A Column of Fire

  He dragged her backward, her arms flailing, her heels dragging along the stone floor. She repeated her trick of going limp. However, this time it did not work, only making it easier for him to pull her. He reached the corner.

  He put one foot on the top of the wall and tried to drag her over. The wall was pierced at floor level by drain holes for rainwater, and she managed to get her hand into one and grab the edge. He kicked her arm and she lost her grip.

  He managed to pull her until she was half over the edge. She was facedown and staring at the drop, screaming in mortal terror. He released her collar and tried to grab her ankles so that he could tip her over. He got hold of one ankle but could not grasp the other. He lifted her foot as high as he could. She was almost over now, clinging to the top of the wall with both hands.

  He grasped one arm and pulled her hand off the wall. She tipped over, but grabbed his wrist at the last minute. He almost went over the side with her, but her strength failed her and she released him.

  For a moment he teetered, windmilling his arms; then he was able to step back to safety.

  She overbalanced in the other direction and tilted, with nightmare slowness, off the parapet. He watched, with a mixture of triumph and horror, as she fell slowly through the air, turning over and over, her screams a faint cry in the wind.

  He heard the thud as she hit the roof of the choir. She bounced, and came down again with her head at a queer angle, and he guessed her neck was broken. She rolled limply down the slope of the roof and off the edge, struck the top of a flying buttress, fell to the lean-to roof of the north aisle, tumbled off its edge, and at last came to rest, a lifeless bundle, in the graveyard.

  There was no one in the graveyard. Rollo looked in the opposite direction, but he saw nothing but rooftops. Nobody had seen the fight.

  He stepped through the low doorway, closed the door behind him, and went down the steep spiral staircase as fast as he could. He stumbled twice and almost fell, but he had to hurry.

  Reaching the bottom he stopped and listened at the door. He could hear nothing. He opened the door a crack. He heard no voices, no footsteps. He peeped out. The cathedral seemed empty.

  He stepped into the transept and closed the door behind him.

  He hurried along the south aisle, raising the hood of his cloak. He reached the west end of the church and cracked the door. There were people in the market square but no one was looking his way. He stepped outside. Without pausing he walked south, past the entrance to the indoor market, deliberately not looking around him: he did not want to meet anyone's eye.

  He turned around the back of the bishop's palace and made his way to the main street.

  It crossed his mind to leave town instantly and never come back. But several people knew he was here, and that he was planning to leave in the morning with a group of travelers; so if he now left precipitately it would be sure to throw suspicion on him. The town watch might even send horsemen to catch up with him and bring him back. He would do better to remain, and act innocent.

  He turned toward the market square.

  The play had ended and the crowd was coming out of the Bell courtyard. He spotted Richard Grimes, a prosperous Kingsbridge builder who sat on the borough council. "Good afternoon, Alderman," he said politely. Grimes would remember that he had seen Rollo coming up the main street from the direction of the riverside, apparently having been nowhere near the cathedral.

  Grimes was surprised to see him after so many years, and was about to start a conversation, when they both heard cries of shock and dismay coming from the graveyard. Grimes went in the direction of the hubbub, and Rollo followed.

  A crowd was gathering around the body. Sylvie lay with arms and legs visibly broken, and one side of her head a horrible mass of blood. Someone knelt beside her and felt for a heartbeat, but it was obvious that she was dead. Alderman Grimes pushed through the press of people and said: "That's Sylvie Willard. How did this happen?"

  "She fell from the roof." The speaker was Susan White, an old flame of Rollo's, once a pretty girl with a heart-shaped face, now a gray-haired matron in her fifties.

  Grimes asked her: "Did you see her fall?"

  Rollo tensed. He had been sure no one was watching. But if Susan had glanced up she would probably have recognized him.

  Susan said: "No, I didn't see, but it's obvious, isn't it?"

  The crowd parted, and Ned Willard appeared.

  He stared at the body on the ground for an instant, then roared like a wounded bull: "No!" He fell to his knees beside Sylvie. Gently, he lifted her head, and saw that part of her face was pulp. He began to weep then, still saying, "No, no," but quietly, between sobs that came from deep inside.

  Grimes looked around. "Did anyone see her fall?"

  Rollo got ready to make a run for it. But no one spoke. The murder had not been witnessed.

  He had got away with it.

  Margery stood at Sylvie's graveside as the coffin was lowered into the ground. The day was still and cold, with a feeble winter sun breaking through clouds intermittently, but Margery felt as if she were in a tornado.

  Margery was heartbroken for Ned. He was weeping into a handkerchief, unable to speak. Barney stood on his right, Alfo on his left. Margery knew Ned, and she knew that he had loved Sylvie with all his being. He had lost his soul mate.

  No one knew why Sylvie had chosen to climb the tower. Margery knew that her brother, Rollo, had been in town that day, and it crossed her mind that he might be able to answer the question, but he had left the day after. Margery had casually asked several people whether they had seen Rollo before he left, and three of them had said something like: "Yes, at the play, he was standing near me." Ned said that Sylvie had always wanted to see the view from the tower, and perhaps she had disliked the play and had chosen that moment to fulfill her wish; and, on balance, Margery thought that was the likeliest explanation.

  Margery's sorrow for Ned was made even more agonizing by this knowledge: that the tragedy might, in the end, bring her what she had craved for the last thirty years. She felt deeply ashamed of the thought, but she could not blind herself to the fact that Ned was now a single man, and free to marry her.

  But even if that happened, would it end her torment? She would have a secret that she could not reveal to Ned. If she betrayed Rollo she would be condemning her sons. Would she keep the secret, and deceive the man she loved? Or would she see her children hanged?

  As the prayers were said over the broken body of Sylvie, Margery asked God never to force her to choose.

  It was an amputation. I would never get back the part of me that vanished when Sylvie died. I knew the feeling of a man who tries to walk having lost a leg. I would never shake off the sense that something should be there, where the missing limb had always been. There was a hole in my life, a great gaping cavity that could never be filled.

  But the dead live on in our imaginations. I think that's the true meaning of ghosts. Sylvie was gone from this earth, but I saw her every day in my mind. I heard her, too. She would warn me against an untrustworthy colleague, mock me when I admired the shape of a young woman, laugh with me at a pompous alderman, and cry over the illness of a child.

  In time the hurricane of grief and rage abated, and I was possessed by a calm, sad resignation. Margery came back into my life like an old friend returned from overseas. That summer she came to London and moved into Shiring House in the Strand, and soon I was seeing her every day. I learned the meaning of the word bittersweet, the acid taste of loss and the honey of hope in one bright fruit. We saw plays, we rode horses in the Westminster fields, we took river trips and picnicked in Richmond. And we made love--sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes at night; occasionally all three.

  Walsingham was suspicious of her at first, but she disarmed him with a combination of flirtatiousness and intellect that he found irresistible.

  In the autumn the ghost of Sylvie told me to marry Margery. "Of course I d
on't mind," she said. "I had your love while I was alive. Margery can have it now. I just want to look down from heaven and see you happy."

  We were married in Kingsbridge Cathedral at Christmas, almost a year after Sylvie died. It was a subdued ceremony. Weddings are usually about young people starting out in life, but ours seemed more like an ending. Walsingham and I had saved Queen Elizabeth and fought for her ideal of religious freedom; Barney and I and the English sailors had defeated the Spanish armada; and Margery and I were together at last. It seemed to me that all the threads of our lives had drawn together.

  But I was wrong. It was not over yet; not quite.

  PART FIVE

  1602 to 1606

  28

  Rollo Fitzgerald lived through the last decade of the sixteenth century in a fury of disappointment and frustration. Everything he had tried to do had come to nothing. England was more resolutely Protestant than ever. His life was a failure.

  And then, with the turn of the century, he perceived that there was one last hope.

  Queen Elizabeth was sixty-six when the new century began. It was a great age, and she was becoming haggard, pale, and melancholy. She refused to look to the future, and made it an act of treason to even discuss the question of who would succeed to her throne. "Men always worship the rising rather than the setting sun," she said, and she was not wrong. Despite her prohibition, everyone was talking about what would happen when she died.

  Late in the summer of 1602 a visitor from Rome came to see Rollo at Tyne Castle. It was Lenny Price, who had been a student with Rollo at the English College back in the seventies. The lively pink-faced youth of those days was now a gray-haired man of fifty-five. "The church has a mission for you," said Lenny. "We want you to go to Edinburgh."

  They were standing on the roof of one of the castle towers, looking across farmland to the North Sea. Rollo's pulse quickened at Lenny's words. Scotland was ruled by King James VI, the son of Mary Stuart. "Mission?" he said.

  "Queen Elizabeth has no heir," Lenny said. "None of the three children of Henry VIII ever had a child. So King James is the likeliest candidate to succeed Elizabeth on the throne of England."

  Rollo nodded. "He's had a book published explaining his right to the throne." James believed in the power of the written word, a useful philosophy for the king of a small, poor country such as Scotland.

  "He's clearly maneuvering for it. He's seeking support--so Rome thinks this is the moment to extract promises from him."

  Rollo felt a warm surge of hope, but forced himself to be realistic. "Despite his mother, James is no Catholic. He was taken from Mary Stuart when he was a year old, and from then on the poison of Protestantism was dripped daily into his childish ear."

  "But there's something you don't know," said Lenny. "Almost nobody knows, and you mustn't tell anyone." He lowered his voice, even though they were alone. "James's wife is a Catholic."

  Rollo was astounded. "Anne of Denmark, the queen of Scotland, is a Catholic? But she was raised Protestant!"

  "God sent a devout man to speak to her, and she saw the light."

  "You mean someone converted her?"

  In a near whisper, Lenny said: "She has been received into the church."

  "God be praised! But this changes everything."

  Lenny raised a cautionary hand. "We don't think she'll be able to convert her husband."

  "Does he not love her?"

  "Hard to say. Our informants in Scotland say they're fond of one another. And they have three children. But they also say that James is a pervert."

  Rollo raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  "With young men," Lenny explained.

  Men who loved men committed a cardinal sin, but many of them were priests, and Rollo was not shocked.

  Lenny went on: "James knows his wife has become a Catholic, and he's accepted the fact. If we can't expect that he'll restore England to exclusive Catholicism, perhaps we can hope for tolerance."

  Rollo winced at the word tolerance. For him it was immorality, a mark of backsliding, error, and decadence. How could the Catholic Church now be demanding tolerance?

  Lenny did not notice. "We must move to exploit this situation, and that's where you come in. You must take a message to Edinburgh from the Catholic Church in England. If James will promise us freedom of worship, we will not oppose his bid for the English throne."

  Rollo saw immediately that this was the right thing to do, and his heart lifted in optimism. But there was a snag. "I'm not senior enough," he said. "The king of Scotland won't see me."

  "But the queen will," said Lenny. "She's one of us, now, so we can arrange it."

  "Is she so far committed?"

  "Yes."

  "That's wonderful," said Rollo. "I'll go, of course."

  "Good man," said Lenny.

  Six weeks later Rollo was at the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh. The house stood at the foot of a hill called Arthur's Seat. To the west, the road ran for a mile to another hill on which stood Edinburgh Castle, a much less comfortable home. King James and Queen Anne preferred to live at Holyrood.

  Rollo dressed in priest's robes and hung a crucifix around his neck. He went to the west range of the palace and gave the name Jean Langlais to an assistant, together with an appropriate bribe. He was shown to a pleasant small room with tall windows and a big fire. Scotland was not so bad, he thought, if you were rich. It would have been quite another matter, in these cold winds, to be one of the barefoot children he had seen in the town.

  An hour went by. Everyone knew that all royal servants pretended to be influential in order to solicit bribes, whether they had any real power or not. But Rollo was not relying only on his bribe. The priest who had converted Queen Anne to Catholicism was supposed also to tell her she should see Rollo. Nevertheless she must first be told that Jean Langlais was here.

  The woman who came in was not the twenty-seven-year-old queen but a gracious woman past sixty who looked familiar. "Welcome to Scotland, Father Langlais," she said. "Do you remember me? It's been almost twenty years."

  When she spoke he recognized her as Mary Stuart's longtime companion Alison. Her hair was gray, now, but she had the same alert blue eyes. He stood up and shook her hand. "Lady Ross!" he said.

  "I'm Lady Thurston now."

  "I didn't expect to see you."

  "Queen Anne has been very good to me."

  Rollo got the picture. After the execution of Mary Stuart, Alison had returned to Scotland and married again. She had made herself useful to Queen Anne and become a lady-in-waiting. No doubt it was Alison who had introduced Anne to the Catholic priest who had converted her. "I imagine it was you who suggested my mission today," Rollo said.

  "Perhaps it was," Alison said.

  This was good news. It improved Rollo's chance of success. "Thank you for your help."

  "I owe you a great deal," Alison said warmly, and the thought crossed Rollo's mind that she might have a soft spot for him. But he had never been very interested in romance. Love was a passion that seemed to have passed him by. He was wondering how to respond to Alison when Queen Anne came in.

  She had a long oval face with a high forehead and curly light brown hair. Her figure was good, and she wore a dress with a low neckline to show off her generous bust. "I'm very glad to see you, Father Langlais," she said pleasantly.

  Rollo bowed low and said: "Your Majesty does me great honor."

  She corrected him. "I do honor to the church you represent."

  "Of course." Royal etiquette was maddeningly difficult. "Forgive me."

  "But let's sit down and talk." She took a seat herself, and Rollo and Alison followed suit. The queen looked inquiringly at Rollo, waiting for him to open the conversation.

  Rollo got straight to the point. "His Holiness Pope Clement believes that Your Majesty may soon be queen of England."

  "Of course," she said. "My husband's title to the English throne is indisputable."

  It certainly was not indisputable.
Mary Stuart had been executed as a traitor, and it was generally accepted that the children of traitors could not inherit titles. Rollo said tactfully: "And yet there may be men who oppose him."

  She nodded. She knew the facts.

  Rollo went on: "His Holiness has instructed English Catholics to support the claim of King James, provided only that he promises to allow us freedom of worship."

  "His Majesty, my husband, is a man of tolerance," she said.

  A grunt of disgust escaped Rollo at the loathed word tolerance, and he had to smother the noise with a cough.

  Queen Anne did not seem to notice. "King James has accepted my conversion to the true faith," she went on.

  "Wonderful," Rollo murmured.

  "King James permits Catholic theologians at his court, and often engages them in debate."

  Rollo noticed Alison nodding discreetly to confirm this.

  "I can assure you, without the least doubt," Queen Anne said firmly, "that when he becomes king of England he will allow us Catholics freedom of worship."

  "That gives me great joy," Rollo said with feeling. But in his mind he heard Lenny Price say But is it true? Rollo really needed to hear it from King James himself.

  Then the door opened and James walked in.

  Rollo leaped to his feet and bowed low.

  King James was thirty-six. He had the plump, fleshy face of a sybarite, and his heavy-lidded eyes had a sly look. He kissed his wife's cheek fondly.

  Queen Anne said to him: "Father Langlais, here, comes to tell us that His Holiness the Pope supports your claim to the throne of England."

  James smiled at Rollo and spoke with a strong Scots accent. "Thank you for bringing us this good news, father." He slobbered a little in his speech, as if his tongue might be too big for his mouth.

  Anne said: "I have been assuring him that you would grant freedom of worship to English Catholics."

  "Splendid," said the king. "My mother was a Catholic, you know, Father Langlais."

  "Requiescat in pace," said Rollo, using the Latin formulation of "Rest in peace" that was favored by Catholics.