Rebels and Traitors (5 page)

Allibone, who was not a toper in Bevan’s style, soon returned and taught his new apprentice his first lesson: how to make up a truckle bed for himself in the shop.

John Jukes, the careful parent, showed up two days later to inspect the printer.

He found a freckled man of twenty-nine, with a cool eye and a confident air. Jukes had ascertained that Allibone was married with no children. He owned one press, since to possess more caused difficulties with the authorities. He worked from a tiny shop, living above it with his wife. He sold some works himself, but passed out other copies to book-shops and itinerant pedlars.

‘I understand there are but twenty licensed printers,’ Jukes began pedantically. Allibone listened, sizing up Jukes: a well-fed shopkeeper, probably sent today by his wife. He wore an English cloth suit, with no French, Dutch or Italian accessories, a suit made for him a decade earlier when he was middle-aged and carried more weight. A man who brooded on slights, planned his argument, then came out with it as if reading a sermon. ‘You are not troubled by the authorities, Master Allibone?’

‘I avoid exciting them … There are twenty or so
Master
Printers, licensed by the Stationers’ Company and approved by High Commission.’ Allibone went back to inking a tray of letters, deftly deploying a wooden tool covered with lambswool. John Jukes sucked his teeth at the mention of the King’s Court of High Commission; Allibone shared the moment, then confided more freely, ‘We mere yeomen and liverymen strive to stay friends with the company officers, and if we are suitably humble, they duly pass work to us. Always the least profitable work, of course.’

The father began a new tack: ‘Sending a boy out to a stranger’s trade is a common thing.’ Allibone merely nodded. Though a dealer in words, he could be content with silence. Gideon, whose family would yammer on about nothing rather than leave fifty seconds empty, had already noticed the difference. Allibone was to be a strong influence; Gideon Jukes was on his way to becoming a quiet man.

‘We are rubbing along,’ commented Allibone, who privately thought his young apprentice was quite tough enough. There was no meekness in Gideon. He had a mind of his own but had been polite these past couple of days, a willing learner. Allibone was finding him easy to instruct and if Gideon was making mistakes, it was only because he was trying to rush ahead and do things before he was capable.

John Jukes reluctantly convinced himself that Allibone was reliable. The printer made no attempt to bluster about himself or his trade, and happily no mention of Bevan Bevan. He gave Jukes a moment alone with his son. Allibone had noticed the awkwardness between them, exacerbated by the fact Gideon had suddenly that year grown taller than his father.

‘Are you content with your situation?’ John was staring at his son’s apprentice clothes, old britches of Allibone’s, beneath a blue leather apron. Everything Gideon touched seemed to cover him with ink; only his newly cropped hair had escaped. John was not sure whether to laugh at the filthy picture he made, or to deplore it.

Gideon bravely maintained that he was happy; his sceptical father knew any lad would be forlorn after his first two days in strange surroundings. Stepping from childhood into adult work was an ugly shock. Gideon now had to contemplate a lifetime of near drudgery, rising at first light and sticking to a mundane task until dinnertime. ‘Well, you have bound yourself, Gideon. Your mother’s uncle, for his own reasons, put himself to some trouble to win you this opening.’

‘Plenty of apprentices fail to stay their term,’ muttered Gideon glumly.

‘Not in our family!’ John must be forgetting wastrel cousin Tom, Gideon scoffed to himself. Tom Jukes tried a new occupation every year and the only one he ever liked was going to the bad … Sympathetically, his father offered, ‘You must stay for a month, to try it thoroughly. Then if your heart cries out strongly, you may come and consult me.’

A month!’

The boy had revealed how homesick he was. To overcome the tug on his emotions, Jukes senior summoned back the printer. Allibone gave no sign of his own misgivings. Gideon was the first apprentice he had been able to take on, and he was anxious that things should not go awry. He satisfied John Jukes eventually, soothing him with a free almanac and a proposal that Jukes should compose an encyclopedia of spices for publication. Robert Allibone was a sharp businessman despite his reserved manner; he had recognised in Gideon’s father a man of many projects — though perhaps he had not realised how frequently John’s projects were left incomplete.

‘Well, Gideon, your mother has sent you some jumbles.’

A packet of cinnamon-flavoured pastry twists was handed over and Gideon went back to work. John Jukes made his farewell; Allibone noticed that he brushed away a tear. Gideon, too, wiped his inky nose on his shirtsleeve.

Those first jumbles were hidden away and eaten in secret, but within the month Gideon opened up, so when his mother sent him treats he would share them. Margery Allibone, a brusque woman, older than her husband, whose cooking was merely adequate, once asked if Gideon’s mother would pass on the jumbles recipe. The printer went further. Cookery books, herbals and household manuals were favourites with the public; he nagged for Parthenope to compile a
Good Housewife’s Closet,
which he could illustrate with woodcuts and sell to anxious brides. But Parthenope was about to acquire a daughter-in-law, Lambert’s wife, and felt the need to preserve her position by guarding her knowledge. When the Jukes wanted to be gracious to the Allibones, they sent raisins or Jamaica pepper.

Gideon stayed out his term. For the full seven years of his indenture, he was a typical apprentice: clumsy, scatterbrained and sleepy. He went from delivering parcels to operating the press, learning the tricks and pitfalls. He was taught that typography was critical; for hours he sat at the high compositing desk, mastering fast use of the box of type, with vowels in the middle compartments, frequent consonants next and
X, Y
and
Z
at the outer edges. He learned how to tighten the form so the lines of type were clenched fast, how far to turn the lever to lower the press — first once, then again for the second page — how to regulate the amount of ink on the pad, how long the wet sheets needed to dry. He watched how Allibone negotiated with the Stationers’ Company who registered books and controlled publication; how he commissioned work from authors, both professional and amateur; how he extracted debts from dilatory clients; how he organised bookbinders; how he kept a careful list of decent importers of paper, and ink and pen suppliers; how he handled people begging him to print subject matter he disapproved of (which was very little) or knew he could not sell (rather more).

Gideon was paid nothing, but had freedom to read. If he had a fault as a worker, it was his tendency to get caught up in the words. Correctly setting and spacing the text was hard enough, without losing his place as he read on obliviously through the manuscript pages. Many a time Robert Allibone threatened to show him what it was like to have a harsh master who beat him — though, being addicted to reading himself, he never did.

For anyone interested in politics, there would soon be no better trade. However, at first the outlook for printers was poor, and it grew worse before it got better. Censorship prohibited publication of all foreign and domestic news. Then in 1637, three years after Gideon’s indentures, the King’s Star Chamber issued a draconian
Decree concerning Printing.
This aimed to suppress seditious books, particularly those which did not accord with the High Church ideals of the reforming new Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. It insisted on registration of all printed works by the Stationers’ Company. Fines for seditious authors were reinforced by fines for their printers; Allibone somehow escaped penalties, but it was an anxious period.

Then, another four years later, when King Charles was forced to call a Parliament, the Star Chamber was abolished. At once, printers began selling books without official registration. Pamphlets and news-sheets immediately flourished; every
Fiery Counterblast
bred a
Witty Riposte.
Anyone with a burning cause could promote his opinions, whether he brazened it out openly, hid under a false name or tantalised with his initials only.

By chance, Gideon Jukes had been positioned right at the heart of this. He finished his apprenticeship, at the age of twenty, the same year that the King would at last summon a Parliament. He had seen the old regime; now he experienced a great rush of excitement at the new.

One of the first decisions Gideon then made as an adult was to join the London Trained Bands.

England had no standing army. Trained Bands had been established by Queen Elizabeth. They were local militias, where men were drilled every summer in the use of pike and musket in order to defend the realm against foreign invasion. Generally viewed as a joke, poorly equipped, badly trained and liable to desert, in most of the shires the Trained Bands were truly inefficient though in London the situation was different. The London Trained Bands were greatly superior.

Gideon’s father was an enthusiast; he had been a captain of the Artillery Company, the high-minded theorists of the Trained Bands, for as long as Gideon could remember. Once a month in summer John would put on a buff coat and collect his weapons. He would proudly march off to an enclosed piece of ground on the western edge of Spitalfields, the Artillery Garden, where the company met to practise under the guidance of hired professional soldiers. Jukes and his comrades read up old campaigns and composed passionate military treatises. None had ever fired a shot in anger. All were convinced they were experts. After the thrill of parading, these companionable hobbyists always adjourned to an alehouse. Their feasts were legendary; the utensils, plates and tureens they used for dining were their most tenderly guarded equipment.

Lambert Jukes was an enthusiastic regular of the Trained Bands’ Blue Regiment. He too revelled in wearing uniform, firing practice shots, and drinking with comrades after drill. ‘You are just weekend warriors!’ grumbled Gideon. ‘Posturing amateurs. Your bullets have no bite.’

Membership of the Trained Bands was compulsory for householders, though they were allowed to send substitutes and many instructed an apprentice or servant to attend for them. Deep political foreboding made Allibone attend training sessions in person. He was in the Green Regiment, which Gideon began to eye up warily.

London was astir. In 1641 Gideon was released from his indenture, a qualified journeyman printer. Taller and less thickset than his older brother, he was now nonetheless strong — toned by working the press and shouldering paper bales. He had the square features, pale skin and fair hair that ran in his family, suggesting that if Viking raiders had not made their mark in the remote past, at least Swedish or Danish seamen had been spreading joy among the ladies of medieval or Tudor London. Allibone had made him a good all-round printer, although he would never be a perfect compositor. Your thoughts wander! What are you dreaming of?’

Calm and good-natured, Gideon merely smiled. He felt diffident of discussing it but was wondering what his future could be, a second son without a patron, passed fit to be a journeyman but with no money to start up in business.

The solution came, though in a sad manner. Robert Allibone’s wife died. Gideon’s brother Lambert had served his grocery apprenticeship with a master whose wife ordered the lads about, but Margery was no bully and rarely came in the print shop. Gideon had always known that she and his master were devoted. He occasionally overheard what he knew were the sounds of lovemaking; at first a fascinated boy, he came to be a young, frustrated bachelor who covered his ears. Frequently, Fleet Lane would be filled with the slow measure of the Allibones playing musical duets on large and lesser viols which they had owned since they first married.

Once widowed, Robert sought change. He decided to move to new premises in the City and asked Gideon to go with him as his partner. Gideon eagerly accepted. They set up at the top end of Basinghall Street, close to the Guildhall, between Cripplegate and Moorgate. At the north end were fair houses with long gardens, while southwards were smaller premises and closeted alleys. Walking for a few minutes, across Lothbury with its noisy copper shops, and down Ironmongers Lane, Gideon could reach the Jukes’s grocery shop. He had not quite come home to mother, but he was well within reach of Bread Street; he could reacquaint himself with the glory of her Dutch pudding. Nowadays puddings were mixed as a joint effort by Parthenope and Lambert’s pretty wife Anne, a dark-eyed, sensible girl from Bishopsgate; as soon as it was seen that she had a light touch with manchet rolls, Anne had fitted in with her mother-in-law. The women worked peacefully together in the kitchen, where John Jukes often nodded on a settle nowadays, dawdling into his senior years with his head as full of schemes as ever. Lambert effortlessly ran the business.

Gideon was welcomed back. Since he would be sharing premises with Allibone, he would cause no ructions with Lambert. His mother took a new look at her returning son, this twenty-year-old with fair hair and a loping stride, who had reached manhood with a scathing view of the world, but was apparently now content with his own place in it. She wondered what other concerns would call him, and whether she would live to see his future. Mothers like to believe their sons are marked for greatness. Parthenope, whose head was filled with musings whenever her hands were busy in a mixing bowl, knew that it mainly led to disappointment. But Lambert, who had never given her a moment’s qualm, had also never given her the feeling of potential she experienced with Gideon. So she made him some mock-bacon marzipan — two-tone stripes in a whimsical streaky pattern — while she pretended he was just a troublesome boy again, needing rosewater for his acne. And she waited.

Gideon liked to take Robert home as a guest to dinner. However, it happened infrequently, after a mishap when a piece of skewer was unfortunately left in a veal olive; it splintered into the unwary printer’s hard palate.