The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,41
with a sigh.
“At least it’s not technically sedition, to reprint the words of the Queen,” Eliza offered.
“Not until she’s divorced, anyways,” Agatha muttered. “Though if that happens, I expect we’ll have larger matters to worry about.”
Sydney’s face lit up at the thought of speaking out and getting his message heard—any message, even if it wasn’t as fiercely radical as he might have hoped. “I’ll set the type myself, if you like, after the workmen have gone home. That way nobody will know where it came from.”
Agatha snorted. “You think the journeymen don’t know every nick in every piece of type we use? But it’s a good precaution, all the same.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you even remember how to compose type?”
Her son only grinned. “I’m sure it will come back to me.”
It did, to his mother’s mingled pride and irritation. Late that evening, with the shop quiet and the streetlamps flickering orange outside, Agatha cast a practiced eye over the finished forme: the bundle of leaden letters and bits of wood, tied up tight with twine to hold all the smaller pieces together. They’d pull a proof to check for errors, but any decent printer could decrypt the backwards letters in the composing stick by the time they finished their apprenticeship, and Agatha’s practiced eye spotted no mistakes.
It only took two people to operate the iron Stanhope press, so Agatha let the young people do the bulk of the work. Sydney set the forme in the galley, and the galley in the press-bed; Eliza skimmed the congealed skin off the top of the ink, and used a knife to spread a thin liquid layer on the glass-topped table next to the press. A single sheet of paper went into the tympan, atop layers of cloth padding to soften the blow of the plate; the frisket came down to protect the edges from ink, its cut-out center square framing and presenting the blank page like a yeoman holding a snowy sheep in place for shearing.
Eliza daubed a thin layer of ink onto the letters of the forme, filling the air with the dark, lush scent of oil; Sydney lowered tympan and frisket onto the bed, and pulled the rounce—a bar that slid the whole arrangement into the heart of the press.
All that was mere preparation: now came the moment of truth.
A single pull of the long central lever brought the flat, heavy platen down with a thump Agatha felt from her heels to her heart. She flinched internally, and hoped the noise wasn’t audible to anyone in the street outside.
Normally it was her favorite part of the process. The instant when all the layers of padding, paper, ink, and type were squashed together—and something new came out.
Sydney pushed the lever back, turned the rounce, and opened the frisket. There it was, in black and white, shining wetly: the words of Queen Caroline to her subjects and supporters. Sydney held it out for Agatha’s approval, suddenly and adorably shy.
Agatha’s heart softened. He’d looked just like that the day he pulled his first proof out of the press, as a young apprentice. It had been Thomas he’d handed it to then, of course.
How fast the years went by, when you had worries to keep you busy.
Swallowing her nostalgia, Agatha eyed the proof, pronounced it good, and hung the paper up to dry. Eliza was already daubing the forme with another layer of ink, and Sydney slipped another page into the press. Another thump, and a new broadsheet to hang from the lines strung across the top of the workroom. And so on, as the minutes spun by.
Press-work made for a comforting rhythm—like the beating of a very large, very slow heart. Agatha hung up another broadsheet and paused to read through a few sentences, taking in the meaning now rather than simply looking for mistakes. “‘General tyranny usually begins with individual oppression.’ This is much more radical stuff than I would have expected from any monarch.”
“They say William Cobbett wrote this one,” Sydney said, his hero’s name lingering on his tongue like a benediction. “According to Prestwich, who dined with him privately the other evening, Cobbett sees the alliance between the Queenites and the radicals as a natural bond: both have been oppressed, exiled, punished, and spied upon by the government, merely for asserting the rights to which they are legally and morally entitled. If we can harness popular support for Caroline, we might be able to push through actual changes—they say