Gideon was allowed to remove the head of his costume temporarily, and listen to the first scenes. Emerging red-faced, he found the proceedings hard to follow. To a grocer's son, it seemed completely alien. The script was tedious: anodyne exchanges which punctuated a strange mixture of clowning and dance. Presentations came and went, in a drama more remarkable for its ingenuity than its content. Moments of burlesque led into banal songs that would never be picked up and hummed on the streets; there were many dances and then a curiously stilted musical drama for Peace, Law and Justice.
Lacking the vigour of the old Ben Jonson masques which had once been played here, James Shirley's text was unworthy of the fine poet who wrote 'Death the Leveller'. His low-life comedy scenes were more spirited than his solemn allegories, but not much more. Wenches and wanton gamesters went into taverns and emerged drunk; thieves were apprehended by a constable; romping beggars and cripples attempted to cheat gentry, then threw away their crutches and danced. Shirley touched on controversy only with great care: 'Are these the effects of Peace?' asked Opinion (understandably perturbed); 'corruption rather.,' It was the only scathing comment. The King and Queen, who were still laughing at the cripples dancing, must have missed it.
Peace, according to this masque, did have the benefit of encouraging English inventiveness. Characters lined up to astonish the audience with fabulous ideas: a jockey brought a bridle that would cool overheated horses; a country fellow had devised a wondrous new threshing machine; a bearded philosopher with a furnace on his head could boil beef in a versatile steamer. There was an underwater chamber which allowed submariners to recover lost treasure from riverbeds, a physician with a hat full of carrots and a rooster on his fist had worked out how to fatten poultry with scraps, and a fortress to be built on Goodwin Sands would melt rocks. In a century where science was to make dramatic advances, this was the crazy side of science.
The three dotterels, Gideon presumed, were intended to illustrate country pleasures during times of plenty. Now they had their moment. Hastily donning his costume head again, Gideon scampered onto the stage. He hardly had time to be nervous. The trio of birds were chased around by three dotterel-catchers, who duly caught them with wires and cages, before they all scampered off to make room for the windmill and its jousting knight. Gideon experienced the gloom of an entertainer who knows the next act is bound to be more popular.
Soon afterwards, accompanied by solemn music, Peace, Law and Justice descended in gold chariots from stage clouds in the upper flats, three statuesque female deities wearing classical robes of green, purple and white satin. The ladies pronounced compliments to one another in curiously bad poetry before the entire cast moved towards the King and Queen and addressed Their Majesties with sanctimonious song. Gideon was at the back, so could barely glimpse the monarch.
The scene changed. The song changed, though not in quality. A finale was anticipated, yet the dance was interrupted by apparently real stagehands and costume-makers, whose dialogue was significantly more spirited than anything else in the pageant. Backstage, a small girl who was skipping about unattended shrieked with joy. Gideon Jukes had almost fallen over her as she stood below his line of sight, constricted as his vision was through the eyeholes. She pushed him aside, almost sick with excitement as actors playing a painter and a carpenter, a tailor's wife, a feather-maker's wife and an embroiderer's wife exchanged banter on stage. They represented ordinary people from a backstage world to which she had just been introduced by her somewhat frowsty grandmother. 'Juliane! Ou es-tu?' She was eight years old, and had been helping with the costumes, thrilled by the responsibility — but that night she was most entranced that she had seen the Queen.
The scene changed yet again. A representation of Morning Twilight glided onstage — a pale girl in a partly see-through costume, with whom Gideon was much taken. This brought the formal entertainment to its end. The Queen did dance with the masquers, proving her indifference to William Prynne's insults and delighting at least one small girl quite utterly!
Gideon felt shocked when Her Majesty danced. The rebel in him was out-rebelled. Any idea of running away from home to be a player evaporated. He would have to accept some other career.
So delighted with The Triumph of Peace was Henrietta Maria that she ordered it to be played all over again at Merchant Taylors Hall, where its anti-puritan message might reach larger numbers of people, especially the young. Third Dotterel would be forbidden by his parents from acting the second time. The small girl would not attend either, since her grandmother, always a game woman, wanted privacy to encourage a legal man called William Gadd, whom she had met at the first performance.
On that royal night at the Banqueting House, all the players and lawyers were taken afterwards to an enormous feast which lasted until daylight. Gideon was too sleepy to eat much. Next morning, Third Dotterel stumbled home to his mother with his bird's head under his arm, shedding feathers all the way from Ludgate Hill to Cheapside.
Chapter Three — London: 1634-42
Parthenope forgave him.
He was her baby — and she was about to lose him. She thought this was not the best moment to send Gideon half across London to another home. But sometimes it is easier for a youngster to respect strangers.
Gideon almost backed out before he started. His first task was to locate Robert Allibone, his new master, who worked at the sign of the Auger. This, his great-uncle had airily instructed, would be found off Fleet Lane. Brought up in the City, Gideon had to leave the few streets around Cheapside that he knew well, pass through the hubbub of booksellers around St Paul's and explore westwards beyond the city wall to Ludgate Hill and the busy environs of the Old Bailey. Though only half an hour's walk away, this was unknown territory. He was reluctant to ask directions. He had walked to an area of lawyers and their hangers-on, some visibly seedy. He sensed that his steps were dogged by sneak-thieves; he could hear the drunks raucously tippling in dark taverns and victualling houses. He had come among scriveners, printers, carriage-men and — since the law was so lucrative — goldsmiths and jewellers.
When few side streets had names and no premises had house numbers, wooden signboards swung by almost every door; they were high enough not to decapitate a man on horseback, but were otherwise unregulated. The pictures were crudely drawn and often faded. Few signs had any connection with nearby shops or tradesmen. Wandering about with youthful absence of urgency, Gideon gazed at Cocks and Bulls, Red Lions, White Harts, Swans, Crowns, Turks' Heads, Kings' Heads, Boars' Heads, Crossed Keys and Compasses, Rising Suns and Men in the Moon, Bushes, Bears and Barleycorns. It took him another hour to find the Auger. Welcoming him without complaint, Robert Allibone, a compact sandy-haired man in brown britches and shirtsleeves, admitted that the street board lacked finesse.
Gideon confessed he had not known what an auger was.
'A bodger. A good honest piercing tool. Not to be confused with an augur, who is a pagan prophet or prognosticator, a dabbler in offal and trickery…' The printer gazed at the boy. 'I hope you like words.'
'I will try, sir.'
'And how are you with ideas?'
'Do you print ideas?'
'I print words. Remember that. Take no responsibility for ideas. Whoever commissions the printing must take the risks — the publisher!' A firm hand pushed Gideon onto a stool and a book was opened on his knees. 'Show me you can read.' Although few people in the shires were literate, the majority in London could read. Gideon saw at once that his test piece was an extremely dull sermon so he pulled a face; Allibone seemed pleased, either at his quickness or his critical taste.