From the Charred Remains (6 page)

“Ten pounds! Oh no, sir, I couldn’t take such a sum! It is too much.”

“No, it is not nearly enough. Call it a dowry if you like, or perhaps a way to begin a living. Perhaps you will wish to pursue the apprenticeship with Master Aubrey in earnest. Printing is a noble profession, to be sure. How about I hold it for you, for a while, until you are ready. I should not like you to carry such a sum upon your person.”

“No, sir, no indeed, sir. Thank you, sir,” she said, her words stumbling over themselves as she tried to express her heartfelt gratitude. Ten pounds would set her up in trade or, as he said, certainly set her up with a comfortable dowry. Tears pricked at her eyes, as she regarded the magistrate in awe.

He patted her hand. “It’s alright, Lucy, I understand.” He smiled again, this time more sadly. “I have something else for you as well.” He seemed more reluctant. “My wife’s clothes, I’d like you to have them. Perhaps save a dress or two for Annie, now that she’s older.”

Lucy’s eyes widened. His late wife, the Mistress Hargrave, had exquisite taste in clothes. Such a bequest! She’d look very fine for sure. Her thoughts flew to Sarah, the magistrate’s daughter. Hesitantly, she asked, “Shouldn’t Sarah inherit her mother’s clothes?”

A shadow passed the magistrate’s face and in that glimpse, she could see that he had not forgiven his daughter for joining the Quakers. For disobeying the law. For leaving England. For disobeying him. “Quakers do not wear fine linens or taffeta,” he said stiffly. “I’ll not have her selling them to promote their
cause.
”

“Thank you, sir,” she said hastily, vowing, in that instant, to never take her mistress’s clothes. “I’ll collect them another time.”

At the door she smiled again at Master Hargrave, but could not speak. He nodded and bid her good night.

*   *   *

Standing at Master Aubrey’s shop the next morning, Lucy watched as the printer and his apprentice laid out a great shallow wooden box and set it on the large table between them. The box was sectioned into a hundred different compartments, with each compartment containing an assortment of tiny metal blocks.

“This is the typecase,” the printer explained. “This box contains the font we are going to use for this folio. We are only setting eight pages, so it should not take very long.” The printer gestured toward a tray. “Pick any letter out, look at it. Ah, do you know what that is?”

Curiously, Lucy looked at the tiny metal piece she had selected at random. It did not seem to be a letter at all. “I don’t know the word for it. I know it means ‘and.’”

“That is an ampersand. There are several others too, like these,” he gestured to the bottom row, “which I mainly use for texts in Latin.” He went on. “You’ll see that I have already set the title, using roman type, thirty-six point. I put spacers, these blank ones here, between every word, with two spacers between each sentence.”

To her surprise and delight, she read the title.
The London Miscellany.
Underneath, in slightly smaller text, she read
From the Charred Remains, a Body found among the Flames.
He had moved the other pieces so this would be the first story seen. He was willing to believe, sight-unseen it seemed, that her true account would be good enough to print.

Then a shiver of fear and excitement wafted over her when he held out his hand. “Let me see the true account now.”

Nervously, she watched the printer read her words. From time to time he grunted, but didn’t say anything out loud. Finally he gave her a gruff nod. “A little long, but we can work with it.”

Lach scowled. Clearly the apprentice was none too happy that his master had taken someone new on. Lucy wanted to say something about how pleased and honored she felt, but the printer held up his hand. “That’s enough, Lucy,” he said. “I’m a busy man and we need to get this finished. So I beg you to pay attention and be silent. The quicker you will learn.”

He turned the pamphlet over, half explaining, half thinking out loud. “Here, I’ve added the poem, discovered with the body, on the last page.” He continued, “The first letter of every paragraph will begin with a larger size. For words we wish to emphasize, we will use italics. This will be in twelve-point roman. Like so.”

He proceeded to rapidly lay the text into a small box he held in his left hand. “Notice that I am putting the letters in—”

“Backward!” Lucy interrupted.

Master Aubrey beamed at her. “Quite right,” he said, cuffing Lach lightly on the ears. “Took this one a while to get that straight. Just lay them in each row, keeping your thumb below. This will keep them in place until you fill in with larger spacers. The side that will be inked is called the ‘face.’ Now, Lucy, go ahead and read your account. I’ll put it in as you speak, and Lach will work on the back page with the poem.”

Watching their practiced hands fly, placing the tiny letters into the wood blocks, Lucy was amazed. Although she still felt a hard lump in her throat from her conversation with Master Hargrave the night before, the excitement of seeing her words built line by line was pushing her sadness aside.

For the next few hours, they worked steadily. From time to time, the printer would shake his head. “No, that won’t work,” he’d say. “That line needs to be shorter.” Once he stopped and stared at her. “I can little believe you wrote these words.” But mostly she would read each word and he would build it into place without speaking.

Lucy’s throat was parched and dry, but she did not dare ask Master Aubrey for a break. The printer seemed excited, as if he couldn’t wait to finish the piece and sell it. Like the printer, Lach never let his fingers stop moving, setting part of the middle document, although from time to time he directed a baleful glance toward Lucy. She supposed that they usually stopped when necessity called.

The
Miscellany
was quite long now, but no matter. At last, they were done setting the type. Master Aubrey let Lach run out back to piss in a pot by the door, and began to dab black ink onto the letters himself with a soft leather pad.

When his apprentice returned, together they placed the paper onto the typeface and lowered the lid while Lucy watched. Pushing a great lever back and forth, the two men finally stopped. With great excitement, Lucy watched them open up the press. There was the first page. “From the Charred Remains,” and a woodcut of the Great Fire. The woodcut had already been used in the L’Estrange piece. As she had learned a year ago, it was common for printers to use the same images repeatedly, once they had asked an artist to carve the block. Reusing the pieces saved both money and time.

After a quick lunch of bread, cheese, and mead, the three continued. They finished the four sheets and hung them to dry. By early afternoon, they had cut and folded the first few. They were ready to sell.

Master Aubrey stepped outside of his shop with Lucy and Lach following, the latter scowling. The printer began his customary call. “A murder! A true and most terrible account of a barbarous murder committed before the Great Fire. From the Charred Remains, his corpse emerged from a malt barrel.”

Within a few minutes, a crowd had gathered eagerly. Remembering what Master Aubrey had said about the presses being delayed by the King, many townspeople, milling toward the market, seemed eager for a new story. And as Master Aubrey liked to say, “Everyone loves a good murder.”

After they’d read it once, the crowd was clearly growing. Those toward the back clamored for the story to be read again.

Lucy was quite surprised, though, when the printer put his arm around her shoulders and proclaimed to the crowd, “This fair lass here was the one who did find the body. A foreigner from a far-off land! Found with a poem, now printed on the back sheet.”

People oohed and ahhed, eyeing her curiously. Londoners’ natural cheerful morbidity began to show. “Tell us, lass, was he truly stuffed in a barrel? A knife through his chest?” one called out.

Lucy nodded.

“Was there a lot of blood?” another asked.

“Of course there was, you idiot,” another crossly answered. “What, think you that a knife in the chest there won’t be a lot of blood?”

The crowd murmured about this. “Let’s hear the poem!” someone called.

Master Aubrey straightened up, and with a great booming voice, read the poem. The crowd shuffled back and forth. Not quite the doggerel they were used to, but some nodded approvingly. Master Aubrey then recounted the story of how the man was found stuffed in the barrel.

“Say, that’s an interesting tale to be sure,” another man called out, moving forward. He handed Lucy a penny for the collection, and put the pamphlet in his cloak. “Who was this poor sot, do you know?”

“Why, I have no idea,” Lucy said.

“Where was this body found, exactly?” the man persisted.

“As likely as not,” Lucy said, “the constable thinks it must have been near the Cheshire Cheese. You remember the tavern. He’s sent word to the tavern owner, but I don’t know if he heard back from him. If he even will. A lot of people don’t seem to have returned yet.” She saw a few people nodding.

“Where did you get the poems from?” another woman asked, her hands on her cheeks. She looked to be about Lucy’s age, or a little older. A gentlewoman, likely enough. If Lucy didn’t know better, she would have thought the woman was nervous.

Master Aubrey shrugged. “Oh, well, authors send them to me. Their names are on them, of course. Roger L’Estrange writes a lot for us, of course. Sometimes we get anonymous pieces, slipped through a slot in the door. Don’t always use those tales, of course. No telling from whence they came. I like to know who I’m getting in bed with.”

“Except for the one Lucy found, in the leather bag. The funny love poem,” Lachlin said. “All kinds of odd stuff in that bag, isn’t that so, Lucy?”

“I suppose,” Lucy said, giving Lach a hard look. She didn’t want to give out any details, to keep thieves from trying to claim the more valuable items.

“Alright, enough of that,” Master Aubrey said. “I’m sorry, ladies and gents, it’s time for us to get back to work.” On the way back in, he said to Lucy, “Nice job, lass. Why don’t you head over to the Golden Lion. Or maybe the Bell.” He rubbed his hands together. “We’ll see how murder fares there.”

3

Her pack now full of pamphlets and broadsides, Lucy headed down Fleet toward the Strand. Master Aubrey had told her that she wouldn’t miss the Golden Lion, housed as it was in the midst of some elegant noblemen’s homes. As she walked, she looked about curiously. One of the more refined areas of London, with very few shops, it was certainly not a place she’d visited very often.

Thankfully, she spied the tavern and started toward it. Filling her pewter cup with water from a nearby well, she watched a few men and women walk into the tavern with a picture of a lion above the door. No time to lose. Lucy quickly relieved her parched throat, and scurried over to the tavern, positioning herself just left of the hanging sign.

She found her heart was beating quickly. Taking a deep breath, Lucy read the title of the pamphlet that she had helped Master Aubrey put together. “From the Charred Remains,” she croaked. “A London miscellany of warnings, poems, and astrological predictions.” A few curious looks from passersby, but no one stopped to listen. This was much harder than she had thought it would be. Setting down her pack, she hopped atop the low stone wall in front of the inn and called again. “A most unnatural death!” Ah! Good. A few passersby stopped this time. “A body found in a barrel, a knife through his heart,” she half-sang, half-shouted through cupped hands, “his corpse having survived the fiery inferno that did engulf London this September 1666.”

Within the hour, Lucy had sold most of the pamphlets. As Master Aubrey had warned her to do, she slipped the coins out of sight to lessen the attention of pickpockets. Her feet were aching from standing on the hard stone walk for so long, and her throat, still scratchy from inhaling the smoke at the Fire site, was feeling worse. Sipping water from her little cup did not seem to help. Grimacing, she decided to go inside, which appeared decent enough. She took an unoccupied table, in the corner, but still toward the front of the establishment, where respectable ladies might be found.

Lucy ordered some warm mead from the tavern keeper, thinking the honey would soothe her throat. As she waited, she slipped her feet from her pointed leather shoes to rub some life back into them. A moment later a serving lass banged a steaming mug of mead down in front of her, not bothering to wipe up the drops that spilled out. Gratefully, she took a sip. Nearby, some men were pulling apart a bit of roasted pig; the smell of pork and apples made her think of Master Hargrave, as that was one of his favorite dishes. Sighing, she hoped it would not be folly to leave the comforts and security of the magistrate’s home. Feeling quite sorry for herself, she closed her eyes.

“Excuse me.” Someone touched her arm.

Lucy’s eyes flew open. A woman, just slightly older than herself, was standing at her table, a worried expression on her face. She looked familiar, but Lucy couldn’t place her. She looked to the woman’s clothes for some indication of her station and rank. She wasn’t the tavern maid, that was certain. Her kirtle was a soft gray taffeta, unstained, but slightly dusty as if she’d been traveling.

Finishing the last sip of her pint, Lucy stood up, dropping a slight curtsy. “Yes, miss? What can I do for you?”

“I should like to purchase the
London Miscellany,
” the woman said, her clipped, slightly haughty words confirming her gentlewoman’s status. She thrust out a coin. “Now, if you please.”

Lucy looked around. She saw the innkeeper direct her a warning glance. Master Aubrey had given her strict instructions. “No hawking inside. No one wants to share their customers’ coins.”

Lucy pushed out one of the wooden chairs at her table. “I’ll sell it to you if you sit and have a pint.”

“I don’t want a pint.”

“At least sit down. Please, miss. The owner will throw me on out on my arse—pardon!—if he thinks I’m hawking inside his shop.”