A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  Ned, too, was fearful for Margery. He might not be able to protect her from the wrath of the law.

  He said: ‘I believe we should all worship God in the way we think right, and not worry about what other people do. I don’t hate Catholics. I’ve been friends with your mother – and father – all my life. I don’t think Christians should kill each other over theology.’

  ‘It’s not just Catholics who burn people. The Protestants in Geneva burned Michel Servet.’

  Ned thought of saying that the name of Servet was known all over Europe precisely because it was so unusual for Protestants to burn people to death; but he decided not to take that argumentative line with Roger. Instead he said: ‘That’s true, and it will be a stain on the name of John Calvin until the day of judgement. But there are a few people – on both sides – who struggle for tolerance. Queen Caterina, the mother of the king of France, is one, and she’s Catholic. Queen Elizabeth is another.’

  ‘But they both kill people!’

  ‘Neither woman is a saint. There’s something you must try to understand, Roger. There are no saints in politics. But imperfect people can still change the world for the better.’

  Ned had done his best, but Roger looked dissatisfied. He did not want to be told that life was complicated. He was twelve years old, and he sought ringing certainties. He would have to learn slowly, like everyone else.

  The conversation was interrupted when Alfo walked in. Roger immediately clammed up, and a few moments later politely took his leave.

  Alfo said to Ned: ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He’s having adolescent doubts. He treats me as a harmless friend of the family. How is school?’

  Alfo sat down. He was nineteen now, and he had Barney’s long limbs and easy-going ways. ‘The truth is, a year ago the school had already taught me all it could. Now I spend half my time reading and the other half teaching the youngsters.’

  ‘Oh?’ It was clearly Ned’s day for counselling young men. He was only forty-three, not old enough for such responsibility. ‘Perhaps you should go to Oxford and study at the university. You could live at Kingsbridge College.’ Ned was only mildly keen on this idea. He himself had never studied at a university, and he could not say that he had suffered much in consequence. He was as smart as most of the clergymen he met. On the other hand, he occasionally noticed that university-educated men were more agile than he in arguments, and he knew that they had learned that in student debates.

  ‘I’m not cut out to be a clergyman.’

  Ned smiled. Alfo was fond of girls – and they liked him, too. He had inherited Barney’s effortless charm. Timid girls were put off by his African looks, but the more adventurous were intrigued.

  English people were illogical about foreigners, Ned found: they hated Turks, and they believed Jews were evil, but they regarded Africans as harmlessly exotic. Men such as Alfo, who somehow ended up in England, usually married into the community, where their inherited appearance disappeared in the course of three or four generations.

  ‘Going to university doesn’t mean you’re obliged to become a clergyman. But I sense that you have something else in mind.’

  ‘My grandmother Alice had a dream of turning the old monastery into an indoor market.’

  ‘That’s true, she did.’ It was a long time ago, but Ned had not forgotten looking around the ruins with his mother, imagining the stalls set up in the cloisters. ‘It’s still a good idea.’

  ‘Could I use the Captain’s money to buy the place?’

  Ned considered. He had charge of Barney’s wealth while Barney was at sea. He kept a lot of it in cash, but he had made some investments too – an orchard in Kingsbridge, a dairy in London – and had made money for his brother. ‘I think we might, if the price is right,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘May I approach the chapter?’

  ‘Do some research first. Ask about recent sales of building land in Kingsbridge – how much per acre.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Alfo said eagerly.

  ‘Be discreet. Don’t tell people what you’re planning – say I’ve asked you to look for a building plot for myself. Then we’ll talk about how much to offer for the monastery.’

  Eileen Fife came into the room with a packet in her hand. She smiled affectionately at Alfo and handed the packet to Ned. ‘A messenger brought this from London for you, Sir Ned. He’s in the kitchen, if you want him.’

  ‘Give him something to eat,’ Ned said.

  ‘I’ve done so already,’ Eileen said, indignant that Ned should think she might have omitted this courtesy.

  ‘Of course you have, forgive me.’ Ned opened the packet. There was a letter for Sylvie addressed in Nath’s childlike handwriting, undoubtedly forwarded by the English embassy in Paris. It would probably be a request for more books, something that had happened three times in the last ten years.

  Ned knew, from Nath’s letters and from Sylvie’s visits to Paris, that Nath had taken over Sylvie’s role in more than bookselling. She still worked as maid to the family of Pierre Aumande de Guise, and she continued to watch Pierre and pass information to the Paris Protestants. Pierre had moved into the Guise palace, along with Odette, her son Alain, now twenty-two and a student, and Nath. This gave Nath extra opportunities for espionage, especially on English Catholics in Paris. Nath had also converted Alain to Protestantism, unknown to Odette or Pierre. All Nath’s information came to Sylvie in letters such as this one.

  Ned set it aside for Sylvie to open.

  The other letter was for him. It was written in clear, forward-slanted script, the work of a methodical man in a hurry, and Ned recognized it as that of Sir Francis Walsingham, his master. However, he could not read it immediately because it was in code. He said to Eileen: ‘I need time to compose a reply. Give the messenger a bed for the night.’

  Alfo stood up. ‘I’ll make a start on our new project! Thank you, Uncle Ned.’

  Ned began to decode his letter. There were only three sentences. It was tempting to write the decrypt above the coded message, but that practice was strictly forbidden. If a coded letter with its decrypt found its way into the wrong hands, the enemy would have a key to all other messages written in the same code. Ned’s code-breakers, working on intercepted correspondence of foreign embassies in London, had benefited more than once from such carelessness on the part of the people on whom they spied. Ned wrote his decrypt with an iron pencil on a slate that could be wiped clean with a damp cloth.

  He had the code in his head, and he was able to decipher the opening sentence rapidly: News from Paris.

  His pulse quickened. He and Walsingham were eager to find out what the French would do next. All through the sixties and seventies, Queen Elizabeth had held her enemies at bay by pretending to consider marriage proposals from Catholic princes. Her latest victim had been Hercule-Francis, the brother of King Henri III of France. Elizabeth would be fifty this year, but she still had the power to fascinate men, and she had enraptured Hercule-Francis, even though he was still in his twenties, calling him ‘my little frog’. She had toyed with him for three years, until he came to the conclusion reached eventually by all her suitors, that she had no intention of marrying anyone. But Ned felt she had played the marriage card for the last time, and he feared that her enemies might now do what they had been talking about for so long, and make a serious attempt to get rid of her.

  Ned was beginning on the second sentence when the door was flung open and Margery burst in.

  ‘How dare you?’ she said. ‘How dare you?’

  Ned was thunderstruck. Margery’s sudden rages were much feared by her servants, but he had never been subjected to one. His relationship with her was friendly to the point of affection. ‘What on earth have I done?’ he said.

  ‘How dare you feed Protestant heresy to my son?’

  Ned frowned. ‘Roger asked me questions,’ he said, reining in his indignation. ‘I tried to answer him honestly.’

  ‘I will bring up m
y sons in the faith of their forefathers and I won’t have them corrupted by you.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Ned with some exasperation. ‘But sooner or later someone’s going to tell them that there’s an alternative point of view. Be grateful it was me and not some bigoted Puritan such as Dan Cobley.’ Even while he was annoyed with her he could not help noticing how attractive she was, tossing her abundant hair and flashing anger from her eyes. She was more beautiful at forty than she had been at fourteen, when he had kissed her behind the tomb of Prior Philip.

  She said: ‘They would recognize Cobley for the bull-headed blasphemer that he is. You pose as a reasonable man while you poison their minds.’

  ‘Ah! I understand. It’s not my Protestantism you object to, it’s my reasonableness. You don’t want your sons to know that men can discuss religion quietly, and disagree without trying to murder one another.’ Even while he argued with her, he realized vaguely that she did not really think he was poisoning Roger’s mind. In truth she was raging against the fate that had driven her and Ned apart so that they could not raise their child together.

  But she was like a charging horse, and could not be stopped. ‘Oh, you’re so clever, aren’t you?’ she raved.

  ‘No, but I don’t pretend to be stupid, which is what you’re doing now.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to argue. I’m telling you not to speak to my children.’

  Ned lowered his voice. ‘Roger is mine, too.’

  ‘He must not be made to suffer for my sins.’

  ‘Then don’t force your religion down his throat. Tell him what you believe, and admit that good men disagree. He will respect you more.’

  ‘Don’t you dare tell me how to raise my children.’

  ‘Then don’t you tell me what I may and may not say to my son.’

  She went to the door. ‘I’d tell you to go to hell, but you’re on your way there already.’ She left the room, and a moment later the front door slammed.

  Ned looked out of the window, but for once he did not enjoy the beauty of the cathedral. He was sorry to have quarrelled with Margery.

  One thing they were agreed upon: they would never tell Roger the truth about his parenthood. They both felt it would be deeply disturbing to the boy – or even to the man, later on – to learn that he had been so deceived all his life. Ned would never have the joy of acknowledging his only son, but he had to make that sacrifice for the boy’s own sake. Roger’s welfare was more important than Ned’s: that was what it meant to be a parent.

  He looked down at his letter and transcribed the second sentence: Cardinal Romero is back and his mistress with him. That was significant. Romero was an informal envoy of the king of Spain. He must be plotting something with the French ultra-Catholics. And his mistress, Jerónima Ruiz, had spied for Ned at the time of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Perhaps she would be willing to reveal what Romero was up to.

  As he was working on the third sentence, Sylvie came into the parlour. Ned handed her the letter that had come with his own. She did not open it immediately. ‘I heard some of your conversation with Margery,’ she said. ‘The louder parts. It sounded unpleasant.’

  Ned took her hand, feeling awkward. ‘I wasn’t attempting to convert Roger. I just wanted to answer his questions honestly.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry if you were embarrassed by my old flame.’

  ‘I’m not embarrassed,’ Sylvie said. ‘I realized, a long time ago, that you love us both.’

  That startled Ned. It was true, but he had never admitted it.

  Reading his mind, Sylvie said: ‘You can’t hide that kind of thing from a wife.’ She opened her letter.

  Ned looked again at his own. With half his mind on Sylvie’s words, he decoded the last sentence: Jerónima will talk only to you.

  He looked up at Sylvie, and the right words came to him. ‘As long as you know that I love you.’

  ‘Yes, I do. This is from Nath. She needs more books. I have to go to Paris.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Ned.

  *

  SYLVIE STILL HAD NOT climbed the cathedral tower to look at the view. After the Sunday service, with a spring sun shining through the coloured windows, she looked for the staircase up. There was a small door in the wall of the south transept that opened on to a spiral staircase. She was wondering whether she should ask permission, or just slip through the door, when Margery approached her. ‘I had no right to come storming into your house and make such a scene,’ Margery said. ‘I feel ashamed.’

  Sylvie closed the little door. This was important and the view from the tower would always be there.

  She felt that she was the lucky one, and therefore she should be magnanimous to Margery. ‘I understand why you were so upset,’ she said. ‘At least, I think I do. And I really don’t blame you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You and Ned should be raising Roger together. But you can’t, and it breaks your heart.’

  Margery looked shocked. ‘Ned swore he would never tell anyone.’

  ‘He didn’t. I guessed, and he couldn’t deny it. But the secret is safe with me.’

  ‘Bart will kill me if he finds out.’

  ‘He won’t find out.’

  ‘Thank you.’ There were tears in Margery’s eyes.

  ‘If Ned had married you, he would have had a house full of children. But it seems I can’t conceive. It’s not as if we don’t try.’ Sylvie was not sure why she was having such a candid conversation with the woman who loved her husband. It just seemed pointless to pretend.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that . . . though I had guessed it.’

  ‘If I die before Ned, and Bart dies before you, then you should marry Ned.’

  ‘How can you say such a thing?’

  ‘I’ll look down from heaven and bless your marriage.’

  ‘It’s not going to happen – but thank you for saying it. You’re a good woman.’

  ‘You are too.’ Sylvie smiled. ‘Isn’t he lucky?’

  ‘Ned?’

  ‘To have the love of both of us.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Margery. ‘Is he?’

  *

  ROLLO WAS AWESTRUCK by the Guise palace. It was bigger than the Louvre. With its courtyards and gardens it covered at least two acres. The place was thronged with servants and men-at-arms and distant relations and hangers-on, all of whom were fed daily and lodged every night. The stable block alone was bigger than the entire house Rollo’s father had built in Kingsbridge at the height of his prosperity.

  Rollo was invited there in June of 1583 for a meeting with the duke of Guise.

  Duke ‘Scarface’ François was long dead, as was his brother Cardinal Charles. François’s son Henri, aged thirty-two, was now the duke. Rollo studied him with fascination. By a coincidence that was regarded, by most Frenchmen, as divinely ordained, Henri had been wounded in the face, just like his father. François had been disfigured by a spear, whereas Henri had taken a bullet from an arquebus, but both had ended up with conspicuous marks, and now Henri, too, was nicknamed Scarface.

  The famously cunning Cardinal Charles had been replaced, in the councils of the Guise family, by Pierre Aumande de Guise, the low-born distant relative who had been Charles’s protégé. Pierre was patron of the English College, and had given Rollo his alias of Jean Langlais, the name by which he was always known when engaged in secret work.

  Rollo met the duke in a small but opulent room that was hung with paintings of biblical scenes in which many of the women and men were naked. There was a distinct air of decadence that made Rollo uncomfortable.

  Rollo was flattered, but somewhat intimidated, by the high status of the other attendees. Cardinal Romero was here to represent the king of Spain, and Giovanni Castelli the Pope. Claude Matthieu was the rector of the Professed Jesuits. These men were the heavy artillery of Christian orthodoxy, and he felt amazed to find himself in their company.

  Pierre sat next to Duke Henri
. Pierre’s skin condition had worsened over the years, and now there were red flaking patches on his hands and neck as well as at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and he scratched himself continually.

  Three Guise attendants served wine and sweetmeats as the notables took their seats, then stood by the door awaiting further orders. Rollo assumed they were thoroughly trustworthy, but all the same he would have made them wait outside. Secrecy had become an obsession with him. The only person in this room who knew his real name was Pierre. In England it was the opposite: no one knew that Rollo Fitzgerald was Jean Langlais, not even his sister, Margery. Rollo was theoretically employed by the earl of Tyne, who was a timid Catholic, devout but frightened of conspiracy; the earl paid him a salary, gave him indefinite leave of absence, and asked no questions.

  Duke Henri opened the discussion with a statement that thrilled Rollo: ‘We are here to talk about the invasion of England.’

  This was Rollo’s dream. The work he had been doing for the last ten years, smuggling priests into England, was important, but palliative: it kept the true faith alive, but did nothing to change the status quo. Its true value was as preparation for this. An invasion led by Duke Henri could return England to the Catholic Church and restore the Fitzgerald family to its rightful position in the ruling elite.

  He saw it in his mind: the invasion fleet with banners flying; the armoured men pouring onto the beaches; the triumphal entry into London, cheered by the crowds; the coronation of Mary Stuart; and himself, in bishop’s robes, celebrating Mass in Kingsbridge Cathedral.

  Rollo understood, from his discussions with Pierre, that Queen Elizabeth was a major nuisance to the Guises. Whenever the ultra-Catholics got the upper hand in France, swarms of Huguenots sought asylum in England, where they were welcomed for their craft skills and enterprise. Prospering there, they sent money home to their co-religionists. Elizabeth also interfered in the Spanish Netherlands, permitting English volunteers to go there and fight on the rebel side.