A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  Ned read all his letters, but now he was hoping to learn more by a personal visit. In face-to-face conversation random details could sometimes emerge and turn out to be important.

  Worried though he was, the trip to France was nostalgic for him. It put him in mind of himself as a young man; of the great Walsingham, with whom he had worked for two decades; and, most of all, of Sylvie. On his way to meet Alain he went to the rue de la Serpente and stood for a while outside the bookshop that had been Sylvie’s home, remembering the happy day he had been invited to dinner there and had kissed her in the back room, and the terrible day Isabelle had been killed there.

  It was a butcher’s shop now.

  He crossed the bridge to the Île de la Cité, went into the cathedral, and said a prayer of thanks for Sylvie’s life. The church was Catholic, and Ned was Protestant, but he had long believed that God cared little about such distinctions.

  And nowadays the king of France felt the same. Henri IV had signed the Edict of Nantes, giving Protestants religious freedom. The new duke of Guise was still a child, and the Guise family had not been able to undermine the peace this time; and so forty years of civil war had come to an end. Ned thanked God for Henry IV, too. Perhaps France, like England, was slowly fumbling its way towards tolerance.

  Protestant services were still discreet, and usually held outside the walls of cities, to avoid inflaming ultra-Catholics. Ned walked south along the rue St Jacques, through the city gate, and out into the suburbs. A man sitting reading at the roadside was the signpost to a track that led through the woods to a hunting lodge. This was the informal church Sylvie had attended before Ned met her. It had been exposed by Pierre Aumande, and the congregation had broken up, but now it was again a place of worship.

  Alain was already there, sitting with his wife and children. Also with him was his long-time friend Louise, the dowager marchioness of Nîmes. Both had been at the château of Blois when Duke Henri and Pierre had been murdered, and Ned suspected they had been in on the plot, though no one had dared to investigate either killing because of the presumed involvement of the king. Ned also saw Nath, who had taken over Sylvie’s business in illegal books: she had become a prosperous old lady in a fur hat.

  Ned sat next to Alain, but did not speak until the hymns, when everyone was singing too loudly to hear their talk. ‘They all hate this James,’ Alain murmured to Ned, speaking French. ‘They say he broke his promises.’

  ‘They’re not wrong,’ Ned admitted. ‘All the same I have to stop them killing him. Otherwise the peace and prosperity that Elizabeth won with such a tremendous effort will be shattered by civil war. What else do you hear?’

  ‘They want to kill the entire royal family, all but the little princess, whom they will declare queen.’

  ‘The entire family,’ Ned repeated, horrified. ‘Bloodthirsty brutes.’

  ‘At the same time they will kill all the leading ministers and lords.’

  ‘They must be planning to burn down a palace, or something. They could do that while everyone was sitting at a banquet, or watching a play.’ He was one of the leading ministers. Suddenly this had become about saving his own life as well as the king’s. He felt a chill. ‘Where will they do it?’ he asked.

  ‘I have not been able to elucidate that point.’

  ‘Have you ever heard the name Guy Fawkes?’

  Alain shook his head. ‘No. A group came to see the duke, but I don’t know who they were.’

  ‘No names were mentioned?’

  ‘No real names.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The only name I heard was a false one.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Jean Langlais,’ said Alain.

  *

  MARGERY WAS BOTHERED about Rollo. His answers to her questions had all been plausible, but just the same she did not trust him. However, she did not see what she could do about her unease. Of course, she could have told Ned that Rollo was Jean Langlais, but she could not bring herself to condemn her brother to the gallows just because he had muddy stockings.

  While Ned was in Paris, Margery decided to take her grandson Jack, the son of Roger, on a visit to New Castle. She felt it was her duty. Whatever Jack ended up doing with his life, he could be helped by his aristocratic relations. He did not have to like them, but he had to know them. Having an earl for an uncle was sometimes better than money. And, when Bartlet died, the next earl would be his son Swifty, who was Jack’s cousin.

  Jack was an enquiring, argumentative twelve-year-old. He entered energetically into disputatious conversations with Roger and with Ned, always taking the view opposite to that of the adult he was talking to. Ned said that Jack was exactly like the young Margery, but she could hardly believe she had been so cocky. Jack was small, like Margery, with the same curly dark hair. He was pretty now, but in a year or two he would begin to turn into a man, and then his looks would coarsen. The pleasure and fascination of watching children and grandchildren grow and alter was the great joy of being elderly, for Margery.

  Naturally, Jack disagreed with his grandmother about the need for this visit. ‘I want to be an adventurer, like Uncle Barney,’ he said. ‘Noblemen have nothing to do with trade – they just sit back and collect rents from people.’

  ‘The nobility keep the peace and enforce the rules,’ she argued. ‘You can’t do business without laws and standards. How much silver is there in a penny? How wide is a yard of cloth? What happens when men don’t pay their debts?’

  ‘They make the rules to suit themselves,’ said Jack. ‘Anyway, the Kingsbridge Guild enforces weights and measures, not the earl.’

  She smiled. ‘Perhaps you should be a statesman, like Sir Ned, rather than an adventurer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You have such strong ideas about government. You could be the Government. Some of the most powerful men at court used to be clever schoolboys like you.’

  He looked thoughtful. He was at the delightful age where anything seemed possible.

  But she wanted him to behave himself at New Castle. ‘Be polite,’ she said as they approached. ‘Don’t argue with Uncle Bartlet. You’re here to make friends, not enemies.’

  ‘Very well, grandmother.’

  She was not sure he had taken her warning to heart, but she had done her best. A child will always be what he is, she thought, and not what you want him to be.

  Her son, Earl Bartlet, welcomed them. In his forties now, he was freckled like Margery’s father, but he had modelled himself on Bart, who, he thought, was his father. The fact that Bartlet was in truth the result of rape by Earl Swithin had not completely poisoned the relationship between mother and son, miraculously. While Jack explored the castle, Margery sat in the hall with Bartlet and drank a glass of wine. She said: ‘I hope Swifty and Jack get to know one another better.’

  ‘I doubt they’ll be close,’ said Bartlet. ‘There’s a big age gap between twelve and twenty.’

  ‘I bumped into your Uncle Rollo in London. He’s staying in a tavern. I don’t know why he doesn’t use Shiring House.’

  Bartlet shrugged. ‘I’d be delighted if he would. Make my lazy caretaker do some work for a change.’

  A steward poured Margery more wine. ‘You’ll be heading up to London yourself later this year, for the opening of Parliament.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  Margery was surprised. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ll say I’m ill.’ All earls were obliged to attend Parliament, and if they wanted to get out of it, they had to say they were too ill to travel.

  ‘But what’s the real reason?’

  ‘I’ve got too much to do here.’

  That did not make sense to Margery. ‘You’ve never missed a Parliament, since you became earl. Nor did your father and grandfather. It’s the reason you have a house in London.’

  ‘The new king has no interest in the views of the earl of Shiring.’

  This was uncharacteristic. Bartlet, like
Bart and Swithin, would normally voice his opinion – loudly – without asking whether anyone cared to hear it. ‘Don’t you want to oppose any further anti-Catholic legislation?’

  ‘I think we’ve lost that battle.’

  ‘I’ve never known you to be so defeatist.’

  ‘It’s important to know when to fight on – and when to stop.’ Bartlet stood up. ‘You probably want to settle into your room before dinner. Have you got everything you need?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ She kissed him and went upstairs. She was intrigued. Maybe he was not like Bart and Swithin after all. Their pride would never have allowed them to say things like I think we’ve lost that battle. They would never admit that they might have been in the wrong.

  Perhaps Bartlet was growing up.

  *

  THE MOST DIFFICULT and dangerous part of Rollo’s plan came when he had to buy thirty-six barrels of gunpowder and bring them to Westminster.

  With two of his younger conspirators he crossed the river and walked to Rotherhithe, a neighbourhood of docks and shipyards. There they went to a stable and told an ostler that they wanted to rent a sturdy flatbed cart and two horses to pull it. ‘We have to pick up a load of timbers from a demolished old ship,’ Rollo said. ‘I’m going to use them to build a barn.’ Ships’ timbers were often recycled this way.

  The ostler was not interested in Rollo’s story. He showed Rollo a cart and two sturdy horses, and Rollo said: ‘Fine, that’s just what I need.’

  Then the ostler said: ‘My man Weston will drive you.’

  Rollo frowned. He could not accept this. A driver would witness everything. ‘I’d rather drive myself,’ he said, trying not to sound agitated. ‘I have two helpers.’

  The ostler shook his head. ‘If Weston doesn’t go with you, you’ll have to pay a deposit, otherwise how do I know you’ll bring the cart back?’

  ‘How much?’ Rollo asked for the sake of appearances – he was willing to pay more or less anything.

  ‘Five pounds for each of the horses and a pound for the cart.’

  ‘You’ll have to give me a receipt.’

  When the transaction was finalized, they drove out of the stable yard and went to a firewood supplier called Pearce. There Rollo bought faggots, irregular branches tied in bundles, and billets, which were more regular split logs, also roped together. They loaded all the wood onto the cart. Pearce was curious about Rollo’s insistence on meticulously stacking the bundles on the cart in the shape of a hollow square, leaving an empty space in the middle. ‘You must be picking up another load that you want to keep hidden,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing valuable,’ said Rollo, as if he was afraid of thieves.

  Pearce tapped the side of his nose knowingly. ‘Enough said.’

  They drove the cart to Greenwich, where Rollo had a rendezvous with Captain Radcliffe.

  Guy Fawkes had calculated the amount of gunpowder required to be sure of completely destroying the House of Lords and killing everyone in it. A gentleman who owned a pistol or an arquebus might buy a box of gunpowder for his own use, and no one would ask any questions; but there was no legitimate way for Rollo to buy the quantity he needed without arousing suspicion.

  His solution was to go to a criminal.

  Radcliffe was a corrupt quartermaster who bought supplies for the royal navy. Half of what he purchased never went on board a ship, but was privately re-sold by him to line his own pockets. Radcliffe’s biggest problem was hiding how rich he was.

  The good thing about him, from Rollo’s point of view, was that he could not babble about the sale of gunpowder, for if he did, he would be hanged for stealing from the king. He had to keep silent, for the sake of his own life.

  Rollo met Radcliffe in the yard of a tavern. They loaded eight barrels onto the cart, stacking them two high in the middle of the square of firewood. A casual observer would assume the barrels contained ale.

  ‘You must be expecting a war,’ said Radcliffe.

  Rollo had an answer ready. ‘We’re merchant sailors,’ he said. ‘We need to defend ourselves.’

  ‘Indeed, you do,’ said Radcliffe.

  ‘We’re not pirates.’

  ‘No,’ said Radcliffe. ‘Of course not.’

  Like Pearce, Radcliffe was inclined to believe whatever Rollo denied.

  When they were done they completed the square and added wood on top, so that the secret load could not be seen even from a high window.

  Then Rollo drove the cart back to Westminster. He went carefully. Crashes between wheeled vehicles were commonplace, usually leading to fistfights between the drivers which sometimes escalated into street riots. The London crowd, never slow to seize an opportunity, would often rob the carts of their loads while the drivers were distracted. If that happened to him, the game would be up. He drove so cautiously, always allowing another cart to go first, that other drivers began to look suspiciously at him.

  He made it back to Westminster Yard without incident.

  Fawkes was waiting and opened the double doors as they approached, so that Rollo was able to drive the cart into the storeroom without stopping. Fawkes closed the doors behind the cart, and Rollo slumped with relief. He had got away with it.

  He only had to do the same thing three more times.

  Fawkes pointed to a new door in the wall, dimly visible by the light of a lamp. ‘I made a passage from here to the Wardrobe Keeper’s apartment,’ he said. ‘Now we can go from one to the other without stepping outside and risking being seen.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Rollo. ‘What about the cellar?’

  ‘I’ve bricked up the tunnel.’

  ‘Show me.’

  The two men went through the new doorway into the apartment, then down the stairs to the cellar. Fawkes had filled in the hole they had made in the wall, but the repair was visible even by candlelight. ‘Get some mud or soot and dirty the new bricks,’ Rollo said. ‘And maybe hack at them a bit with a pickaxe, so that they look as if they’ve been damaged over the years.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘I want that patch of wall to be indistinguishable from all the rest.’

  ‘Of course. But no one is going to come down here anyway.’

  ‘Just in case,’ said Rollo. ‘We can’t be too careful.’

  They returned to the storeroom.

  The other two were unloading the gunpowder barrels and rolling them to the far end of the space. Rollo directed them to put the firewood in front of the barrels, stacking the bundles carefully so that the pile would remain stable. One of the young men stood on the broken table, careful not to put his foot through the hole, and the other passed bundles up to him to be placed at the top.

  When it was done Rollo studied their work carefully. No one would suspect that this was anything other than a stack of firewood. He was satisfied. ‘Even if someone were to search this place,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘they probably wouldn’t find the gunpowder.’

  *

  NED AND MARGERY lived in St Paul’s Churchyard, in a pleasant row house with a pear tree in the backyard. It was not grand, but Margery had made it cosy with rugs and pictures, and they had coal fires to keep the place warm in winter. Ned liked it because he could look out and see the cathedral, which reminded him of Kingsbridge.

  Ned arrived back from Paris late one evening, tired and anxious. Margery made him a light supper and they went to bed and made love. In the morning he told her about his trip. She was shocked rigid by what he said, and struggled to hide her emotions. Fortunately, he was in a hurry to report to Robert Cecil, and he went out immediately after breakfast, leaving her free to think in peace.

  There was a plan to kill the royal family, all except Princess Elizabeth, and at the same time all the leading ministers, which probably meant burning down a palace, Ned had said. But Margery knew more. Bartlet was going to miss the opening of Parliament, for the first time since he had become earl of Shiring. Margery had been puzzled by his decision, but now it made sense.
The plotters would strike at Westminster.

  The opening ceremony was ten days away.

  How did Bartlet know about it? Ned had learned that Jean Langlais was involved, and Margery knew that Langlais was Rollo. Bartlet’s uncle Rollo had warned him to stay away.

  She knew it all, now, but what was she to do? She could denounce Rollo to Ned, and perhaps that was what she would have to do in the end, although she shuddered with horror at the thought of sending her brother to his death. However, there might be a better way. She could go and see Rollo. She knew where he was lodging. She could tell him she knew everything and threaten to reveal all to Ned. Once Ned knew, the entire plot was doomed. Rollo would have no choice but to give the whole thing up.

  She put on a heavy cloak and stout boots and went out into the London autumn.

  She walked to the White Swan and found the red-nosed landlord. ‘Good day to you, Mr Hodgkinson,’ she said. ‘I was here a few weeks ago.’

  The landlord was grumpy, perhaps because he had drunk too much of his own wine the night before. He gave her a look of indifference and said: ‘I can’t remember everyone who buys a cup of wine in here.’

  ‘No matter. I want to see Rollo Fitzgerald.’

  ‘There’s no one of that name in the house,’ he said tersely.

  ‘But he was lodging here!’

  He gave her a hostile look. ‘May I ask who you are?’

  Margery assumed an air of aristocratic hauteur. ‘I am the dowager countess of Shiring, and you would do well to mind your manners.’

  He changed his tune. No one wanted to quarrel with an aristocrat. ‘I beg your pardon, my lady, but I can’t recall ever having a guest of the name you mentioned.’

  ‘I wonder if any of his friends stayed here. What about Jean Langlais?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Hodgkinson. ‘French name, though he spoke like an Englishman. But he left.’

  ‘Do you know where he went?’

  ‘No. Monsieur Langlais is not a man to give out unnecessary information, my lady. Close-mouthed, he is.’

  Of course he was.