A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

Ned Willard came out of the crowd of sheriff’s men and dashed at Swithin, sword held high; and Rollo stepped quickly forward and stood in Ned’s way, protecting the injured earl. Ned stopped short, and the two young men faced one another.

  Rollo was taller and heavier. At school he had been able to persecute little Neddy Willard, but only until he grew up. Now there was something in the way Ned stood and looked that undermined Rollo’s sense of superiority.

  They moved around one another, swords held forward, looking for a chance. Rollo saw something close to loathing on Ned’s face. What have I done to make you hate me? he wondered, and the answers came thick and fast: forcing Margery to marry Bart; the charge of usury that had ruined the Willard family; the failed effort to stop Elizabeth becoming queen; all that on top of school bullying.

  Rollo heard a roar behind him and looked over his shoulder quickly. He saw that Earl Swithin was still fighting, despite his injury. He held his sword awkwardly in his left hand but had managed to cut the sheriff’s forehead. The wound was superficial but bleeding copiously, and the blood was interfering with the sheriff’s vision. Both hurt, they were fighting clumsily, like drunk men.

  Rollo’s glance behind was a mistake. Ned attacked suddenly and furiously. He came at Rollo fast, the heavy sword flashing in the candlelight as it stabbed and sliced and twisted. Rollo defended himself desperately, blocking the blows and backing away; then something moved under the sole of his right boot – jewels from the reliquary, he realized despite his fear – and his leg slipped from under him. He fell on his back and dropped his sword. Both his arms spread wide, leaving his body undefended; and he foresaw his own death in the next split-second.

  To his astonishment Ned stepped over him.

  Rollo sprang to his knees and looked behind him. Ned was attacking the earl with even more ferocity, while the sheriff stood aside and tried to dash the blood from his eyes. Swithin backed until a pillar arrested his retreat. A swipe from Ned knocked the weapon from the earl’s left hand, and then suddenly Ned had the point of his sword at the earl’s throat.

  The sheriff yelled: ‘Arrest him!’

  Ned’s point pierced the skin of Swithin’s throat, bringing a trickle of blood, but Ned restrained himself. For a long moment Swithin was an inch from death. Then Ned said: ‘Tell your men to drop their weapons.’

  Swithin shouted: ‘Yield! Yield!’

  The noise of fighting died rapidly, to be replaced by the sound of iron swords falling to the stone floor. Rollo looked around and saw that his father, Sir Reginald, was kneeling down, holding his head, which was bloody.

  Ned did not take his eyes off Swithin, Rollo saw. Ned said: ‘I arrest you in the name of the queen for blasphemy, desecration and murder.’

  Rollo jumped to his feet. ‘We’re not the blasphemers!’

  ‘No?’ said Ned with surprising composure. ‘But here you are in the church, with your swords unsheathed. You have wounded the bishop-elect and murdered the gravedigger, and you’ve caused the holy relics to be dropped on the floor.’

  ‘What about yourselves?’

  ‘The sheriff and his men came here to protect the clergy and the relics, and a good thing we did.’

  Rollo was baffled. How had this gone so wrong?

  Ned said: ‘Osmund, tie them up, then take them to the Guild Hall and lock them in the jail.’

  Osmund promptly produced a roll of stout cord.

  Ned went on: ‘Then send for the surgeon, and make sure he treats Dean Luke first.’

  As Rollo’s hands were tied behind his back, he stared at Ned, whose face registered a savage kind of satisfaction. Rollo’s mind thrashed about looking for explanations. Had the sheriff been tipped off about Swithin’s intentions, or had the timid Dean Luke summoned them merely out of nervousness? Had the Puritans been warned off, or had they simply decided not to come?

  Had Ned Willard planned this whole disaster?

  Rollo did not know.

  *

  Earl Swithin was executed, and I was responsible for his death. I had no idea, then, that he was the first of so many.

  Rollo and Bart and Sir Reginald were punished with heavy fines, but one of the group had to die, and the earl had actually murdered a man in church. That was the justification; but what really sealed his fate was that he had tried to defy the will of Queen Elizabeth. The queen wanted England to understand very clearly that she, alone, had the right to appoint bishops, and anyone who interfered with her prerogative risked his life. Shocking though it was to kill an earl, she needed Swithin dead.

  I made sure the judge understood her wishes.

  As the crowd gathered in front of Kingsbridge Cathedral for the execution, Rollo stared hard at me, and I knew he suspected a trap, but I don’t think he ever worked it out.

  Sir Reginald was there, too, with a long scar across his head where the hair never grew back. The wound damaged his brain as well as his hair, and he never quite regained his wits. I know Rollo always blamed me for that.

  Bart and Margery watched, too.

  Bart wept. Swithin was a wicked man, but his father.

  Margery looked like someone released from a horrible dungeon into the sunlight and fresh air. She had lost that sickly look, and she was dressed with her former panache, albeit in sombre mourning colours: on her, a black hat with a black feather could still look playful. Her tormentor was on his way to hell, where he belonged, and she was free of him.

  Swithin was brought out of the Guild Hall; and I had no doubt that the worst part of his punishment was the humiliating walk down the main street to the square in front of a jeering throng of people he had always despised as his inferiors. His head was chopped off, decapitation being the mercifully quick death reserved for the nobility; and I imagine the end came as a release.

  Justice was done. Swithin was a murderer and a rapist who deserved to die. But I found that my conscience was not untroubled. I had lured him into an ambush. In a way the death of poor George Cox was my responsibility. I had meddled in things that should be left to the law or, failing that, to God.

  I may yet go through anguish in hell for my sin. But if I had to live that time again I would do the same, to end Margery’s ordeal. I preferred to suffer myself than to know that her agony continued. Her wellbeing was more important to me than my own.

  I have learned, during the course of a long life, that that is the meaning of love.

  Part Three

  1566 to 1573

  14

  Ebrima Dabo was living his dream. He was free, rich and happy.

  On a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1566 he and his partner, Carlos Cruz, walked out of the city of Antwerp into the countryside. They were two prosperous, well-dressed inhabitants of one of the richest cities in the world. Together they owned the largest iron-making concern in Antwerp. In brains they were about equal, Ebrima thought: he was older and wiser, but Carlos had the bold imagination of youth. Carlos was married to Imke, the daughter of his distant cousin Jan Wolman, and they had two small children. Ebrima, who would be fifty next year, had married Evi Dirks, a widow his own age, and had a teenage stepson who was employed in the ironworks.

  Ebrima often thought nostalgically of the village where he had been born. If he could have turned back the years, and avoided being taken as a prisoner-of-war and sold into slavery, he would have had a long, uneventful and contented life in that village. When he thought this way he felt sad. But he could not go back. For one thing, he had no idea how to get there. But there was something else. He knew too much. He had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, like Eve in the myth the Christians believed, and he could never return to the garden. He spoke Spanish and French and the local Brabant Dutch dialect, and had not uttered a word of Manding for years. He hung oil paintings in his house, he loved to listen to musical groups playing complex scores, and he was particular about the quality of his wine. He was a different man.

  With brains and hard work and luck he had forged a new life. A
ll he wanted, now, was to keep what he had won. But he feared he would not be able to.

  He and Carlos were not the only people leaving the city. Antwerpers often walked into the countryside in good weather, but today’s crowds were abnormal. There were hundreds of people on the narrow country road. Ebrima knew many of them: men who supplied him with ore, others who bought his iron, families who lived in his street, keepers of shops where he bought meat and gloves and glassware. All were heading for the same place, a broad meadow known as Lord Hubert’s Pasture. It was Carlos’s children’s favourite place to picnic. But the crowd on the road were not picnickers.

  They were Protestants.

  Many carried copies of the same small book, the Psalms translated into French by the poet Clément Marot, printed in Antwerp. It was a crime to own the book, and the penalty for selling it was death, but it was easily available and cost a penny.

  Most of the younger men also carried weapons.

  Ebrima guessed that Lord Hubert’s Pasture had been chosen for the meeting because it was outside the jurisdiction of the Antwerp city council, so the city watch had no authority there, and the rural police did not have the manpower to disperse such a crowd. Even so, there was always the danger of violence: everyone had heard of the Massacre of Wassy. And some of the younger men were undoubtedly in an aggressive mood.

  Carlos was a Catholic. Ebrima was what the Christians would have called a pagan, if they had known what was in his heart, but of course they did not, for he pretended to be a devout Catholic like Carlos. Even his wife, Evi, did not know, and if she wondered why he liked to go for riverside walks at dawn on Sunday mornings she was tactful enough not to ask. Ebrima and Carlos both went regularly, with their families, to their parish church and, on big occasions, to Antwerp Cathedral. Both feared that religious warfare in the Netherlands could destroy their happiness as it had done for so many people across the border in France.

  Carlos was a simple soul, philosophically, and he could not understand why anyone wanted to take up an alternative religion. But Ebrima saw, with sadness and alarm, what attracted so many Netherlanders to Protestantism. Catholicism was the creed of their Spanish overlords, and many Dutch people resented foreign domination. Also, Netherlanders were innovators, whereas the Catholic Church was conservative about everything, quick to condemn new ideas, slow to change. Worst of all, the clergy were not friendly to the commercial activities that had made so many Netherlanders rich, especially banking, which could not exist unless men committed the sin of usury. By contrast the influential John Calvin, leader of the Geneva Protestants until his death two years ago, had allowed interest to be charged on loans.

  This summer, as a fresh wave of itinerant Calvinist pastors from Geneva gave informal sermons in the forests and fields of the Netherlands, the trickling spread of Protestantism had turned into a flood.

  Persecution was fierce, but intermittent. The governor of the Netherlands was Margherita, duchess of Parma, the illegitimate half-sister of King Felipe of Spain. She was inclined to go easy on heretics for the sake of a quiet life, but her brother was determined to wipe out heresy in all his domains. When she became too tolerant, the bloodthirsty Chief Inquisitor Pieter Titelmans would crack down: Protestants would be tortured, mutilated and burned to death. But the hard line got little support even from Catholics. Most of the time, the laws were enforced lightly. Men such as Carlos were more interested in making and selling things. The new religion grew.

  How big was it now? Ebrima and Carlos were on their way to the open-air meeting to find out. City councillors wanted to know just how popular the alternative religion was. It was difficult to tell, normally, because Protestantism was semi-hidden; today’s meeting would be a rare chance to see how many Protestants there really were. So a councillor had unofficially asked Carlos and Ebrima, as solid Catholic citizens without official status, to discreetly count them.

  Judging by the numbers on the road, the total was going to be higher than expected.

  As they walked, Ebrima asked: ‘How is the painting coming along?’

  ‘It’s almost finished.’ Carlos had commissioned a top Antwerp artist to paint a picture for the cathedral. Ebrima knew that in his prayers Carlos thanked God for his gifts and asked that he would be allowed to keep them. Like Ebrima, he did not take his prosperity for granted. He often mentioned the story of Job, the man who had everything and lost it all, and he would quote: ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.’

  Ebrima was intrigued that Carlos did not reject the Church after the persecution he had suffered in Seville. Carlos was not very forthcoming about his spiritual life, but over the years Ebrima had gathered, from casual remarks and hints, that Carlos found great consolation in Catholic services, something similar to what Ebrima got from the water rite. Neither of them felt the same at an earnest Protestant service in a whitewashed church.

  Now Ebrima said: ‘What subject did you decide upon, for the painting, in the end?’

  ‘The miracle at Cana, when Jesus turned the water into wine.’

  Ebrima laughed. ‘Your favourite Bible story. I wonder why.’ Carlos’s love of wine was well known.

  Carlos smiled. ‘It will be unveiled in the cathedral next week.’

  The painting would, technically, be a gift from the city’s metalworkers, but everyone would know that it had been bought with Carlos’s money. This was a measure of how quickly Carlos had become one of Antwerp’s leading citizens. He was amiable and gregarious and very smart, and might be a city councillor one day.

  Ebrima was a different kind of man, introverted and cautious. He was just as smart as Carlos but he had no political ambitions. Also, he preferred to keep his money for himself.

  Carlos added: ‘We’ll have a big party afterwards. I hope you and Evi will come.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They heard the singing before they reached their destination. Ebrima felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The sound was awesome. He was used to chorus singing by choirs in Catholic churches – quite large choirs in cathedrals – but this was different. He had never before heard thousands of voices raised in the same song.

  The road passed through a little wood then emerged at the top of a shallow rise from where they could see the whole of the meadow. It sloped down to a shallow stream and up the far side, and the entire space of ten acres or more was covered with men, women and children. On the far side a pastor stood on a makeshift platform, leading the singing.

  The hymn was in French:

  Si seurement, que quand au val viendroye

  D’umbre de mort, rien de mal ne craindroye . . .

  Ebrima understood the French words and recognized them as a translation from the familiar Latin of the twenty-third psalm, which he had heard in church – but not like this. The sound seemed a mighty phenomenon of nature, making him think of a gale over the ocean. They really believed what they were singing, that as they walked through the valley of the shadow of death they would fear no evil.

  Ebrima spotted his stepson, Matthus, not far away. Matthus still worshipped with his mother and stepfather every Sunday but, lately, he had started to criticize the Catholic Church. His mother urged him to keep his doubts to himself, but he could not: he was seventeen, and for him right was right and wrong was wrong. Now Ebrima was troubled to see him with a group of youths, all carrying unpleasant-looking clubs.

  Carlos saw him at the same time. ‘Those boys seem to be looking for a fight,’ he said anxiously.

  But the atmosphere in the meadow was peaceful and happy, and Ebrima said hopefully: ‘I think they’ll be disappointed today.’

  ‘What a lot of people,’ Carlos said.

  ‘How many, do you think?’

  ‘Thousands.’

  ‘I don’t know how we’re going to count.’

  Carlos was clever with numbers. ‘Let’s say there’s half this side of the stream and half the other. Now imagine a line from here to the preacher. How many in the near
quarter? Divide it into four again.’

  Ebrima took a guess. ‘Five hundred in each sixteenth?’

  Carlos did not respond to that, but said: ‘Here comes trouble.’

  He was staring over Ebrima’s shoulder, and Ebrima turned to look for the cause. He saw at once what had alerted Carlos. Coming along the road through the wood was a small group of clergy and men-at-arms.

  If they had come to break up the meeting, they were too few. This armed crowd, full of righteousness, would wipe them out.

  In the centre of the group was a priest in his mid-sixties wearing an ostentatious silver cross outside his black robe. As he came closer, Ebrima saw that he had dark, deep-set eyes either side of a high-bridged nose, and a mouth set in a hard, determined line. Ebrima did not recognize the man, but Carlos did. ‘That’s Pieter Titelmans, dean of Ronse,’ he said. ‘The Grand Inquisitor.’

  Ebrima looked anxiously at Matthus and his friends. They had not yet spotted the newcomer. What would they do when they realized that the Grand Inquisitor had come to spy on their meeting?

  As the group approached, Carlos said: ‘Let’s stay out of his way – he knows me.’

  But he was too late. Titelmans met his eye, registered surprise, and said: ‘I’m disappointed to see you in this nest of ungodliness.’

  ‘I’m a good Catholic!’ Carlos protested.

  Titelmans tilted back his head, like a hungry hawk spotting movement in the grass. ‘What would a good Catholic be doing at a Protestant psalm-singing orgy?’

  Ebrima answered him. ‘The city council needs to know how many Protestants there are in Antwerp. We’ve been sent here to count them.’

  Titelmans looked sceptical and spoke to Carlos. ‘Why would I take the word of that Ethiopian? He’s probably a Muslim.’

  If only you knew, thought Ebrima. Then he recognized one of Titelmans’s entourage, a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and the flushed complexion of one who loves wine. ‘Father Huus, there, knows me,’ he said. Huus was a canon of Antwerp Cathedral.