Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Susannah received her in her parlour, then kissed her on the lips and said: ‘Go on up, you lucky girl.’

An enclosed staircase led from the parlour up to Susannah’s boudoir, and Ned was waiting there.

Margery threw her arms around him and they kissed urgently, as though starved of love. She broke the kiss to say: ‘Bed.’

They went into Susannah’s bedroom and pulled off their clothes. Ned’s body was slender, his skin white, with thick dark hair on his chest. Margery loved just looking at him.

But something was wrong. Ned’s penis was unresponsive, limp. This happened quite often with Bart, when he was drunk, but it was the first time with Ned. Margery knelt in front of him and sucked it, as Bart had taught her to do. It sometimes worked with him, but today with Ned it made no difference. She stood up, put her hands to his face, and looked into his golden-brown eyes. He was embarrassed, she saw. She said: ‘What is it, my darling?’

‘Something on my mind,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘What are we going to do? What is our future?’

‘Why think about it? Let’s just love each other.’

He shook his head. ‘I have to make a decision.’ He put his hand into the coat he had thrown aside and took out a letter.

‘From the queen?’ Margery asked.

‘From Sir William Cecil.’

Margery felt as if the summer day had been blasted by a sudden winter wind. ‘Bad news?’

Ned threw the letter onto the bed. ‘I don’t know if it’s bad or good.’

Margery stared at it. The letter lay on the counterpane like a dead bird, its folded corners sticking up like stiffening wings, the broken red wax seal like a spatter of blood. Intuition told her that it announced her doom. In a low voice she said: ‘Tell me what it says.’

Ned sat up on the bed, crossing his legs. ‘It’s about France,’ he said. ‘The Protestants there — they’re called Huguenots — seem to be winning the civil war, with the help of a huge loan from Queen Elizabeth.’

Margery knew this already. She was horrified by the relentless success of heresy, but Ned was pleased about it; Margery tried not to think about this or any of the things that divided them.

Ned went on: ‘So, happily, the Catholic king is holding peace talks with the Protestant leader, a man called Gaspard de Coligny.’

At least Margery could share Ned’s approval of that. They both wanted Christians to stop killing each other. But how could this blight their love?

‘Queen Elizabeth is sending a colleague of ours called Sir Francis Walsingham to the conference as a mediator.’

Margery did not understand that. ‘Do the French really need an Englishman at their peace talks?’

‘No, that’s a cover story.’ He hesitated. ‘Cecil doesn’t say more in the letter, but I can guess the truth. I’ll happily tell you what I think, but you can’t tell anyone else.’

‘All right.’ Margery took part listlessly in this conversation, which had the effect of postponing the dreaded moment when she would know her fate.

‘Walsingham is a spy. The queen wants to know what the king of France intends to do about Scottish Mary. If the Catholics and the Huguenots really do make peace, the king might turn his attention to Scotland, or even England. Elizabeth always wants to know what people might be plotting.’

‘So the queen is sending a spy to France.’

‘When you put it like that, it’s not much of a secret.’

‘All the same I won’t repeat it. But please, for pity’s sake, what has this got to do with you and me?’

‘Walsingham needs an assistant, the man must speak fluent French, and Cecil wants me to go. I think Cecil is displeased with me for staying away from London so long.’

‘So you’re leaving me,’ Margery said miserably. That was the meaning of the dead bird.

‘I don’t have to. We could carry on as we are, loving one another and meeting secretly.’

Margery shook her head. Her mind was clear, now, for the first time in weeks, and she could think straight at last. ‘We take terrible risks every time. We will be discovered one day. Then Bart will kill you and divorce me and take Bartlet away from me.’

‘Then let’s just run away. We’ll tell people we’re married: Mr and Mrs Weaver. We can take a ship to Antwerp: I have a distant cousin there, Jan Wolman, who will give me work.’

‘And Bartlet?’

‘We’ll take him with us — he’s not really Bart’s son anyway.’

‘We’d be guilty of kidnapping the heir to an earldom. It’s probably a capital offence. We could both be executed.’

‘If we rode to Combe Harbour we could be at sea before anyone realizes what we’ve done.’

Margery yearned to say yes. In the past three months she had been happy for the first time since she was fifteen. The longing to be with Ned possessed her body like a fever. But she knew, even if he did not, that he could never be happy working for his cousin in Antwerp. All his adult life Ned had been deeply engaged in the government of England, and he liked it more than anything. He adored Queen Elizabeth, he revered William Cecil, and he was fascinated by the challenges facing them. If she took him away from all that she would ruin him.

And she, too, had her work. In recent weeks she had, shamefully, used her sacred mission as a cover for adulterous meetings, but nonetheless she was dedicated to the task God had assigned her. To give that up would be a transgression as bad as adultery.

It was time to end it. She would confess her sin and ask God’s mercy. She would rededicate herself to the holy duty of bringing the sacraments to deprived English Catholics. Perhaps in time she would come to feel forgiven.

As she reached her decision, she began to cry.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘We can work something out.’

She knew they could not. She embraced him and pulled him to her. They lay back on the bed. She whispered: ‘Ned, my beloved Ned.’ Her tears wetted his face as they kissed. His penis was suddenly erect. ‘Once more,’ she said.

‘It’s not the last time,’ he said as he rolled on top of her.

Yes, it is, she thought; but she found she could not speak, and she gave herself up to sorrow and delight.

Six weeks later, Margery knew she was pregnant.

Sir Francis Walsingham believed in lists the way he believed in the Gospels. He made lists of who he had met yesterday and who he was going to see tomorrow. And he and Sir Ned Willard had a list of every suspicious Englishman who came to Paris.

In 1572, Walsingham was Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to France, and Ned was his deputy. Ned respected Walsingham as he had Sir William Cecil, but did not feel the same breathless devotion. Towards Walsingham Ned was loyal rather than worshipful, admiring rather than awestruck. The two men were different, of course; but, also, the Ned who now served as Walsingham’s deputy was not the eager youngster who had been Cecil’s protégé. Ned had grown up.

Ned had undertaken clandestine missions for Elizabeth from the start, but now he and Walsingham were part of the rapidly growing secret intelligence service set up to protect Elizabeth and her government from violent overthrow.

The peace between Catholics and Protestants that had reigned in England for the first decade of Elizabeth’s rule had been thrown into jeopardy by the Papal Bull. There had already been one serious conspiracy against her. The Pope’s agent in England, Roberto Ridolfi, had plotted to murder Elizabeth and put Mary Stuart on the throne, and then marry Mary to the duke of Norfolk. The secret service had uncovered the plan and the duke’s head had been chopped off a few days ago. But no one believed that was the end of the matter.