A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  Ebrima got back on board and Barney poled away.

  Carlos said to Ebrima: ‘You gave him the money you won from Gómez, didn’t you?’

  Ebrima shrugged in the moonlight. ‘We stole his raft. It was his living.’

  ‘And now we’re broke.’

  ‘You were broke already,’ Ebrima said sharply. ‘Now I’m broke too.’

  Barney thought some more about pursuit. He was not sure how energetically they would be chased. The city authorities did not like a murder, but victim and perpetrators were Spanish soldiers, and the Kortrijk town council would not spend much money chasing foreigners who had killed a foreigner. The Spanish army would execute them, given the chance, but once again Barney wondered whether they would care enough to organize a murder hunt. The army might well go through the motions and give up quite soon.

  Ebrima was quiet and thoughtful for a while, then he spoke solemnly. ‘Carlos, there’s something we need to get straight.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve left the army now.’

  ‘If they don’t catch us, yes.’

  ‘When we boarded the José y Maria, you told the officer I was a free man.’

  Carlos said: ‘I know.’

  Barney sensed the tension. For two years Ebrima had been treated as a regular soldier – an exotic-looking one, but no more a slave than the rest of them. What was his position now?

  Ebrima said: ‘Am I a free man in your eyes, Carlos?’

  Barney noted that phrase in your eyes. It meant that Ebrima was a free man in his own eyes.

  Barney was not sure how Carlos felt about this. Ebrima’s slavery had not been discussed since that moment on the José y María.

  There was a long pause, then Carlos said: ‘You’re a free man, Ebrima.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m glad we understand each other.’

  Barney wondered what Ebrima would have done if Carlos had said no.

  The clouds began to break. In the better light, Barney was able to keep the raft in midstream, and they moved faster.

  After a while Carlos said: ‘Where does this river lead, anyway?’

  ‘Antwerp,’ said Barney. ‘We’re going to Antwerp.’

  *

  EBRIMA DID NOT know whether to believe Carlos. It was not wise to put your trust in friendly words from your owner: that was an article of faith among the Seville slaves. A man who was happy to keep you prisoner, force you to work for no pay, flog you for disobedience and rape you any time he felt like it would not hesitate to lie to you. Carlos was different from the norm, but how different? The answer to that question would determine the course of the rest of Ebrima’s life.

  His head hurt from Gómez’s blow. Touching his skull gingerly, he felt a lump where the iron hand had struck him. But he was not confused or dizzy, and he thought he would recover.

  When dawn broke they stopped where the river ran through a grove of trees. They pulled the raft out of the water and concealed it with branches. Then they took turns to watch while the other two slept. Ebrima dreamed that he woke up in chains.

  On the morning of the third day they saw the tall tower of Antwerp’s cathedral in the distance. They abandoned the raft, letting it float free, and walked the last few miles. They were not yet out of trouble, Ebrima reckoned. They might be seized immediately and thrown in jail, then handed over to the Spanish military, to be hastily tried and speedily executed for the murder of Ironhand Gómez. However, on the busy roads leading to the city no one seemed to have heard about three Spanish soldiers – one with a red beard, one African – who had killed a captain in Kortrijk then fled.

  News went from city to city mainly in merchants’ bulletins, which contained mostly commercial information. Ebrima could not read, but he understood from Carlos that such newsletters included details of crimes only if they were politically significant: assassinations, riots, coups. A tavern brawl in which all involved were foreign soldiers would be of little interest.

  Antwerp was surrounded by water, he realized as they explored the outskirts. To the west was the broad sweep of the river Scheldt. On the other three sides, the city was separated from the mainland by a walled channel. The waterway was crossed by bridges, each leading directly to a fortified gate. It was said to be the richest town on earth, so, naturally, it was well defended.

  Even if the guards knew nothing of what had happened in Kortrijk, would they admit ragged, starving men with swords? The friends approached with trepidation.

  However, the guards gave no sign that they were looking for three fugitives from justice, to Ebrima’s relief. They did look askance at the appearance of the three – who were wearing the clothes in which they had boarded the José y María two years ago – but then Barney said they were relatives of Jan Wolman, and suspicion melted away. The guards even gave them directions to his address, near the high cathedral they had seen from so far away.

  The island was indented with long, narrow docks and latticed with winding canals. Walking through the busy streets, Ebrima wondered how Jan Wolman would receive two penniless second cousins and an African. They might not be the most welcome of surprise visitors.

  They found his home, a fine tall house in a row. They knocked at the door with apprehension, and were regarded doubtfully by the servants. But then Jan appeared and welcomed them with open arms. He said to Barney: ‘You look exactly like my late father when he was young and I was a boy.’ Jan himself had the red hair and golden-brown eyes of the Willards.

  They had decided not to burden Jan with the whole truth about their flight from Kortrijk. Instead, they said they had deserted from the Spanish army because they had not been paid. Jan believed them, and even seemed to think that soldiers who had not been paid had a right to desert.

  Jan gave them wine, bread and cold beef, for they were starving. Then he made them wash and loaned them clean shirts because, he said with amiable candour, they stank.

  Ebrima had never been in a house like Jan’s. It was not big enough to be called a palace, though it had plenty of room, especially for a city dwelling. However, it was crammed with costly furniture and objects: large, framed wall mirrors; Turkish rugs; decorated glassware from Venice; musical instruments; and delicate ceramic jugs and bowls that seemed to be for show rather than use. The paintings were also unlike anything Ebrima had seen. Netherlanders seemed to enjoy pictures of people like themselves, relaxing with books and cards and music in comfortable rooms similar to the ones they lived in, as if they found their own lives more interesting than those of the biblical prophets and figures of legend more common in Spanish art.

  Ebrima was given a room smaller than those of Barney and Carlos, but he was not asked to sleep with the servants, and he concluded from this that Jan was not certain of his status.

  That evening they sat around the table with the family: Jan’s wife, Hennie; his daughter, Imke; and three small boys, Frits, Jef and Daan.

  They used a mixture of languages. French was the main medium in the south and west of the Netherlands, and various Dutch dialects were spoken elsewhere. Jan, like many merchants, could get by in several languages, including Spanish and English.

  Jan’s daughter, Imke, was seventeen and attractive, with a wide happy smile and curly fair hair; a junior version of Hennie. She took an immediate shine to Barney, and Ebrima noticed that Carlos competed in vain for her attention. Barney had a roguish grin that girls loved. In Ebrima’s opinion steady, reliable Carlos would make the better husband, but few teenage girls would be so wise as to see that. Ebrima himself had no interest in young girls, but he liked Hennie, who seemed intelligent and kind.

  Hennie asked how they had come to join the Spanish army, and Ebrima began to tell the story, in mixed Spanish and French with a few dialect words when he knew them. He made the most of the drama, and soon the whole table was listening to him. He included the details of the new furnace, emphasizing that he had been an equal partner with Carlos in its invention. He explained how the blast of air made t
he fire burn so hot that the iron was produced in molten form and flowed out continuously, allowing the furnace to produce a ton of metal per day; and as he did so he observed Jan looking at him with new respect.

  The Wolmans were Catholics, but they were horrified to learn how the Church in Seville had treated Carlos. Jan said that kind of thing would never happen in Antwerp, but Ebrima wondered if he was right, given that the Church in both countries was ruled by the same Pope.

  Jan was excited by the blast furnace, and said that Ebrima and Carlos must meet his main supplier of metals, Albert Willemsen, as soon as possible – in fact, tomorrow.

  Next morning, they all walked to a less affluent neighbourhood near the docks. Albert lived in a modest house with his wife, Betje; a solemn little eight-year-old daughter, Drike; his attractive widowed sister, Evi; and Evi’s son, Matthus, who was about ten. Albert’s premises were strikingly like Carlos’s old home in Seville, with a passage leading to a backyard workplace with a furnace and stocks of iron ore, limestone and coal. He readily agreed that Carlos, Ebrima and Barney could build a blast furnace in his yard, and Jan promised to lend them the money needed.

  Over the following days and weeks, they got to know the city. Ebrima was struck by how hard the Netherlands people worked – not the poor, who worked hard everywhere, but the rich. Jan was one of the wealthiest men in town, but he worked six days a week. A Spaniard with that much money would have retired to the countryside, bought a hacienda and paid a steward to collect rents from peasants so that his own lily-white fingers did not have to touch grubby money, while seeking an aristocratic match for his daughter in the hope that his grandchildren would have titles. Netherlanders did not seem to care much about titles, and they liked money. Jan bought iron and bronze and manufactured guns and ammunition; he bought fleeces from England and turned them into woollen cloth that he sold back to the English; he bought profitable shares in cargoes, workshops, farms and taverns; and he loaned money to expanding businesses, to bishops who had overspent their incomes, and to princes. He always charged interest, of course. The Church’s prohibition against usury was ignored here.

  Heresy was another thing that did not trouble the people of Antwerp. The city was thronged with Jews, Muslims and Protestants, all cheerfully identifying themselves by their clothing, all doing business on an equal footing. There were folk of many complexions: redbeards like Barney, Africans like Ebrima, light-brown Turks with wispy moustaches, and beige Chinamen with straight blue-black hair. The Antwerpers hated nobody, except those who did not pay their debts. Ebrima liked the place.

  Nothing was said about Ebrima’s freedom. Every day he went with Carlos and Barney to Albert’s yard, and every evening they all ate at Jan’s house. On Sundays Ebrima went to church with the family, then slipped away in the afternoon – when the other men were sleeping off the wine they had drunk with the midday meal – and found a place out in the countryside where he could perform the water rite. No one called Ebrima a slave, but in other respects his life was worryingly similar to how it had been in Seville.

  While they were working in the yard Albert’s sister Evi often sat with them when they took a break. She was about forty, a little on the heavy side – as were many well-fed Netherlands women in their middle years – with a distinct twinkle in her blue-green eyes. She talked to them all, but especially to Ebrima, who was close to her own age. She had a lively curiosity, and questioned him about life in Africa, pressing him for details, some of which he had to strain to remember. As a widow with a child, she was probably looking for a husband; and since both Carlos and Barney were too young to be interested in her, Ebrima had to wonder whether she had a speculative eye on him. He had not been intimate with a woman since parting with Elisa, but he hoped that was a temporary state: he certainly did not intend to live the life of a monk.

  Building the blast furnace took a month. When they were ready to test it, both Jan’s family and Albert’s came to watch.

  Ebrima recollected that they had done this only once before, and so they could not be sure that it would work a second time. The three of them would look stupid if it failed. Worse, a fiasco would blight their future – which made Ebrima realize that he had been half-consciously hoping to stay and make a living here. And he hated the thought of making a fool of himself in front of Evi.

  Carlos lit the fire, Ebrima poured in the iron ore and lime, and Barney whipped on the two harnessed horses that drove the bellows mechanism.

  As before, there was a long, nail-biting wait.

  Barney and Carlos fidgeted nervously. Ebrima struggled to maintain his habitual impassivity. He felt as if he had staked everything on the turn of a single card.

  The spectators became a bit bored. Evi started talking to Hennie about the problems of having adolescent children. Jan’s three sons chased Albert’s daughter around the yard. Albert’s wife, Betje, offered oranges on a tray. Ebrima was too tense to eat.

  Then the iron began to flow.

  The molten metal inched slowly from the base of the furnace into the prepared stone channels. At first, the motion was agonizingly slow, but soon the flow strengthened, and began to fill the ingot-shaped hollows in the ground. Ebrima poured more raw materials into the top of the furnace.

  He heard Albert say wonderingly: ‘Look at that – it just keeps coming!’

  ‘Exactly,’ Ebrima said. ‘As long as you keep feeding the furnace, it will keep giving you iron.’

  Carlos warned: ‘It’s pig iron – it has to be purified before it can be used.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Albert said. ‘But it’s still impressive.’

  Jan said incredulously: ‘Are you telling me that the king of Spain turned up his nose at this invention?’

  Carlos replied: ‘I don’t suppose King Felipe even heard of it. But the other iron makers in Seville felt threatened. Spanish people don’t like change. The people who run our industries are very conservative.’

  Jan nodded. ‘I suppose that’s why the king buys so many cannons from foreigners like me – because Spanish industry doesn’t produce enough.’

  ‘And then they complain that the silver from America arrives in Spain only to leave again right away.’

  Jan smiled. ‘Well, as we’re Netherlands merchants rather than Spanish grandees, let’s go into the house, have a drink, and talk business.’

  They went inside and sat around the table. Betje served them beer and cold sausage. Imke gave the children raisins to keep them quiet.

  Jan said: ‘The profits from this new furnace will be used first to pay off my loan, with interest.’

  Carlos said: ‘Of course.’

  ‘Afterwards, the money should be shared out between Albert and yourselves. Is that how you see it?’

  Ebrima realized that the word ‘yourselves’ was deliberately vague. Jan did not know whether Ebrima was to be included as an equal partner with Carlos and Barney.

  This was no time for humility. Ebrima said: ‘The three of us built the furnace together: Carlos, Barney and me.’

  Everyone looked at Carlos, and Ebrima held his breath. Carlos hesitated. This was the real test, Ebrima realized. When they had been on the raft, it had cost Carlos nothing to say You’re a free man, Ebrima, but this was different. If Carlos acknowledged Ebrima as an equal, in front of Jan Wolman and Albert Willemsen, he would be committed.

  And Ebrima would be free.

  At last Carlos said: ‘A four-way split, then. Albert, Barney, Ebrima and me.’

  Ebrima’s heart bounded, but he kept his face expressionless. He caught Evi’s eye, and saw that she was looking pleased.

  That was when Barney dropped his bombshell. ‘Count me out,’ he said.

  Carlos said: ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You and Ebrima invented this furnace,’ Barney said. ‘I hardly did anything. Anyway, I’m not staying in Antwerp.’

  Ebrima heard Imke gasp. She would be disappointed: she had fallen in love with Barney.

  Ca
rlos said: ‘Where will you go, Barney?’

  ‘Home,’ said Barney. ‘I’ve had no contact with my family for more than two years. Since we arrived in Antwerp, Jan has confirmed that my mother lost everything when Calais fell. My brother, Ned, no longer works in the family business – there is no business – and he’s some kind of secretary in the court of Queen Elizabeth. I want to see them both. I want to make sure they’re all right.’

  ‘How will you get to Kingsbridge?’

  ‘There’s a Combe Harbour ship docked here in Antwerp at the moment – the Hawk, owned by Dan Cobley, captained by Jonas Bacon.’

  ‘You can’t afford passage – you haven’t got any money.’

  ‘Yesterday I spoke to the first mate, Jonathan Greenland, who I’ve known since I was a boy. One of the crew died on the voyage here, the ship’s blacksmith and carpenter, and I’ve taken his job, just for the journey home.’

  ‘But how will you make a living back in England, if your family business is gone?’

  Barney gave the devil-may-care grin that broke the hearts of girls like Imke. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of something.’

  *

  BARNEY QUESTIONED Jonathan Greenland as soon as the Hawk was out at sea and the crew were able to think about something other than steering the ship.

  Jonathan had spent last winter in Kingsbridge, and had left to rejoin the ship only a few weeks ago, so he had all the latest news. He had called on Barney’s mother, expecting Alice to be as eager as ever for reports from overseas. He had found her sitting in the front parlour of the big house, looking out at the west front of the cathedral, doing nothing; surrounded by old ledgers but never opening them. Apparently, she attended meetings of the borough council, but did not speak. Barney found it hard to imagine his mother not doing business. For as long as he could remember, Alice had lived for deals, percentages and profits; the challenge of making money by trading absorbed her completely. This transformation was ominous.