It was early yet, the fog not yet risen from the Scottish Yard, but at every lodge there were ’prentices and workmen standing in their doorways, waiting for me. And at every station the masons, porters, and smiths grinned and pointed, hiding their mouths behind their fists. Even the master of the beer cellar had roused himself from his bed. The porter’s lodge at the outer wall discharged the porter’s boy and two guards at a run as they followed me across Whitehall Road, and behind them came a full measure of workmen together in a tide.
To the west of Whitehall Street lay the horse-guard yard, flanked on three sides by the stable. Standing about the yard were six or seven of the king’s mounted men in blue coats and breeches, and with them a slant-eyed fool who wore around his neck a riding halter. He was large but with a child’s soft looks. One of the horse guards, seeing the crowd, walked towards me with a bridle and bit in one hand, and in the other a short whip.
With a great laugh he said to his fellows, “I’ll raise my wager, now that I’ve seen the Welshman. Ten shillings my fool beats your fool.”
He stopped within an arm’s breadth and, holding up the bridle, said, “Come, my great dray, bend down your head and take this between your teeth. I swear to you the whip will but tickle your neck if you run apace. Win for me and I’ll give you a shilling.”
He cocked his head at me, his smile faltering when I didn’t move. “Come, come. Take this bit and then give me your hand so I may straddle your back.”
Dropping the bridle down to his waist, he gave a great sigh as though deeply burdened by my silence. He flicked the whip at my chest, bringing a welt. “Well,” he said, “this one may need gelding.” He lowered the whip to slash at my thigh and I grabbed his fingers, squeezing them until they popped. I lifted him up and hung him by his coat from a high hook on the stable wall. Two of his men, weighted down with sword and cuirass, rushed at me, and I put them to ground like stranded kettle fish.
Suddenly, a loud field-ready voice cried, “Hold, hold!” and a stout, middling man with a red- winded face strode into the yard, pulling ’prentices and guardsmen roughly about, and with a great waving of arms made the sentries raise up their pikes. The bluejay I had hung on the wall was rescued and the crowd was soon scattered to their posts.
“Now, then,” threatened the stout man, standing on my toes. “What mean you to come and beat my men? I’m Llwewelyn, captain at arms, and I will have your head on a pike before you can finish a prayer. What say you?”
At hearing his good Welsh name I handed him the letter from Corporal Jones and waited while it was read. After a few surprised words, the captain embraced me as though I were a son truly lost and only just found, and I was that day taken into the king’s guard.
I drilled with pike and musket that summer through. Fitted with gorget, breastplate, and helmet, carrying a pike twenty feet long, five feet greater than other sentries, I made a fair impression upon the citizens of Whitehall. Posted at the palace gates where the stream of traffic was greatest, I wore a coat of scarlet with boots special-made to lift my height above seven feet. Men, and not a few women, would come to King’s Gate of an evening to gawk at me.
One night I was placed with a Cornishman, himself seven feet tall, on the stairs of the banqueting hall for the king’s summer’s-end feast. There the Cornishman and I were paired at the north entrance flanking the great ladies and lords that did pass through. Soon, before us stood the king himself. A man of smallish stature, not above five and a half feet, with sad eyes and a tripping tongue, he admired and examined us with pride. His queen came behind and with her own hand tied upon our breastplates two ribbons of red and gold. Afterwards, whenever the king was to go to Whitehall, whether to banquet or bait or receive men of great importance in his privy galleries, there stood the Cornishman and I.
We sentried beneath ceilings painted of men and women naked as newborns, flanked by hangings of silvered thread and carvings of alabaster and gold. Our cuirasses and helmets were kept from blackening by the king’s own armory squires. Our matched pikes of the finest ash were tied with the ribbons of favored court women who traipsed about us like cats in a granary, winking and gesturing for our notice, vying for a glance and a promising smile.
October brought open rebellion in Catholic Ireland, where it was proclaimed that British settlers were cut down by the thousands. Londoners came to call the slaughter the Queen’s Rebellion, for it was she they blamed for encouraging popery and open revolt. There was bloody action in the streets and even into Westminster Hall from citizens who feared the king himself was secretly a Catholic, bringing the well-remembered horrors of the Inquisition back to Protestant England. The king’s guards were called out to quiet the town and bring order again.
We broke dissent in Old St. Paul’s Church, where Puritan zealots gathered to try to turn away gaudy merchants who had filled the church naves with their goods, using the very baptismal font as a money counter. We chased the riotous preachers from the cathedral into the courtyard, where booksellers sold their wares to every rogue with a coin, and took the good ministers in chains to the Tower. We routed gangs of marching outlaw ’prentices, seeking only charitable pay and a relief from endless taxes which the king’s pleasures demanded, into the stinking alleys and public houses, where they sought shelter, and into houses where trap doors and ferret closets could hide a desperate man with a dirk or striking stick.
We raided the fomenting Cradle and Coffin Inn in St. Giles off Drury Lane, bastion of dissenters who wanted no hint of popery in their places of worship. And plucked deserting soldiers, sickened from the misuse of their own, from the Red Lion Inn over Fleet Ditch, and the Blood Bowl near Water Lane, where it was said a man a day was robbed and murdered.
In every public house and shop we searched, there followed offers of money and ale to turn away and look elsewhere. Our exemplar in this regard was the king himself, for he took bribes from every country in Europe to keep his armies from joining one royal dynasty over another. The money, for pride, I would not take when many of my fellows did; but a man will take drink when he is thirsty, and comfort when a welcoming cubby is made under a woman’s skirts. It was a short step then from guard to garrison lout, and I made time in gaming, baiting, and cockfighting. There were fairs and shows in every street. Giant women and dwarfish men were paraded on Fleet Street with baboons and dancing dogs. At the Eagle and Child Inn a monstrous ox grown nineteen hands high was shown for a coin.
There were ready fights to be had on any corner or crossroads, as most men were frayed with the threat of street war. A cap cocked back or a bitten thumb would bring bands of Catholics and Protestants together, knives drawn and keen for butchering. The Parliament threatened to impeach the queen for her Catholic ways. The queen in answer told the king, “Go and pull those rogues out by the ears or never more see my face.” My post was moved to Commons that winter to keep the Parliament men in mind of their king.
It was nigh on Christmas on a bright, cold day that I stood guard at Commons, nursing a head from too much drink. The evening before had been a pitiful show. An ancient bear, too old to fight, had been mauled in the Southwark baiting pits by a pack of young hounds. Blinded and matted with gore, the bear struggled to die on its hind feet but its owner gave the prod to anyone who would beat it down again so the hounds could better tear at its flesh. A terrible rumbling had taken up in my ears to watch that bear shaming every man-jack of them with his courage and his refusal to die on his back. The prod was in my hand before I had given a thought to it, and I stripped the bear baiter’s backside to mincemeat before I was held down by ten of my fellows and hastened from the ring. The roar was still in my head that morning as I gazed out of blood-hazed eyes at a young woman, standing before our sentries preaching.
She had come for weeks offering prayers for our blackened souls, and because she was small and henlike, I had given her not a thought. She was only one of many women who shouted or pleaded or spoke in strange tongues of the sinfulness of the king and his men. Newgate Prison had been flooded with these dour preaching shrills and they were of more sport to the courtiers that came to watch them rant than were the murderous scum waiting to be hanged. The guards posted with me soon made their own sport with her. Ripping the maiden’s cap from her hair, they fondled her with their hands, yet she stood upon her little stool, speaking of love and fragrant sacrifices to God. All the while she gave no heed to the men molesting her but looked above their heads to the highest rafters as if to watch a brace of nesting doves. Believing in that moment that no merciful act goes without punishment afterwards, I batted away the men and told her to go home to her husband or father.
