Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

They went outside.

It was just a few steps from the tower door to the compound gate, but it seemed more. The courtyard was full of people watching the game. Alison spotted Drysdale, hitting the ball with his two hands clamped together, concentrating hard.

Then Willie was at the gate.

He put the iron key into the big lock and turned it. Alison kept her back to the crowd, hiding her face, but that meant she could not tell whether anyone was looking at them. It took an effort of will to resist the temptation to look back over her shoulder. The massive timber gate creaked noisily as Willie pushed it open: did anyone hear that sound over the cheering? The three fugitives stepped through. No one came after them. Willie closed the gate behind them.

‘Lock it,’ said Alison. ‘It may slow them down.’

Willie locked the gate, then dropped the key into the barrel of the cannon that stood beside the entrance.

No one had seen them.

They ran down to the beach.

Willie took hold of the one undamaged boat and pushed it into the shallows, then held it with its keel just touching the shore. Alison clambered in, then turned to help Mary. The queen stepped into the boat and sat down. Willie pushed it off from the beach, jumped in, and started to row.

Alison looked back. There was no sign that they had been missed: no one on the ramparts, no one leaning out of the castle windows, no one running down to the beach.

Was it possible that they had escaped?

The sun had not yet set, and a long summer evening stretched ahead. The breeze, though stiff, was warm. Willie pulled strongly at the oars. He had long arms and legs, and he was motivated by love. All the same, their progress across the wide lake seemed agonizingly slow. Alison kept looking back, but there was no pursuit yet. Even if they realized the queen had gone, what could they do? They would have to mend one of the remaining boats before they could give chase.

She began to believe they were free.

As they approached the mainland, Alison saw the figure of a man she did not recognize, waiting on the shore. ‘Hell,’ she said. ‘Who’s that?’ She was possessed by a terrible fear that they had come this far only to be trapped again.

Willie looked over his shoulder. ‘That’s Alistair Hoey. He’s with George.’

Alison’s heartbeat slowed again.

They reached the shore and jumped out of the boat. Alistair led them along a path between houses. Alison heard horses stamping and snorting impatiently. The escapers emerged onto the main road through the village — and there was Pretty Geordie, smiling in triumph, surrounded by armed men. Horses were saddled ready for the fugitives. George helped Mary onto her mount, and Willie had the joy of holding Alison’s foot while she swung herself up.

Then they all rode out of the village to freedom.

Exactly two weeks later, Alison was convinced that Mary was about to make the greatest mistake of her life.

Mary and Alison were at Dundrennan Abbey, on the south coast of Scotland, across the Solway Firth from England. Dundrennan had been the grandest monastery in Scotland. The monasteries had been secularized, but there was still a magnificent Gothic church and an extensive range of comfortable quarters. Mary and Alison sat alone in what had been the abbot’s luxurious suite of rooms, grimly contemplating their future.

Everything had gone wrong for Queen Mary — again.

Mary’s army had met the forces of her brother, James Stuart, at a village called Langside, near Glasgow. Mary had ridden with her men, and had been so brave that they had had to restrain her from leading the charge, but she had been defeated, and now she was on the run again. She had ridden south, across bleak windswept moorland, burning bridges behind her to slow pursuit. One miserable evening Alison had cut off all Mary’s lovely auburn hair, to make her less easily recognizable, and now she was wearing a dull brown wig. It seemed to complete her wretchedness.

She wanted to go to England, and Alison was trying to talk her out of it.

‘You still have thousands of supporters,’ Alison said brightly. ‘Most Scots people are Catholic. Only upstarts and merchants are Protestant.’

‘An exaggeration, but with some truth,’ Mary said.

‘You can regroup, assemble a bigger army, try again.’

Mary shook her head. ‘I had the larger army at Langside. It seems I cannot win the civil war without outside help.’

‘Then let us go back to France. You have lands there, and money.’

‘In France I am an ex-queen. I feel too young for that role.’

Mary was an ex-queen everywhere, Alison thought, but she did not say it. ‘Your French relations are the most powerful family in the country. They might assemble an army to back you, if you ask them personally.’

‘If I go to France now, I will never return to Scotland. I know it.’

‘So you’re determined...’

‘I will go to England.’

They had had this discussion several times, and each time Mary came to the same conclusion.

She went on: ‘Elizabeth may be a Protestant, but she believes that a monarch who has been anointed with holy oils — as I was when I was nine months old — rules by divine right. She cannot validate a usurper such as my brother James — she is in too much danger of being usurped herself.’

Alison was not sure how precarious Elizabeth’s position was. She had been queen for ten years without serious opposition. But perhaps all monarchs felt vulnerable.

Mary went on: ‘Elizabeth must help me regain my throne.’

‘No one else thinks that.’

It was true. All the noblemen who had fought at Langside and had accompanied Mary on her flight south were opposed to her plan.

But she would make up her own mind, as always. ‘I’m right,’ she said. ‘And they’re wrong.’

Mary had always been wilful, Alison thought, but this was almost suicidal.

Mary stood up. ‘It’s time to go.’

They went outside. George and Willie were waiting in front of the church, with a farewell party of noblemen and a small group of servants who would accompany the queen. They mounted horses and followed a grassy track alongside a stream that ran, gurgling and chuckling, through the abbey grounds towards the sea. The path went through spring-green woodland sprinkled with wild flowers, then the vegetation changed to tough gorse bushes splashed with deep-golden-yellow blossoms. Spring blooms signalled hope, but Alison had none.

They reached a wide pebble beach where the stream emptied into the sea.

A fishing boat waited at a crude wooden jetty.

On the jetty, Mary stopped, turned, and spoke directly to Alison in a low voice. ‘You don’t have to come,’ she said.

It was true. Alison could have walked away. Mary’s enemies would have left her alone, seeing no danger: they would think a mere lady-in-waiting could not organize a counter-revolution, and they would be right. Alison had an amiable uncle in Stirling who would take her in. She might marry again: she was certainly young enough.

But the prospect of freedom without Mary seemed the most dismal of all possible outcomes. She had spent her life serving Mary. Even during the long empty weeks and months at Loch Leven she had wanted nothing else. She was imprisoned, not by stone walls, but by her love.

‘Well?’ said Mary. ‘Will you come?’

‘Of course I will,’ Alison said.

They got into the boat.

‘We could still go to France,’ Alison said desperately.

Mary smiled. ‘There is one factor you overlook,’ she said. ‘The Pope and all the monarchs of Europe believe that Elizabeth is an illegitimate child. Therefore she was never entitled to the throne of England.’ She paused, looking across the twenty miles of water to the far side of the estuary. Following her gaze Alison saw, dimmed by haze, the low green hills of England. ‘And if Elizabeth is not queen of England,’ said Mary, ‘then I am.’