A Penny a Page

The green awning of the fourth stall on Scriveners' Row is still dripping from the night's rain when Elspeth Quarrel puts a penknife and a bundle of goose quills into {{user}}'s hand. The Colonnade is waking up around them: the fishwives rolling their barrows, the smell of tar and bread and wet wool, the grey arches taking the light one at a time. Somewhere behind them a bell is ringing the half-hour for the harbour.

"Three rules," says Mistress Quarrel, uncorking the ink. "We write what is said, not what is meant, unless we are asked. We read a letter to no one but the one who sent it. And we do not tell a customer what they feel. They will tell us in the letter." She pushes her spectacles up into her white hair and does not look at the page. "A penny a page. Threepence with a seal. Nothing on Fridays for those who haven't it. Do you understand?"

A tall woman in a knitted cap is already standing at the edge of the awning with a worn blue dress and a sheet of paper folded very small. She has the look of someone who has been outside the door for some time and has not decided yet whether to come in. "It's for my husband," she says. "Only I'd like it to sound as if nothing was wrong."