Rebels and traitors

by Lindsey Davis

  Standing back in a gateway while guests chose their seats, his brother met an acquaintance, a younger man than Lambert, perhaps only a couple of years older than Gideon. Lambert introduced him: 'Edward Sexby son of Marcus Sexby, gent — absolutely sharp and straight, and valiant for our cause. He was apprenticed to Edward Price, of the Grocers' Fraternity' That was all the accreditation a man could need with the Jukes; Lambert in his jovial way invited Sexby to the wedding feast.

  'It is not his party!' whispered Lacy crossly, the sweet new bride suddenly furious.

  'Dear heart — your first quarrel with your in-laws!' Gideon was mildly pleased at how it smacked of domesticity. Lacy returned a cold stare, calculating that her new husband might be trickier to manage than the Bevans had promised her.

  A buzz of rancour rose, as two very different families, intent on despising one another, took up positions over succulent chicken, pigeons and legs of roasted pork. The Jukes brooded over Bevan Bevan's past sins and his relatives' fecklessness, bitterly noting poor manners and shamelessly expensive gloves. The Bevans decried the sermon and the wedding breakfast, which the Jukes had provided. The Jukes led a large, loud contingent of cousins, friends, stockmen and errand boys, maids past and present, past maids' children, and present maids' sisters who were hopeful of becoming maids future. They also brought two tiny, extremely ancient ladies, hook-shouldered Aunt Susan and Good Mother Perslowe, who were no relation at all, but always attended family parties. By contrast, the Bevans and Keevils seemed oddly light on guests. Lacy's parents were absent, though presumably Elizabeth had invited them, and the journey from Eltham, at less than ten miles, should not have been prohibitive.

  Parthenope Jukes seated herself in state at the head of the table squashed alongside Elizabeth Bevan (nee Keevil), a large-boned, low-bosomed, florid-faced woman whose significance Gideon had missed when his great-uncle married her. He now understood: all tradesmen's widows in the City of London were well-to-do, for they inherited one-third of their husband's effects automatically, another third if they were childless as Elizabeth had been in her first marriage, and perhaps the final third too if they had persuaded their man to leave them everything. Beyond that, printers' widows had a special position: exceptionally, a print business passed from deceased husband to widow, together with prized membership of the Stationers' Company. When the late printer Keevil was carried off by illness, he left Elizabeth with attractive assets. Bevan had always 'lived on his wits' — or lived off his relatives' as John Jukes redefined it.

  'Bevan must have employed fantastic footwork to displace her journeyman!' Gideon sneered to Robert Allibone. It was more or less traditional that a printer's widow continued the business through her husbands' apprentices — generally remarrying one of the journeymen. They had the right to be affronted if she chose elsewhere.

  Allibone smiled wryly. 'Ah! You did not know that I served my time with Abraham Keevil?' Gideon swallowed, thinking he had committed some faux pas, but his friend gently ended his suffering: 'Oh, the dame had her eye on me, but I was always set on Margery!'

  The matriarchs had drawn up battle lines, using fashion for weapons. Elizabeth Keevil made much of the fact that her olive-green satin had been bought at the Royal Exchange. Parthenope scoffed at the Exchange galleries as dangerously newfangled, while she cruelly noticed how the low-cut gown's pearl-bedecked elbow-sleeves hung so far off Elizabeth's shoulders they gripped her fleshy arms like a straitjacket, hampering her use of cutlery. Wielding her own fork daintily, Parthenope gazed on her family's resplendent outfits; in theory religious Independents shunned ornament, but a wedding was a matter of status and a wedding where they loathed the bride's family called for even more dash. Parthenope herself was in dark old-gold damask that had used up a year's profits from imported peppers. Anne wore a white petticoat, embroidered with maroon flowers and foliage, under a scalloped-edge gown that she had pinned back for easier movement; alone of the women she had put on a coif beneath her hat, which modestly hid most of her hair. Lambert and his father had let themselves be buttoned into their best black silks; John had become frail recently, but Lambert was as solid as a slab of slate.

  Parthenope and Anne had acquired their finery not at the Exchange but in the traditional city way: knocking on doors to request special arrangements. This procedure for favours could be a fiction. When pleading gentlewomen called to negotiate bargains in grocery, Lambert would either charge the normal price or underweigh the goods. 'Putting a thumb on the scale is a usual grocers' trick!' Elizabeth whispered to the bride, managing to suggest that Lacy's marriage would be continually marred by such treacherous wiles.

  Perhaps using the pennies he had saved, Lambert had hired two sackbut-players. The men were far from virtuosos; their primitive trombones were soon dreaded by everyone.

  As the meal progressed, Bevan began talking politics. Covert signals failed to silence him. 'There is always an uncle who must cause trouble!' hissed Parthenope under cover of handing a vegetable tureen to Anne.

  Gideon and Lacy had not exchanged wedding rings. Bevan denounced this as religious extremism, then latched onto Anne Jukes as a target. He referred scathingly to her foray into Westminster with the female petitioners. 'Shall we be seeing your wife as a she-preacher next, Lambert?' Lambert, moving around the company like a large benevolent lord, calmly raised a tankard to his great-uncle, oblivious of insult. Anne pretended not to hear, until Bevan's next jibe: 'I hear that rebel wives in the City are donating their jewels to Parliament's war chest!'

  'I am glad to know,' snapped Anne. She was forthright and fearless, which offended Bevan all the more. 'They shall have my wedding ring tomorrow. Lambert and I need no pagan symbols.' In an undertone, she scoffed to her mother-in-law, 'He is not even drunk.'

  'Not yet!'

  Fortunately Elizabeth Bevan missed this, since she was frazzled at the separate table where her children were being fed. She purloined the bride to help her control them. In the decade of her marriage to Bevan, Elizabeth had been constantly pregnant. Although it had not stopped her parading bare breasts and forearms today like a decadent royal maid-of-honour, under her stays she was big-bellied again at nearly forty. There were five surviving offspring, all squealers and snivellers; Arthur, aged seven, was a particularly repugnant child.

  Anne Jukes felt obliged to leave her food and assist. Childless throughout her own marriage, Anne knew herself to be an object of both pity and disapproval, as if the situation was her fault. The long wedding sermon, with its emphasis on marriage for procreation, had been torture. Now other people's insolent children would be dumped on her.

  'Why thank you, my dear!' Elizabeth simpered. 'Do not let naughty Arthur throw syllabub on your good gown. Come, Lacy, resume your place of honour — '

  The Keevil brood eyed her balefully. Anne Jukes, who came from a jolly, good-tempered brewing family, squared up to them. In their home these children ran amok like little princes, governed only with cajoling and bribes. But as the delinquent Arthur now raised his bowl to hurl it 'accidentally' over her embroidered skirts, Anne grasped his shoulders and lifted him right off the wooden bench; she dumped him down in front of her like a slop bucket. He was still small enough to be manhandled and Anne's kneading of her much-admired white manchet rolls had given her sturdy arms. 'Now, Arthur. We have thanked God for providing this fine feast. If you have no wish to eat, you may stand on a stool in a corner like a school dunce, and there wait for all the company to finish.'

  Amazed, Arthur thought of screaming. Silently, she dared him. He thought better of it.

  Anne reflected that before she took herself to Westminster with the female petitioners, this brat would have got the better of her. Since she began joining in demonstrations, she had acquired quiet resolution. For two pins she would have told Elizabeth just where she went wrong domestically… As she took charge of the young Bevans, who were lace-collared like miniature royalty, she thought with some pleasure of her new rebel character.


  'Your daughter-in-law is so good with the little ones!' murmured Elizabeth Bevan, as the delinquent Arthur slunk back to his seat while Anne firmly tied napkins around his sulky siblings' necks. 'So good for one who is barren!'

  Anne, who had the finest instincts in Cheapside, looked up and saw it said.

  Then Anne Jukes let her surly gaze dwell speculatively upon the bride. Elizabeth Bevan understood; Lacy's aunt stilled, suddenly cold in her heart.

  As the afternoon passed, the meal became less formal. People came and went around the inn courtyards. Gideon found it awkward to converse with his new wife while all eyes were upon them. He had been at enough weddings to know that soon relatives would start chivvying him with lewd advice. At his side, the inscrutable Lacy politely smiled at everything he said, and as the day continued, Gideon realised that had she been an ink-seller, he would have found her too meek to trust.

  He noticed that the sackbut-players, with quarts of drink inside them, were slightly more tuneful.

  He saw Robert Allibone saunter away towards the stable-yard, so made excuses and followed him. Always diffident in company, Robert was prone to sneaking off by himself to read. When Gideon first appeared, he had been studying a pamphlet, but he pushed the paper inside his doublet quickly. Side by side, they pissed on the dungheap.

  'What's the news?'

  'It will keep. I will not spoil your wedding day'

  Neither was in a hurry to rejoin the feast. Allibone addressed his friend with mock-solemnity: 'As your good groomsman, I should ask if you know what is expected of a husband?'

  Gideon chuckled bravely. Few men who had been London apprentices needed an eve-of-wedding lecture. 'Lambert is threatening to lurk at the bedside with instructions… My father said: eat all that is set in front of you and always give your wife the victory in quarrels. My mother warned me not to spit in the hall, nor wear boots in the bedchamber, nor bring home a dozen ducks on laundry day — all needing to be plucked, glazed and roasted — not even though the purchase price was a great bargain.'

  'Your father did that!' marvelled Robert, with admiration.

  'And still lives,' Gideon confirmed.

  It seemed a moment for confidences. Bevan and Elizabeth had set him wondering, so Gideon asked about the mysterious debt owed to Allibone by the Keevil estate. Robert's face clouded. 'It was an alphabetical debt.'

  'Well, recite it.'

  'Oh you know my distemper with stockholders…', 'Keevil held shares in the English Stock Company?' During his apprenticeship, Gideon had absorbed the history of printing in London. He knew how William Caxton had first set up in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, producing legal and medical texts, then Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde, moved to Fleet Street, to be close to his lawyer customers. From early days the principle applied that authors should not attempt to make a living from writing; their role was merely to keep printers and booksellers in business. Over time, the stationers who provided raw materials — vellum and paper, ink, skins for binding — had gained control of book production. Only their liverymen could print, bind and sell books. The Stationers' Company was self-governing, so entry to the trade was always tightly controlled by insiders. Allibone believed it led to abuse. Under Queen Elizabeth, censorship bit. New books had to be approved by Privy Counsellors and archbishops; the Stationers' Company kept a register of licensed books and allocated to its members the right to print them. This system could be benign, giving work to less prosperous printers — or it could be corrupt. Robert Allibone called it vile.

  Stationers' Company involvement was formalised further in 1590, when the English Stock Company was created by the Crown. The money was provided by a hundred and five shareholders. Those shareholders accumulated copyrights in books, copyrights which they passed to their heirs, heirs who were not necessarily printers — and almost never authors. Increasingly, shares in the English Stock and possession of licences went into the hands of booksellers rather than printers.

  By the time the civil war began, the Stationers' Company was officially joint-partner with the Crown in imposing censorship and that was Robert Allibone's main grievance. 'A monopoly,' he raged. 'As surely as those on beer and soap that we deplored when the King sold them. Our own company, which ought to have been the first to protect our livelihoods, was coerced and corrupted, cozened and cheated into doing the King's and Archbishop Laud's will for them. The vicious system stank then and it still does. The Stationers' Company did the dirty work of censorship for Star Chamber. When Star Chamber was abolished, we believed the mire was cleansed, but now Parliament has its own machinery, the Committee for Printing- oh Lord, how I hate them! — and the same old lackeys are attempting control. But they will not succeed. The people have tasted enjoyment of a free press. There is no going back.'

  'Where in all this,' inserted Gideon quietly (he was dogged in discussion), 'was your quarrel with the late Keevil and my uncle Bevan?'

  Allibone spoke tersely. Abraham Keevil was my master. He taught me well. He was, I rue it, a holder in the English Stock and as a benefit he acquired a licence for printing the ABC primer, which is compulsory in every school.'

  A very great bringer-in of cash, Robert.'

  Assuredly lucrative.'

  'And good work — we want the people to read… So then?'

  'Keevil caught some plague or pox. His lads, being barely supervised, lacked the capacity or the application for such a large commission. He and I struck a verbal agreement for me to print copies.'

  'You were independent?'

  'I had set up alone, having inherited a little money. Keevil knew I would produce the job in timely fashion and decently done. It was an important contract for me. I believe it was a relief to him, too, to share the work with a man he trusted — as he did, for he had trained me. Then his illness finished him.'

  Gideon worked out what had happened: 'On Keevil's death, his widow reneged. She placed the job elsewhere.' He wondered whether Robert's preference for Margery was relevant to Elizabeth's action.

  'She took it back; organised the staff herself; stole my profit. Perhaps in the chaos of grief,' Robert conceded dryly, though at the time, he had become so aggrieved he had threatened a complaint to the Stationers' Company. 'I had the right of it. Elizabeth knew that. So Bevan Bevan was sent waddling around to see me, silkily proposing we should settle the matter with a fifty pounds down-payment and seven years' use of an honest apprentice…'

  'You were robbed there!' laughed Gideon.

  'So true. At the time it seemed my only hope of compensation!'

  Their privacy was at an end. Bevan Bevan staggered out to the courtyard, his white cambric shirt billowing through gaps between the buttons on his scarlet suit. He had grown larger than ever, so his vast thighs were close to splitting the grandiose spangled seams of his bright britches.

  'Go in to your bride.' Robert encouraged Gideon with a light push. 'Leave me with the spouting leviathan.'

  So Gideon slipped away while Bevan began another slurred tirade against Parliament. Afterwards, Gideon guiltily acknowledged that he had seen the angry glint in Robert's eye. He sensed that his friend was keen for something stronger than argument. Perhaps it had to do with the pamphlet he had put away.

  But this was no time to linger. As soon as Gideon returned to the feast, he was gathered up, chivvied and badgered, for his bride was by now waiting in the wedding chamber and he must hasten to her. The quicker he went of his own accord, the less danger that he would be escorted by a throng of tipsy, titillated onlookers. His mother kissed him, shedding a tear. Lambert tagged after him, playing the wise older brother.

  'Let me at it, Lambert; this is one thing I must do for myself — '

  Lambert blearily cited the musketeer's drill: 'Just ram home and withdraw your scouring stick.'

  What? Shivering inside his new shirt, Gideon walked upstairs, aware of every creak in the treads. Downstairs he could hear good-humoured cheers and knew his health was being drunk. Sackbuts hoote
d hoarsely. 'That is just the rude advice I would expect from a Blue Regiment pikeman.'

  Leaning on the lowest baluster, Lambert continued, 'Draw forth your match, boy. Blow the ash from your coal and open your pan…'

  'Plug your mouth, fool; you have the drill all arsy-versy'

  'Pray the weather be fair, so your weapon will fire — Nay, in the heat of engagement, brother, there is no more to it than this simple order: prepare, present and give fire!'

  Groaning, Gideon quickly turned a corner out of sight. In his embarrassment, he opened the wrong door. Fortunately that room was empty.

  Some kind soul had indicated the bridal bedroom with a wreath of flowers, hung on a nail outside. Still flustered, he grasped the handle and marched straight in. Lacy's almond eyes glared at him, above a dark coverlet. His new wife had just learned that husbands never knock. 'They cannot be changed!' her aunt had scoffed. Elizabeth should know, thought Lacy, with a hardness that would have astonished her new husband.

  Gideon crossed to a chest beneath a window where he sat to pull off his shoes and stockings. He was unknotting the thin, tangled ties of his shirt when a commotion below distracted him so much he opened the leaded casement and leaned out. The noise brought Lacy to his side and they hung over the sill together. Parthenope, weeping with laughter, looked up and waved them impatiently back to their bower, though not before Anne shouted: 'Bevan Bevan has been put in the horse-trough by your friend Allibone!'

  Gideon barked with laughter. 'Well that has done for the scarlet suit at last!' Anne gazed up at him fondly. Lacy, she thought, would be well served in her wedding bed, whereas lovemaking with Lambert made his wife feel like a damp sheet being flattened in a mangle…

  Gideon turned to his bride. She was behind him again, kneeling on the bed, pulling off her nightgown over her head with both arms. The only other naked woman Gideon had ever seen was Mother Eve in a picture. He had pored over the woodcut — yet it bore little relation to real anatomy.