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.
