London in Chains by Gillian Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page A

helped to make books before?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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 .
    â€˜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,