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 theater 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: traveling 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 favorite 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'd be very sorry to see you go, Jack," Ned said. "You remind me of your grandmother."
"I'll be sorry to say good-bye. 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 rocked. "I didn't think you were going that far. Sorry about the bad language, you startled me."
Jack nodded acknowledgment 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 daresay 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.
Acknowledgments
My historical advisers for A Column of Fire were: Mercedes Garcia-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 Beatrix and Beatrice 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 theater; 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, Chris Manners, Tony McWalter, Charlotte Quelch, John Studzinski, Jann Turner, and Kim Turner.
All of you helped me write a better book, and I give you my heartf
elt 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, adviser 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, said to also be a pirate Sir Francis Throckmorton George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury Bess of Hardwick
Sir Amias Paulet
Gilbert Gifford, spy
William Davison, temporary secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth Anthony Babington, traitor
Margaret Clitherow, Catholic martyr Howard of Effingham, lord high admiral Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke, earl of Montgomery Edmund Doubleday
Guy Fawkes
Thomas Percy
France
Francois, duke of Guise Henri, son of Francois
Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, brother of Francois Marie de Guise, sister of Francois 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
Antoine, king of Navarre
Henri, son of Antoine, later King Henri IV of France Louis, prince of Conde
Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France Charles de Louviers, assassin William Allen, leader of the exiled English Catholics Ambroise Pare, 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 Alvaro de la Quadra
Bernardino de Mendoza, ambassador to London Alonso Perez de Guzman, seventh 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
About the Author
KEN FOLLETT is one of the world's best-loved authors, selling more than 160 million copies of his thirty books. Follett's first bestseller was Eye of the Needle, a spy story set in the Second World War.
In 1989, The Pillars of the Earth was published and has since become Follett's most popular novel. It reached number one on bestseller lists around the world and was an Oprah's Book Club pick.
Its sequel, World Without End, proved equally popular, and the Kingsbridge series has sold 38 million copies worldwide.
Follett lives in Hertfordshire, England, with his wife, Barbara. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren, and three Labradors.
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Ken Follett, A Column of Fire
(Series: Kingsbridge # 3)
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