The Liberty Broadside

The press groaned as the screw came down, its wooden frame quivering under the strain. Nathaniel Cobb felt the weight of it travel through his arms, into his shoulders, and down to his very heart. The platen met the paper with a slow, deliberate breath. When he lifted it, the sheet glistened under the lamplight, the letters as black and sharp as rifle shot.

Ink and tallow scented the room. Snow pressed against the windows of the small shop on Union Street, melting into streaks that caught the firelight. From somewhere beyond the shutters came the tramp of British boots and the muted jangle of sabers. Inside, the air trembled with heat and caution.

Isaiah Thomas bent over the page, his spectacles slipping down his nose. He was a younger man than Nathaniel had expected for a master printer, not yet thirty, with a quick, restless gaze that seemed to miss naught. The light found the ink on his fingers and the pale burn scar on his wrist, a mark from years spent at the press. He studied the proof a long moment before speaking. “Clean work,” he said. “A clear impression, and not a broken letter among them.”

Nathaniel straightened, pleased despite the cold gnawing at his feet. “It is for the governor’s chaplain, sir. He writes fine words about loyalty.”

Thomas offered a thin smile. “Aye. And pays for them in good coin. We print his sermons, and he thinks that makes us loyal, too.”

He laid the page aside and reached beneath the bench for a small parcel wrapped in rough linen. The cords slipped loose, revealing a sheaf of cheaper paper and a tray of newly cast type. The apprentice leaned closer and saw the words already sorted in the composing stick: freedom, tyranny, rights of man.

“Are these for the Gazette, sir?” he asked quietly.

Thomas did not look up. “They are for no paper that the Crown can read before breakfast.” He spoke with the calm of a man long past fear. “Every truth has its hour. Ours keeps a later watch.”

From the back room came the muted voices of journeymen finishing their meal. Someone laughed about a broadside that had vanished from a Loyalist window overnight. The laughter died as the master’s shadow crossed the doorway.

“Trim the lamp, lad,” Thomas said. “And fetch a clean sheet. The night belongs to us now.”

Nathaniel obeyed. The oil burned steady; the press gleamed with a thin coat of light. Thomas set each letter as if placing a prayer. Outside, the wind rattled the shutters. When the first impression came off the platen, he lifted it to the fire and read the headline softly to himself.

The Liberty of the Press, A Sacred Trust.

He laid it to dry upon the rack. The ink shone black as gunpowder, still wet, and still dangerous.

The frost had not yet lifted from the cobbles when Nathaniel carried the bundle of printed sermons through Cornhill. He kept the sheets wrapped tight beneath his arm to guard the damp from curling their corners. The harbor wind cut through his coat, carrying the sour smoke of the wharves and the salt of low tide. All Boston seemed to smell of coal, seaweed, and a pervasive fear.

Stalls lined the street, some selling fish, others oranges gone soft with travel. Beside a cart of apples, a woman called out prices for hymnals and tracts. Her voice carried clear above the clamor of cartwheels. She was young, no older than twenty, her cloak frayed but her eyes alive and quick. Upon her table she had set folded papers tied in ribbon: psalms, sermons, and a few old issues of the Boston Gazette.

“Fine reading for a Sabbath mind,” she said to a passing sailor, who grinned and paid a penny. Then she slipped a second sheet beneath his coat with a whisper. He nodded once and walked on.

Nathaniel slowed his step, for he knew that manner of exchange. Those quiet sheets, passed from hand to hand, were not approved by the Crown. He had seen Isaiah Thomas print their kind by candlelight.

The woman noticed him watching and raised an eyebrow. “You stand there like a constable,” she said. “If you mean to buy, then buy. If not, do not stare as though the words would bite you.”

“I was only looking,” he said. “You have a great many papers.”

“Enough to keep my fingers inked and my stomach fed.” She untied a small stack and spread them open. Beneath the pious titles, a few sheets carried no name at all. One bore the heading The Liberty of the Press, A Sacred Trust.

Nathaniel’s breath caught. He recognized the line of type, the uneven S that had slipped slightly low in the forme. That was his own work from the night before.

“Where did you get these?” he asked, his tone too sharp.

She smiled as she tied the bundle again. “They fall from the heavens, same as the snow. Some say angels print them. I but sell what the angels bring.”

“You should be careful,” he cautioned. “They will call it sedition.”

“They already have.” She turned to another customer and called, “Hymns for the righteous! Handbills for the brave!”

He lingered a moment longer, unsure whether to warn her again or to thank her. She looked back once more, her expression neither friendly nor mocking, only curious.

“You have the smell of ink about you,” she said. “But not of courage.”

Then she turned away, her laughter mingling with the cries of the market. Nathaniel moved on, clutching the governor’s sermons close to his chest. Beneath the paper’s clean white surface, he thought he could still feel the warmth of the forbidden ink.

The lamps along Queen Street smoked and hissed in the cold wind. Isaiah Thomas walked with his collar turned up and a parcel of paper under his arm. Nathaniel followed a step behind, careful to keep his head down as the red-coated sentries passed.

They stopped before the wide windows of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter. The shutters stood open, light spilling onto the street. Inside, Margaret Draper’s apprentices worked steadily at her press, the iron glinting beneath the lamps. The smell of fresh ink drifted into the night air, sweet and heavy.

Thomas rapped lightly on the doorframe. “Mistress Draper,” he called.

She turned from her desk, a slim woman in widow’s black with a sharp, proud bearing. “Mr. Thomas,” she said, her tone cool but civil. “You keep odd hours.”

“I keep the hours my trade allows,” he replied. “Paper grows scarce, and I heard you had a store of it.”

Her eyes studied him a moment before she nodded toward the back room. “You have heard true. Though His Majesty’s officers have placed their own claims upon it.”

Thomas stepped inside, the warmth of the room closing around him. Nathaniel stayed near the door, uneasy among the Loyalist printers. Draper’s apprentices glanced up briefly, then bent to their work again, setting type for the next day’s Gazette.

“You do well,” Thomas said. “The News-Letter has the finest impressions in the city.”

“Flattery does not soften politics,” Draper replied. “You print for the people who would see this town burn.”

He smiled faintly. “I print for readers who still think.”

“That is your danger,” she said, “and theirs.” She opened a drawer and drew out a folded sheet of parchment. “This came from the Governor’s Council. Your name sits upon it.”

Thomas unfolded the notice. It ordered that his press be inspected for subversive materials. The seal of the Crown glimmered red in the lamplight. Nathaniel saw his master’s jaw tighten, but his voice remained calm. “They have searched me before,” Thomas said. “They will find sermons, almanacs, and advertisements for soap. Nothing else.”

“You and I both know that is not true.” Draper rested her hands on the table. “You are clever, Isaiah. But clever men forget that presses are not hidden things. Every sheet you strike speaks louder than you do.”

Thomas looked around the room at her tidy rows of type and the neat piles of paper. “And every silence speaks louder still,” he said.

For a moment neither moved. The only sound was the soft rhythm of the press, the wooden frame creaking with each pull.

Finally, she spoke. “Take what paper you came for. It will be dear. The risk of selling to you grows higher each month.”

He paid in coins, each one dull from long use, and tucked the rolls beneath his arm. “When freedom grows dear,” he said, “it is worth the price.”

He bowed slightly and turned toward the door. Nathaniel followed him into the street. Behind them, the presses continued their steady beat, a heartbeat of the King’s cause.

As they walked away, Thomas spoke quietly. “Remember her words, lad. There are many kinds of printers in this town. Some print for gold, some for God, and a few for liberty. We shall see which of us lasts the winter.”

The wind rose off the harbor, carrying the smell of salt and smoke. Nathaniel pulled his coat tighter and said nothing. Somewhere behind them, a bell tolled the hour, its sound carrying through the narrow streets like a warning.

The printshop was dark when Nathaniel returned. A snowstorm had begun, and the wind pressed against the shutters as if trying to gain entry. The streets were empty, and the snow muffled every sound except the low creak of the signboard above the door: I. Thomas, Printer.

Inside, the fire in the hearth had burned low. He moved through the stillness, his breath fogging in the cold air. The presses loomed like sleeping giants, their iron forms gleaming faintly in the last embers. On the table lay the day’s proof sheets: sermons, advertisements, a notice about runaway apprentices. Nothing dangerous. Nothing that could bring soldiers to the door.

He should have gone home to his bed in the loft above the bindery, but the silence of the shop held him. He took up a rag and began to clean the platen. The ink had dried thick and black, clinging to every groove. He scraped at it carefully, feeling the rough edge catch against the wood. The shop smelled of oil and smoke, of iron and paper, and the faint sweetness of drying ink.

As he worked, his hand brushed against the edge of a loose floorboard. He knelt and pried it up with the knife he kept for trimming quills. Beneath lay a narrow space lined with cloth. Inside it rested a small chest and several bundles wrapped in sailcloth.

He hesitated, then lifted one free. The cloth unrolled with a whisper. Within lay type, newly cast and shining, each letter polished and sharp. He read the words arranged in one line on the composing stick: THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS, A SACRED TRUST.

His throat tightened. He had printed those words himself not two nights before, believing they were for a pamphlet now destroyed. Yet here was the proof that Isaiah Thomas kept the type ready, as if expecting to print again at any hour. Beneath it lay other lines: TYRANNY, NATURAL RIGHTS, THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE.

He did not hear the door until it opened.

A gust of cold air swept through the shop, bringing the faint sound of marching boots from the street. Thomas stood in the doorway, snow dusting his coat and hair. For a moment neither spoke. Then his gaze fell to the open floorboard.

“So,” he said quietly, “you have found the true heart of the shop.”

Nathaniel rose, stammering. “I was cleaning, sir. The board was loose, and…”

Thomas crossed the room and knelt beside the chest. His expression was calm, almost tired. “A printer hides little from his apprentices. In time they find it all.” He closed the lid and set his hand upon it. “You know what this means?”

“It means treason,” Nathaniel said, his voice strange to his own ears.

“It means conscience,” Thomas replied. He straightened, brushing the dust from his hands. “If the King fears words, then words are what we must give him.”

Outside, the sound of boots drew nearer, the measured march of soldiers patrolling the square. Thomas moved to the window and peered through the narrow gap in the shutters. The glow of lanterns passed along the street, then faded into the snow.

“They search often now,” he said softly. “The governor’s men would like nothing more than to break this press.”

“Then why keep printing?” Nathaniel asked.

Thomas turned to him. “Because silence is the first victory of tyranny. Once won, it is never lost.”

He replaced the board and covered it with a stack of blank paper. “You have seen too much to pretend ignorance, Nathaniel. From this night on, you must choose whether you work for coin or for cause.”

Nathaniel looked down at his stained hands. The ink had settled deep into his skin, black in every crease. He thought of the woman in the marketplace, of her bold voice and her quick laugh. He thought of the words hidden under their sermons.

“I will stay,” he said, “if there is work to be done.”

Thomas gave a short nod. “There is always work.”

He turned up the lamp, and the light struck the press, the shelves of type, the pale sheets waiting to be filled. Outside, the wind rose again, howling through the narrow streets.

“Then trim the wick, lad,” said the printer. “We print tonight.”

The lamp burned steady. The press groaned once more. And as the first sheet came off the platen, the words gleamed like metal newly forged.

The snow had turned to an icy rain by the time night fell again. In the narrow cellar beneath the printshop, the air was damp and close, heavy with the smell of ink and lamp oil. Nathaniel crouched beside the press, trimming the wick of a tallow candle. Shadows trembled along the low stone walls, where crates of type and barrels of paper stood stacked like silent witnesses.

A knock sounded from above: two slow, one quick. Thomas lifted his head. “That will be them.”

He opened the trapdoor to admit three men. Their boots dripped onto the packed earth floor. Nathaniel recognized one at once as Samuel Adams, his broad brow furrowed and his eyes burning with quiet conviction. Beside him came Benjamin Edes of the Boston Gazette, his coat streaked with soot from the night’s ride. The third man was a slender courier with a weather-beaten face and a roll of parchment under his arm.

Thomas clasped Adams’s hand. “Welcome, sir. The press is ready.”

Adams’s voice was low but certain. “Then tonight we strike another blow for the truth. The Council means to silence every printer who will not bow to the King. Let us show them how poorly silence sits upon free men.”

He unrolled the parchment and spread it on the worktable. The heading read: The Massachusetts Resolves. The ink was faint, the letters written in a hand too hurried for safety.

Edes whistled softly. “You mean to print this entire piece?”

“Every word,” Adams said. “By morning, I would have it on every tavern wall from Dock Square to Roxbury.”

Thomas studied the text by candlelight. “The language is bold,” he said. “Bolder than the law allows.”

“The law,” Adams replied, “belongs to those who fear their own people.”

Thomas looked to Nathaniel. “You have steady hands, lad?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then fetch the pica and the small caps. We begin with the headline.”

Nathaniel worked quickly, setting each letter into the composing stick. His fingers moved by habit, yet his heart beat faster with every word. Resolved: That the liberty of this Province is under threat from the hand of tyranny.

The pressmen spoke in low tones as they worked. Edes ground the ink with a wooden muller, the heavy sound filling the cellar like a slow drum. Thomas arranged the forms with care, his scarred wrist glinting each time the candle caught it.

From above came the faint creak of floorboards. They all froze. Adams drew back into the shadows. Nathaniel could hear his own pulse. Then a small voice called down through the trapdoor.

“Mr. Thomas?”

It was the woman from the market, Abigail Larkin. She carried a basket under her cloak and a wet shawl over her arm.

Thomas let her in. “You bring news, or paper?”

“Both,” she said. “The watch patrols are heavier near Cornhill. And I brought paper from a friend who owes no loyalty to the King.” She uncovered a bundle of coarse, gray sheets. “Smuggled from Providence. Not fine, but it will hold ink.”

Adams smiled faintly. “Madam, you serve liberty more faithfully than half our gentlemen.”

She shrugged. “Liberty buys better than piety.” Her gaze fell on Nathaniel, who was setting the final line. “It is you again,” she said softly. “So you possess courage after all.”

A blush rose to his cheeks, but he did not look up. “I am learning.”

Thomas pulled the first proof. The ink steamed in the cold air. He held the page high for the others to see. The headline glowed black in the candlelight:

THE MASSACHUSETTS RESOLVES, PRINTED FOR THE PEOPLE.

Adams nodded once, his face grave. “Tomorrow the Governor will call it sedition. Tonight, it is the truth.”

Thomas laid the sheet to dry. “Then let us print until the candle gutters out.”

The press began to move, steady and slow, the wood moaning under each pull. Nathaniel fed the paper and drew it out again, sheet after sheet, the words multiplying in the dim light like sparks from a fire.

Above them, the storm rattled the shutters and the city slept uneasy. Below, the clatter of the press filled the dark, the sound of rebellion pressed into being by human hands.

The morning came gray and raw. A thin mist clung to the windows, and the harbor bells tolled somewhere beyond the fog. Inside the shop, the fire burned low. Nathaniel bent over the press, rubbing the platen clean with a rag soaked in turpentine. His eyes stung from the fumes, and his hands were black halfway to the wrist.

On the table beside him lay the proof of last night’s printing. The page was smudged where his hand had trembled. A dark streak crossed the line that read, Resolved: That all men are born free and equal. The blot had swallowed half the word free.

He stared at it a long while. A single slip, a breath too quick, and the meaning was gone.

Isaiah Thomas came down the stairs from the loft, his coat unbuttoned, his face gray with lack of sleep. He picked up the proof and studied it. “A pity,” he said. “The letters were true enough.”

“I will set it again,” Nathaniel promised.

“You will,” Thomas answered, “but not until you understand why it happened.”

Nathaniel kept his eyes on the press. “I was tired. The paper was thin.”

“The paper has no mind of its own.” Thomas laid the sheet down gently. “A printer’s mistake is not measured in smudges, but in consequences. If that blot had gone to press, the Governor would call it treason, the Patriots would call it folly, and both would miss the truth we meant to speak.”

He poured water into a basin and began to wash his hands. The water turned gray at once. “Every word we set is worth a man’s freedom,” he said. “You must pull each impression as if it were your last.”

Nathaniel said nothing. He took up the composing stick again and began to set the line anew. The small pieces of lead clicked against one another like teeth.

Thomas watched him for a moment, then asked, “Do you think I am too harsh?”

“No, sir,” Nathaniel said. “But sometimes I think the truth itself is harsher.”

Thomas smiled faintly. “You are not wrong.”

He turned toward the window, where the pale light of dawn was beginning to show through the fog. “Do you know what first drew me to this trade, lad?”

Nathaniel shook his head.

“Not the ink, nor the craft, though I love both. It was the permanence. Once a word is printed, it lives beyond its author. It can outlast a tyrant, or ruin him.”

He looked back at the smudged proof. “That is why we must take such care. The press remembers every hand that touches it.”

From the street came the faint roll of a drum, a British patrol changing watch at the Common. The sound carried through the mist like a warning.

Thomas picked up the new proof Nathaniel had pulled. The impression was sharp this time, each letter standing firm. He nodded once. “Better. The word is clear now.”

He laid the page aside to dry. “There is your lesson for the day. Ink forgives nothing, and neither does history.”

Nathaniel looked at his fingers, stained black and shining in the dim light. “Then I suppose we are both already guilty,” he said.

Thomas gave a quiet laugh. “Aye, lad. And let us hope we are guilty of the right thing.”

The press creaked as Nathaniel pulled another sheet. The words came out clean this time, sharp and certain. Outside, the fog began to lift, and the city stirred, unaware that within this small room, treason and truth had been measured out by the ounce and found to weigh the same.

The knock came like a musket shot. Three hard blows on the door, sharp enough to rattle the window glass.

Isaiah Thomas froze over the forme he was locking. His hands hovered above the type, his fingers still black with ink. Nathaniel looked up from the press, his heart hammering. The lamp flickered. For a moment, neither moved.

Then Thomas spoke quietly. “Put the pages away.”

Nathaniel gathered the printed sheets from the drying line and slid them beneath a pile of advertisements. His hands shook. Another blow struck the door, followed by a voice, harsh and precise.

“By order of His Majesty’s Council, open this door!”

Thomas drew a breath. “Do not panic,” he said. “Fear makes more noise than courage.”

He crossed the room and lifted the bar. The door swung inward, and the night poured in with a gust of cold air, a lantern’s yellow glare, and the wet gleam of bayonets.

Captain Alistair Redding stood on the threshold in his scarlet coat, snow melting on his hat brim. Two soldiers flanked him, muskets slung and ready.

“Mr. Thomas,” Redding said, his tone polite but hard. “We have received reports that your presses have been employed for purposes unfriendly to the Crown.”

Thomas bowed slightly. “You are welcome to see for yourself, Captain. You will find sermons, almanacs, and advertisements for soap.”

Redding stepped inside. His boots left dark prints on the floorboards. “And which of these trades pays best in these times?”

“None,” Thomas replied. “Printing pays in hunger and blisters. Still, it is honest work.”

The soldiers began to search. They overturned paper bundles, kicked open cupboards, and scattered loose sheets across the floor. Nathaniel kept to his bench, trying to look busy. The press loomed beside him like a guilty accomplice.

Redding lifted one of the sheets. “A sermon on obedience,” he said. “How fitting.” He smiled without humor and set it down again. His eyes moved to Nathaniel. “And you, boy? What is your duty here?”

“To pull the press clean, sir,” Nathaniel said, his voice coming out thin.

Redding stepped closer. He reached for Nathaniel’s hand and turned it palm up. The skin was stained deep with ink. “Hard work,” he said softly. “Yet somehow I doubt all of it was for the King’s glory.”

Before Nathaniel could answer, Thomas spoke. “Ink does not swear allegiance, Captain. It serves whoever handles the press.”

Redding’s gaze met his. “And whose hand guides yours, Mr. Thomas?”

“The truth,” Thomas said.

For a long moment the two men regarded each other. The soldiers continued their search, but the room seemed to hold its breath. Then one of them lifted a barrel lid and frowned. “Molasses, sir.” He plunged a stick into the dark syrup and withdrew it, dripping and clean. “Nothing here.”

Redding looked around the shop once more. The air smelled of ink and iron and unease. Finally, he nodded to his men. “We will not waste the King’s time on empty barrels.”

He turned back to Thomas. “You tread a narrow path. I advise you to keep to it.”

Thomas inclined his head. “And I advise you to read more widely, Captain.”

The faintest smile crossed Redding’s mouth. “Good night, Mr. Thomas.”

When the door closed behind them, the silence felt immense. Nathaniel let out a long breath and opened the barrel they had left untouched. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth beneath a layer of molasses, lay the hidden formes of The Massachusetts Resolves.

Thomas wiped the sweat from his brow. “You see,” he said quietly, “a printer learns more from his mistakes than his triumphs. Fear teaches us where to hide the truth.”

He looked toward the door where the soldiers had gone. “But the day will come when we will hide it no longer.”

Nathaniel stared at the barrel, the black syrup gleaming over the hidden words. “And if they come again?”

“Then,” Thomas said, “we print faster.”

Outside, the soldiers’ boots faded down the street. Inside, the press stood waiting, still warm from use, smelling of oil and defiance.

The snow was gone, and with it any pretense of calm. The air smelled of tar and thawed mud, and the city hummed like a kettle about to boil. Handbills hung on every post, nailed there by night and torn down by morning. Loyalist broadsides cursed the Sons of Liberty as traitors. Patriot sheets answered with sharper words, naming the governor a tyrant and the soldiers his chains.

Isaiah Thomas’s name appeared on more than one of them, though he had not signed a single one. At dawn, Nathaniel carried a bundle of papers through Cornhill, his coat buttoned tight. He moved quickly, slipping one broadside beneath the door of a tavern, another behind a barrel at the market. People saw and pretended not to. A few gave him the briefest of nods. The soldiers on patrol ignored him, or seemed to.

The sheets were damp against his chest, still smelling of ink and turpentine. The words upon them were his master’s, set by his own hands: The liberty of the press is the heart of a free people. Silence it, and no man remains free.

When he returned to the shop, the presses were already running. The journeymen worked in silence, their sleeves rolled, their faces streaked with sweat. Thomas stood at the forme, adjusting the pressure. “More ink, less fear,” he said. “The one covers the other.”

A shout came from outside. Nathaniel glanced through the window. A crowd had gathered near the Custom House, waving pamphlets. Some were Patriots, cheering. Others shouted back, calling them rebels. A stone struck the door, then another.

“Keep working,” Thomas said.

Nathaniel obeyed, but the noise grew louder. The glass shook in its frame. He could hear the clatter of muskets being leveled somewhere beyond the crowd.

Then a heavy knock sounded on the door again, not the measured blows of authority this time, but the wild hammering of chaos. Abby Larkin’s voice called through the din. “Mr. Thomas! They are fighting at the docks! The soldiers are seizing presses!”

Thomas went to the door and let her in. Her cloak was torn, her hands black with ink and soot. She carried a stack of crumpled broadsides against her chest.

“They broke Edes’s press,” she gasped. “The Gazette is gone.”

Thomas’s face did not change, but his hands tightened. “Then ours must double its voice.”

He turned to the men at the press. “Keep it running.”

“But the soldiers,” one began.

“Let them hear the sound,” Thomas said. “Let them know what cannot be stopped.”

Nathaniel pulled another sheet from the press. The ink smeared across his wrist, hot and shining. He could hear the uproar outside: shouting, boots, the ring of steel.

“Sir,” he said, “how long can we keep this up?”

Thomas looked toward the window where smoke was rising over the rooftops. “Until every man in this town knows which side he stands on,” he said, “and until the truth stands with him.”

He turned back to the press. “Ink it again.”

The platen came down with a heavy sigh. The words bit into the paper, each one a spark. Nathaniel laid the fresh broadside on the pile to dry. Across the top, the headline read:

The Spy Shall Speak, Though the King Commands Silence.

By evening, those sheets would be plastered across every street in Boston. Some would be torn down, some burned, but others would be read aloud in taverns until the words took root.

Outside, the riot rolled on like thunder. Inside, the press kept moving, steady and sure, its rhythm drowning out the noise of the city.

When at last they stopped, Nathaniel looked at his master. Thomas wiped the sweat from his brow and smiled faintly. “They have their muskets,” he said. “We have our words. Let us see which fire burns longer.”

The bells began before dawn, ringing out from every steeple, wild and uneven. Nathaniel woke in the loft above the shop and at first thought it was a fire. Then he heard the voices in the street, running feet, and the clash of shutters thrown open. Someone shouted, “The redcoats have fired on the militia! At Lexington!”

He stumbled down the stairs. Isaiah Thomas was already in the pressroom, fully dressed, his coat thrown over his shoulders. The presses stood silent for once. He was staring at the window, where the gray light of morning showed smoke drifting over the harbor.

“Is it true?” Nathaniel asked.

Thomas nodded. “A courier rode through at first light. The King’s troops marched to seize the powder stores. The farmers met them in the road.”

“Was there fighting?”

“There was killing,” Thomas said. His voice was steady, but his eyes were dark. “The first shots of a war. And every sheet we have printed helped load those muskets.”

He crossed the room and began to gather papers from the tables, stacking them into bundles. “They will come for the presses next.”

Nathaniel felt his throat tighten. “Captain Redding?”

“Or worse,” Thomas said. “Once the army starts marching, it listens to no captain.” He looked up at the boy. “We must be gone before nightfall.”

The door opened suddenly. Abby Larkin burst in, her cloak streaked with mud, her face flushed from running. “They have closed the Neck,” she said breathlessly. “No one leaves the city without a pass. Soldiers are everywhere.”

Thomas took her arm and steadied her. “Are the others safe?”

“Edes is in hiding. Gill, too. They smashed the Gazette press this morning.”

Thomas drew a long breath. “Then ours is the last still standing.”

He turned to Nathaniel. “Pack the formes. Take only what we can carry: type, ink, the chase, the small press tools. Leave the heavy press itself.”

Nathaniel hesitated. “Leave it?”

Thomas’s voice softened. “It has done its duty. We will build another.”

The journeymen had already fled the city’s turmoil, so the three of them labored on alone. They wrapped the type cases in canvas, lashed the composing sticks together with rope, and filled barrels with paper. Every movement echoed in the silent street outside.

As they worked, the sound of drums came closer. A column of soldiers passed by, their coats bright against the smoke-gray morning. Redding rode at their head. He did not look toward the shop, but Nathaniel saw his hand tighten on the reins.

Abby watched from the doorway. “He knows,” she whispered.

Thomas shook his head. “He suspects. Knowing and proving are not the same.”

He opened a trapdoor in the floor, revealing the narrow passage that led to the alley behind. “When darkness comes, we go by that way. The road west is still open through the marshes.”

Nathaniel looked back at the presses, at the wooden frames, the racks of type, the drying lines stained with months of ink. “Will we ever come back?”

Thomas did not answer at once. He ran his hand along the press as though feeling for its heartbeat. “Perhaps,” he said at last. “But the words will travel farther than we can. That is enough.”

Outside, the bells still rang, fierce and uncertain. From the harbor came the boom of a distant gun. The city that had lived by paper and rumor was now learning the sound of war.

Thomas straightened his back and shouldered one of the type cases. “We go to Worcester tonight,” he said. “Let the King’s men have Boston. We will give the country something they cannot march against.”

Nathaniel lifted another bundle. Abby took the third.

The last thing he saw before they closed the trapdoor was the old press standing in the half-light, motionless now but glimmering faintly, as if the ink itself remembered every word it had spoken.

The city slept uneasily under martial law. Torches burned at the gates, and soldiers paced along the Neck, their bayonets catching the red glow of the fires. Beyond the harbor, the sky flickered with distant light, perhaps signal fires, or maybe the reflection of burning barns.

In the alley behind the printshop, a cart waited beneath a tarpaulin. The horse stamped and snorted, uneasy in the cold. Nathaniel crouched by the wheel, tightening the ropes that bound the load. Inside the canvas lay the heart of their rebellion: type cases, composing sticks, small tools, and the iron press plate wrapped in oilcloth.

Isaiah Thomas came last, locking the door of the shop behind him. He stood for a moment, his hand resting on the latch. The sound of the key turning echoed faintly in the still air. “That is the end of Boston for us,” he said. “The beginning will be elsewhere.”

Abby Larkin pulled her hood close around her face. “The patrols are doubled,” she whispered. “I bribed one guard with a broadside that mocked his captain. He laughed and let us pass, but the next may not.”

Thomas climbed onto the cart and took the reins. “Then we go quietly. No lamps, no talk.”

They moved out into the narrow street, the wheels crunching over frost and scattered paper. Every few yards, they stopped and listened. The night was full of small sounds: a shutter banging, a dog barking, the faint toll of a bell across the river. Each time the wind changed, they could smell the sea.

At the edge of the Neck, two soldiers stood by a fire barrel. Nathaniel’s mouth went dry. He felt Thomas’s hand on his shoulder, steady and firm.

“Stay calm,” Thomas murmured. “We are carters hauling scrap metal to Worcester for repair. Nothing more.”

They rolled forward. The soldiers watched the cart approach, their faces half-lit by the fire. One stepped forward. “What have you got there?”

“Printer’s iron,” Thomas said evenly. “Worthless to anyone without the skill to use it.”

The soldier poked the canvas with his musket barrel. The metal beneath rang faintly. “Feels heavy for scraps.”

Thomas reached into his coat and drew out a folded broadside. “Perhaps this will lighten your mood.”

The man squinted at it, then grinned. “You fellows never cease your printing.” He tucked the paper into his belt and waved them on.

They crossed the bridge at a slow walk. The city fell behind them, its glow fading into the mist. On the other side, the road opened into dark marshland, the moonlight glimmering on pools of water.

Nathaniel looked back once. “Do you think they will burn the shop?”

Thomas kept his eyes on the road. “Let them. The press is not wood and metal. It is thought, and that travels faster than fire.”

They drove through the night without rest. Once, the wheel sank into a muddy rut, and they had to lift it free by hand. Another time they heard riders behind them and doused their lantern, waiting breathless among the reeds until the hoofbeats passed.

Abby’s cloak was soaked through, and Nathaniel’s arms ached from holding the reins, but neither complained.

At dawn, the eastern sky turned pale. A church steeple rose out of the fog ahead. Thomas pulled the horse to a stop at the crest of a hill. Below them lay the small town of Worcester, quiet and unguarded, the fields wet with dew.

“There,” he said softly. “There the press will live again.”

Abby smiled through her exhaustion. “The King’s men will not follow so far from their streets.”

Thomas looked west, where the light touched the hills. “No,” he said. “But our words will.”

Nathaniel climbed down and helped him uncover the load. The metal plates gleamed dull and cold in the morning light. He ran his hand over one and felt the faint ridges of the type. It seemed to pulse with life, as if waiting to speak again.

Thomas laid a hand on his shoulder. “We will build a new shop before nightfall. You will help set the first forme, lad.”

Nathaniel nodded. “What shall we print?”

Thomas smiled, the lines of fatigue softening on his face. “The truth, as always. And this time we shall print it free.”

The wind rose, lifting the edge of the canvas like a banner. Behind them, Boston lay hidden by mist. Ahead stretched a new road, clean and unprinted.

The new press stood in a barn behind a tavern at the edge of Worcester. The air smelled of hay and damp earth, and sunlight filtered through the cracks in the boards. It was rough shelter, but it was freedom.

Isaiah Thomas wiped his brow and looked over their work. The great wooden frame of the press had been reassembled from memory, the iron platen refitted with bolts scavenged from farm tools. The type cases were set on makeshift benches, the letters polished clean after their long journey. It was smaller than the Boston shop, but it breathed.

Nathaniel and Abby stood beside him, both streaked with dust and ink. Their hands were raw from lifting and hammering, but the exhaustion felt holy, as if every ache were a prayer.

Thomas reached for the first forme and slid it into place. “Let us see,” he said softly, “if liberty still speaks west of the Charles.”

They inked the plate with careful strokes, then laid the paper upon it. Nathaniel pulled the lever, feeling the familiar weight in his arms. When he lifted the sheet, the words gleamed black against white.

Thomas took the page and read aloud, his voice low but steady.

The Massachusetts Spy: Or, American Oracle of Liberty. Printed in Exile, but Unbroken.

A smile touched the corner of his mouth. “We live again,” he said.

Abby laughed softly. “The King will not enjoy his morning reading.”

“Then he must find another printer,” Thomas replied.

They hung the first pages on a line to dry. The smell of ink mingled with the scent of hay, and the barn filled with the quiet ticking of paper settling on its cords.

Nathaniel watched the words blur slightly as they dried, still bright and alive.

Outside, the town moved slowly into the afternoon. Farmers brought wagons to market, women fetched water from the pump. Children ran past, shouting about the battles near Concord. None of them noticed the barn door half open, nor the faint beat of a press echoing within.

Thomas sat on a stool, flexing his stiff hands. “Do you know, lad,” he said, “that we are now traitors in law and patriots in print? The Crown has declared our work forbidden. That makes every sheet a victory.”

Nathaniel laid another paper on the stack. “How many shall we print?”

“As many as the day allows,” Thomas said. “The words must travel faster than the soldiers.”

Abby joined them at the table, sorting the printed pages. “I will take these east by wagon,” she said. “There are still readers in Boston who will pay in silver and silence.”

Thomas nodded. “Then the Spy will live where the army cannot march.”

He stood and looked out through the open door. The hills beyond the town were green now, the trees full of new leaves. “Remember this day,” he said quietly. “We have no flag, no army, but we have a press. That is the first foundation of freedom.”

Nathanathaniel watched him in the doorway, a tired man in a travel-stained coat, his eyes alight with purpose. The wind lifted the pages hanging behind them, and the rustling sounded almost like applause.

Thomas turned back into the light. “Set another forme,” he said. “We have miles of paper and a world to print.”

The morning broke bright and clear. The barn that served as their pressroom stood open to the fields, and the scent of hay drifted in with the breeze. Nathaniel woke to the sound of hoofbeats and the hurried knock of a courier at the door.

Isaiah Thomas was already at the bench, sorting type when the messenger entered. He was a young rider, his coat streaked with dust, his eyes shining with exhaustion and pride. He held out a sealed packet.

“From Philadelphia,” he said. “By order of the Continental Congress. To every printer of standing.”

Thomas wiped his hands and broke the seal. The paper crackled as he unfolded it. His lips moved silently as he read, then stopped.

He looked at Nathaniel and Abby. “It is done,” he said softly. “They have declared it.”

He passed the sheet to them. The title at the top glowed with black ink and certainty: In Congress, July Fourth, 1776. A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America.

Nathaniel read the opening lines aloud, his voice trembling.

“When in the Course of human events…”

Abby listened, her eyes bright with tears. “So it is no longer rebellion,” she whispered. “It is birth.”

Thomas turned to the press. “Then let us give this child its first cry.”

They worked without speaking. Thomas set the first lines with hands that shook slightly, the old burn on his wrist catching the light. Nathaniel locked the forme and inked it. Abby laid the paper, smooth and white, upon the platen.

Thomas nodded once. “Pull.”

The lever came down with the steady rhythm they all knew. The wood creaked, the iron sighed, and then the sheet emerged, wet, black, and new. Thomas lifted it to the sunlight that streamed through the cracks in the barn wall.

The words shone as if they were alive.

He read aloud, his voice full of wonder.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

The sound filled the barn, steady and low. Outside, a church bell began to ring. Then another, farther off, answered it. The air seemed to vibrate with their echo.

Abby hung the first sheet on the line to dry. “They will hear this in every town,” she said. “Even in Boston.”

Thomas smiled faintly. “Especially in Boston.”

He sank onto a stool, tired but radiant. “There was a time,” he said, “when I feared these words would never see daylight. Now the world will read them.”

Nathaniel looked at the sheet, the ink glistening black as gunpowder. “Do you think the King will read them?”

Thomas laughed softly. “He will. Kings always read what they fear.”

He took up another sheet and handed it to Nathaniel. “Print the next. Each copy is a voice, each voice a blow for liberty.”

The press began to move again, slow and steady, the platen rising and falling like the breath of a living thing. Outside, the bells kept ringing.

When the last impression dried, Thomas held one page in his hands, turning it gently as though afraid to mar the words. The paper caught the sun and seemed almost transparent, the black letters shining through like veins of fire.

He spoke quietly, almost to himself. “The ink is still wet, but the truth is dry. This will outlast us all.”

Nathaniel stepped outside into the warm air. Across the valley, the hills shimmered in the morning light, and from the town below came the faint cheer of voices. He looked back once. Through the open door, he saw the press, the hanging sheets, and the man who had kept them all alive.

The wind lifted the pages on the line, making them flutter like white flags, not of surrender, but of freedom newly declared.