The rain had ceased by nightfall. That left Crown-Reach locked in a freezing, motionless fog that smelled of coal sulfur, damp timber, and stale river water. In Printer’s Alley, a narrow, twisting lane barely eight feet wide paved with slippery river cobbles, the town gas lamps had been mysteriously put out at the seventh hour by order of the district ward-master. The overhanging timber roof edges of the three-story printing houses leaned toward one another like conspirators whispering in the dark, cutting off all starlight and casting long, greasy shadows across the stone floor.
Inside Master Barnaby Thorne’s printing house, however, the heat was intense, fueled by two roaring coke stoves and the relentless physical labor of twelve men. Four heavy Stanhope iron screw presses stood in a row down the center of the flat stone slab floor, their massive cast-iron frames groaning rhythmically as teams of two apprentices pulled on the long wooden levers. Clack-thud. Creak-snap. The sound was relentless. It echoed from the whitewashed brick walls like the heartbeat of an iron beast.
Sheets of damp, heavy rag paper were lifted from the tympans with wooden tongs. Their surfaces shone with fresh, black printer’s ink. Then they hung from overhead hemp drying lines that crisscrossed the ceiling like spiderwebs. Each broadsheet was eighteen inches wide. It carried the complete careful balance sheet of the High court’s diverted flood escrows, alongside the verbatim text of Hester Quill’s constitutional petition and the full text of Chief Justice Vance’s stay.
