Rebels and Traitors (4 page)

The masque participants finally dismounted outside the Banqueting House. Through his costume, Gideon could make out parts of the stark new classical building in three subtle shades of stonework, its harmonious Palladian style a cool contrast to the brightly painted beams and red brick of the rackety old Tudor buildings in Whitehall. Jostled by the other players and afraid his tail would be stepped on, he entered at the level of the Undercroft. The claws of his costume slipped on the stone, as he made his way up the easy flights of a broad stair. A tall doorway brought them into a magnificent two-storeyed hall, purposely designed for state receptions. Heat, braying voices, the stench of sweat and the cloying scent of rosewater assailed them. At the far end stood the King’s canopied throne, flanked by the noblest gentlemen and ladies of the court. Lapdogs scampered about at will. Other courtiers, decorated with pockmarks and great pearls, lined the two side aisles, where splendid tapestries covered the tall window niches, pegged back on the street side to allow a view outside. Above, lesser spectators hung over the balcony which ran around the upper storey, including members of the Inns of Court who had fought the Lord Chamberlain for permission to see their own masque. The room, already warm from so many jostling bodies, was ablaze with lights, the glister of silver and gold tissue, and the sparkle of jewels. Only its ceiling was bare. Painted panels had been commissioned from Peter Paul Rubens, but they would not arrive from Holland until the following year.

The King and Queen, diminutive figures enthroned like dolls on their state dais, faced a specially constructed raised stage. During the masque, this would represent variously arbours, streets, a tavern, open countryside and clouds, with all the scene changes and spectacles wrought by cunning machinery.

Gideon was allowed to remove the head of his costume temporarily, and listen to the first scenes. Emerging red-faced, he found the proceedings hard to follow. To a grocer’s son, it seemed completely alien. The script was tedious: anodyne exchanges which punctuated a strange mixture of clowning and dance. Presentations came and went, in a drama more remarkable for its ingenuity than its content. Moments of burlesque led into banal songs that would never be picked up and hummed on the streets; there were many dances and then a curiously stilted musical drama for
Peace, Law
and
Justice.

Lacking the vigour of the old Ben Jonson masques which had once been played here, James Shirley’s text was unworthy of the fine poet who wrote ‘Death the Leveller’. His low-life comedy scenes were more spirited than his solemn allegories, but not much more. Wenches and wanton gamesters went into taverns and emerged drunk; thieves were apprehended by a constable; romping beggars and cripples attempted to cheat gentry, then threw away their crutches and danced. Shirley touched on controversy only with great care:
‘Are these the effects of Peace?’
asked
Opinion
(understandably perturbed);
‘corruption rather…’
It was the only scathing comment. The King and Queen, who were still laughing at the cripples dancing, must have missed it.

Peace, according to this masque, did have the benefit of encouraging English inventiveness. Characters lined up to astonish the audience with fabulous ideas: a jockey brought a bridle that would cool overheated horses; a country fellow had devised a wondrous new threshing machine; a bearded philosopher with a furnace on his head could boil beef in a versatile steamer. There was an underwater chamber which allowed submariners to recover lost treasure from riverbeds, a physician with a hat full of carrots and a rooster on his fist had worked out how to fatten poultry with scraps, and a fortress to be built on Goodwin Sands would melt rocks. In a century where science was to make dramatic advances, this was the crazy side of science.

The three dotterels, Gideon presumed, were intended to illustrate country pleasures during times of plenty. Now they had their moment. Hastily donning his costume head again, Gideon scampered onto the stage. He hardly had time to be nervous. The trio of birds were chased around by three dotterel-catchers, who duly caught them with wires and cages, before they all scampered off to make room for the windmill and its jousting knight. Gideon experienced the gloom of an entertainer who knows the next act is bound to be more popular.

Soon afterwards, accompanied by solemn music,
Peace, Law
and
Justice
descended in gold chariots from stage clouds in the upper flats, three statuesque female deities wearing classical robes of green, purple and white satin. The ladies pronounced compliments to one another in curiously bad poetry before the entire cast moved towards the King and Queen and addressed Their Majesties with sanctimonious song. Gideon was at the back, so could barely glimpse the monarch.

The scene changed. The song changed, though not in quality. A finale was anticipated, yet the dance was interrupted by apparently real stagehands and costume-makers, whose dialogue was significantly more spirited than anything else in the pageant. Backstage, a small girl who was skipping about unattended shrieked with joy. Gideon Jukes had almost fallen over her as she stood below his line of sight, constricted as his vision was through the eyeholes. She pushed him aside, almost sick with excitement as actors playing a painter and a carpenter, a tailor’s wife, a feather-maker’s wife and an embroiderer’s wife exchanged banter on stage. They represented ordinary people from a backstage world to which she had just been introduced by her somewhat frowsty grandmother.
‘Juliane! Où es-tu?’
She was eight years old, and had been helping with the costumes, thrilled by the responsibility — but that night she was most entranced that she had seen the Queen.

The scene changed yet again. A representation of
Morning Twilight
glided onstage — a pale girl in a partly see-through costume, with whom Gideon was much taken. This brought the formal entertainment to its end. The Queen did dance with the masquers, proving her indifference to William Prynne’s insults and delighting at least one small girl
quite utterly!

Gideon felt shocked when Her Majesty danced. The rebel in him was out-rebelled. Any idea of running away from home to be a player evaporated. He would have to accept some other career.

So delighted with
The Triumph of Peace
was Henrietta Maria that she ordered it to be played all over again at Merchant Taylors Hall, where its anti-puritan message might reach larger numbers of people, especially the young. Third Dotterel would be forbidden by his parents from acting the second time. The small girl would not attend either, since her grandmother, always a game woman, wanted privacy to encourage a legal man called William Gadd, whom she had met at the first performance.

On that royal night at the Banqueting House, all the players and lawyers were taken afterwards to an enormous feast which lasted until daylight. Gideon was too sleepy to eat much. Next morning, Third Dotterel stumbled home to his mother with his bird’s head under his arm, shedding feathers all the way from Ludgate Hill to Cheapside.

Parthenope forgave him.

He was her baby — and she was about to lose him. She thought this was not the best moment to send Gideon half across London to another home. But sometimes it is easier for a youngster to respect strangers.

Gideon almost backed out before he started. His first task was to locate Robert Allibone, his new master, who worked at the sign of the Auger. This, his great-uncle had airily instructed, would be found off Fleet Lane. Brought up in the City, Gideon had to leave the few streets around Cheapside that he knew well, pass through the hubbub of booksellers around St Paul’s and explore westwards beyond the city wall to Ludgate Hill and the busy environs of the Old Bailey. Though only half an hour’s walk away, this was unknown territory. He was reluctant to ask directions. He had walked to an area of lawyers and their hangers-on, some visibly seedy. He sensed that his steps were dogged by sneak-thieves; he could hear the drunks raucously tippling in dark taverns and victualling houses. He had come among scriveners, printers, carriage-men and — since the law was so lucrative — goldsmiths and jewellers.

When few side streets had names and no premises had house numbers, wooden signboards swung by almost every door; they were high enough not to decapitate a man on horseback, but were otherwise unregulated. The pictures were crudely drawn and often faded. Few signs had any connection with nearby shops or tradesmen. Wandering about with youthful absence of urgency, Gideon gazed at Cocks and Bulls, Red Lions, White Harts, Swans, Crowns, Turks’ Heads, Kings’ Heads, Boars’ Heads, Crossed Keys and Compasses, Rising Suns and Men in the Moon, Bushes, Bears and Barleycorns. It took him another hour to find the Auger. Welcoming him without complaint, Robert Allibone, a compact sandy-haired man in brown britches and shirtsleeves, admitted that the street board lacked finesse.

Gideon confessed he had not known what an auger was.

‘A bodger. A good honest piercing tool. Not to be confused with an au
gur,
who is a pagan prophet or prognosticator, a dabbler in offal and trickery …’ The printer gazed at the boy. ‘I hope you like words.’

‘I will try sir.’

And how are you with ideas?’

‘Do you print ideas?’

‘I print words. Remember that. Take no responsibility for ideas. Whoever commissions the printing must take the risks — the publisher!’ A firm hand pushed Gideon onto a stool and a book was opened on his knees. ‘Show me you can read.’ Although few people in the shires were literate, the majority in London could read. Gideon saw at once that his test piece was an extremely dull sermon so he pulled a face; Allibone seemed pleased, either at his quickness or his critical taste.

Bevan Bevan was standing as guardian. Gideon saw Allibone stiffen when his great-uncle walked in, wearing a florid scarlet suit, the outfit in which he had married Elizabeth Keevil. The Jukes family had focused their revulsion upon this wedding suit. The main colour was vivid; the braid which outlined hems, edges and side-seams flashed with spangles. The short cloak, which was worn with a casual flourish on the left shoulder, made Bevan look immensely wide. The outfit came with gloves — one to wear and one to clutch.

Bevan placed his clutching-glove upon a pile of printed pamphlets, while he handed over the fifty pounds agreed as bond money. This was supposed to represent a surety that Gideon came from a good background and would be capable of setting up in business on his own account eventually. Normally a bond would be repaid when a young man completed his apprenticeship; its purpose was to establish him. However, Gideon deduced that Bevan’s fifty pounds would remain with Allibone, for it represented some debt the Keevils owed. He sensed rancour between the men. Allibone’s voice was pointedly dry: ‘You are a fortunate boy, Gideon Jukes. Entry to apprenticeship in the Stationers’ Company is regulated strictly!’

Bevan shot Allibone a sorrowful look. Then he took it upon himself to explain the contract of apprenticeship: ‘Your indenture — which you must guard with your life — this witnesses: that you, Gideon Jukes, will faithfully serve your master to learn the trade of a printer.’ He ran a fat finger down the terms. ‘You shall do no damage to your master, nor allow it to be done by others. You shall not waste his goods, nor lend them out unlawfully. You shall not fornicate, nor commit matrimony. You shall not play cards, dice, tables, nor any unlawful games which may cause your master to have any loss. You shall not haunt taverns or
playhouses
!’

Gideon scuffed his feet. Robert Allibone’s sharp eyes lingered thoughtfully on this boy who had been promoted to him as so intelligent and keen to learn: a gangly specimen, with a newly cut pudding-bowl of straight tow-coloured hair and vividly pustular skin. Still, he seemed well mannered. Before the irritating uncle arrived, Allibone had warmed to him.

With a wave of his clutching-glove, Bevan fluffed on. ‘Well, well, it is all here — not buy or sell goods on your own account, not absent yourself from your master day or night, but behave as a faithful apprentice, et cetera. In consideration, your master shall teach and instruct you in the art and mystery of his trade by the best means he can, while finding you meat, drink, apparel, lodging, and all other necessaries, according to the custom of the City of London.’ They were outside the City, but nobody quibbled.

‘Thank you,’ said Gideon gratefully to the printer. His parents had threatened to throw him out of house and home for his disloyalty. It was probably bluff, but a thirteen-year-old boy needed to feel confident he had not seen his last beef-and-oyster pie.

His great-uncle proposed a drink with Allibone to seal the contract. Gideon was left behind, sitting on a paper bale, gazing rather dolefully at the terrifying equipment. The silent press stood taller than a man. In due course Allibone would explain to him that it was based on the design of olive and wine presses. It had two tall, heavy, upright side-beams, which carried a lighter cross-piece. Down through that ran a big wooden screw. Into its bell-shaped lower terminus was fixed a turning lever, then a flat box containing the paper. Below was a long table, where the form sat, full of mirror-image type to be inked. Around the room Gideon saw a daunting array of boxes which contained letters, large and small, in seeming disarray. On shelves were unbound books and pamphlets awaiting sale.