Chapter Two — Whitehall: 2 February 1634
The blur of torchlight first became visible to the waiting crowds at Charing Cross. Spectators made out an occasional twinkle, then ranks of tarry flambeaux bobbed queasily in the darkness, finally filling the broad street with light. The horses and chariots made their slow, noisy way towards Whitehall Palace and the watching lords and ladies. A spectacular cast of players had spent hours preparing themselves in grand private mansions along the Strand and now they advanced towards the Banqueting House. Above the clatter of horses' hooves, a reedy shawm struggled to make its music heard in a hornpipe for frolicking anti-masquers, who were to present low-life comedy interludes. They wore coats and caps of yellow taffeta, bedecked with red feathers, and were ushering Fancy, the first featured character, in multi-coloured feathers and with big bats' wings attached to his shoulders. This quaint figure led the way for numerous curiosities, who were celebrating a tricky moment in history.
The Triumph of Peace was being presented to a King who certainly ruled without conflict. He had dismissed his truculent Parliament six years before. Now, though, his independence had an end-date for he had made himself penniless. To set the moment in context, that year of 1634 would see the notorious witchcraft trials at Loudun, the first meeting of the Academie francaise, the opening of the Covent Garden piazza in London, and the charter for the Oxford University Press. North America was being colonised with permanent settlements. Europe, from Scandinavia to Spain, was a theatre of blood, rape and pillage in what would come to be known as the Thirty Years War. The previous year, Galileo Galilei had been tried in Rome and forced to recant his opinion that the earth went around the sun; he now languished in the prison where he would die. In London the world revolved around King Charles.
In England, without apparent irony, its ruling couple could be hailed in song by Shirley as
'… great King and Queen, whose smile
Doth scatter blessings through this Isle.'
The masque celebrated the King's and Queen's recent return from Scotland. There, causing as much offence as he possibly could to his strait-laced and suspicious Scottish subjects, King Charles had been crowned monarch of two kingdoms. He had worn ostentatious robes of white satin and had outraged the fierce Scottish Kirk by using a thoroughly Anglican ritual, conducted by a phalanx of English bishops in jewel-bright robes. This display was not designed to win the hearts of sober Presbyterians. Although always convinced of his personal charm, King Charles saw no reason to show diplomacy to mere subjects. Why should he? He was accustomed to uncritical praise — for instance, the nauseous blandishments he was about to hear in Shirley's masque, calling him 'the happiness of our Kingdom, so blest in the present government…'. Perhaps only lawyers could have endorsed this. Even some of those paying for the masque may have choked on it.
There were three kingdoms, in fact, some more blest than others. It was never thought necessary to have a coronation for the Irish, even to offend them. They were seen as savages, whose best land English monarchs and their favourites greedily plundered — more recently, an investment opportunity even to the well-off English middle classes. The Welsh skulked in a mere rocky principality; they were allowed the traditional honour of their own Prince of the Blood, even though, as was also traditional, they never saw their sovereign's eldest son. The Prince of Wales was not quite four years old and so not allowed to stay up to watch The Triumph of Peace. Peace would play little part in his early life.
On returning from Edinburgh, King Charles and his enormous entourage had been ceremonially welcomed back by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London. Gideon had gone to watch. Borne in the civic procession was the traditional naked sword — which might be prophetic. The staged welcome, with bare-headed reverence from the leading citizens, colour, vibrancy, noise, and crowds of applauding onlookers penned behind street rails, had similarities to the masque which the flattering lawyers then offered at Whitehall. It may have helped the monarch to believe that life was one great pageant of admiration, with himself its adored centre. But the grudging boy in the dotterel-suit was starting to wonder.
Bulstrode Whitelocke, the go-getting lawyer who had arranged The Triumph of Peace, knew what he was about. The royal family lapped up such entertainments, oblivious to the obscene expense. This masque cost twenty thousand pounds, at a time when a well-to-do farmer with his own land might earn two or three hundred pounds a year and a cobbler was paid sixpence a day — but must supply his own thread. Apples were three for a penny and ribbon was ninepence a yard. You could buy a horse for two pounds, or a blind one for half as much. Brought up to know the value of money, Gideon goggled at this extravagance. Twenty thousand pounds lavished on one night's court entertainment could only mean enormous royal favour was expected in return. Would the King understand the bargain?
Gideon began to see why the Queen's love of such theatricals had attracted scabrous comment. As this procession was wending its colourful way along Whitehall to the Banqueting House, everything about it — including its staging on Candlemas, which was a Catholic feast day — looked like deliberate defiance against William Prynne, the puritan author of a fanatical tract called Histriomastix: the Players' Scourge (or Actor's Tragedy). Prynne had an obsessive hatred for the theatre. He denounced the Queen, who had shocked England by importing French actresses to take part in court masques, at a time when women did not appear on the stage. Worse, it was said that Henrietta Maria had scandalously danced in these masques herself.
William Prynne, who was a lawyer, had been tried in the hated Star Chamber, which ruled on censorship. He was sentenced to a ferocious fine, the pillory and prison; he was doggedly continuing his activities from jail and would eventually be tried a second time, have his ears lopped and his forehead branded 'SL' for Seditious Libeller. He was already deprived of his Oxford degree, and expelled from Lincoln's Inn, the very Inn whose more grovelling members had contributed to The Triumph of Peace.
Few of the satin-clad lords and ladies probably gave much thought to the imprisoned campaigner as the crowds gasped with delight at 'Jollity in a flame-coloured suit' and 'Laughter in a long coat of several colours, with laughing vizards on his breast and back, a cap with two grinning faces, and feathers between'. But as they stamped their cold feet outside in Whitehall, Lambert Jukes and his uncle were discussing Prynne sardonically. Bevan had an intimate connection with literature nowadays. Those who love books love free ones best of all. Through his new wife, the printer's widow, Bevan obtained reading material which — since the widow was extremely well-off — he had leisure to peruse.
'Have you read this Players' Scourge?' asked Lambert.
'Nobody has read it,' scoffed Bevan Bevan flatly. 'No man has a life long enough. We use this book to prop up a dilapidated court cupboard that has lost a foot. It is more than a thousand pages of bile! This is a mighty cube of invective, expelled like foul air from the posterior of one who professes never to visit the playhouse — '
'Difficult, when the theatres are closed due to plague.' Lambert sounded pleased to find this flaw.
Bevan eased his bulk, trying to get comfortable on his lame leg. He and Lambert were squeezed into a dark corner opposite the Horse Guards Yard, to which Bevan had led them by a back route up from the river, passing through the woodyard, coalyards, and other palace offices. 'They say Prynne's book is a very conduit of foul- mouthed, narrow-minded, fearsome flame-throwing spite which the crazed author has gathered over seven years — '
'And he calls the Queen a whore?' Lambert was always direct. From their position, they could see the tall windows of the Banqueting House; within its warmth, persons who called themselves quality were pressed against the glass panes, craning out at the spectacle. The King and Queen would be among that richly dressed throng. From time to time a jewel flashed on the white neck of one of the ladies, whose high-waisted gowns with puffed sleeves and snowflake collars were like costumes for fairies in just such a masque as they were preparing to watch.
'A notorious whore,' concurred Bevan.
'Not well advised!' Lambert sniggered.
As the torchlit procession continued past them, they watched many strange phenomena. To antique music representing birdsong, came a man-sized owl accompanied by a magpie, a jay, a crow and a kite. Struggling to spot their own bird, Lambert and Bevan made out three satyrs with their own torch-bearers — and finally what they were waiting for: the three dotterels. They expelled a roar of greeting, which they kept up until one of the high- stepping wildfowl turned slowly towards them.
Despite the winter night, inside the dotterel's heavy costume, Gideon had sweat in his eyes. Adolescents like to hide, but this was far too uncomfortable. Striving to keep up with the parade, the young actor momentarily tripped over the long claws of his bird's feet. Bevan's derisive cheer had been unmistakable even through the muffling headpiece. Now he was for it. He knew that his great-uncle and his brother had tracked him down.
