A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  *

  IN SHOREDITCH, JUST outside the east wall of the city of London, between a slaughterhouse and a horse pond, there stood a building called The Theatre.

  When it was built no one in England had ever seen a structure like it. A cobbled courtyard in the middle was surrounded by an octagon of tiered wooden galleries under a tile roof. From one of the eight sides a platform, called a stage, jutted out into the yard. The Theatre had been purpose-built for the performance of plays, and was much more suitable than the inn yards and halls where such events were normally put on.

  Rollo Fitzgerald went there on an autumn afternoon in 1583. He was tailing Francis Throckmorton. He needed to forge one more link in the chain of communication between the duke of Guise and the queen of Scots.

  His sister Margery did not know that he was in England. He preferred it that way. She must never get even a suspicion of what he was doing. She continued to smuggle priests from the English College into the country, but she hated the idea of Christians fighting each other. If she knew he was fomenting an insurrection, she would make trouble. She might even betray the plot, so strongly did she believe in nonviolence.

  However, all was going well. He could hardly believe that the plan was working with no snags. It had to be the will of God.

  The laundress Peg Bradford had proved as easy to persuade as Alison had forecast. She would have smuggled letters in the laundry just to please Queen Mary, and the bribe Rollo gave her had been almost superfluous. She had no idea that what she was doing could lead her to the gallows. Rollo had felt a twinge of guilt about persuading such an unworldly and well-meaning girl to become a traitor.

  At the other end of the chain, Pierre Aumande de Guise had arranged for his letters to Mary to be held at the French embassy in London.

  All Rollo needed now was someone to pick up the letters in London and deliver them to Peg in Sheffield; and Throckmorton was his choice.

  Admission to The Theatre was a penny. Throckmorton paid an additional penny to get into the covered gallery, and a third penny to rent a stool. Rollo followed him in and stood behind and above him, watching for an opportunity to speak to him quietly and inconspicuously.

  Throckmorton came from a wealthy and distinguished family whose motto was Virtue is the only nobility. His father had flourished during the reign of the late Mary Tudor, but had fallen from favour under Elizabeth Tudor, just like Rollo’s father. And Throckmorton’s father had eagerly agreed to harbour one of Rollo’s secret priests.

  Throckmorton was expensively dressed, with an extravagant white ruff. He was not yet thirty, but his hair was receding into a widow’s peak which, together with his sharp nose and pointed beard, gave him a bird-like look. After studying at Oxford, Throckmorton had travelled to France and contacted English Catholic exiles, which was how Rollo knew of his leanings. However, they had never actually met, and Rollo was far from certain that he could persuade Throckmorton to risk his life in the cause.

  The play was called Ralph Roister Doister, which was also the name of the main character, a braggart whose actions never matched his words. His boasting was exploited, by the impish Matthew Merrygreek, to get him entangled in absurd situations which made the whole place rock with laughter. Rollo was reminded of the African playwright Terence, who had written in Latin in the second century BC. All students had to read the plays of Terence. Rollo enjoyed himself so much that for a few minutes he even forgot his deadly mission.

  Then an interval was announced and he remembered.

  He followed Throckmorton outside and stood behind him in a queue to buy a cup of wine. Moving closer, Rollo said quietly. ‘Bless you, my son.’

  Throckmorton looked startled.

  Rollo was not wearing priestly robes, but he discreetly reached inside his shirt collar, grasped the gold cross that he wore under his clothes, showed it to Throckmorton for a second, then dropped it out of sight. The cross identified him as a Catholic: Protestants believed it was superstitious to wear one.

  Throckmorton said: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Jean Langlais.’

  It had crossed Rollo’s mind that he might use other false names, to confuse his trail even more. But the name of Jean Langlais had begun to acquire an aura. It represented a mysteriously powerful figure, a ghost-like being moving silently between England and France, working secretly for the Catholic cause. It had become an asset.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘God has work for you to do.’

  Throckmorton’s face showed excitement and fear as he thought what this might mean. ‘What sort of work?’

  ‘You must go to the French embassy – after dark, cloaked and hooded – and ask for the letters from Monsieur de Guise, then take those letters to Sheffield and give them to a laundress called Peg Bradford. After that you must wait until Peg gives you some letters in return, which you will bring back to the embassy. That’s all.’

  Throckmorton nodded slowly. ‘Sheffield is where Mary Queen of Scots is imprisoned.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a long pause. ‘I could be hanged for this.’

  ‘Then you would enter heaven all the sooner.’

  ‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’

  ‘Because you are not the only one who has been chosen by God to do his work. In England there are thousands of young men like yourself eager for change. My role is to tell them what they can do in the struggle to restore the true faith. I, too, am likely to go to heaven sooner rather than later.’

  They reached the head of the line and bought their drinks. Rollo led Throckmorton away from the crowd. They stood on the edge of the pond, looking at the black water. Throckmorton said: ‘I have to think about this.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ That was the last thing Rollo wanted. He needed Throckmorton to commit. ‘The Pope has excommunicated the false queen, Elizabeth, and forbidden Englishmen to obey her. It’s your holy duty to help the true queen of England regain her throne. You know that, don’t you?’

  Throckmorton took a gulp of wine. ‘Yes, I know it,’ he said.

  ‘Then give me your hand and say you will play your part.’

  Throckmorton hesitated for a long moment. Then he looked Rollo in the eye and said: ‘I’ll do it.’

  They shook hands.

  *

  IT TOOK NED a week to get to Sheffield.

  Such a distance, 170 miles, could be covered faster by someone who kept horses permanently stabled at intervals along the route, so that he could change mounts several times a day; but that was mainly done by merchants who needed a regular courier service between cities such as Paris and Antwerp, because news was money to them. There was no courier service between London and Sheffield.

  The journey gave him plenty of time to worry.

  His nightmare was coming true. The French ultra-Catholics, the king of Spain and the Pope had at last agreed on joint action. They made a deadly combination. Between them they had the power and the money to launch an invasion of England. Already spies were making plans of the harbours where the invaders would land. Ned had no doubt that discontented Catholic noblemen such as Earl Bart were sharpening their swords and burnishing their armour.

  And now, worst of all, Mary Stuart was involved.

  Ned had received a message from Alain de Guise in Paris, via the English embassy there. Alain continued to live with Pierre and spy on him: this was his revenge. Pierre, for his part, treated his stepson as a harmless drudge, made him run errands, and seemed to like having him around as a dogsbody.

  Alain’s message said Pierre was rejoicing that he had succeeded in making contact with the queen of the Scots.

  This was bad news. Mary’s approval would give the whole treasonous enterprise a cloak of holy respectability. To many she was the rightful queen of England, and Elizabeth the usurper. Under Mary’s auspices, a gang of foreign thugs became an army of righteousness in the eyes of the world.

  It was maddening. After all that Elizabeth had achieve
d, bringing religious peace and commercial prosperity to England for twenty-five years, they still would not leave her be.

  Ned’s task of protecting Elizabeth was made more difficult by personal court rivalries – as happened so often in politics. His Puritan master, Walsingham, clashed with the fun-loving Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. ‘Secret codes, and invisible ink!’ Leicester would jeer when he ran into Walsingham in the palace of White Hall or the garden of Hampton Court. ‘Power is won with guns and bullets, not pens and ink!’ He could not persuade the queen to get rid of Walsingham – she was too smart for that – but his scepticism reinforced her miserliness, and the work done by Walsingham and his men was never properly financed.

  Ned could have reached Sheffield at the end of his sixth day of travel. However, he did not want to arrive muddy-stockinged and road-weary, in case he needed to impose his authority. So he stopped at an inn two miles outside the town. Next day he got up early, put on a clean shirt, and arrived at the gate of Sheffield Castle at eight in the morning.

  It was a formidable fortress, but he was irritated to see that security was careless. He crossed the bridge over the moat along with three other people: a girl with two lidded buckets that undoubtedly contained milk; a brawny builder’s lad carrying a long timber on his shoulder, presumably for some repair work; and a carter with a vertiginous load of hay. Three or four people were coming the other way. None of them was challenged by the two armed guards at the gate, who were eating mutton chops and throwing the bones into the moat.

  Ned sat on his horse in the middle of the inner courtyard, looking around, getting his bearings. There was a turret house that he guessed would be Mary’s prison. The hay cart rumbled over to a building that was clearly the stable block. A third building, the least uncomfortable-looking, would be where the earl lived.

  He walked his horse to the stable. Summoning his most arrogant voice, he shouted at a young groom: ‘Hey! You! Take my horse.’ He dismounted.

  The startled boy took the bridle.

  Pointing, Ned said: ‘I presume I’ll find the earl in that building?’

  ‘Yes, sir. May I ask the name?’

  ‘Sir Ned Willard, and you’d better remember it.’ With that Ned stalked off.

  He pushed open the wooden door of the house and entered a small hall with a smoky fire. To one side an open door revealed a gloomy medieval great hall with no one in it.

  The elderly porter was not as easy to bully as the groom. He stood barring the way and said: ‘Good day to you, master.’ He had good manners, but as a guard he was next to useless: Ned could have knocked him down with one hand.

  ‘I am Sir Ned Willard, with a message from Queen Elizabeth. Where is the earl of Shrewsbury?’

  The porter took a moment to size Ned up. Someone with nothing but ‘sir’ in front of his name was below an earl on the social scale. On the other hand, it was not wise to offend a messenger from the queen. ‘It’s an honour to welcome you to the house, Sir Ned,’ said the porter tactfully. ‘I’ll go immediately to see whether the earl is ready to receive you.’

  He opened a door off the hall, and Ned glimpsed a dining room.

  The door closed, but Ned heard the porter say: ‘My lord, are you able to see Sir Ned Willard with a message from her majesty Queen Elizabeth?’

  Ned did not wait. He opened the door and barged in, stepping past the startled porter. He found himself in a small room with a round table and a big fireplace – warmer and more comfortable than the great hall. Four people sat at breakfast, two of whom he knew. The extraordinarily tall fortyish woman with a double chin and a ginger wig was Mary Queen of Scots. He had last seen her fifteen years ago when he had gone to Carlisle Castle to tell her that Queen Elizabeth had made her a prisoner. The slightly older woman next to her was her companion Alison, Lady Ross, who had been with her at Carlisle and even earlier at St Dizier. Ned had not met the other two but he could guess who they were. The balding man in his fifties with a spade-shaped beard had to be the earl, and the formidable-looking woman of the same age was his wife, the countess, usually called Bess of Hardwick.

  Ned’s anger doubled. The earl and his wife were negligent fools who put at risk everything Elizabeth had achieved.

  The earl said: ‘What the devil . . .?’

  Ned said: ‘I am a Jesuit spy sent by the king of France to kidnap Mary Stuart. Under my coat I have two pistols, one to murder the earl and one the countess. Outside are six of my men hiding in a cartload of hay, armed to the teeth.’

  They did not know how seriously to take him. The earl said: ‘Is this some kind of jest?’

  ‘This is some kind of inspection,’ Ned said. ‘Her majesty Queen Elizabeth has asked me to find out how well you’re guarding Mary. What shall I tell her, my lord? That I was able to enter the presence of Mary without once being challenged or searched and that I could have brought six men with me?’

  The earl looked foolish. ‘It would be better if you did not tell her that, I must admit.’

  Mary spoke in a voice of queenly authority. ‘How dare you act like this in my presence?’

  Ned continued to speak to the earl. ‘From now on she takes her meals in the turret house.’

  Mary said: ‘Your insolence is intolerable.’

  Ned ignored her. He owed no courtesy to the woman who wanted to murder his queen.

  Mary stood up and walked to the door, and Alison hurried after her.

  Ned spoke to the countess. ‘Go with them please, my lady. There are no Jesuit spies in the courtyard at the moment, but you won’t know when there are, and it’s as well to get into good habits.’

  The countess was not used to being told what to do, but she knew she was in trouble, and she hesitated only a moment before obeying.

  Ned pulled a chair up to the table. ‘Now, my lord,’ he said. ‘Let us talk about what you need to do before I can give Queen Elizabeth a satisfactory account.’

  *

  BACK IN LONDON, at Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane, Ned reported that Mary Stuart was now better guarded than she had been.

  Walsingham went immediately to the heart of the matter. ‘Can you guarantee that she is not communicating with the outside world?’

  ‘No,’ Ned said with frustration. ‘Not unless we get rid of all her servants and keep her alone in a dungeon.’

  ‘How I wish we could,’ Walsingham said fervently. ‘But Queen Elizabeth won’t permit such harshness.’

  ‘Our queen is soft-hearted.’

  Walsingham’s view of Elizabeth was more cynical. ‘She knows how she could be undermined by stories about how cruel she is to her royal relative.’

  Ned was not going to argue. ‘Either way, we can do no more in Sheffield.’

  Walsingham stroked his beard. ‘Then we must focus on this end of the pipeline,’ he said. ‘The French embassy must be involved. See what English Catholics are among the callers there. We have a list.’

  ‘I’ll get on with it right away.’

  Ned went upstairs, to the locked room where Walsingham kept the precious records, and sat down for a session of study.

  The longest list was that of well-born English Catholics. It had not been difficult to make. All families who had prospered under Mary Tudor and fallen from favour under Elizabeth were automatically suspected. They confirmed their tendencies in several ways, often openly. Many paid the fine for not going to church. They dressed gaudily, scorning the sombre black and grey of devout Protestants. There was never an English-language Bible in a Catholic house. These things were reported to Walsingham by bishops and by Lord Lieutenants of counties.

  Both Earl Bart and Margery were on this list.

  But the list was too long. Most of these people were innocent of treason. Ned sometimes felt he had too much information. It could be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. He turned to the alphabetical register of Catholics in London. In addition to those who lived here, Walsingham received daily reports of Catholics entering and le
aving the city. Visiting Catholics usually stayed at the homes of resident Catholics, or lodged at inns frequented by other Catholics. Doubtless the list was incomplete. London was a city of a hundred thousand people, and it was impossible to have spies in every street. But Walsingham and Ned did have informants in all the Catholics’ regular haunts, and they were able to keep track of most comings and goings.

  Ned leafed through the book. He knew hundreds of these names – lists were his life – but it was good to refresh his memory. Once again, Bart and Margery appeared, coming to stay at Shiring House in the Strand when Parliament sat.

  Ned turned to the daily log of callers at the French embassy in Salisbury Square. The house was under surveillance day and night from the Salisbury Tavern across the road and had been ever since Walsingham had returned from Paris in 1573. Starting from yesterday and working backwards in time, Ned cross-checked every name with the alphabetical register.

  Margery did not appear here. In fact, neither she nor Bart had ever been found to contact foreign ambassadors or other suspicious characters while in London. They socialized with other Catholics, of course, and their servants frequented a Catholic tavern near their house called The Irish Boy. But there was nothing to link them with subversive activities.

  However, many callers at the French embassy could not be identified by name. Frustratingly, the log had too many entries of the form Unknown man delivering coal, Unidentified courier with letters, Woman not clearly seen in the dark. Nevertheless, Ned persisted, hoping for some clue, anything.

  Then he was struck by an entry two weeks ago: Madame Aphrodite Housse, wife of the deputy ambassador.

  In Paris, Ned had known a Mademoiselle Aphrodite Beaulieu who appeared fond of a young courtier called Bernard Housse. This had to be the same person. And if it was, Ned had saved her from a gang of rapists during the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

  He turned back to the alphabetical register and found that Monsieur Housse, the deputy French ambassador, had a house in the Strand.

  He put on his coat and went out.