A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  Perhaps Fawkes had been involved in clandestine activity before, for he did as Rollo said, only giving an almost imperceptible nod to show that he had understood.

  ‘His Holiness the Pope has work for you to do,’ Rollo said in the same low tone. ‘But you’re being followed by one of King James’s spies, so first you have to shake him off. Go to a tavern and drink a cup of wine, to give me a chance to get ahead of you. Then walk west along the river, away from the bridge. Wait until there is only one boat at the beach, then hire it to take you across, leaving your tail behind. On the other side, walk quickly to Fleet Street and meet me at the York tavern.’

  Fawkes nodded again once.

  Rollo moved away. He went over London Bridge and walked briskly through the city and beyond its walls to Fleet Street. He stood across the street from the York, wondering whether Fawkes would come. He guessed that Fawkes would be unable to resist the call of adventure, and he was right. Fawkes appeared, walking with the characteristic swagger that made Rollo think of a prize fighter. Rollo watched for another minute or two, but neither Bellows nor anyone else was following.

  He went inside.

  Fawkes was in a corner with a jug of wine and two goblets. Rollo sat opposite him, with his back to the room; hiding his face was now an ingrained habit. Fawkes said: ‘Who was following me?’

  ‘Nick Bellows. Small man in a brown coat, sitting next but two to you.’

  ‘I didn’t notice him.’

  ‘He goes to a certain amount of trouble not to be noticed.’

  ‘Of course. What do you want with me?’

  ‘I have a simple question for you,’ Rollo said. ‘Do you have the courage to kill the king?’

  Fawkes looked at him hard, weighing him up. His stare would have intimidated many men, but Rollo was his equal in self-regard, and stared right back.

  At last Fawkes said: ‘Yes.’

  Rollo nodded, satisfied. This was the kind of plain speaking he wanted. ‘You’ve been a soldier, you understand discipline,’ he said.

  Again Fawkes just said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your new name is John Johnson.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit obvious?’

  ‘Don’t argue. You’re going to be the caretaker of a small apartment that we’ve rented. I’ll take you there now. You can’t go back to your lodging, it may be watched.’

  ‘There’s a pair of pistols in my room that I’d be sorry to leave behind.’

  ‘I’ll send someone to collect your belongings when I’m sure the coast is clear.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘We should go now.’

  ‘Where is this apartment?’

  ‘At Westminster,’ said Rollo. ‘In the House of Lords.’

  *

  IT WAS ALREADY dark on a rainy evening, but the London taverns and shops were lit up with lanterns and blazing torches, and Margery knew she was not mistaken when she saw her brother across the street. He was standing outside a tavern called the White Swan, apparently saying goodbye to a tall man who Margery thought she recognized.

  Margery had not seen her brother for years. That suited her: she did not like to be reminded of the fact that he was Jean Langlais. Because of this terrible secret she had almost turned down Ned’s proposal of marriage fifteen years ago. But if she had done so, she would never have been able to tell him why. She loved him so much, but in the end what tipped the balance was not her love for him but his for her. He longed for her, she knew, and if she had turned him down, without plausible explanation, he would have spent the rest of his life being mystified and wounded. She had power over his life and she was unable to resist the temptation to make him happy.

  She could not be comfortable with her secret, but it was like the backache that had afflicted her ever since the birth of Roger: it never ceased to hurt, but she learned to live with it.

  She crossed the street. As she did so the second man left, and Rollo turned to go back into the tavern. ‘Rollo!’ she said.

  He stopped suddenly at the door, startled, and for a moment he looked so fearful that she felt concerned; then he recognized her. ‘It’s you,’ he said warily.

  ‘I didn’t know you were in London!’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that Thomas Percy you were talking to?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘I thought so. I recognized his prematurely grey hair.’ Margery did not know what religion Percy adhered to, but some of his famous family were Catholic, and Margery was suspicious. ‘You’re not up to your old tricks, are you, Rollo?’

  ‘Certainly not. All that is over.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Margery was not fully reassured. ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m handling a protracted lawsuit for the earl of Tyne. He’s in dispute with a neighbour over the ownership of a watermill.’

  That was true, Margery knew. Her son Roger had mentioned it. ‘Roger says the legal fees and bribes have already cost more than three watermills.’

  ‘My clever nephew is right. But the earl is obstinate. Come inside.’

  They went in and sat down. A man with a big red nose brought Rollo a cup of wine without asking. His proprietorial air suggested to Margery that he was the landlord. Rollo said: ‘Thank you, Hodgkinson.’

  ‘Something for the lady?’ the man asked.

  ‘A small glass of ale, please,’ Margery said.

  Hodgkinson went away, and Margery said to Rollo: ‘Are you lodging here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was puzzled. ‘Doesn’t the earl of Tyne have a London house?’

  ‘No, he just rents one when Parliament is sitting.’

  ‘You should use Shiring House. Bartlet would be happy for you to stay there.’

  ‘There are no servants there, just a janitor, except when Bartlet comes to London.’

  ‘Bartlet would gladly send a couple of people up here from New Castle to look after you, if you asked him.’

  Rollo looked peeved. ‘Then they would spend his money on beef and wine for themselves and feed me bacon and beer, and if I complained, they’d tell Bartlet I was too high-handed and demanding. Frankly, I prefer a tavern.’

  Margery was not sure whether he was irritated by her or by the thought of dishonest servants, but she decided to drop the question. If he wanted to stay in a tavern, he could. ‘How are you, anyway?’ she said.

  ‘The same as ever. The earl of Tyne is a good master. How about you? Is Ned well?’

  ‘He’s in Paris right now.’

  ‘Really?’ said Rollo, interested. ‘What’s he doing there?’

  ‘His work,’ she said vaguely. ‘I’m not really sure.’

  Rollo knew she was lying. ‘Spying on Catholics, I assume. That’s his work, as everyone knows.’

  ‘Come on, Rollo, it’s your fault for trying to murder his queen. Don’t pretend to be indignant.’

  ‘Are you happy with Ned?’

  ‘Yes. God in his wisdom has given me a strange life, but for the last fifteen years I have been truly happy.’ She noticed that his shoes and stockings were covered with mud. ‘How on earth did you get so dirty?’

  ‘I had to walk along the foreshore.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Long story. And I have an appointment.’ Rollo stood up.

  Margery realized she was being dismissed. She kissed her brother’s cheek and left. She had not asked him what his appointment was about, and as she walked away from the tavern she asked herself why. The answer came immediately: she did not think he would tell her the truth.

  *

  ROLLO IMPOSED STRICT security at the Wardrobe Keeper’s apartment. Everyone arrived before dawn, so that they would not be seen entering. Each man brought his own food, and they did not go outside in daylight. They left again after dark.

  Rollo was almost seventy, so he left the harder work to younger men such as Fawkes and Percy, but even they struggled. All were the sons of noble and wealthy families, and none of them had previously done much digging.

  They
had first to demolish the brick wall of the cellar, then scoop out the earth behind it. The tunnel needed to be large enough for a number of thirty-two-gallon barrels of gunpowder to be dragged inside. They saved time by making it no larger, but the disadvantage of that was that they had to work bent double, or lying down; and the confined space grew hot.

  During the day they lived on salted fish, dried meat and raisins. Rollo would not let them send out for the kind of meal they were used to, fearing that they would draw attention to themselves.

  It was muddy work, which was why Rollo had been embarrassingly dirty when he unexpectedly ran into Margery. The soil they removed from the tunnel had to be lugged up to ground level, then taken outside after dark and carried along Parliament Passage and down Parliament Stairs, from where it could be thrown into the river. Rollo had been unnerved when Margery asked about his filthy stockings, but she had seemed to accept his explanation.

  The tunnellers were discreet, but not invisible. Even in the dark, they were sometimes seen coming and going by people carrying lanterns. To divert suspicion, Fawkes had let it be known that he had builders in, making some alterations that his master’s wife had demanded. Rollo hoped no one would notice the improbably large quantity of earth being displaced by mere alterations.

  Then they ran into a difficulty so serious that Rollo was afraid it might ruin the whole plan. When they had tunnelled into the earth for several feet, they came up against a solid stone wall. Naturally, Rollo realized, the two-storey building above had proper foundations: he should have anticipated this. The work became harder and slower, but they had to go on, for they were not yet far enough under the debating chamber to be sure that the explosion would kill everyone there.

  The stone foundations turned out to be several feet thick. Rollo feared they would not finish the job before the opening ceremony. Then Parliament was postponed, because of an outbreak of plague in London; and the tunnellers had a new deadline.

  Even so, Rollo fretted. Progress was terribly slow. The longer they took, the more risk there was that they would be discovered. And there was another hazard. As they went farther, undermining the foundations, Rollo feared a collapse. Fawkes made stout timber props to support the roof – as he said he had done when digging under city walls in Netherlands sieges – but Rollo was not sure how much this fighting man really knew about mining. The tunnel might just fall in and kill them all. It could even bring down the entire building – which would achieve nothing if the king were not inside.

  Taking a break one day, they talked about who would be in the chamber when the gunpowder went off. King James had three children. Prince Henry, who was eleven, and Prince Charles, four, would probably accompany their parents to the ceremony. ‘Assuming they both die, Princess Elizabeth will be the heir,’ said Percy. ‘She will be nine.’

  Rollo had already thought about the princess. ‘We must be prepared to seize her,’ he said. ‘Whoever has her, has the throne.’

  Percy said: ‘She lives at Coombe Abbey, in Warwickshire.’

  ‘She will need a Lord Protector, who will, of course, be the actual ruler of England.’

  ‘I propose my kinsman the earl of Northumberland.’

  Rollo nodded. It was a good suggestion. Northumberland was one of the great peers of the realm and a Catholic sympathizer. But Rollo had a better idea. ‘I suggest the earl of Shiring.’

  The others were not enthusiastic. Rollo knew what they were thinking: Bartlet Shiring was a good Catholic but did not have Northumberland’s stature.

  Too polite to denigrate Rollo’s nephew, Percy said: ‘We must plan uprisings in all parts of the country where Catholic peers are strong. There must be no opportunity for the Protestants to promote a rival for the throne.’

  ‘I can guarantee that in the county of Shiring,’ said Rollo.

  Someone said: ‘A lot of people will die.’

  Rollo was impatient with men who worried about killing. A civil war would be a cleansing. ‘The Protestants deserve death,’ he said. ‘And the Catholics will go straight to heaven.’

  Just then there was a strange noise. At first it sounded like a rush of water overhead. Then it turned into a rumble as of shifting rocks. Rollo immediately feared a collapse. The other men clearly had the same instinctive reaction, for they all rushed, as if to save their lives, up the narrow stone staircase that led from the cellar to the apartment at ground level.

  There they stopped and listened. The noise continued, intermittently, but the floor was not shaking, and Rollo realized they had overreacted. The building was not about to fall down. But what was happening?

  Rollo pointed at Fawkes. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘We’ll investigate. The rest of you, stay quiet.’

  He led Fawkes outside and around the building. The noise had stopped, but Rollo thought it must have come from roughly where their tunnel ran.

  At the back of the building, a row of windows ran along the upper storey, lighting the debating chamber. In the middle of the row was a small door opening on to a wooden exterior staircase: it was not much used, for the grand entrance was on the other side. Under the staircase, at ground level, was a double wooden door that Rollo had hardly noticed before. If he had thought about it, he would have assumed that it gave access to the kind of storeroom where gardeners kept spades. Now for the first time he saw both doors wide open. A carthorse stood patiently outside.

  Rollo and Fawkes stepped through the doorway.

  It was a store, but it was huge. In fact, Rollo guessed, it was probably the same length and width as the debating chamber directly above. He was not quite sure because the windowless vault was dark, illuminated mainly by the light coming through the doorway. From what he could see, it looked like the crypt of a church, with massive pillars curving up to a low wooden ceiling that must form the floor of the room above. Rollo realized with dismay that the tunnellers had probably been hacking through the base of one of those pillars. They were in even more danger of collapse than he had feared.

  The room was mostly empty, with odd pieces of timber and sacking lying around, and a square table with a hole broken through its top. Rollo immediately saw the explanation for the noise: A man whose face was black with dust was shovelling coal from a pile onto a cart. That was the cause of the noise.

  Rollo glanced at Fawkes and knew they were both thinking the same thing. If they could get control of this room, they could place their gunpowder even nearer to the king – and they could stop tunnelling.

  A woman of middle age was watching the carter work. When his vehicle was loaded, he counted coins with his sooty hands and gave them to her, evidently paying her for the coal. She took the coins to the doorway to examine them in the light before thanking the man. Then, as the carter backed his horse into the shafts of the cart, the woman turned to Rollo and Fawkes and said politely: ‘Good day to you, gentlemen. Is there something I can do for you?’

  ‘What is this room?’ Rollo asked.

  ‘I believe it used to be the kitchen, in the days when banquets were served in the grand chamber above. Now it’s my coal store. Or it was: spring is coming and I’m getting rid of my stocks. You may like to buy some: it’s the best hard coal from the banks of the river Tyne, burns really hot—’

  Fawkes interrupted her. ‘We don’t want coal, but we’re looking for somewhere to store a large quantity of wood. My name is John Johnson, I’m caretaker of the Wardrobe Keeper’s apartment.’

  ‘I’m Ellen Skinner, widow and coal merchant.’

  ‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs Skinner. Is this place available to rent?’

  ‘I’ve got it leased for the rest of the year.’

  ‘But you’re getting rid of your stock, you say, because spring is coming. Few people buy coal in warm weather.’

  She looked crafty. ‘I may have another use for the place.’

  She was feigning reluctance, but Rollo could see the light of greed in her eyes. Her arguments were no more than negotiating
tactics. He began to feel hopeful.

  Fawkes said: ‘My master would pay well.’

  ‘I’d give up my lease for three pounds,’ she said. ‘And you’d have to pay the landlord on top of that – four pounds a year, he charges me.’

  Rollo suppressed the impulse to say eagerly: It’s a bargain. The price did not matter, but if they were seen to be throwing money around, they would attract attention and, perhaps, suspicion.

  Fawkes haggled for the sake of appearance. ‘Oh, madam, that seems too much,’ he said. ‘A pound for your lease at most, surely.’

  ‘I might keep the place. I’ll need a coal store come September.’

  ‘Split the difference,’ Fawkes said. ‘One pound ten shillings.’

  ‘If you could make it two pounds, I’d shake hands on it now.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ Fawkes said, and held out his hand.

  ‘A pleasure, Mr Johnson,’ said the woman.

  Fawkes said: ‘I assure you, Mrs Skinner, the pleasure is all mine.’

  *

  NED WENT TO Paris in a desperate attempt to find out what was happening in London.

  He continued to hear vague rumours of Catholic plots against King James. And his suspicion had been heightened when Guy Fawkes deftly shook off his surveillance and disappeared. But there was a frustrating lack of detail in the gossip.

  Many royal assassination plots had been hatched in Paris, often with the help of the ultra-Catholic Guise family. The Protestants there had maintained the network of spies Sylvie had set up. Ned hoped that one of them, most likely Alain de Guise, might be able to fill the gaps.

  After the simultaneous murders of Duke Henri and Pierre Aumande, Ned had feared that Alain would no longer be a source of information on exiled English Catholics; but Alain had picked up some of his stepfather’s wiliness. He had made himself useful to the widow and befriended the new young duke, and so continued to live at the Guise palace in Paris and work for the family. And because the ultra-Catholic Guises were trusted by the English plotters, Alain learned a good deal about their plans, and passed the information to Ned by coded letters sent along well-established secret channels. Much of the exiles’ talk came to nothing, but several times over the years Alain’s tips had led to arrests.