A Column of Fire
To Emanuele:
49 years of sunshine
By day the LORD went ahead of them in a column of smoke to lead them on their way. By night he went ahead of them in a column of fire to give them light so that they could travel by day or by night.
Exodus 13:21, God’s Word Translation
Contents
Cast of Characters
Prologue
Part One: 1558
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Part Two: 1559 to 1563
9
10
11
12
13
Part Three: 1566 to 1573
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Part Four: 1583 to 1589
22
23
24
25
26
27
Part Five: 1602 to 1606
28
29
30
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Who is Real?
Cast of Characters
I hope you won’t need this. Any time I think you might have forgotten a character, I’ve put in a gentle reminder. But I know that sometimes readers put a book down and don’t get another moment to read for a week or more – it happens to me – and then sometimes you forget. So here’s a list of the people who pop up more than once, just in case . . .
ENGLAND
Willard household
Ned Willard
Barney, his brother
Alice, their mother
Malcolm Fife, groom
Janet Fife, housekeeper
Eileen Fife, daughter of Malcolm and Janet
Fitzgerald household
Margery Fitzgerald
Rollo, her brother
Sir Reginald, their father
Lady Jane, their mother
Naomi, maid
Sister Joan, Margery’s great-aunt
Shiring household
Bart, Viscount Shiring
Swithin, his father, earl of Shiring
Sal Brendon, housekeeper
The Puritans
Philbert Cobley, ship owner
Dan Cobley, his son
Ruth Cobley, Philbert’s daughter
Donal Gloster, clerk
Father Jeremiah, parson of St John’s in Loversfield
Widow Pollard
Others
Friar Murdo, an itinerant preacher
Susannah, Countess of Brecknock, friend of Margery & Ned
Jonas Bacon, captain of the Hawk
Jonathan Greenland, first mate aboard the Hawk
Stephen Lincoln, a priest
Rodney Tilbury, justice
Real historical people
Mary Tudor, queen of England
Elizabeth Tudor, her half-sister, later queen
Sir William Cecil, advisor to Elizabeth
Robert Cecil, William’s son
William Allen, leader of the exiled English Catholics
Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster
FRANCE
Palot family
Sylvie Palot
Isabelle Palot, her mother
Giles Palot, her father
Others
Pierre Aumande
Viscount Villeneuve, fellow student of Pierre’s
Father Moineau, Pierre’s tutor
Nath, Pierre’s maid
Guillaume of Geneva, itinerant pastor
Louise, marchioness of Nîmes
Luc Mauriac, cargo broker
Aphrodite Beaulieu, daughter of the count of Beaulieu
René Duboeuf, tailor
Françoise Duboeuf, his young wife
Marquis de Lagny, a Protestant aristocrat
Bernard Housse, a young courtier
Alison McKay, lady-in-waiting to Mary Queen of Scots
Fictional members of the Guise household
Gaston Le Pin, head of the household guard of the Guise family
Brocard and Rasteau, two of Gaston’s thugs
Véronique
Odette, maid to Véronique
Georges Biron, a spy
Real historical people: the Guise household
François, duke of Guise
Henri, son of François
Charles, cardinal Lorraine, brother of François
Real historical people: the Bourbons & their allies
Antoine, king of Navarre
Henri, son of Antoine
Louis, prince of Condé
Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France
Real historical people: others
Henri II, king of France
Caterina de’ Medici, queen of France
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
Charles de Louviers, assassin
SCOTLAND
Real historical people
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
SPAIN
Cruz family
Carlos Cruz
Aunt Betsy
Ruiz family
Jerónima
Pedro, her father
Others
Archdeacon Romero
Father Alonso, inquisitor
Captain ‘Ironhand’ Gómez
NETHERLANDS
Wolman family
Jan Wolman, cousin of Edmund Willard
Imke, his daughter
Willemsen family
Albert
Betje, Albert’s wife
Drike, their daughter
Evi, Albert’s widowed sister
Matthus, Evi’s son
OTHER NATIONS
Ebrima Dabo, Mandinkan slave
Bella, rum maker in Hispaniola
Prologue
We hanged him in front of Kingsbridge Cathedral. It is the usual place for executions. After all, if you can’t kill a man in front of God’s face you probably shouldn’t kill him at all.
The sheriff brought him up from the dungeon below the Guild Hall, hands tied behind his back. He walked upright, his pale face defiant, fearless.
The crowd jeered at him and cursed him. He seemed not to see them. But he saw me. Our eyes met, and in that momentary exchange of looks there was a lifetime.
I was responsible for his death, and he knew it.
I had been hunting him for decades. He was a bomber who would have killed half the rulers of our country, including most of the royal family, all in one act of bloodthirsty savagery – if I had not stopped him.
I have spent my life tracking such would-be murderers, and a lot of them have been executed – not just hanged but drawn and quartered, the more terrible death reserved for the worst offenders.
Yes, I have done this many times: watched a man die knowing that I, more than anyone else, had brought him to his just but dreadful punishment. I did it for my country, which is dear to me; for my sovereign, whom I serve; and for something else, a principle, the belief that a person has the right to make up his own mind about God.
He was the last of many men I sent to hell, but he made me think of the first . . .
Part One
1558
1
Ned Willard came home to Kingsbridge in a snowstorm.
He sailed upstream from Combe Harbour in the cabin of a slow barge loaded with cloth from Antwerp and wine from Bordeaux. When he reckoned the boat was at last nearing Kingsbridge, he wrapped his French cloak more tightly around his shoulders, pulled the hood over his ears, stepped out onto the open deck, and looked ahead.
At first he was disappointed: all he could see was falling snow. But his longing for a sight of the city was like an ache, and he stared into the flurries, hoping. After a while his wish was granted, and the storm began to lift. A surprise patch of blue sky appeared. Gazing over the tops of the surrounding trees, he saw the tower of the cathedral – four hundred and five feet high, as every Kingsbridge Grammar School pupil knew. The stone angel that watched over the city from the top of the spire had snow edging her wings today, turning the tips of her feathers from dove-grey to bright white. As he looked, a momentary sunbeam struck the statue and gleamed off the snow, like a benison; then the storm closed in again and she was lost from view.
He saw nothing except trees for a while, but his imagination was full. He was about to be reunited with his mother after an absence of a year. He would not tell her how much he had missed her, for a man should be independent and self-sufficient at the age of eighteen.
But most of all he had missed Margery. He had fallen for her, with catastrophic timing, a few weeks before leaving Kingsbridge to spend a year in Calais, the English-ruled port on the north coast of France. Since childhood he had known and liked the mischievous, intelligent daughter of Sir Reginald Fitzgerald. When she grew up, her impishness had taken on a new allure, so that he found himself staring at her in church, his mouth dry and his breath shallow. He had hesitated to do more than stare, for she was three years younger than he, but she knew no such inhibitions. They had kissed in the Kingsbridge graveyard, behind the concealing bulk of the tomb of Prior Philip, the monk who had commissioned the cathedral four centuries ago. There had been nothing childish about their long, passionate kiss: then she had laughed and run away.
But she kissed him again the next day. And on the evening before he left for France they admitted that they loved one another.
For the first few weeks they exchanged love letters. They had not told their parents of their feelings – it seemed too soon – so they could not write openly, but Ned confided in his older brother, Barney, who became their intermediary. Then Barney left Kingsbridge and went to Seville. Margery, too, had an older brother, Rollo; but she did not trust him the way Ned trusted Barney. And so the correspondence ended.
The lack of communication made little difference to Ned’s feelings. He knew what people said about young love, and he examined himself constantly, waiting for his emotions to change; but they did not. After a few weeks in Calais, his cousin Thérèse made it clear that she adored him and was willing to do pretty much anything he liked to prove it, but Ned was hardly tempted. He reflected on this with some surprise, for he had never before passed up the chance of kissing a pretty girl with nice breasts.
However, something else was bothering him now. After rejecting Thérèse, he had felt confident that his feelings for Margery would not alter while he was away; but now he asked himself what would happen when he saw her. Would Margery in the flesh be as enchanting as she seemed in his memory? Would his love survive the reunion?
And what about her? A year was a long time for a girl of fourteen – fifteen now, of course, but still. Perhaps her feelings had faded after the letters stopped. She might have kissed someone else behind the tomb of Prior Philip. Ned would be horribly disappointed if she had become indifferent to him. And even if she still loved him, would the real Ned live up to her golden remembrance?
The storm eased again, and he saw that the barge was passing through the western suburbs of Kingsbridge. On both banks were the workshops of industries that used a lot of water: dyeing, fulling of cloth, papermaking and meat slaughtering. Because these processes could be smelly, the west was the low-rent neighbourhood.
Ahead, Leper Island came into view. The name was old: there had been no lepers here for centuries. At the near end of the island was Caris’s Hospital, founded by the nun who had saved the city during the Black Death. As the barge drew closer Ned was able to see, beyond the hospital, the graceful twin curves of Merthin’s Bridge, connecting the island to the mainland north and south. The love story of Caris and Merthin was part of local legend, passed from one generation to the next around winter fireplaces.
The barge eased into a berth on the crowded waterfront. The city seemed not to have altered much in a year. Places such as Kingsbridge changed only slowly, Ned supposed: cathedrals and bridges and hospitals were built to last.
He had a satchel slung over his shoulder, and now the captain of the barge handed him his only other luggage: a small wooden trunk containing a few clothes, a pair of pistols and some books. He hefted the box, took his leave, and stepped onto the dock.
He turned towards the large stone-built waterside warehouse that was his family’s business headquarters, but when he had gone only a few steps, he heard a familiar Scots voice say: ‘Well, if it isn’t our Ned. Welcome home!’
The speaker was Janet Fife, his mother’s housekeeper. Ned smiled broadly, glad to see her.
‘I was just buying a fish for your mother’s dinner,’ she said. Janet was so thin she might have been made of sticks, but she loved to feed people. ‘You shall have some, too.’ She ran a fond eye over him. ‘You’ve changed,’ she said. ‘Your face seems thinner, but your shoulders are broader. Did your Aunt Blanche feed you properly?’
‘She did, but Uncle Dick set me to shovelling rocks.’
‘That’s no work for a scholar.’
‘I didn’t mind.’
Janet raised her voice. ‘Malcolm, Malcolm, look who’s here!’
Malcolm was Janet’s husband and the Willard family’s groom. He came limping across the dockside: he had been kicked by a horse years ago when he was young and inexperienced. He shook Ned’s hand warmly and said: ‘Old Acorn died.’
‘He was my brother’s favourite horse.’ Ned hid a smile: it was just like Malcolm to give news of the animals before the humans. ‘Is my mother well?’
‘The mistress is in fine fettle, thanks be to God,’ Malcolm said. ‘And so was your brother, last we heard – he’s not a great writer, and it takes a month or two for letters to get here from Spain. Let me help with your luggage, young Ned.’
Ned did not want to go home immediately. He had another plan. ‘Would you carry my box to the house?’ he said to Malcolm. On the spur of the moment he invented a cover story. ‘Tell them I’m going into the cathedral to give thanks for a safe journey, and I’ll come home right afterwards.’
‘Very good.’
Malcolm limped off and Ned followed more slowly, enjoying the familiar sight of buildings he had grown up with. The snow was still falling lightly. The roofs were all white, but the streets were busy with people and carts, and underfoot there was only slush. Ned passed the notorious White Horse tavern, scene of regular Saturday-night fights, and walked uphill on the main street to the cathedral square. He passed the bishop’s palace and paused for a nostalgic moment outside the Grammar School. Through its narrow, pointed windows he could see lamplit bookshelves. There he had learned to read and count, to know when to fight and when to run away, and to be flogged with a bundle of birch twigs without crying.
On the south side of the cathedral was the priory. Since King Henry VIII had dissolved the monasteries, Kingsbridge Priory had fallen into sad disrepair, with holed roofs, teetering walls and vegetation growing through windows. The buildings were now owned by the current mayor, Margery’s father, Sir Reginald Fitzgerald, but he had done nothing with them.
Happily the cathedral was well maintained, and stood as tall and strong as ever, the stone symbol of the living city. Ned stepped through the great west door into the nave. He would thank God for a safe journey and thereby turn the lie he had told Malcolm into a truth.
As always, the church was a place of business as well as worship: Friar Murdo had a tray of vials of earth from Palestine, guaranteed to be genuine; a man Ned did not recognize offered hot stones to warm your hands for a penny; and Puss Lovejoy, shivering in a red dress, was selling what she always sold.
Ned looked at the ribs of the vaulting, like the arms of a crowd of people all reaching up to heaven. Whenever he came into this place he thought of the men and women who had built it. Many of them were commemorated in Timothy’s Book, a history of the priory that was studied in the school: the masons Tom Builder and his stepson, Jack; Prior Philip; Merthin Fitzgerald, who, as well as the bridge, had put up the central tower; and all the quarrymen, mortar women, carpenters and glaziers, ordinary people who had done an extraordinary thing, risen above their humble circumstances and created something eternally beautiful.
Ned knelt before the altar for a minute. A safe journey was something to be thankful for. Even on the short crossing from France to England, ships could get into trouble and people could die.
But he did not linger. His next stop was Margery’s house.
On the north side of the cathedral square, opposite the bishop’s palace, was the Bell Inn, and, next to that, a new house was going up. It was on land that had belonged to the priory, so Ned guessed Margery’s father was building. It was going to be impressive, Ned saw, with bay windows and many chimneys: it would be the grandest house in Kingsbridge.
He continued up the main street to the crossroads. Margery’s current home stood on one corner, across the road from the Guild Hall. Although not as imposing as the new place promised to be, it was a big timber-framed building occupying an acre of the priciest land in town.
Ned paused on the doorstep. He had been looking forward to this moment for a year but, now that it had come, he found his heart full of apprehension.
He knocked.
The door was opened by an elderly maid, Naomi, who invited him into the great hall. Naomi had known Ned all his life, but she looked troubled, as if he were a dubious stranger; and, when he asked for Margery, Naomi said she would go and see.
Ned looked at the painting of Christ on the cross that hung over the fireplace. In Kingsbridge there were two kinds of picture: Bible scenes and formal portraits of noblemen. In wealthy French homes Ned had been surprised to see paintings of pagan gods such as Venus and Bacchus, shown in fantastic forests, wearing robes that always seemed to be falling off.