I am Alice la Silkwymman.

I was born in the year of Our Lord 1304, the third daughter of a mercer on Cheapside. My hands know silk better than letters — and yet here I find myself, setting down these thoughts for whomever you may be, in whatever strange age you read them.

London in my day smells of tallow and horse and the Thames. The bells of St Mary-le-Bow measure our hours; the guild measures our worth. I stitch peacocks onto an alderman's gown and wonder whether he will still wear it when he is old.

What follows is my neighbourhood, my people, and such small fragments of my days and nights as I dare preserve.