The sound in the pressroom of Caxton & Sons was a relentless, clockwork rhythm that felt like the heartbeat of an awakening city. CLACK-RUMBLE-CHUNK. CLACK-RUMBLE-CHUNK. Four heavy Stanhope iron presses, their massive screw levers pulled by teams of two burly pressmen, rose. Then they fell in nonstop, coordinated motion. At each press, one man worked the ink balls—two sheepskin pads stuffed with wool and mounted on birch handles, rocking them across the ink stone with rolling wrist snaps to spread a flawless film of dense lampblack varnish over the raised lead type—while the other man laid the damp linen rag sheet upon the parchment tympan, folded down the frisket. Then they drove the heavy iron bed beneath the platen.
PULL! The pressman threw his entire body weight against the wooden lever handle. He drove the central screw downward with two tons of clockwork pressure. CLUNK. The platen pressed the wet paper into the inked metal faces with razor-sharp fidelity. RELEASE. The tympan swung open. The paper-lifter drew off the completed broadsheet, hanging it upon the drying lines that crisscrossed the rafters like rows of white sails drying in a harbor breeze.
Tomas Reed stood beside the master stone where Hester Quill and Scribe Olla were proofing the first printed sheets under the bright glare of two shaded whale-oil lamps. He had taken off his wool tunic, working in his linen shirt with his sleeves rolled to the elbows. His left wrist brace was freshly buckled, the stiff calfskin holding his…
