A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  Margery had got used to the knowledge that Susannah had once been Ned’s lover. Susannah had been bashful when Margery revealed that she had guessed the truth. ‘You had his heart,’ Susannah had said. ‘I just had his body, which, fortunately, was all I wanted.’ Margery was living in such a daze of passion that she could hardly think straight about that or anything else.

  Susannah received her in her parlour, then kissed her on the lips and said: ‘Go on up, you lucky girl.’

  An enclosed staircase led from the parlour up to Susannah’s boudoir, and Ned was waiting there.

  Margery threw her arms around him and they kissed urgently, as though starved of love. She broke the kiss to say: ‘Bed.’

  They went into Susannah’s bedroom and pulled off their clothes. Ned’s body was slender, his skin white, with thick dark hair on his chest. Margery loved just looking at him.

  But something was wrong. Ned’s penis was unresponsive, limp. This happened quite often with Bart, when he was drunk, but it was the first time with Ned. Margery knelt in front of him and sucked it, as Bart had taught her to do. It sometimes worked with him, but today with Ned it made no difference. She stood up, put her hands to his face, and looked into his golden-brown eyes. He was embarrassed, she saw. She said: ‘What is it, my darling?’

  ‘Something on my mind,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What are we going to do? What is our future?’

  ‘Why think about it? Let’s just love each other.’

  He shook his head. ‘I have to make a decision.’ He put his hand into the coat he had thrown aside and took out a letter.

  ‘From the queen?’ Margery asked.

  ‘From Sir William Cecil.’

  Margery felt as if the summer day had been blasted by a sudden winter wind. ‘Bad news?’

  Ned threw the letter onto the bed. ‘I don’t know if it’s bad or good.’

  Margery stared at it. The letter lay on the counterpane like a dead bird, its folded corners sticking up like stiffening wings, the broken red wax seal like a spatter of blood. Intuition told her that it announced her doom. In a low voice she said: ‘Tell me what it says.’

  Ned sat up on the bed, crossing his legs. ‘It’s about France,’ he said. ‘The Protestants there – they’re called Huguenots – seem to be winning the civil war, with the help of a huge loan from Queen Elizabeth.’

  Margery knew this already. She was horrified by the relentless success of heresy, but Ned was pleased about it; Margery tried not to think about this or any of the things that divided them.

  Ned went on: ‘So, happily, the Catholic king is holding peace talks with the Protestant leader, a man called Gaspard de Coligny.’

  At least Margery could share Ned’s approval of that. They both wanted Christians to stop killing each other. But how could this blight their love?

  ‘Queen Elizabeth is sending a colleague of ours called Sir Francis Walsingham to the conference as a mediator.’

  Margery did not understand that. ‘Do the French really need an Englishman at their peace talks?’

  ‘No, that’s a cover story.’ He hesitated. ‘Cecil doesn’t say more in the letter, but I can guess the truth. I’ll happily tell you what I think, but you can’t tell anyone else.’

  ‘All right.’ Margery took part listlessly in this conversation, which had the effect of postponing the dreaded moment when she would know her fate.

  ‘Walsingham is a spy. The queen wants to know what the king of France intends to do about Scottish Mary. If the Catholics and the Huguenots really do make peace, the king might turn his attention to Scotland, or even England. Elizabeth always wants to know what people might be plotting.’

  ‘So the queen is sending a spy to France.’

  ‘When you put it like that, it’s not much of a secret.’

  ‘All the same I won’t repeat it. But please, for pity’s sake, what has this got to do with you and me?’

  ‘Walsingham needs an assistant, the man must speak fluent French, and Cecil wants me to go. I think Cecil is displeased with me for staying away from London so long.’

  ‘So you’re leaving me,’ Margery said miserably. That was the meaning of the dead bird.

  ‘I don’t have to. We could carry on as we are, loving one another and meeting secretly.’

  Margery shook her head. Her mind was clear, now, for the first time in weeks, and she could think straight at last. ‘We take terrible risks every time. We will be discovered one day. Then Bart will kill you and divorce me and take Bartlet away from me.’

  ‘Then let’s just run away. We’ll tell people we’re married: Mr and Mrs Weaver. We can take a ship to Antwerp: I have a distant cousin there, Jan Wolman, who will give me work.’

  ‘And Bartlet?’

  ‘We’ll take him with us – he’s not really Bart’s son anyway.’

  ‘We’d be guilty of kidnapping the heir to an earldom. It’s probably a capital offence. We could both be executed.’

  ‘If we rode to Combe Harbour we could be at sea before anyone realizes what we’ve done.’

  Margery yearned to say yes. In the past three months she had been happy for the first time since she was fifteen. The longing to be with Ned possessed her body like a fever. But she knew, even if he did not, that he could never be happy working for his cousin in Antwerp. All his adult life Ned had been deeply engaged in the government of England, and he liked it more than anything. He adored Queen Elizabeth, he revered William Cecil, and he was fascinated by the challenges facing them. If she took him away from all that she would ruin him.

  And she, too, had her work. In recent weeks she had, shamefully, used her sacred mission as a cover for adulterous meetings, but nonetheless she was dedicated to the task God had assigned her. To give that up would be a transgression as bad as adultery.

  It was time to end it. She would confess her sin and ask God’s mercy. She would rededicate herself to the holy duty of bringing the sacraments to deprived English Catholics. Perhaps in time she would come to feel forgiven.

  As she reached her decision, she began to cry.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘We can work something out.’

  She knew they could not. She embraced him and pulled him to her. They lay back on the bed. She whispered: ‘Ned, my beloved Ned.’ Her tears wetted his face as they kissed. His penis was suddenly erect. ‘Once more,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not the last time,’ he said as he rolled on top of her.

  Yes, it is, she thought; but she found she could not speak, and she gave herself up to sorrow and delight.

  *

  SIX WEEKS LATER, Margery knew she was pregnant.

  17

  Sir Francis Walsingham believed in lists the way he believed in the Gospels. He made lists of who he had met yesterday and who he was going to see tomorrow. And he and Sir Ned Willard had a list of every suspicious Englishman who came to Paris.

  In 1572, Walsingham was Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to France, and Ned was his deputy. Ned respected Walsingham as he had Sir William Cecil, but did not feel the same breathless devotion. Towards Walsingham Ned was loyal rather than worshipful, admiring rather than awestruck. The two men were different, of course; but, also, the Ned who now served as Walsingham’s deputy was not the eager youngster who had been Cecil’s protégé. Ned had grown up.

  Ned had undertaken clandestine missions for Elizabeth from the start, but now he and Walsingham were part of the rapidly growing secret intelligence service set up to protect Elizabeth and her government from violent overthrow.

  The peace between Catholics and Protestants that had reigned in England for the first decade of Elizabeth’s rule had been thrown into jeopardy by the Papal Bull. There had already been one serious conspiracy against her. The Pope’s agent in England, Roberto Ridolfi, had plotted to murder Elizabeth and put Mary Stuart on the throne, and then marry Mary to the duke of Norfolk. The secret service had uncovered the plan and the duke’s head had been chopped o
ff a few days ago. But no one believed that was the end of the matter.

  Ned, like all Elizabeth’s advisors, feared more conspiracies. Everything he had worked for during the last fourteen years was now under threat. The dream of religious freedom could turn overnight into the nightmare of inquisition and torture, and England would again know the revolting smell of men and women being burned alive.

  Dozens of wealthy Catholics had fled from England, and most of them came to France. Ned and Walsingham believed that the next plot against Elizabeth would be hatched here in Paris. It was their mission to identify the plotters, learn their intentions, and foil their plans.

  The English embassy was a big house on the ‘left bank’, south of the river, in the university district. Walsingham was not a rich man, and England was not a rich country, so they could not afford the more expensive right bank where the French aristocracy had their palaces.

  Today Ned and Walsingham were going to attend the royal court in the Louvre palace. Ned was looking forward to it. The gathering of the most powerful men and women in France was a rich opportunity to pick up information. Courtiers gossiped, and some of them let secrets slip. Ned would chat to everyone and chart the undercurrents.

  He was just a little nervous, not on his own account, but on that of his master. Walsingham at forty was brilliant but lacked grace. His first appearance before King Charles IX had been embarrassing. A stiff-necked Puritan, Walsingham had dressed all in black: it was his normal style, but in the gaudy French court it was seen as a Protestant reproach.

  On that first occasion, Ned had recognized Pierre Aumande de Guise, whom he had met at St Dizier with Mary Stuart. That had been eleven years ago, but Ned remembered Aumande vividly. Although the man had been good-looking and well-dressed, there was something creepy about him.

  King Charles had pointedly asked Walsingham whether it was really necessary for Elizabeth to imprison Mary Stuart, the former queen of France, the deposed Queen of Scots, and Charles’s sister-in-law. Walsingham should have known the book of Proverbs well enough to remember A soft answer turneth away wrath. However, he had responded with righteous indignation – always a weakness in Puritans – and the king had become frosty.

  Since then Ned had made a special effort to be more easy-going and amiable than his unbending boss. He had adopted a style of dress appropriate to a minor diplomat without rigid religious convictions. Today he put on a pastel-blue doublet slashed to show a fawn lining, an unostentatious outfit by Paris standards but, he hoped, stylish enough to distract from the appearance of Walsingham, who clung stubbornly to his black.

  From his attic window Ned could see across the Seine river to the towers of the cathedral of Notre Dame. Beside his smoky mirror stood a little portrait Margery had given him. It was somewhat idealized, with impossibly white skin and rosy cheeks; but the artist had captured her tumbling curls and the mischievous grin he had loved so much.

  He still loved her. Two years ago he had been forced to accept that she would never leave her husband, and without hope his passion had burned low, but the fire had not gone out, and perhaps it never would.

  He had no news from Kingsbridge. He had not heard from Barney, who was presumably still at sea. He and Margery had agreed not to torture themselves by writing to one another. The last thing Ned had done, before leaving England, was to quash the arrest warrant for Stephen Lincoln, which had been issued on the basis of evidence invented by Dan Cobley. If Margery felt it her sacred duty to bring consolation to bereft Catholics, Ned was not going to let Dan Cobley stop her.

  Adjusting his lace collar in front of the mirror, he smiled as he remembered the play he had seen last night, called The Rivals. Highly original, it was a comedy about ordinary people who spoke naturally, rather than in verse, and featured two young men, both of whom wanted to abduct the same girl – who turned out, in a surprise ending, to be the sister of one of them. The whole thing took place in one location, a short stretch of street, in a period of less than twenty-four hours. Ned had not before seen anything so clever in London or Paris.

  Ned was just about ready to leave when a servant came in. ‘A woman has called, selling paper and ink cheaper than anywhere in Paris, she claims,’ the man said in French. ‘Do you care to see her?’

  Ned used huge quantities of expensive paper and ink, drafting and encoding Walsingham’s confidential letters to the queen and Cecil. And the queen was as parsimonious with her spies as she was with everyone, so he was always looking for lower prices. ‘What is Sir Francis doing right now?’

  ‘Reading his Bible.’

  ‘Then I have time. Send her up.’

  A minute later a woman of about thirty appeared. Ned looked at her with interest. She was attractive rather than beautiful, modestly dressed, with a determined look softened by blue eyes. She introduced herself as Thérèse St Quentin. She took samples of paper and ink out of a leather satchel and invited Ned to try them.

  He sat at his writing table. Both paper and ink seemed good. ‘Where do you get your supplies?’ he asked.

  ‘The paper is made just outside Paris, in the suburb of Saint-Marcel,’ she said. ‘I also have beautiful Italian paper from Fabriano, in Italy, for your love letters.’

  It was a flirty thing to say, but she was not very coquettish, and he guessed it was part of her sales pitch. ‘And the ink?’

  ‘I make it myself. That’s why it’s so cheap – though it’s very good.’

  He compared her prices with what he usually paid and found that she was, indeed, cheap, so he gave her an order.

  ‘I’ll bring everything today,’ she said. Then she lowered her voice. ‘Do you have the Bible in French?’

  Ned was astonished. Could this respectable-looking young woman be involved in illicit literature? ‘It’s against the law!’

  She responded calmly. ‘But breaking the law no longer carries the death penalty, according to the Peace of St Germain.’

  She was talking about the agreement that had resulted from the peace conference Ned and Walsingham had been sent to in St Germain, so Ned knew the details well. The treaty gave the Huguenots limited freedom of worship. For Ned, a Catholic country that tolerated Protestants was as good as a Protestant country that tolerated Catholics: it was the freedom that counted. However, freedom was fragile. France had had peace treaties before, all of them short-lived. The famously inflammatory Paris preachers ranted against every attempt at conciliation. This one was supposed to be sealed by a marriage – the king’s rackety sister, Princess Margot, was engaged to the easy-going Henri of Bourbon, Protestant king of Navarre – but eighteen months later the wedding still had not taken place. Ned said: ‘The peace treaty could be abandoned, and any day there could be a surprise crackdown on people like you.’

  ‘It probably wouldn’t be a surprise.’ Ned was about to ask why not, but she did not give him the chance. She went on: ‘And I think I can trust you. You’re Elizabeth’s envoy, so you must be Protestant.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Ned said cautiously.

  ‘If you want a French Bible, I can get you one.’

  Ned was amazed by her nerve. And as it happened, he did want a French Bible. He spoke the language well enough to pass as a native but sometimes, in conversation, he did not catch the biblical quotations and allusions that Protestants used all the time, and he had often thought he should read the better-known chapters to familiarize himself with the translation. As a foreign diplomat, he would not get into much trouble for owning the book, in the unlikely event that he was found out. ‘How much?’ he said.

  ‘I have two editions, both printed in Geneva: a standard one that is a bargain at two livres, and a beautifully bound volume in two colours of ink with illustrations for seven livres. I can bring them both to show you.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I see you’re going out – to the Louvre, I suppose, in that beautiful coat.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you be back for your dinner?’
<
br />   ‘Probably.’ Ned felt bemused. She had taken control of the conversation. All he did was agree to what she proposed. She was forceful, but so frank and engaging that he could not be offended.

  ‘I’ll bring your stationery then, and two Bibles so that you can choose the one you prefer.’

  Ned did not think he had actually committed himself to buying one, but he let that pass. ‘I look forward to seeing them.’

  ‘I’ll be back this afternoon.’

  Her coolness was impressive. ‘You’re very brave,’ Ned commented.

  ‘The Lord gives me strength.’

  No doubt he did, Ned thought, but she must have had plenty to start with. ‘Tell me something,’ he said, taking the conversational initiative at last. ‘How did you come to be a dealer in contraband books?’

  ‘My father was a printer. He was burned as a heretic in 1559, and all his possessions were forfeit, so my mother and I were destitute. All we had was a few Bibles he had printed.’

  ‘So you’ve been doing this for thirteen years?’

  ‘Almost.’

  Her courage took Ned’s breath away. ‘During most of that period, you could have been executed, like your father.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But surely you could live innocently, selling just paper and ink.’

  ‘We could, but we believe in people’s right to read God’s word for themselves and make up their own minds about what is the true gospel.’

  Ned believed in that, too. ‘And you’re willing to risk your life for that principle.’ He did not mention that if caught she would undoubtedly have been tortured before being executed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Ned stared at her, fascinated. She looked back at him boldly for a few moments, then she said: ‘Until this afternoon, then.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  When she had gone, Ned went to the window and looked out across the busy fruit-and-vegetable market of the place Maubert. She was not as afraid as she might have been of a crackdown on Protestants. It probably wouldn’t be a surprise, she had said. He wondered what means she had of finding out in advance about the intentions of the ultra-Catholics.