Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

He wished he was not relying so heavily on his sister. She was smart and well-organized and fearless, but in the end she was a woman. However, Rollo himself did not want to set foot on English soil, not yet, so he had to use her.

At dusk the captain dropped anchor in a bay with no name three miles along the coast from his destination. The sea was mercifully calm. In the bay close to the beach a small, round-ended fishing boat with a mast and oars was anchored. Rollo had known the vessel when his father had been Receiver of Customs at Combe Harbour: it had once been the Saint Ava , but was now simply called the Ava . Beyond the beach, in the cleft of a chine, stood a sturdy cottage of pale stone with smoke coming from its chimney.

Rollo waited anxiously, watching the cottage, looking for a sign. His hope was so intense that it made his whole body taut and he almost felt he might throw up with fear of failure. This was the beginning of the end. The young men he was escorting were secret agents for God. They were a small advance party, but they would be followed by more. One day soon the dark years would come to an end, England would give up foolish notions of religious freedom, and once again the great mass of ignorant peasants and labourers would happily bow to the authority of the one true Church. The Fitzgerald family would be restored to its rightful position — if not better: Rollo might become a bishop, and his brother-in-law Bart a duke. In Kingsbridge there would be a purge of Puritans like the one in Paris on St Bartholomew’s Day — though Rollo had to keep that part of his dream secret from Margery, who would have refused to take part if she had known what violence he had in mind.

At last he saw the agreed response to his white cloak: a white sheet was waved from an upstairs window.

It could have been a trick. Mal Roper, the staunch Catholic fisherman who lived in the cottage, might have been arrested by Ned Willard and tortured for information, and the white sheet could be the bait of a trap. But there was nothing Rollo could do about that. He and those with him were risking their lives, and they all knew it.

As the sky darkened, Rollo assembled the priests on deck, each with a bag containing his personal effects plus the items he would need to bring the sacraments to deprived English families: wafers, wine, oil for confirmation, and holy water. ‘Complete silence until you reach the house,’ he instructed them in a whisper. ‘Even low voices carry across water. This bay is normally deserted except for the fisherman’s family, but you never know, and your mission could end before you reach England.’ One of the priests was the ebullient Lenny Price, the first man he had met at the college in Douai, and the oldest in this group. ‘Lenny, you’re in charge once you’re on land.’

The captain lowered a boat and it splashed into the sea. The priests clambered down a rope ladder, Rollo last. Two sailors grasped the oars. The boat shushed through the waves. On the beach Rollo could faintly discern the figure of a small woman with a dog: Margery. He breathed more easily.

The boat bumped the slope of the beach. The priests jumped out into the shallows. Margery greeted them with a handshake, saying nothing. Her well-trained dog was equally silent.

Rollo remained in the boat. Margery looked at him, caught his eye, grinned, and touched her chin as if stroking a beard: she had not seen him like this before. Fool! he thought, and quickly turned away. The priests must not find out that Rollo was Margery’s brother: they knew him only as Jean Langlais.

The sailors pushed off the beach and began to row back to the Petite Fleur . Rollo looked astern from the boat and watched Margery lead the priests stumbling across the pebbles, then into the cottage. They crowded through the front door and were lost from sight.

Mal Roper, his wife Peg, and their three strapping sons knelt on the stone floor of the single downstairs room of the cottage while Lenny Price said Mass. Margery almost wept to see the joy of these simple believers as they received the sacraments. If she lost her life for the sake of this moment, she thought, it would be worth it.

She often thought of her great-aunt, Sister Joan, now dead. The troubled young Margery, sixteen-year-old bride, had climbed to the top floor of her father’s house, where old Joan had turned two little rooms into a monastic cell and a chapel. There Joan had told her that God had a purpose for her, but she must just wait for him to reveal it. Well, Joan had been right. Margery had waited, and God had revealed his purpose, and this was it.

The demand for Catholic priests was huge. Margery talked to aristocratic and wealthy Catholics in London whenever Bart attended Parliament. Discreetly, she sounded them out, and soon found that many were desperate for the sacraments. In London Margery was careful to stay away from the French and Spanish embassies, to avoid the suspicion of conspiracy. She had persuaded Bart to be equally chary. He supported her mission. He hated Protestantism, but in middle age he had become lazy and passive, and he was happy to let her do all the work as long as she let him feel like a hero. Margery did not mind.

After the service, Peg Roper served them all a hearty fish stew in wooden bowls with coarse home-baked bread. Margery was glad to see the priests tucking in: they had a long way to go before daybreak.

The Ropers were not rich, but Mal refused money. ‘I thank you, my lady, but we don’t need payment to do God’s will,’ he said. Margery saw that he was proud to say this, and she accepted his refusal.

It was midnight when they left.

Margery had two lanterns. She led the way with one, and Lenny brought up the rear with the other. She headed due north along a familiar road. She urged silence on the men every time they approached a village or farmhouse, for she did not want them to be heard or seen. A group of nine people walking at night would arouse suspicion and hostility in the mind of anyone who saw them. Margery was particularly cautious near larger manor houses, where there might be men-at-arms who could be sent out with torches to question the travellers.

The night was mild and the road was dry. All the same, Margery found the walking hard. Ever since the birth of her second child, Roger, she had suffered occasional backache, especially when she had to walk a long distance. She just had to grit her teeth and bear it.

Every two or three hours she stopped at a preselected spot, far from human habitation, where they rested, drank water from a stream, ate some of the bread Peg Roper had given them for their journey, and relieved themselves before setting off again.

Margery listened hard as she walked along, alert for the sounds of other people on the road. In a city there would have been people skulking along the lanes, usually about some criminal business, but here in the countryside there was little to steal and therefore fewer criminals. All the same she remained cautious.

Margery had cried for a whole day when she heard about the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. All those people murdered by Catholics! It was much worse than a battle, in which soldiers killed soldiers. In Paris the citizens had slaughtered defenceless women and children in their thousands. How could God permit it? And then, to make it worse, the Pope had sent a letter of congratulation to the king of France. That could not be God’s will. Hard though it was to believe, the Pope had done wrong.

Margery had known that Ned was in Paris at the time, and she had feared for his life, but then it was announced that everyone in the English embassy had survived. Hard on the heels of that came the news that Ned had married a French girl. It made Margery sad — quite unreasonably, she felt. She had had the chance to run away with him and she had refused. He could not spend his life yearning for her. He wanted a wife and a family. She should be glad that he had found happiness without her. But she could not bring herself to rejoice.