Free London in Chains by Gillian Bradshaw

Lucy – you do the inking.’
    Inking was done with two dabs , leather balls on sticks which you rolled in ink, then blotted over the forme two-handed, as quickly as you could. Printer’s ink was thick, like set honey, and it smelled of linseed and soot. It took a full day to dry, so between dabbing ink Lucy ran around hanging up the printed sheets. She went home that evening exhausted, but at the same time satisfied. They had made something that day; turned scribbled words into a sheet that would soon be in men’s hands and minds.
    She arrived back at the house at supper-time, but when she sat down at the table, Aunt Agnes stared, then squawked angrily, ‘You’re filthy!’
    Lucy glanced down and saw that her hands were black with ink; what was worse, there were tiny splatters all over her sleeves as well. She jumped up in horror, bobbed her head at her aunt, and ran into the kitchen to wash it off before it dried.
    Too late. The ink wouldn’t come off with water; laundry soap only smeared it. She was dismayed. Ink-stained hands were one thing, but she had only two shifts.
    â€˜You’ll have to stitch yourself some oversleeves,’ said Susan, who had been eating her own supper in the kitchen with Geoffrey’s William. ‘I’m sure Mr Stevens has some old scraps of linsey you could use for it.’
    â€˜Aye,’ Lucy agreed unhappily: oversleeves might protect her shift in future, but they wouldn’t get the ink out.
    William gave a bray of laughter and leaned back against the wall. ‘Got your hands dirty, Mistress High-and-Mighty?’
    She gave him a cool look and didn’t reply. Susan slapped his arm. ‘Leave her be!’ she ordered. ‘Where’s the shame in dirtying your hands with honest work?’
    â€˜She wouldn’t dirty them on your work, though, would she?’
    â€˜As though you cared for that!’ Susan replied tartly. ‘Your grievance is that she wouldn’t dirty them on you – and for that I don’t blame her!’
    Faced with this female solidarity, William’s only reply was a grunt. Lucy smiled at Susan, who grinned back.
    She wondered if she could clean the splatter-marks by rubbing soda and ash into them and leaving them to soak overnight. That would mean she had to wear her best shift instead, but the next day was a Sunday, so she’d be wearing it anyway. She went upstairs to change.
    Lucy wanted to rinse her shift next morning, but Uncle Thomas forbade even that much work on the Sabbath. She’d forgotten that he was so strict: on a farm, where cows needed milking regardless of the day of the week, Sabbath-keeping tended to be more lax. The household – including Cousin Geoffrey and his man – went to the parish church of St Olave instead, and listened to a long sermon on a text from Jeremiah. Lucy usually enjoyed sermons – the high-flown rhetoric, the dramatic story-telling, the ingenious reasoning and heartfelt emotion. St Olave’s preacher, however, was a long-winded mumbler, and she spent a tedious two hours worrying about her shift.
    In the afternoon they walked across the bridge to visit Cousin Hannah and her husband in Stepney. Lucy had met Hannah only once, twelve years before when Thomas had taken his whole family north to meet his relations. She remembered a soft, fat, timid girl who hadn’t liked the countryside and who’d cried to be taken home to London. Meeting Hannah again, after so many years, she found her perfectly recognizable: still soft and timid and anxious. Her husband, Nathaniel Cotman, was a loud, large man at least a decade older than his wife, a mercer like his father-in-law. He engaged in a long lament about the ruin of trade; Thomas occasionally added an ‘Aye! Very true!’, while everyone else sat mute. Lucy found herself wishing for the morning: printing was a lot more interesting than the Stevens family Sabbath.
    She finally