This is a novel of the English Civil War. London, 1647: Lucy Wentnor, a young woman from the Midlands, having been attacked by soldiers during the Civil War and rejected by her sweetheart, hopes to start afresh with her aunt and uncle in the capital, now that war seems to be over. London, however, is in chaos and her uncle, once a well-to-do mercer, is now almost bankrupt. Lucy, unwilling to go home, finds a job in one of the few businesses that's booming: publishing. She is soon assisting in printing pamphlets, an industry which the breakdown of the licensing system and censorship has left free as never before. Radical politics, royalist plots, the complex negotiations which ultimately send the King to the scaffold, are all fair game to the unlicensed press and the colourful men and women who bring out the news.