Rebels and Traitors (99 page)

‘He was shown a pamphlet called
The Bauble-Botherer’s Betrayal
and asked who the author of it was. Master Allibone stoutly replied, he was scarce able to say who was the author of it. About two weeks before, he had printed a book
like
the one he was being shown, but he could not say for certain whether that was the exact one or not. So he was then asked where was the original copy of the pamphlet, to which our Robert mildly returned that after we have printed and corrected works of that nature, the copies are thrown out as waste paper. “I expect,” said he, with his whimsical smile, “it is being used as bum-fodder in the privy by some large-buttocked alderman.” They pressed him again so, looking closely at the pamphlet, he claimed that there was some alteration from what he had printed; it might not be the same, and for all he knew it had been reprinted by others twenty times or more … He has answered interrogations before, of course —’ It was news to Gideon. ‘So they asked how many he had printed and he told them he had no idea, but the usual number would be one thousand. That was the grain of truth, you know, to make his other answers sound reasonable. Afterwards he protested, as we generally do, that unless the work is a matter of controversy, we never keep any spare copies.’

‘Unfortunately’ said Miles miserably, ‘the soldiers then found some hidden.’

‘So they asked, who was “Mr A.R.” and the good Allibone declared he had no idea, never having seen him before that day.’

As Gideon guffawed, another printer took up the story: ‘Master Allibone was then informed that exceptions had been taken to the pamphlet. He was accused that the matters contained in it are erroneous, profane and highly scandalous.’

‘He is never profane,’ sniffed Gideon.

‘True. But by then they were hauling out his press, which made him apoplectic. Thereupon he hit a soldier, who struck him in return with a musket-butt. And so they carried him away.’

Robert had been taken not to the Tower, it turned out, but to the Poultry Compter, a local civil prison, close by and reached down Ironmongers Lane. When Gideon rushed to this prison, again with Miles, he was at first told he could not see his friend. Then, a shamefaced jailor admitted that Robert had been brought here after he became unwell on the intended journey to the Tower. The man took Gideon to a cell. No one had explained, but as soon as Gideon knelt down beside his friend, he knew. Robert lay quite motionless. He was on his back, still in his nightshirt and bare feet, the nightshirt opened over the chest. He was dead.

Robert was still warm, as warm as if he lived. Gideon crouched with him, horrified. Miles could not accept the truth; he began rubbing Robert’s hands, calling out to his master to revive.

‘Miles, Miles, Miles! It is no use.’

A doctor was still talking to the staff. As Gideon held his old friend’s lifeless body on his lap, this man came to the cell door, looking at them curiously.

‘He is gone, sir. He was gone before I came. The shock of his arrest brought it on. His heart had a massive convulsion and he was taken from the world in a few minutes. He cannot have known what was happening.’

So Robert Allibone was lost, at two years short of fifty, as much a casualty of the civil war as if he had served in the army. His friends buried him with bunches of sea-green ribbons lying on the coffin. Copies of his most fervent pamphlets were hidden inside it with him, especially those that had been confiscated on the orders of the new, ‘Barebones’ Parliament — an act of defiance, which they deemed would have pleased him. Large numbers of the printing community attended the funeral, along with many civilian Levellers, foremost among them the estimable William Walwyn. Many tears were shed for Robert openly that day, others more privately. His partner Gideon Jukes and their apprentice Miles Gentry were inconsolable.

When he walked into his print shop and found Juliana Lovell talking to Miles, Gideon Jukes froze. He recognised the nape of her neck first, then her voice, her figure, her determined way of speaking out even to a youth who was annoying her … Gideon might have stepped backwards and fled, but Miles had seen him. As Juliana turned, there was no escape. He had been a soldier, so he stood his ground.

Any other woman asking him to print embroidery designs would have been out of luck. Forced into conversation about her request, Gideon took refuge in his professional role. He outlined carefully what would be involved in commissioning an engraver to draw illustrations. Even to his own ears his voice sounded colourless; he could see Miles looking at him as if he thought Gideon was sickening. Since Robert’s death, Miles had taken obsessive care of him. The apprentice had been shaken by the traumatic loss of his first master and was anxious that he might be left alone in the world if anything happened to the second. ‘I accept there are precedents. Emblem books exist, Mistress Lovell.’

‘I have one!’ snapped Juliana crisply. ‘It is forty years out of date. There are new fashions and I want to make them available.’

‘I understand.’ Ignoring the rebuke, Gideon continued to make her aware of the complications.

Juliana interrupted irritably. ‘I can pay you for this printing, Captain Jukes. I am not begging for favours.’

Gideon was a good businessman, but acknowledged with a private smile to himself — and to the wide-eyed Miles — that if there was one customer who might persuade him to subsidise a commission, it would be Juliana Lovell.

He confirmed that Miles was right; this was not a way to make large sums of money. Juliana set him straight: she wanted to offer designs mainly as a means to lure customers to her shop — ‘You have a shop?’

‘Haberdashery I have returned to the trade of my grandfather.’ She spoke with a mixture of defiance and pride. Grand-mère Roxanne would be horrified, but Juliana was happy with the life, and even happier to be earning a living. Gideon Jukes could see the change in her.

He thought he could find an engraver, and promised to make enquiries, perhaps ordering a sample design. Since he could not say how long this enquiry would take — both Miles and Juliana herself suspected he would conveniently ‘forget’ to do it — he had to ask where Juliana lived so he could find her to report. Her heart took an odd lurch, but she told him.

A few weeks later, as she was close to shutting up her business for the day, she felt slightly caught out when Gideon Jukes appeared, bearing a satchel. Catherine Keevil was with her in the shop, so Juliana left her downstairs and led Gideon up to her main room. He began laying out papers on the table, though first he put down a purse of money. Like any shopkeeper, Juliana assessed the weight of the purse by eye, without seeming to do so. He explained shamefacedly, ‘I have been remiss. I promised you the wench’s wages —’

‘There is no need,’ replied Juliana coolly — though he
had
promised and she might have been in difficulties. So when he waved aside her mild protest, she took up the money and put it away safely. She felt glad that her first good opinion of this man was now confirmed. Before Catherine reappeared they spoke of her quickly; Juliana acknowledged that she was a pleasant, willing worker who had become an essential part of her household. ‘I have grown very fond of her. Indeed I could not manage without her.’

They broke off when Catherine came upstairs, now a slim, demure girl of almost twenty. She brought with her Thomas and Valentine, just home from the local petty school with their horn books. ‘I taught them their letters myself,’ said Juliana, ‘but I think it is good for them to go out into the world now’
Having no father,
she meant.

Gideon saw how much taller and more mature the boys were, Thomas now ten, Valentine two years younger. The hazel-eyed, brown-haired duo were not yet too big for a lone mother to keep in hand, but they had turned into real boys: slovenly, slow to move when asked, forgetful, obstreperous, prone to squabbling. Tom had something of his father’s self-confidence, had Gideon known it. Val was sickly and given to whining, a mother’s boy. Both stalked around, eyeing up the visitor like young dogs whose pack had been invaded by a stronger male. They parked themselves like guards either side of their mother, staring at Gideon in silence, although when the adults’ conversation remained fixed on sewing and printing matters, they lost interest.

They needed to be fed, so Gideon was asked to join the family. He would not have stayed, but the printing discussion was unfinished; they were working through a draft booklet and Gideon wanted to take notes on all of the pages so he could have them set. Since the table was covered with papers, Juliana and Catherine organised a modest supper in the next-door parlour, with plates on their knees.

Over the meal, Gideon outlined how he had come to be working in Holborn. He explained Robert’s death. It had taken months to get the press returned; he had had to pretend to the authorities he knew nothing about Robert’s publications, but was a simple-minded dupe who only wanted to produce …

‘Produce what, Captain?’

‘Harmless poetry, I claimed.’

‘Not true?’

‘Not acceptable to my dear partner Robert. He was a man of great erudition, well read and the best conversationalist. But as a man of business, he despised the printing of verse and had banned me from any encouragement of poets.’

‘Why was that?’

‘No profit — but they expect the earth.’

‘Ah! What would Master Allibone have thought of stitch patterns?’

Gideon pulled a face. What anyone thinks: I am out of my mind to dabble!’ It was the closest he came to a joke. Mostly he spoke in the same level, subdued tone that Juliana found so disappointing. Whatever she had imagined if they chanced to meet again, it was not this.

He then told how, after he did retrieve the printing press, he decided revolutionary publishing was unsafe. The
Public Corranto had
been quashed when Robert was arrested. Gideon did not even attempt to revive it.

During his grief for his partner, he had reviewed his own ambitions. He decided to move premises. It was what Robert had done all those years before, when he shifted from Fleet Alley for a fresh start after his wife Margery died. So Gideon reversed the process. He came back to where they had worked when he was apprenticed and now he printed commercial books, school primers, spelling books, dictionaries and whatever was brought in to him by the professional men of the area. He had a growing trade with the American colonies, which had a big demand for school books.

‘I noticed in your shop you deal in wit, gout and verse grammars.’

’All good lines — but my steadiest bestseller is on angling!’

Once he had told his own story, Gideon naturally asked Juliana what coincidence had brought her to the same quarter of London. She simply mentioned her guardian’s legacy. With her sons present, she would not dwell on other matters.

After their meal, discussion of the proposed pattern book resumed. Catherine took away the boys, put them to bed and retired to her own room. If any tried to eavesdrop, they would only have heard polite voices as Juliana and Gideon continued to put together the draft pages.

Their work finally done, Gideon collected the drawings and Juliana’s stitchery instructions into his satchel. From it he first removed a bundle of old news-sheets.

Perhaps for a second he looked uneasy. ‘Customary printer’s gift. Out-of-date editions. Useful for wrapping up fish heads and marrow bones. Clean your muddy heels and soles on them. People put them in the privy. As we printers say, let the nation wipe its arse on the news …’ Juliana was slightly startled; this man had certainly not come to be romantic! Even Gideon had second thoughts. ‘Bringing bum-fodder to a strange house? Apologies, madam; I must be mildly deranged …’

‘No gift is turned away by tradespeople, Captain!’

She should have known that there was a point. Gideon lifted his hand, which had lain palm-down on the pile, apparently accidentally. Juliana read, upside down, that the top paper was called
The Moderate Intelligencer.
Gideon leafed through the first pages then read out, not looking at her: ‘I thought you may not have seen this.
“By an express further from Holland, we hear that Prince Rupert is daily expected… he wrote letters not long since to his mother, intimating that as soon as he could hear of his brother Maurice, with those eleven ships that were carried away in the hurricano” -
he would go to his mother is intended, I presume, though this journal is too poorly edited to say so —
“His own letters say that he himself and one more” -
one more ship, it means —
“was not in it. What is become of the rest, the Lord knows’.
” This was at the end of March. Thinking of you, I made enquiries —’

Thinking of you?
Juliana had once discussed Orlando with Anne Jukes; Anne must have said her husband was at sea. ‘Yes. There were other reports.’
Prince Rupert continues at the Palace Royal. There is no news yet of his brother Maurice…
A good mother, Juliana had kept news-sheets for her boys, if they were curious in future. Thank you. It was kind.’ Her voice choked a little; she pressed her palm over her mouth. There was a rumour that Prince Maurice reappeared in the Mediterranean, but that was false … Even the two ships that survived were so worm-eaten they were quite unserviceable; I suppose in such a condition the rest were vulnerable to the storm …’