A Column of Fire

by Ken Follett

  For a long moment he let her hold his hand without responding, and it lay limp in her grasp. Then, at last, she felt him squeeze her fingers, gently but firmly; and she knew it was going to be all right.

  *

  We hanged him in front of Kingsbridge Cathedral.

  Margery and I did not want to join the crowd, but we could not be absent either, so we watched from the window of the old house. She burst into tears when they brought Rollo from the Guild Hall down the main street to the market square, and walked him up the scaffold.

  When the support was jerked from beneath him, Margery began to pray for his soul. As a Protestant I never believed in prayers for dead souls, but I joined in for her sake. And I had done something more practical, also for her sake. Rollo should have been cut down and disembowelled while still alive, then hacked into pieces, but I had bribed the executioner, and so Rollo was allowed to choke to death before his body was ritually mutilated – to the disappointment of the crowd, who had wanted to see the traitor suffer.

  After that I retired from court life. Margery and I came back to Kingsbridge permanently. Roger, who never found out that he was my son, took over from me as the Member of Parliament for Kingsbridge. My nephew Alfo became the richest man in Kingsbridge. I remained lord of Wigleigh – I had developed a strong affection for the people of my little village.

  So Rollo was the last of the men I sent to the gallows. But there is one more part of the story to be told . . .

  Epilogue

  1620

  At the age of eighty, Ned spent a lot of time sleeping. He napped in the afternoon, he went to bed early, and he sometimes nodded off after breakfast in the front parlour of the Kingsbridge house.

  The house was always full. Barney’s son, Alfo, and Ned’s son, Roger, both had children and grandchildren. Roger had bought the house next door and the youngsters treated the two houses as one home.

  Someone had told them that Grandpa Ned knew everything, and his great-grandchildren often came running into the parlour with questions. He was endlessly intrigued by what they asked him: How long does it take to get to Egypt? Did Jesus have a sister? What’s the biggest number?

  He watched them with intense pleasure, fascinated by the random nature of family resemblances: one had Barney’s roguish charm, another Alice’s relentless determination, and one little girl brought tears to his eyes when she smiled just like Margery.

  Inherited traits showed themselves in other ways, too. Alfo was mayor of Kingsbridge, as his grandfather Edmund had been. Roger was a member of King James’s Privy Council. Over at New Castle, Earl Swifty was, sadly, as much of a swaggering bully as Swithin, Bart and Bartlet had been.

  The family had grown like a spreading tree, and Ned and Margery had watched its progress together, until her life had come to a peaceful end three years ago. Ned still talked to her sometimes, when he was alone. ‘Alfo has bought the Slaughterhouse Tavern,’ he would say as he got into bed at the end of the day. Or again: ‘Little Eddie is as tall as me, now.’ It hardly mattered that she made no reply: he knew what she would have thought. ‘Money sticks to Alfo like honey on his fingers,’ she would have said, and: ‘Eddie will be after girls any day now.’

  Ned had not been to London for years, and would never go again. Strangely enough, he did not pine for the excitement of tracking down spies and traitors, nor for the challenges and intrigues of government. It was the theatre he missed. He had loved plays ever since he saw the story of Mary Magdalene performed at New Castle on that Twelfth Day of Christmas so long ago. But a play was a rare event in Kingsbridge: travelling companies came only once or twice a year, to perform in the yard of the Bell Inn. Ned’s consolation was that he had some of his favourite plays in book form, so he could read them. There was one writer he particularly enjoyed, though he could never remember the fellow’s name. He forgot a lot of things these days.

  He had a book on his lap now, and he had fallen asleep over it. Wondering what had awakened him, he looked up to see a young man with Margery’s curly dark hair: his grandson, Jack, the son of Roger. He smiled. Jack was like Margery in other ways: good-looking and charming and feisty – and far too earnest about religion. His extremism had gone in the direction opposite to Margery’s and he was some kind of Puritan. This caused bad-tempered rows with his pragmatic father.

  Jack was twenty-seven and single. To the surprise of his family he had chosen to be a builder, and had prospered. There were famous builders in the family’s past: heritage again, perhaps.

  Now he sat in front of Ned and said: ‘I have some important news, Grandfather. I’m going away.’

  ‘Why? You have a successful business here in Kingsbridge.’

  ‘The king makes life uncomfortable for those of us who take the teachings of the Bible seriously.’

  What he meant was that he and his Puritan friends stubbornly disagreed with the English Church on numerous points of doctrine, and King James was as intolerant of them as he was of Catholics.

  ‘I’ll be very sorry to see you go, Jack,’ Ned said. ‘You remind me of your grandmother.’

  ‘I’ll be sorry to say goodbye. But we want to live in a place where we can do God’s will without interference.’

  ‘I spent my life trying to make England that kind of country.’

  ‘But it’s not, is it?’

  ‘It’s more tolerant than any other place, as far as I know. Where would you go in search of greater freedom?’

  ‘The New World.’

  ‘God’s body!’ Ned was shocked. ‘I didn’t think you were going that far. Sorry about the bad language, you startled me.’

  Jack nodded acknowledgement of the apology. He disapproved almost as much as the Catholics of the blasphemous exclamations Ned had learned from Queen Elizabeth; but he said no more about it. ‘A group of us have decided to sail to the New World and start a colony there.’

  ‘What an adventure! It’s the kind of thing your grandmother Margery would have loved to do.’ Ned felt envious of Jack’s youth and boldness. Ned himself would never travel again. Luckily he had rich memories – of Calais, of Paris, of Amsterdam. He recalled every detail of those journeys even when he could not remember what day of the week it was.

  Jack was saying: ‘Although James will continue to be our king theoretically, we hope he will take less interest in how we choose to worship, since it will be impossible for him to enforce his rules at such a distance.’

  ‘I dare say you’re right. I wish you well.’

  ‘Pray for us, please.’

  ‘I will. Tell me the name of your ship, so that I can ask God to watch over it.’

  ‘It’s called the Mayflower.’

  ‘The Mayflower. I must try to remember that.’

  Jack went to the writing table. ‘I’ll note it down for you. I want us to be in your prayers.’

  ‘Thank you.’ It was oddly touching that Jack cared so much about Ned’s prayers.

  Jack wrote on a scrap of paper and put down the pen. ‘I must leave you, now – I’ve got so much to do.’

  ‘Of course. I’m feeling tired, anyway. I may take a little nap.’

  ‘Sleep well, Grandfather.’

  ‘God be with you, beloved boy.’

  Jack left, and Ned looked out of the window at the glorious west front of the cathedral. From here he could just see the entrance to the graveyard where both Sylvie and Margery lay. He did not look down at his book. He was happy with his thoughts. They were often enough for him, nowadays.

  His mind was like a house he had spent his life furnishing. Its tables and beds were the songs he could sing, the plays he had watched, the cathedrals he had seen, and the books he had read in English, French and Latin. He shared this notional house with his family, alive and dead: his parents, his brother, the women he had loved, the children. There were guest rooms for important visitors such as Francis Walsingham, William and Robert Cecil, Francis Drake, and of course Queen Elizabeth. His enemies were there, too – Rollo
Fitzgerald, Pierre Aumande de Guise, Guy Fawkes – although they were locked in the cellar, for they could do him no more harm.

  The pictures on the walls were of the times when he had been brave, or clever, or kind. They made the house a happy place. And the bad things he had done, the lies he had told and the people he had betrayed and the times he had been cowardly, were scrawled in ugly letters on the wall of the outhouse.

  His memory formed the library of the house. He could pick out any volume and instantly be transported to another place and time: Kingsbridge Grammar School in his innocent childhood, Hatfield Palace in the thrilling year of 1558, the banks of the Seine river on the bloodstained night of St Bartholomew, the Channel during the battle with the Spanish armada. Strangely, the character of Ned that lived in those stories did not remain the same. It seemed to him sometimes that quite a different person had learned Latin, someone else had fallen under the spell of young Princess Elizabeth, another character had stabbed a man with no nose in the graveyard of the church of St-Julien-le-Pauvre, and yet another had watched the fireships scatter the galleons off Calais. But of course they were all just different versions of himself, the owner of the house.

  And one day soon the place would fall down, as old buildings did, and then, quite quickly, it would all turn to dust.

  With that thought he drifted off to sleep.

  Acknowledgements

  My historical advisors for A Column of Fire were: Mercedes García-Arenal on Spain; the late Roderick Graham on Scotland; Robert Hutchinson on England; Guy Le Thiec on France; and Geoffrey Parker on the Netherlands.

  I was also helped by: Anne-Laure Béatrix and Béatrice Vingtrinier at the Louvre in Paris; Dermot Burke at Hatfield House; Richard Dabb and Timothy Long at the Museum of London; Simon Lennox, Trisha Muir and Richard Waters at Loch Leven Castle; Sarah Pattinson at Carlisle Castle; Les Read on English sixteenth-century theatre; and Elizabeth Taylor at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

  My editors were: Cherise Fisher, Leslie Gelbman, Phyllis Grann, Neil Nyren, Brian Tart and Jeremy Trevathan.

  Friends and family who gave advice included: John Clare, Barbara Follett, Emanuele Follett, Tony McWalter, Chris Manners, Charlotte Quelch, John Studzinski, Jann Turner and Kim Turner.

  All of you helped me write a better book, and I give you my heartfelt thanks.

  Who is Real?

  Readers sometimes ask me which of the characters in a novel are real historical figures and which are fictional. For those who are curious about this, here’s a list of the real people in A Column of Fire.

  ENGLAND

  Mary Tudor, queen of England

  Elizabeth Tudor, her half-sister, later queen

  Tom Parry, Elizabeth’s treasurer

  Sir William Cecil, advisor to Elizabeth

  Robert Cecil, William’s son

  Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster

  Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester

  Sir Nicholas Throckmorton

  Nicholas Heath, Lord Chancellor

  Sir Francis Drake, sea captain

  Sir John Hawkins, naval commander, also said to be a pirate

  Sir Francis Throckmorton

  George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury

  Bess of Harwick

  Sir Amias Paulet

  Gilbert Gifford, spy

  William Davison, temporary secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth

  Anthony Babington, traitor

  Margaret Clitheroe, Catholic martyr

  Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral

  Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke, earl of Montgomery

  Edmund Doubleday

  Guy Fawkes

  Thomas Percy

  FRANCE

  François, duke of Guise

  Henri, son of François

  Charles, cardinal Lorraine, brother of François

  Marie de Guise, sister of François and mother of Mary Queen of Scots

  Louis ‘Bottles’, Cardinal de Guise

  Anna d’Este, duchess of Guise

  Henri II, king of France

  Caterina de’ Medici, queen of France

  Diane de Poitiers, mistress of King Henri II

  Children of Henri and Caterina:

  Francis II, king of France

  Charles IX, king of France

  Henri III, king of France

  Margot, queen of Navarre

  Mary Stuart, queen of Scots and queen of France

  Antoine, king of Navarre

  Henri, son of Antoine, later King Henri IV of France

  Louis, prince of Condé

  Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France

  Charles de Louviers, assassin

  William Allen, leader of the exiled English Catholics

  Ambroise Paré, royal surgeon

  Jean de Poltrot, assassin

  Jean de Hangest

  Jean Le Charron, provost of Paris

  SCOTLAND

  James Stuart, illegitimate half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots

  James Stuart, son of Mary Queen of Scots, later King James VI of Scotland

  and King James I of England

  Anne of Denmark, queen of Scotland

  John Leslie, bishop of Ross

  Sir William Douglas

  Lady Agnes, his wife

  George ‘pretty Geordie’, their son

  Willie Douglas, Sir William’s illegitimate son

  SPAIN

  King Felipe II

  Count of Feria, diplomat

  Bishop Álvaro de la Quadra

  Bernardino de Mendoza, ambassador to London

  Alonso Perez de Guzman, 7th duke of Medina Sidonia, admiral of the Spanish armada

  NETHERLANDS

  Margherita of Parma, governor, illegitimate half-sister of King Felipe II

  Pieter Titelmans, grand inquisitor

  Ken Follett was twenty-seven when he wrote Eye of the Needle, an award-winning thriller that became an international bestseller. He then surprised everyone with The Pillars of the Earth, about the building of a cathedral in the Middle Ages, which continues to captivate millions of readers all over the world, and its long-awaited sequel, World Without End, was a number one bestseller in the US, UK and Europe. Recently, he has written the bestselling Century trilogy, which comprises Fall of Giants, Winter of the World and Edge of Eternity. A Column of Fire is the third novel in the Kingsbridge sequence.

  ALSO BY KEN FOLLETT

  The Modigliani Scandal

  Paper Money

  Eye of the Needle

  Triple

  The Key to Rebecca

  The Man from St Petersburg

  On Wings of Eagles

  Lie Down with Lions

  The Pillars of the Earth

  Night over Water

  A Dangerous Fortune

  A Place Called Freedom

  The Third Twin

  The Hammer of Eden

  Code to Zero

  Jackdaws

  Hornet Flight

  Whiteout

  World Without End

  Fall of Giants

  Winter of the World

  Edge of Eternity

  First published 2017 by Macmillan

  This electronic edition published 2017 by Macmillan

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-5098-5659-6

  Copyright © Ken Follett 2017

  Author photo © Olivier Favre

  Jacket designed by Daren Cook

  The right of Ken Follett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or an
y part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Map artwork by Stephen Raw

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.