On a cold November morning in 1501, Cristina Smith comes to the Aberdeen Burgh Court, followed by a line of men. Teeth clenched, nails digging into her palms, Cristina approaches the bailies in the great hall of the tollbooth.

Like most people appearing before the bailies, she has something to prove. After her father’s death, Cristina followed his advice and claimed his workshop as her own. Spacious and bright, its one large window faces south onto the busy street at Green Gate. The workshop had been Cristina’s playground since childhood. As she grew, her father introduced her to the workshop tools and their uses: the anvils of differing sizes, surfaces against which to mould any piece of metal into shape; the forehammer and the hand hammer, too large for her child-sized hand at first but soon enough she used them with ease; and the many tongs hanging in a neat row along the wall. Her father was always well-organised. She’s not about to prove herself to be somebody else’s daughter.

Unlike most people coming to court, Cristina is flanked by a group of twelve men. Despite her simple grey dress, her black overcoat, and the modest wimple covering her hair and neck, being surrounded by such a large group of supporters makes her seem noble. Important. Powerful.

‘The daughter of Andrew Smith?’ the scribe asks her before the bailies speak, ensuring he knows what to put down on the parchment before him.

‘Cristina, ’ she replies. ‘I’m Cristina Smith.’

‘Tell us your issue, ’ one of the bailies requests, though he knows well why she’s come.

Cristina speaks in a voice loud and clear, for the bailies, the scribe, the men behind her – for the entire town – to hear: ‘There’s been murmurs in the community of this town, ’ she says, ‘that I’ve no right to my father’s workshop and the tools there. That I’m no proper heir of his, that my womanhood keeps me from inheriting my father’s tools and his sword that has hung in our house since before I was born. So, revered bailies of this town, I’ve brought you evidence to the contrary. No writs, no documents to go over, but the testimony of the best and most worthy of the smiths of this town.’

One by one, hat in hand, the smiths step forward. Their testimonies are unanimous:

‘Cristina Smith was trained by her father as a blacksmith from girlhood.’

‘She’s as good as a member of our guild, woman or not.’

‘Cristina ought to have the tools and the sword that her father left for her. She’s his only rightful heir.’

The bailies must accept a testimony as united as this. They must accept that a woman, small as she is, has harnessed the support of the town’s most important tradesmen. The blacksmiths, who forge the weapons that defend the town as well as the tools that sustain its daily life, must be kept happy at any cost. Cristina lowers her eyes with a smile as her ownership of her father’s goods is put on paper. She almost wishes she’d brought her sword to court. Its curved handguard, shaped a clamshell, was made by her grandfather, a man with an eye for elegance. The blade itself is so heavy, only a handful of boys were able to lift it when her father invited them into his workshop to play soldiers for a day. They all gasped when she, then fifteen, swung it over her head with all the strength her hard work had built in her arms.

Once back in her workshop, she’ll take the sword from its sheath and hang it on the wall behind her worktable. It’ll be the first thing anyone entering her shop sees. Perhaps this time, the townspeople who’ve complained about her assertiveness will whisper: By God, she seems about ready to forge the world anew.

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