A Column of Fire

  Ebrima's heart sank.

  He could see her, by the window, in a white dress, talking to his stepson, Matthus, with Carlos's pet cat in her arms.

  Carlos said: "She's a mere child, dean. Surely--"

  But Drike was not finished. "And I am a Protestant," she said defiantly. "For which I thank the Lord."

  From the guests came a murmur of mixed admiration and dismay.

  "Come here," said Titelmans.

  She crossed the room with her head held high, and Ebrima thought: Oh, hell.

  "Take the three of them away," said Titelmans to his entourage.

  Someone shouted: "Why don't you leave us in peace?"

  Titelmans looked angrily toward the source of the jeer, but he could not see who had spoken. However, Ebrima knew: he had recognized the voice of young Matthus.

  Another man shouted: "Yeah, go back to Ronse!"

  The other guests started to cheer their approval and shout their own catcalls. Titelmans's men-at-arms escorted the Willemsen family out of the room. As Titelmans turned to follow, Matthus threw a bread roll. It hit Titelmans's back. He pretended not to notice. Then a goblet flew through the air and hit the wall close to him, splashing his robe. The booing became louder and cruder. Titelmans barely retained his dignity as he hurried through the door before anything else could threaten him.

  The crowd laughed and clapped his exit. But Ebrima knew there was nothing to smile about.

  The burning of young Drike was scheduled for two weeks later.

  It was announced in the cathedral. Titelmans said that Albert and Betje had recanted their Protestantism, asked God's forgiveness, and begged to be received back into the bosom of the church. He probably knew their confessions were insincere, but he had to let them off with a fine. However, to everyone's horror, Drike had refused to renounce her religion.

  Titelmans would not let anyone visit her in prison, but Albert bribed the guards and got in anyway. However, he was unable to change her mind. With the idealism of the very young, she insisted she was ready to die rather than betray her Lord.

  Ebrima and Evi went to see Albert and Betje the day before the burning. They wanted to give support and comfort to their friends, but it was hopeless. Betje wept without stopping, and Albert could barely speak. Drike was their only child.

  That day a stake was planted in the pavement in the city center, overlooked by the cathedral, the elegant Great Market building, and the grand, unfinished city hall. A cartload of dry firewood was dumped next to the stake.

  The execution was scheduled for sunrise, and a crowd gathered before dawn. The mood was grim, Ebrima noted. When hated criminals such as thieves and rapists were executed, the spectators mocked them and cheered their death agonies; but that was not going to happen today. Many in the crowd were Protestants, and feared this might one day happen to them. The Catholics, such as Carlos, were angered by the Protestants' troublemaking, and fearful that the French wars of religion would spread to the Netherlands; but few of them believed it was right to burn a girl to death.

  Drike was led out of the town hall by Egmont, the executioner, a big man dressed in a leather smock and carrying a blazing torch. She wore the white dress in which she had been arrested. Ebrima saw at once that Titelmans, in his arrogance, had made a mistake. She looked like a virgin, which she undoubtedly was; and she had the pale beauty of paintings of the Virgin Mary. The crowd gave a collective gasp on seeing her. Ebrima said to his wife, Evi: "This is going to be a martyrdom." He glanced at Matthus and saw that the boy had tears in his eyes.

  One of the two west doors of the cathedral opened, and Titelmans appeared at the head of a little flock of priests like black crows.

  Two men-at-arms tied Drike to the stake and piled the firewood around her feet.

  Titelmans began to speak to the crowd about truth and heresy. The man had no sense of the effect he had on people, Ebrima realized. Everything about him offended them: his hectoring tone, his haughty look, and the fact that he was not from this city.

  Then Drike began to speak. Her treble rose above Titelmans's shout. Her words were in French:

  Mon Dieu me paist soubs sa puissance haute

  C'est mon berger, de rien je n'auray faute

  It was the psalm the crowd had sung at Lord Hubert's Pasture, the twenty-third, beginning The Lord is my shepherd. Emotion swamped the crowd like a tidal wave. Tears came to Ebrima's eyes. Others in the crowd wept openly. Everyone felt they were present at a sacred tragedy.

  Titelmans was furious. He spoke to the executioner, and Ebrima was close enough to hear his words: "You were supposed to pull out her tongue!"

  There was a special tool, like a claw, for removing tongues. It had been devised as a punishment for liars, but was sometimes used to silence heretics, so that they could not preach to the crowd as they were dying.

  Egmont said sullenly: "Only if specifically instructed."

  Drike said:

  En tect bien seur, joignant les beaulx herbages,

  Coucher me faict, me meine aux clairs rivages

  She was looking up, and Ebrima felt sure she was seeing the green pastures and still waters waiting in the afterlife of all religions.

  Titelmans said: "Dislocate her jaw."

  "Very well," said Egmont. He was of course a man of blunted sensibility, but this instruction clearly offended even him, and he did not trouble to hide his distaste. Nevertheless he handed his torch to a man-at-arms.

  Next to Ebrima, Matthus turned around and shouted: "They're going to dislocate her jaw!"

  "Be quiet!" said his mother anxiously, but Matthus's big voice had already reached far. There was a collective roar of anger. Matthus's words were repeated throughout the crowd until everyone knew.

  Matthus shouted: "Let her pray!" and the cry was repeated: "Let her pray! Let her pray!"

  Evi said: "You'll get into trouble!"

  Egmont went up to Drike and put his hands to her face. He thrust his thumbs into her mouth and took a firm grip of her jaw, so that he could wrench the bone from its sockets.

  Ebrima sensed a sudden violent movement beside him, then Egmont was struck on the back of the head by a stone thrown by Matthus.

  It was a big stone, aimed well and hurled hard by a strong seventeen-year-old arm, and Ebrima heard the thud as it hit Egmont's skull. The executioner staggered, as if momentarily losing consciousness, and his hands fell from Drike's face. Everyone cheered.

  Titelmans saw the event slipping from his control. "All right, never mind, light the fire!" he said.

  Matthus shouted: "No!"

  More stones were thrown, but they missed.

  Egmont took back his torch and put it to the firewood. The dry sticks blazed up quickly.

  Matthus pushed past Ebrima and ran out of the crowd toward Drike. Evi shouted: "Stop!" Her son ignored her.

  The men-at-arms drew their swords, but Matthus was too quick for them. He kicked the burning wood away from Drike's feet, then ran away, disappearing back into the crowd.

  The men-at-arms came after him, swords raised. The crowd scattered before them, terrified. Evi wailed: "They'll kill him!"

  Ebrima saw that there was only one way to save the boy, and that was to start a general riot. It would not be difficult: the crowd was almost there already.

  Ebrima pushed forward, and others went with him, surging around the now-undefended stake. Ebrima drew his dagger and cut the ropes that bound Drike. Albert appeared and picked her up--she did not weigh much--and they disappeared into the crowd.

  The people turned on the priests, jostling them. The men-at-arms gave up searching for Matthus and returned to defend the clergy.

  Titelmans hurried away toward the cathedral, and the priests went after him. Their walk turned into a run. The crowd let them go, jeering, and watched them as they passed through the elaborately carved stone archway, pushed open the great wooden door, and finally vanished into the darkness of the church.

  Albert and his family left Antwer
p that night.

  Ebrima was one of only a handful of people who knew they were going to Amsterdam. It was a smaller town, but farther to the northeast and therefore more removed from the center of Spanish power at Brussels--for which reason it was prospering and growing rapidly.

  Ebrima and Carlos bought Albert's ironworks, paying him for it in gold, which he took with him in locked saddlebags on a sturdy pony.

  The lovelorn Matthus wanted to go with them, and Ebrima--who remembered, albeit dimly, the power of adolescent romance--would have let him; but Albert said that Drike was too young to marry, and they must wait a year. Then Matthus could come to Amsterdam and propose to her, if he still wanted to. Matthus swore that he would, and his mother said: "We'll see."

  Titelmans went quiet. There were no further confrontations, no more arrests. Perhaps he had realized that Antwerp Catholics disliked his extremism. Or he might just have been biding his time.

  Ebrima wished the Protestants would go quiet, too, but they seemed to have become more confident, not to say arrogant. They demanded tolerance, and the right to worship as they wished, but they were never satisfied with that, he thought with exasperation. They believed their rivals were not just mistaken but evil. Catholic practices--the ways in which Europeans had worshipped for hundreds of years--were blasphemous, they said, and must be abolished. They did not practice the tolerance they preached.

  It worried Ebrima that the Spanish overlords and their allies in the priesthood seemed to be losing their grip on authority. Hatred and violence seethed under the surface of city life. Like all entrepreneurs, he just wanted peace and stability so that he could do business.

  He was doing just that, negotiating with a buyer in the ironworks, perspiring a little in the summer heat, on the twentieth day of August, when the trouble boiled over again.

  He heard a commotion in the street: running footsteps, breaking glass, and the raucous shouts of overexcited men. He hurried out to see what was going on, and Carlos and Matthus joined him. A couple of hundred youths, including a handful of girls, were hurrying along the street. They carried ladders, pulleys, and ropes as well as cruder tools such as wooden staffs, sledgehammers, iron bars, and lengths of chain. "What are you doing?" Ebrima shouted at them, but no one answered his question.

  The glass Ebrima had heard breaking was a window in the house of Father Huus, who lived in the same street as the ironworks; but that appeared to have been a passing fancy, and the mob was heading for the city center in a seemingly purposeful mood.

  Carlos said: "What the hell are they up to?"

  Ebrima could guess, and he hoped he was wrong.

  The three men followed the crowd to the market square where Drike had been rescued. There the youths gathered in the center, and one of them asked for God's blessing, speaking Brabant Dutch. Among Protestants, anyone could pray extempore, and they could use their own language, instead of Latin. Ebrima was afraid they had come to the market square because that was where the cathedral stood, and his fear turned out to be right. When the prayer ended they all turned as one, clearly following a prearranged plan, and marched to the cathedral.

  The entrance was a pointed Gothic arch under an ogee. On the tympanum was carved God in heaven, and the concentric orders of the arch were filled with angels and saints. Next to Ebrima, Carlos gasped with horror as the group began to attack the carvings with their hammers and makeshift weapons. As they smashed the stonework they yelled Bible quotations, making the scriptures sound like curses.

  Carlos yelled at them: "Stop this! There will be retaliation!" No one took any notice.

  Ebrima could tell that Matthus was itching to join them. As the boy took a step forward, Ebrima took his arm in a strong ironmaker's grip. "What would your mother say?" he said. "She worships here! Stop, and think."

  "They're doing God's work!" Matthus yelled.

  The rioters discovered that the big cathedral doors were locked: the priests had seen them coming. Ebrima felt relieved: at least the damage they could do was limited. Perhaps they would wind down now. He released Matthus's arm.

  But the mob ran round to the north of the church, looking for another way in. The onlookers followed. To Ebrima's consternation they found a side door unlocked: the priests in their panic must have overlooked it. The mob pushed through into the church, and Matthus pulled away from Ebrima.

  By the time Ebrima got inside, the Protestants were running in all directions, yelling in triumph, lashing out at any carved or painted image. They seemed drunk, though not with wine. They were possessed by a frenzy of destruction. Both Carlos and Ebrima yelled at them to stop, and other older citizens joined in the appeal, but it was useless.

  There were a few priests in the chancel, and Ebrima saw some of them fleeing through the south porch. One did the opposite, and came toward the intruders, holding up both hands as if to stop them. Ebrima recognized Father Huus. "You are God's children," he kept saying. He walked directly at the charging youths. "Stop this, and let's talk." A big lad crashed into him, knocking him to the floor, and the others ran over him.

  They pulled down precious hangings and threw them into a pile in the middle of the crossing, where screeching girls set fire to them using lighted candles from an altar. Wooden statues were smashed, ancient books were torn, and costly vestments were ripped up; and the debris was added to the flames.

  Ebrima was appalled, not just by the destruction but by its inevitable consequences. This could not be allowed to pass. It was the most outrageous provocation of both King Felipe and Pope Pius, the two most powerful men in Europe. Antwerp would be punished. It might be a long time coming, for the wheels of international politics turned slowly; but when it happened it would be dreadful.

  Some of the group were even more serious. They had clearly planned this, and they gathered around the high altar, their target obviously the massive sculpture. They quickly set their ladders and pulleys in positions that they must have prearranged. Carlos was aghast. "They're going to abuse the crucified Christ!" he said. He stared in horror as they tied ropes around Jesus and hacked at his legs to weaken the structure. They kept shouting about idolatry, but it was clear even to the pagan Ebrima that it was the Protestants who were perpetrating the blasphemy here. They worked the pulleys with determined concentration, tightening the ropes, until at last the dying Jesus tilted forward, cracked at the knees, and was finally torn from his place and thrown to the ground, facedown. Not satisfied, the Protestants attacked the fallen monument with hammers, smashing the arms and head with a glee that seemed satanic.

  The two carved thieves, crucified either side of where Jesus had been nailed, now seemed to look mournfully down on his shattered body.

  Someone brought a flagon of Communion wine and a golden chalice, and they all congratulated one another and drank.

  A shout from the south side made Ebrima and Carlos turn. With a shock, Ebrima saw that a little group had gathered in the chapel of St. Urban, staring up at the painting Carlos had commissioned of the miracle at Cana.

  "No!" Carlos roared, but no one heard.

  They ran across the church, but before they got there one of the boys had raised a dagger and slashed the canvas from one side to the other. Carlos threw himself at the boy, knocking him to the ground, and the knife went flying; but others grabbed both Carlos and Ebrima and held them fast, struggling but helpless.

  The boy Carlos had attacked got up, apparently unhurt. He picked up his knife and slashed the canvas again and again, tearing the images of Jesus and the disciples, and the representations of Carlos and his family and friends among the painted wedding guests.

  A girl brought a taper and put it to the shredded canvas. The painted fabric first smoldered and smoked. Then eventually a small flame appeared. It spread rapidly, and soon the entire picture was blazing.

  Ebrima ceased to struggle. He looked at Carlos, who had closed his eyes. The young hooligans let them both go and went off to vandalize something else.

  Relea
sed, Carlos fell to his knees and wept.

  15

  Alison McKay was in prison with Mary Queen of Scots.

  They were confined in a castle, on an island, in the middle of a Scottish lake called Loch Leven. They were guarded day and night by fifteen men-at-arms, more than enough to watch over two young women.

  And they were going to escape.

  Mary was indomitable. She did not have good judgment: Alison admitted to herself, in the darkest hours of the night, that just about every decision the queen had ever taken had turned out badly. But Mary never gave up. Alison loved that about her.

  Loch Leven was a grim place. The house was a square tower of gray stone with small, mean windows to keep out the cold wind that blew hard across the water, even in summer. It was set in a compound less than a hundred yards across. Outside was a narrow strip of scrubland, then the lake. When the weather was stormy, the strip was submerged and the waves lashed the stones of the perimeter wall. The lake was broad, and it took half an hour for a strong man to row to the mainland.

  This was a hard prison from which to escape, but they had to try. They were miserable. Alison had never imagined, until now, that boredom could drive her to contemplate suicide.

  They had been raised in the glittering court of France, surrounded by people in gorgeous clothes and priceless jewels, invited every day to banquets and pageants and plays. Their everyday conversation had been of political plots and social intrigue. The men around them started wars and ended them; the women were queens and the mothers of kings. After that, Loch Leven was purgatory.

  It was 1568. Alison was twenty-seven and Mary twenty-five. They had been at Loch Leven almost a year, and Alison had spent much of that time brooding about where they had gone wrong.

  Mary's first mistake had been to fall for and then marry Queen Elizabeth's cousin Henry, Lord Darnley, a charming drunk who had syphilis. Alison had felt torn: happy to see Mary in love, but appalled by her choice of man.

  Love quickly wore off, and when Mary became pregnant, Darnley murdered her private secretary, whom he suspected of fathering the child.

  If there was a nobleman in Scotland even worse than Darnley it was, in Alison's opinion, the quarrelsome and violent earl of Bothwell, and Mary's second mistake had been to encourage Bothwell to kill Darnley. Bothwell had succeeded, but everyone knew or guessed what had happened.