Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

He saw the body on the street, and had a dreadful feeling he knew who it was. Sylvie did too, and she let out a sob and broke into a run. A moment later they both bent over the still form on the bloody cobblestones. Ned knew right away that Isabelle was dead. He touched her face: she was still warm. She had not been dead long, which explained why her clothes had not yet been stolen.

Sylvie, weeping, said: ‘Can you carry her?’

‘Yes,’ Ned said, ‘if you just help get her over my shoulder.’ She would be heavy, but the embassy was not far away. And it occurred to him that he would look like a militiaman disposing of a corpse, and consequently would be less likely to be questioned.

He had his hands under Isabelle’s lifeless arms when he smelled smoke and hesitated. He looked towards the shop and saw movement inside. Was there a fire in there? A flame flared up and lit the interior, and he saw men moving about with an air of purpose, as if looking for something; valuables, perhaps. ‘They’re still here!’ he said to Sylvie.

At that moment, Ned saw two men step through the doorway. One had a mutilated face, his nose just two holes surrounded by puckered white scar tissue. The other man had thick blond hair and a pointed beard, and Ned recognized Pierre.

Ned said: ‘We have to leave her — come on!’

Sylvie hesitated for one grief-stricken moment, then broke into a run. Ned ran after her, but they had been recognized. He heard Pierre shout: ‘There she is! Go after her, Rasteau!’

Ned and Sylvie ran side by side to the end of the rue de la Serpente. As they passed the huge windows of the church of Saint-Severin, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw the man called Rasteau pounding after him, sword raised.

Ned and Sylvie raced across the wide rue St Jacques and into the graveyard of St-Julien-le-Pauvre. But Sylvie was tiring and Rasteau gained on them. Ned thought furiously. Rasteau was in his thirties, but big and strong, and his nose had obviously been chopped off in some fracas. He was probably a practised swordsman with long experience of combat. He would be a formidable opponent. In any fight lasting more than a few seconds, his greater size and skill would tell. Ned’s only hope was to surprise him somehow and finish him quickly.

Ned knew his surroundings well. This was where he had trapped the man who had been tailing him. Turning around the east end of the church, he was out of Rasteau’s sight for a moment. He stopped suddenly and pulled Sylvie into the deep shelter of a doorway.

They were both panting. Ned could hear the heavy running steps of their pursuer. In a moment he had his sword in his right hand and his dagger in the left. He had to judge this perfectly: he could not let the man go past. But there was no time to think. When it seemed that Rasteau must be almost upon them, Ned stepped out from the doorway.

His timing was not quite right. A moment earlier Rasteau had slowed his pace, perhaps suspecting a trap; and he was just out of Ned’s reach. He could not stop, but he was able to swerve and avoid being impaled on Ned’s blade.

Ned moved fast and lunged, and his point penetrated Rasteau’s side. Momentum carried the man past Ned. The blade came out. Rasteau half turned, stumbled and fell heavily. Without conscious thought, Ned stabbed wildly. Rasteau swung his weapon in a wide sweep and knocked Ned’s sword out of his hand. It flew through the air and fell on a grave.

Rasteau was up in a flash, moving fast for a big man. Ned glimpsed Sylvie coming out of the doorway and yelled: ‘Run, Sylvie, run!’ Then Rasteau came at him stabbing and slicing. Ned retreated, using his dagger to parry a thrust, then a swing, then another thrust; but he knew he could not keep it up. Rasteau feinted a downward cut then, with surprising agility, changed the stroke into a thrust that dipped under Ned’s guard.

And then Rasteau stopped still, and the point of a sword came out through the front of his belly. Ned leaped backwards, avoiding Rasteau’s sword, but it was not necessary, for the thrust lost all momentum as Rasteau screamed in agony and fell forward; and Ned saw, behind him, the small form of Sylvie, holding the sword Ned had dropped, pulling it out of Rasteau’s back.

They did not wait to watch Rasteau die. Ned took Sylvie’s hand and they ran across the place Maubert, past the gallows, to the embassy.

Two armed guards stood outside the house. They were not embassy employees: Ned had never seen them before. One of them stepped in front of Ned and said: ‘You can’t go in there.’

Ned said: ‘I am the deputy ambassador and this is my wife. Now get out of my way.’

From an upstairs window came the authoritative voice of Walsingham. ‘They are under the protection of the king — let them pass!’

The guard stood aside. Ned and Sylvie went up the steps. The door opened before they reached it.

They stepped inside to safety.

I married Sylvie twice: first in the little Catholic church of St-Julien-le-Pauvre, outside which she had killed the man with no nose; and then again in a Protestant service at the chapel in the English embassy.

Sylvie was a virgin at the age of thirty-one, and as if to recover lost time, we made love every night and every morning for months. When I lay on top of her she clung to me as if I were saving her from drowning, and afterwards she often cried herself to sleep in my arms.

We never found Isabelle’s body, and that made it harder for Sylvie to mourn. In the end we treated the burned-out shop as a grave, and stood in front of it for a few minutes every Sunday, holding hands and remembering a strong, brave woman.

Amazingly, the Protestants recovered from St Bartholomew’s Day. Three thousand people had been killed in Paris, and thousands more in copycat massacres elsewhere; but the Huguenots fought back. Towns with Protestant majorities took in crowds of refugees and closed their gates against the representatives of the king. The Guise family, as powerful Catholics on the side of the monarch, were welcomed back into the royal circle once more as civil war broke out again.

Services were resumed in the loft over the stable and in other clandestine locations all over the country.

Walsingham was recalled to London, and we went with him. Before we left Paris, Sylvie showed Nath the warehouse in the rue du Mur, and Nath took over the selling of illegal literature to Paris Protestants. However, my wife was not willing to abandon her mission. She announced that she would continue to order the books from Geneva. She would sail across the English Channel to Rouen, meet the shipments there, escort them to Paris, pay the necessary bribes, and deliver the cargo to the rue du Mur.

I worried about her, but I had learned from Queen Elizabeth that some women could not be ruled by men. Anyway, I’m not sure I would have stopped her if I could. She had a sacred mission, and I could not take that away from her. If she carried on long enough, one day, of course, she would be caught. And then she would die, I knew.

It was her destiny.

Rollo stood on the deck of the Petite Fleur as the freighter approached the coast of England. This was the moment of greatest danger.

The ship, out of Cherbourg, was headed for Combe Harbour carrying barrels of apple brandy, huge rounds of cheese, and eight young priests from the English College at Douai.

Rollo wore a priest’s robe and a pectoral cross. His hair was thinning on top, but to compensate he had grown a full beard. Over his shoulders was a white cloak, not very priestly: it was a prearranged signal.

He had made preparations with meticulous care, but too many things could go wrong in practice. He did not even know for sure whether the captain was trustworthy. The man was being paid handsomely for making this stop, but someone else — Ned Willard, or another of Queen Elizabeth’s men — might have offered him a higher fee to betray Rollo.