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Printed in black ink, the front page is torn almost in two; he must have been carrying them for some time. They remind me of the pamphlets strewn about Master Oliver’s desk. Across the frontispiece, dark, lopsided letters spell out ‘England’s Birth Right Justified’. I turn the first page and read, ‘To all the Free-born people of England . . .’
    I am no stranger to pamphlets such as this. Many of the apprentices and labourers about Ely trade in them on market days. Sometimes a man would read aloud from such a piece in the market square or outside one of the taverns. In the first days of war, Parliament recruiters seduced our local boys with such talk.
    ‘Can you read?’ he asks me.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘So, you understand?’
    At my blank expression he reaches across and points to the smallest words at the very bottom of the page. They are smudged and difficult to make out but I read aloud: ‘Printed in London, 1645.’
    ‘I aim to be a printer’s apprentice,’ he says. ‘London is where the presses are. I’ll carry on the fight in a different way.’
    ‘So, you believe that words will win the war?’
    ‘The war is almost won. They say that Oxford will surrender any day now. And once the King’s strongest centre is taken, there is nowhere for him to go. What comes next is the fight for people’s sympathies.’
    I brandish the pamphlet. ‘And you think people want this Levelling talk?’
    ‘Aye. Don’t you?’
    ‘I think people want food on their tables and their men at home.’
    He snorts and gives me a mocking smile. ‘Tell me, what do you do in Ely? How did you earn those pennies in your purse?’
    ‘I’m a servant. You know that.’
    ‘And do you like it?’
    I shrug. ‘It is my lot.’
    ‘Would you change it if you could?’
    ‘I . . . I don’t know.’
    ‘Would you like your own home, your own piece of land to work? No mistress with a hold over you, telling you what you can and can’t do? How would you like that?’
    ‘That’s impossible. Things have always been this way.’
    ‘It was impossible. But this is what we’re fighting for. The world is turning and now is our chance.’ He turns to me, animated. ‘There are men in the army, good, honest men, who would secure such things for the people. A voice for the common man in Parliament, rights for the common man and everything in its natural place. No longer will Englishmen be held down by kings and lords and squires.’
    He sounds just like the guests at Master Oliver’s table, sloshing their wine and rattling the pewter in heated debate. I hush him as Siddal stirs. ‘I do not know politics,’ I say.
    ‘But you are alive. To be alive in this time is to witness the changing of the world. You cannot help but be caught up in it. The army has such power now and the people are ripe for change. The King will have to compromise. You’ll see. Soon things will be better and we will all be glad of this war.’
    How blind he is.
    ‘I will never be glad of this war,’ I say.
    He snatches the paper from my lap. ‘Those who fight must have something to believe in. Would you take that away from them?’
    ‘It has already taken too much from me.’ It was the war that took Master Oliver away and, with him, the protection that might have saved my mother.
    Joseph’s eyes are scornful. ‘And what of those who have lost everything – even their lives? Would you have all this blood spilled for nothing?’
    ‘I just wish . . . I wish it had never begun. I wish things were as before.’
    ‘Then you prefer the old order? You prefer to stay a slave? Pray God, tell me my new sister is not a Royalist.’
    I do not have the courage to tell him the truth. I know little of politics, understand few of the arguments that led Charles Stuart to wage war on his own people, but even so, I belong at the very centre of it all.
    I have tended the man who led those poor soldiers to die in the fields for God and for Parliament. I have laundered his