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breakfast, and then we’d eat together, the five of us.
    My first task in the morning was to fetch water from the conduit while Mary laid the fire.
    All the maids from Broad Street gathered at the conduit to gossip while they queued for water. I’d always drawn water from a well in the backyard, but this was a building, open-sided, with a roof, and in the centre the water flowed from pipes. The first time I used it the girl next to me in the queue began talking to me. Her name was Em, and she was one of a group of maidservants who all worked in shops near by. They seemed friendly enough, even when I told them I worked for Mary Faulkner and they realized I was a Quaker. They giggled a lot, and chattered in what seemed to me an idle way about their mistresses and their dealings with them. One of them told how she’d been beaten and locked in the cellar, accused of laziness. Another boasted of keeping back a coin or two from the change every time she went shopping. “My mistress never notices,” she said. The others rolled their eyes in amazement, spoke of coins counted out one by one.
    “What’s your mistress like?” Em asked me. “I heard she’s hard on her servants.”
    “I only came yesterday,” I said, “but I know she is a good woman; and she’s been kind to me.”
    Even so, I hurried back, anxious not to keep Mary waiting. She had a sharp tongue, I’d noticed, in her dealings with the men, and I feared to anger her. I saw that she had opened up the shop and was busy inside. The shop had its own front entrance, but I went through the doorway into the long passage that ran down one side of the building, leading past shop and print works and into the back room, where I set down the pails of water.
    Nat was there, teasing one of the cats. From the print room I heard men’s voices and the thump of the press.
    Nat switched his teasing from the cat to me. “Good morning, pretty maid.”
    I didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.
    “Kitty, she ignores me,” he told the cat. “I shall die of grief.”
    I smiled then. “Should thou not be at work?”
    “I was on my way back to the workshop when I saw Kitty had a mouse.”
    “Ugh! Is it alive?”
    He held the draggled thing up by its tail. “Not now. Art thou frightened of them?”
    “Of mice? No!”
    “Cockroaches? Spiders?”
    I laughed; shook my head.
    “Thou’rt fearless, then.”
    “No. I fear displeasing Mary.”
    “Thou need not. She’s sharp, but just.”
    “But … why did the other maid leave?”
    “Sarah? Idleness. She was always gossiping with the apprentice.”
    “Thou’rt teasing me again!” But I began to busy myself; took down plates from the shelves and set them on the board, ready for breakfast.
    “No. She was lazy. And dull-witted. Mary doesn’t suffer fools gladly.” He grinned. “It’s most often me in trouble.”
    “And the others? What are they like?”
    “Simon Race is a pleasant man, easy to work with. He’s skilled; Mary values him. He’s a widower with a young child that his sister in Castle Street cares for. John Pardoe – the big man who operates the press – I like him well. He’s a Quaker.”
    “And Simon too?”
    “No.”
    “He goes to the steeple-house?”
    Nat must have seen my disapproval, for he smiled and said, “Yes. As many good people do.”
    I felt myself reproved, and was silent.
    “Mary’s a good mistress,” said Nat. “She took me from the orphanage when I was a boy, to work as her printer’s devil—”
    “Devil?” I was shocked again.
    He laughed. “Servant boys who work for printers end up covered in ink and look like devils. Mary taught me everything about the trade – and she taught me to read and write; gave me books to read. She took me on as her apprentice, and treated me as if I’d been her own. I turned Quaker because of her.”
    “Thy term will be up soon, surely?”
    “This summer.”
    “And will thou leave?”
    “Yes.” His face brightened. “London.