Later stories claimed he had suffered from a bad conscience. It was said that about six o'clock on the fateful day, he returned to his wife and gave her the money, saying it was the dearest money he ever earned in his life. Another version said Brandon used up the reward in stews and brothels, catching Naples scab which, along with the drink, then destroyed him. It was also maintained that he never again slept easily and was afraid to walk the streets or sleep without a candle. His successor was William Loe, a dust-carrier and cleaner of dungheaps.
Gideon Jukes, who felt permanent ties to Brandon, attended his funeral in Whitechapel. A noisy throng stood to see the corpse carried to the churchyard. Some heckled, 'Hang him, the rogue! Bury him in a dunghill.' Others battered the coffin, saying they would quarter him. Gideon later saw the burial register, which baldly pronounced: 'June 21st, Richard Brandon, a man out of Rosemary Lane. This R. Brandon is supposed to have cut off the head of Charles the First.' Gideon wondered if the entry ought to be removed, but doing so would only draw more attention.
The sheriffs of the City of London sent large quantities of wine for the funeral.
Nobody came forward to validate Brandon's admission. The army remained resolutely silent. Although the axeman's identity seemed glaringly obvious, public speculation ran rife for years. Royalists theorised that the masked executioner had been Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell's chaplain, Hugh Peter, was named. Some claimed inside knowledge that it was Solicitor-General Cook. Years later Colonel Hewson's man, Sergeant Hulet, was formally charged with having been the axeman's assistant on that day, and was even found guilty by a jury, yet he was released unpunished, perhaps because of too many doubts. But Royalists' favourite bogeyman for the task was Colonel John Fox, Tinker Fox of Birmingham.
A year after the execution, Fox was sent on Parliament's business to Edinburgh, where the elders of the Kirk imprisoned him. By the time he was released in October 1650, he was so hugely in debt he was said to be ready to starve; his health collapsed and he died destitute at fifty, with his wife having to petition Parliament for ten pounds to pay for his funeral. Gideon Jukes could not attend that burial; he would by then be himself in Scotland.
Gideon had resumed normal life as a printer.
Immediately after the King's death, the mood in Basinghall Street was jubilant. Government was being reconstituted, with the King's Privy Council now replaced by a Council of State. Machinery was enacted daily to institute a Commonwealth. Robert printed a banner in a large font with the Parliamentary resolution: 'It hath been found by Experience that the Office of a King in this Nation is unnecessary, burdensome and dangerous to the Liberty, Safety and Public Interest of the People of this Nation; and therefore ought to be abolished.' The House of Lords was done away with on even better grounds: that it was 'useless and dangerous.'
One by one, the trappings of monarchy and the nobility were reviewed. The crown and sceptre had been secured and locked up. Other emblems and oaths were redesigned — among them the Great Seal, the Mace, the oaths of office for judges, the titles of public institutions, badges and coinage.
Gideon was living at his parents' house, now owned by Lambert and Anne. In part this was to save money until he decided whether he needed to set himself up in business separate from Robert. There was not enough work to keep both partners plus a journeyman, though Amyas would be leaving them. He was about to get married and was to be set up in his own workshop with his father-in-law's help. He had had his apprentice bond returned. In that he was more fortunate than Gideon, whose bond had been a debt repayment. Still, his father had bequeathed him a useful legacy out of affection and his mother had added to that when she died. He joked that even his army arrears might one day turn up.
Robert had taken on a new, fourteen-year-old apprentice called Miles, who spent a lot of time lusting after girls who would not look at him and the rest staring into space.
'This is a gormless, dawdling noodle of a lad, Robert!'
'Oh, just like my previous apprentices,' smiled Robert. Miles grinned vacantly before accidentally knocking over a pile of stitched pamphlets.
'You could pick those up, young man, and re-stack them tidily,' Gideon hinted. Miles gawped at him as if he could not believe the newly returned partner was so stiff and unreasonable. Gideon mimed taking a sight on him with a musket, holding the pose in concentrated silence as if covering some pernicious Royalist he intended to blast to smithereens. Very slowly, Miles stooped and retrieved the pamphlets. Robert hid a smile.
Another reason Gideon felt obliged to live with his brother was that relations between Lambert and Anne had become so strained he tried to be a peacemaker.
Lambert's health had never fully recovered after Colchester. He was now in his middle forties, with a limp in his foot from Naseby; he had the poor digestion and rheumatics of a much older man, and grumbled like one too. He seemed unlikely to achieve his parents' longevity. War had diminished his gusto; he was running to seed. Lumpish, touchy, dictatorial, and much given to seeking out old comrades for long nights of reminiscence, he ate and drank too much, with too little time spent at home. Gideon dared not imagine what happened in bed with his wife.
Anne still took the lead in running the grocery business. Lambert saw himself as the titular head, but let Anne get on with things as she had done while he was away. They did not tussle for supremacy; Lambert gave way as if he was too tired to care. Trade had suffered badly during the war. Lambert was given to pretending he thought this was Anne's bad management; she ceased taking criticism as a joke. They sniped at each other over business, but there was worse amiss.
Gideon realised that in some ways he had been lucky to be away soldiering. Life was simpler: you only struggled for food, sleep and survival. He had made the army his own refuge from domestic problems, and now he wondered how far Lambert did the same. Gideon had been away from home for over six years, Lambert for five. Returning was bound to take readjustment.
Slowly, they both settled. Perhaps because he was younger and a single man, Gideon found it easier. He slipped back without too much anxiety into the print shop, conveniently filling the place Amyas left. Robert welcomed him, welcomed his skill and reliability, and particularly his conversation. A year older than Lambert, Robert would have been penned up with only the dream-struck new apprentice had Gideon not come home.
Gideon picked up that other people thought in Lambert's absence something had been going on between Anne Jukes and Robert Allibone. He hated the idea. Robert was now forty-five, not too old for lust though surely too far gone for love (thought Gideon, at a mere twenty-eight), certainly Robert seemed fixed for ever as a widower. To Gideon, the man had aged noticeably; he was shocked at how the sandy hair had thinned and grown lank around Robert's nearly bald crown. Never one with much concern for good eating, Robert's diet at taverns had made him sallow and leather-skinned, with some of his freckles coarsening into liver spots. However, he remained lean and active, his mind sharp and his temperament kindly. As time went by, Gideon ignored other people sniggering; he convinced himself that if Robert did hanker after Anne, Anne safely ignored the infatuation.
The truth was that if Anne Jukes had ever had a soft spot for another man, it was not Robert but Gideon. Fortunately neither Gideon nor Lambert saw this.
Robert had guessed. Robert, trapped in unrequited and impossible heartache, was too great a spirit to speak of it. He had always been his own man, self-contained, emotionally reserved. He sought refuge in solitary evening journeys on his horse, Rumour; he dined several times a week at an inn in King Street, over in Westminster. Rumour had acquired a taste for buckets of ale, while Robert pecked for facts in the political undergrowth like a foraging blackbird tossing leaves. To those who knew him, Robert's nosing around Parliament seemed perfectly natural. Writing the Public Corranto was the work he loved best. Disappearing on his own to hunt down news let him hide his secret sorrow.