Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Ned Willard came out of the crowd of sheriff’s men and dashed at Swithin, sword held high; and Rollo stepped quickly forward and stood in Ned’s way, protecting the injured earl. Ned stopped short, and the two young men faced one another.

Rollo was taller and heavier. At school he had been able to persecute little Neddy Willard, but only until he grew up. Now there was something in the way Ned stood and looked that undermined Rollo’s sense of superiority.

They moved around one another, swords held forward, looking for a chance. Rollo saw something close to loathing on Ned’s face. What have I done to make you hate me? he wondered, and the answers came thick and fast: forcing Margery to marry Bart; the charge of usury that had ruined the Willard family; the failed effort to stop Elizabeth becoming queen; all that on top of school bullying.

Rollo heard a roar behind him and looked over his shoulder quickly. He saw that Earl Swithin was still fighting, despite his injury. He held his sword awkwardly in his left hand but had managed to cut the sheriff’s forehead. The wound was superficial but bleeding copiously, and the blood was interfering with the sheriff’s vision. Both hurt, they were fighting clumsily, like drunk men.

Rollo’s glance behind was a mistake. Ned attacked suddenly and furiously. He came at Rollo fast, the heavy sword flashing in the candlelight as it stabbed and sliced and twisted. Rollo defended himself desperately, blocking the blows and backing away; then something moved under the sole of his right boot — jewels from the reliquary, he realized despite his fear — and his leg slipped from under him. He fell on his back and dropped his sword. Both his arms spread wide, leaving his body undefended; and he foresaw his own death in the next split-second.

To his astonishment Ned stepped over him.

Rollo sprang to his knees and looked behind him. Ned was attacking the earl with even more ferocity, while the sheriff stood aside and tried to dash the blood from his eyes. Swithin backed until a pillar arrested his retreat. A swipe from Ned knocked the weapon from the earl’s left hand, and then suddenly Ned had the point of his sword at the earl’s throat.

The sheriff yelled: ‘Arrest him!’

Ned’s point pierced the skin of Swithin’s throat, bringing a trickle of blood, but Ned restrained himself. For a long moment Swithin was an inch from death. Then Ned said: ‘Tell your men to drop their weapons.’

Swithin shouted: ‘Yield! Yield!’

The noise of fighting died rapidly, to be replaced by the sound of iron swords falling to the stone floor. Rollo looked around and saw that his father, Sir Reginald, was kneeling down, holding his head, which was bloody.

Ned did not take his eyes off Swithin, Rollo saw. Ned said: ‘I arrest you in the name of the queen for blasphemy, desecration and murder.’

Rollo jumped to his feet. ‘We’re not the blasphemers!’

‘No?’ said Ned with surprising composure. ‘But here you are in the church, with your swords unsheathed. You have wounded the bishop-elect and murdered the gravedigger, and you’ve caused the holy relics to be dropped on the floor.’

‘What about yourselves?’

‘The sheriff and his men came here to protect the clergy and the relics, and a good thing we did.’

Rollo was baffled. How had this gone so wrong?

Ned said: ‘Osmund, tie them up, then take them to the Guild Hall and lock them in the jail.’

Osmund promptly produced a roll of stout cord.

Ned went on: ‘Then send for the surgeon, and make sure he treats Dean Luke first.’

As Rollo’s hands were tied behind his back, he stared at Ned, whose face registered a savage kind of satisfaction. Rollo’s mind thrashed about looking for explanations. Had the sheriff been tipped off about Swithin’s intentions, or had the timid Dean Luke summoned them merely out of nervousness? Had the Puritans been warned off, or had they simply decided not to come?

Had Ned Willard planned this whole disaster?

Rollo did not know.

Earl Swithin was executed, and I was responsible for his death. I had no idea, then, that he was the first of so many.

Rollo and Bart and Sir Reginald were punished with heavy fines, but one of the group had to die, and the earl had actually murdered a man in church. That was the justification; but what really sealed his fate was that he had tried to defy the will of Queen Elizabeth. The queen wanted England to understand very clearly that she, alone, had the right to appoint bishops, and anyone who interfered with her prerogative risked his life. Shocking though it was to kill an earl, she needed Swithin dead.

I made sure the judge understood her wishes.

As the crowd gathered in front of Kingsbridge Cathedral for the execution, Rollo stared hard at me, and I knew he suspected a trap, but I don’t think he ever worked it out.

Sir Reginald was there, too, with a long scar across his head where the hair never grew back. The wound damaged his brain as well as his hair, and he never quite regained his wits. I know Rollo always blamed me for that.

Bart and Margery watched, too.

Bart wept. Swithin was a wicked man, but his father.

Margery looked like someone released from a horrible dungeon into the sunlight and fresh air. She had lost that sickly look, and she was dressed with her former panache, albeit in sombre mourning colours: on her, a black hat with a black feather could still look playful. Her tormentor was on his way to hell, where he belonged, and she was free of him.

Swithin was brought out of the Guild Hall; and I had no doubt that the worst part of his punishment was the humiliating walk down the main street to the square in front of a jeering throng of people he had always despised as his inferiors. His head was chopped off, decapitation being the mercifully quick death reserved for the nobility; and I imagine the end came as a release.

Justice was done. Swithin was a murderer and a rapist who deserved to die. But I found that my conscience was not untroubled. I had lured him into an ambush. In a way the death of poor George Cox was my responsibility. I had meddled in things that should be left to the law or, failing that, to God.

I may yet go through anguish in hell for my sin. But if I had to live that time again I would do the same, to end Margery’s ordeal. I preferred to suffer myself than to know that her agony continued. Her wellbeing was more important to me than my own.

I have learned, during the course of a long life, that that is the meaning of love.

Ebrima Dabo was living his dream. He was free, rich and happy.

On a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1566 he and his partner, Carlos Cruz, walked out of the city of Antwerp into the countryside. They were two prosperous, well-dressed inhabitants of one of the richest cities in the world. Together they owned the largest iron-making concern in Antwerp. In brains they were about equal, Ebrima thought: he was older and wiser, but Carlos had the bold imagination of youth. Carlos was married to Imke, the daughter of his distant cousin Jan Wolman, and they had two small children. Ebrima, who would be fifty next year, had married Evi Dirks, a widow his own age, and had a teenage stepson who was employed in the ironworks.

Ebrima often thought nostalgically of the village where he had been born. If he could have turned back the years, and avoided being taken as a prisoner-of-war and sold into slavery, he would have had a long, uneventful and contented life in that village. When he thought this way he felt sad. But he could not go back. For one thing, he had no idea how to get there. But there was something else. He knew too much. He had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, like Eve in the myth the Christians believed, and he could never return to the garden. He spoke Spanish and French and the local Brabant Dutch dialect, and had not uttered a word of Manding for years. He hung oil paintings in his house, he loved to listen to musical groups playing complex scores, and he was particular about the quality of his wine. He was a different man.