. Nobody will care if your stitches are uneven. Speed's the thing! We wanted these by the beginning of the week; if we can get them out by the end of it, you'll have done very well.'

When he was content that she could do the work, he handed her his spatula –
bonefolder
was the proper name for it – and left her to get on with it, closing the door of the carriage house behind him.

She made some mistakes folding the first few sheets and had to do them over. She also punched some of the holes in the wrong places and had to try again. The shed was unheated, too, so that after half an hour or so she had to pause every now and then to warm her fingers under her arms. Still, it was warmer work than weeding or cheese-making, and easier as well.

The pamphlet itself was more worrying. She didn't read it from beginning to end – she'd taken Browne's call for speed to heart – but she kept picking up bits of it as she stitched. It was called
A New-found Stratagem
, and the anonymous author seemed to be arguing that the Army should not be disbanded; that, in fact, the proposal to disband it was a trick, intended merely to leave the people defenceless against the tyranny of Parliament. She found herself whispering the difficult words under her breath, chewing the ideas like gristle: ‘just demands . . . denied contrary to duty, oath, and covenant'; ‘a shelter and defence to secure them from oppression and violence'. She could see why Parliament would dislike the pamphlet, but she wondered what Mr Browne and his friends thought they could achieve by printing it. Presumably Mr Browne thought he could sell it, but what were the buyers supposed to do about the disbanding of armies?

After a while she got up and walked around the shed while she sewed, partly to keep warm, partly because she was curious. The printing press drew her irresistibly: she would fold and punch a sheet, walk over to the press as she stitched, gaze a moment, then walk back to the table as she tied off the thread. She thought she could see how the machine worked: the flat part, the bed-like bit, would slide under the cider-press-like screw. The bed was covered by a sheet of canvas in a wooden frame, like a blank painting, and after a while she worked up the courage to lift it and peer beneath. There was another piece of cloth, folded; under that was a kind of frame full of words, lying on a flat stone. She tried to read the words and couldn't.

She went back to the table, vexed, and folded and punched another sheet. Everyone had always told her she read well; during her mother's long decline she'd spent hours sitting at the bedside, reading from the Bible – yet she couldn't read the words in the frame at all! She returned to the press, busily stitching, and tried again.

The letters in the frame were written
backwards
, she realized: that was why she couldn't read them! She stared at them, her tongue between her teeth:
To the rigg . . . To the right honourable the Commons of England af . . . affemd . . . assembled in Parliament . . .

It was the petition Mr Browne had brought Uncle Thomas the night before: it had been printed here, on this press. There was something wonderful about that: those printed words, as black and formal as the Bible itself, had been put on paper
here.
It was like discovering the secret of a juggler's trick.

The door banged open.

She dropped the paper she was stitching and bolted for the window; she was up on the table when a voice yelled, ‘Hey! It's only me!'

She turned back, heart pounding, and saw a young man in an apron standing by the press and grinning at her.

‘Will told me you were here,' he said. ‘The niece of Mr Stevens the mercer, he said. I'm Ned Trebet.'

Ned Trebet was not fat and old. He was about her own age, tall and sturdy, with sandy hair and long legs like a stork. His eyes were a bright blue, and they regarded her with a mixture of amusement and . . . something she didn't like. She gritted her teeth: she was going to have to lift her skirts to jump down from the table again, and Ned Trebet, damn him, would
enjoy
it.

‘Will said you were a pretty thing,' said Trebet, still grinning. ‘He didn't do you justice!'

Since it had to be done, she picked up her skirts and jumped down quickly, then gave him a cold look. The wretch merely grinned some more. Then his eyes fell on the stack of papers she'd already stitched and the expression changed. ‘You've done all that already?' he asked in amazement.

‘Aye,' she replied cautiously.

‘Why, you'll have it ready in no time!' He looked her up and down once more, then leered cheerfully. ‘I wouldn't have thought a beautiful girl
needed
to be a hard worker!'

‘Nay,' she said sharply, ‘any woman must work hard if she wishes to make an honest living, and if she's pretty, she must work twice as hard or she'll suffer ill-use by dishonest men.'

Trebet merely grinned. ‘
Use
, certainly, but
I
certainly wouldn't term it
ill
!'

‘If there's aught you wish to know, you should ask of Mr Browne,' she said pointedly. ‘For myself, I came to London only yesterday and I'm still learning the work.'

‘Aye, I can see you are a country rose,' Trebet said gallantly. ‘I only came to make myself known to you and to say that I can give you dinner.'

‘I think Mr Browne meant me to go to his house,' she replied at once. The cost of dinner in an ordinary inn would swallow up the whole of her day's wage: if Trebet was expecting her to pay, she couldn't afford it; if he was offering to feed her for free, she didn't want the debt.

Trebet, however, frowned. ‘It would be better if you didn't parade up and down the street, so that any informer watching has the chance to notice something's up. I'll speak to Will about it. No sense wasting the time, either! We need these in Saffron Walden by the week's end.'

‘Saffron Walden?' she repeated, frowning.

‘Aye. Didn't you know? They're for the soldiers. Parliament's commissioners are already on their way to the Army's headquarters at Saffron Walden and they mean to persuade the men to disband or go to Ireland. If we lose the Army, we lose all hope of a just settlement.'

The pamphlet's point suddenly appeared very clear indeed: persuade the Army to mutiny. It was confirmation, if she'd needed it, that her uncle and his friends weren't just playing: they really were engaged in sedition – and so, it seemed, was she. ‘I didn't know,' she said, feeling slightly sick.

‘
This
will make it clear to the soldiers what's at stake!' said Ned Trebet enthusiastically. ‘With you finishing it off so speedily, perhaps we should print more. I can work the press, once Will's set the type.'

Will, however, when he came to collect Lucy at noon, reckoned that there was not enough time to print more copies. Lucy wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. Disappointed, she decided: if she was arrested, another hundred copies would be neither here nor there, and at least she would have seen the press working.

Mr Browne did, however, accept Ned Trebet's offer to supply Lucy with dinner – without consulting her. ‘Generous!' he exclaimed warmly. ‘And, in truth, I think the less traffic there is between my shop and your tavern, the safer it will be for both of us. I'm obliged to you, Ned.'

‘It's a small matter,' replied Trebet modestly.

Lucy was afraid that he meant to stay and flirt while she ate, but it seemed he was busy in his tavern at dinner-time. He brought her bread, small beer and a dish of stewed beef, then excused himself and hurried back across the yard, apron flapping. She was relieved: she wanted nothing to do with lusty young men, particularly ones named Ned. The food was good, but she still regretted Browne's shop. It would have been pleasant to have some
safe
company, and she still wanted to look at the bookshop.

She stitched until the sun was low, then stopped and put away the needles and thread: she did not want to walk back to her uncle's in the dark. She was arranging the quires in stacks when Mr Browne came in to tell her she should get home before dark.

‘All of those?' he cried delightedly. ‘You're a fine needlewoman indeed!'

‘Thank you, sir,' she said, feeling herself blush at the unaccustomed praise. She knew very well that she was not a fine needlewoman: she tended to hurry, and her stitches were uneven and too large. She was just lucky that that was exactly what was required to rush out a pamphlet.

‘Tomorrow you must trim these and finish them off,' said Browne. ‘Do that before you stitch any more and we can send the first batch out. Can you come early tomorrow?'

‘As soon as there's light, sir.' She wondered if he'd pay her now.

‘Good girl!'

‘Sir,
how
do I trim them and finish them off?'

‘You . . . no, I'll show you tomorrow. But I'll give you another pamphlet tonight: have a care to study it, and use it as a guide tomorrow.'

‘Thank you, sir!'

They left the printworks separately, like poachers, and met again outside his bookshop; this time he showed her in. The shop was small and dark; it smelled of leather and dust. Liza wasn't there. The books stood in locked cases all around the walls, their dark spines barely visible through an iron grille. Lucy stared at them in fascination. She had never seen so many in one place.

‘No use looking there!' Browne told her with a smile. ‘I don't keep the pamphlets on the shelves, where any informing knave could see them! Here!' He went to a case, opened it and then knelt and swung a whole shelf out of the way. He reached down into the concealed space behind it. ‘Now, what have we?' He began pulling out stacks of pamphlets, printed on the soft, greyish, poor-quality paper Lucy had been stitching all day. ‘
Regal Tyranny Discovered
– that would do, but, mmm, this copy is most sluttishly put together.
London's Liberty in Chains
, together with
The Charters of London
– too thick. Ah!
An Arrow Against All Tyrants
and
The Oppressed Man's Oppressions Declared
– either of these would do; they're both much the same length as the
Stratagem
. Which will you have?'

‘Uh, whichever you wish, sir!' said Lucy, taken aback.

Browne weighed a pamphlet in either hand, then put one aside. He stacked the rest back in their hiding place, replaced the shelf of books and closed and locked the case. ‘Here, then!' he said, handing her the pamphlet he'd selected.

It was
An Arrow Against All Tyrants
. Lucy took it gingerly and thanked Browne again.

‘Have a care not to study it on the street!' Browne warned her. ‘Informers, remember! Keep it out of sight until you're safely home.' He got to his feet, then smiled at her. ‘Ah, but I almost forgot your wages!' He dug two large pennies out of his purse and set them in her hand, one, two: the heavy cold rounds filled her palm. She wondered if the surge of pleasure she felt was sinful. Money was the root of all evil, said scripture, but she'd worked hard all day, and didn't scripture also say that the labourer was worthy of his hire?

‘Thank you, sir!' she said, smiling.

She'd worried that she'd get lost going back to Southwark, but she discovered that the landmarks her uncle had pointed out that morning had stayed with her and she had no difficulty. It was just beginning to grow dark, and the streets were crowded again, this time with people hurrying home; jostling among them on the same errand, Lucy believed for the first time that perhaps she
could
get used to London, after all.