Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

‘How do you know?’

‘Because Roger is two.’

‘Oh. You noticed.’

‘He has your eyes.’ She looked into Ned’s eyes. ‘That wonderful golden-brown.’

‘You’re not angry?’

‘I knew, when I married you, that I was not the first woman you’d loved. But...’

‘Go on.’

‘But I didn’t know you might still love her, or that she had had your child.’

Ned took both her hands in his. ‘I can’t tell you that I’m indifferent to her, or don’t care about her,’ he said. ‘But please understand that you are all I want.’

It was the right thing to say, but Sylvie was not sure she believed him. All she knew was that she loved him and she was not going to let anyone take him away. ‘Make love to me,’ she said.

He kissed her. ‘My goodness, you’re a hard taskmaster,’ he joked. Then he kissed her again.

But this was not enough. She wanted something with him that Susannah Twyford and Margery Shiring had never shared. ‘Wait,’ she said, thinking. ‘Is there something you’ve always thought about doing with a woman?’ She had never before talked like this to him — or to anyone. ‘Something that excites you when you imagine it, but you’ve never done it?’ She held her breath. What would he say?

He looked thoughtful and a little embarrassed.

‘There is,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I can tell.’ She was glad she could read his face so easily. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m embarrassed to say.’

Now he looked bashful. It was sweet. She wriggled closer to him, pressing her body against his. In a low voice she said: ‘Then whisper.’

He whispered in her ear.

She looked at him, grinning, a little surprised but also aroused. ‘Really?’

He shook his head. ‘No, forget it. I shouldn’t have said it.’

She felt excited, and she could tell he was, too. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But we could try it.’

So they did.

Ned studied the face of his son, Roger. His heart was so full he could hardly speak. Roger was a child on the edge of adolescence, starting to grow taller but still having smooth cheeks and a treble voice. He had Margery’s curly dark hair and impish look, but Ned’s golden-brown eyes.

They were in the parlour of the house opposite the cathedral. Earl Bart had come to Kingsbridge for the spring court of quarter sessions, and had brought with him the two boys he thought were his sons: Bartlet, who was eighteen, and Roger, twelve. Ned, too, had come for the court: he was the Member of Parliament for Kingsbridge now.

Ned had no other children. He and Sylvie had been making love for more than ten years, with a fervour that had hardly diminished, but she had never become pregnant. It was a cause of sadness to them both, and it made Roger painfully precious to Ned.

Ned was also recalling his own adolescence. I know what you have in front of you, he thought as he looked at Roger; and I wish I could tell you all about it, and make it easier for you; but when I was your age I never believed older people who said they knew what the lives of younger ones were like, and I don’t suppose you will either.

Roger’s attitude to Ned was, naturally, quite casual. Ned was a friend of his mother’s, and Roger regarded him as an unofficial uncle. Ned could not display his affection except by listening carefully to the boy, taking him seriously and replying thoughtfully to what he said; and perhaps that was why Roger occasionally confided in him — something that gave Ned great joy.

Now Roger said: ‘Sir Ned, you know the queen. Why does she hate Catholics?’

Ned had not expected that, though perhaps he should have. Roger knew that his parents were Catholics in a Protestant country, and he had just become old enough to wonder why.

Ned played for time by saying: ‘The queen doesn’t hate Catholics.’

‘She makes my father pay a fine for not going to church.’

Roger was quick-thinking, Ned saw, and the little flush of pleasure he felt was accompanied by a painful stab of regret that he had to conceal his pride, most especially from the boy himself.

Ned said to Roger what he said to everyone: ‘When she was young, Princess Elizabeth told me that if she became queen, no Englishman would die for his religion.’

‘She hasn’t kept that promise,’ Roger said quickly.

‘She has tried.’ Ned searched for words that would explain the complexities of politics to a twelve-year-old. ‘On the one hand, she has Puritans in Parliament telling her every day that she’s too soft, and she should be burning Catholics to death, just as her predecessor Queen Mary Tudor burned Protestants. On the other hand, she has to deal with Catholic traitors such as the duke of Norfolk who want to kill her.’

Roger argued stubbornly: ‘Priests are executed just for bringing people back to the Catholic faith, aren’t they?’

Roger had been saving up these questions, Ned realized. He was probably afraid to challenge his parents about such matters. Ned was pleased the boy trusted him enough to share his worries. But why was Roger so concerned? Ned guessed that Stephen Lincoln was still living more or less clandestinely at New Castle. He would be tutor to Bartlet and Roger, and almost certainly said Mass regularly for the family. Roger was worried that his teacher might be found out and executed.

There were many more such priests than there had been. Stephen was one of the old diehards left over after Queen Elizabeth’s religious revolution, but there were dozens of new priests, perhaps hundreds. Ned and Walsingham had caught seventeen of them. All had been executed for treason.

Ned had questioned most of the seventeen before they died. He had not learned as much as he wished, partly because they had been trained to resist interrogation, but mainly because they did not know much. Their organizer worked under the obvious pseudonym of Jean Langlais and gave them only the absolute minimum of information about the operation of which they were part. They did not know exactly where on the coast they had landed, nor the names of the shadowy people who welcomed them and set them on the road to their destinations.

Ned said: ‘These priests are trained abroad and smuggled into England illegally. They owe allegiance to the Pope, not to our queen. Some of them belong to a hard-line ultra-Catholic group called the Jesuits. Elizabeth fears they may conspire to overthrow her.’

‘And do they conspire?’ Roger asked.

If Ned had been arguing with an adult, he would have responded disputatiously to these questions. He might have scorned the naivety of anyone who supposed that clandestine priests were innocent of treachery. But he had no wish to win an argument with his son. He just wanted the boy to know the truth.

The priests all believed that Elizabeth was illegitimate, and that the true queen of England was Mary Stuart, the queen of the Scots; but none of them had actually done anything about it — so far, at least. They had not tried to contact Mary Stuart in her prison, they had not called together groups of discontented Catholic noblemen, they had not plotted to murder Elizabeth.

‘No,’ he said to Roger. ‘As far as I know, they don’t conspire against Elizabeth.’

‘So they are executed just for being Catholic priests.’

‘You are right, morally speaking,’ Ned said. ‘And it is a great sadness to me that Elizabeth has not been able to keep her youthful vow. But politically it is quite impossible for her to tolerate, within her kingdom, a network of men who are loyal to a foreign potentate — the Pope — who has declared himself her enemy. No monarch on earth would put up with that.’