Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Alain’s message said Pierre was rejoicing that he had succeeded in making contact with the queen of the Scots.

This was bad news. Mary’s approval would give the whole treasonous enterprise a cloak of holy respectability. To many she was the rightful queen of England, and Elizabeth the usurper. Under Mary’s auspices, a gang of foreign thugs became an army of righteousness in the eyes of the world.

It was maddening. After all that Elizabeth had achieved, bringing religious peace and commercial prosperity to England for twenty-five years, they still would not leave her be.

Ned’s task of protecting Elizabeth was made more difficult by personal court rivalries — as happened so often in politics. His Puritan master, Walsingham, clashed with the fun-loving Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. ‘Secret codes, and invisible ink!’ Leicester would jeer when he ran into Walsingham in the palace of White Hall or the garden of Hampton Court. ‘Power is won with guns and bullets, not pens and ink!’ He could not persuade the queen to get rid of Walsingham — she was too smart for that — but his scepticism reinforced her miserliness, and the work done by Walsingham and his men was never properly financed.

Ned could have reached Sheffield at the end of his sixth day of travel. However, he did not want to arrive muddy-stockinged and road-weary, in case he needed to impose his authority. So he stopped at an inn two miles outside the town. Next day he got up early, put on a clean shirt, and arrived at the gate of Sheffield Castle at eight in the morning.

It was a formidable fortress, but he was irritated to see that security was careless. He crossed the bridge over the moat along with three other people: a girl with two lidded buckets that undoubtedly contained milk; a brawny builder’s lad carrying a long timber on his shoulder, presumably for some repair work; and a carter with a vertiginous load of hay. Three or four people were coming the other way. None of them was challenged by the two armed guards at the gate, who were eating mutton chops and throwing the bones into the moat.

Ned sat on his horse in the middle of the inner courtyard, looking around, getting his bearings. There was a turret house that he guessed would be Mary’s prison. The hay cart rumbled over to a building that was clearly the stable block. A third building, the least uncomfortable-looking, would be where the earl lived.

He walked his horse to the stable. Summoning his most arrogant voice, he shouted at a young groom: ‘Hey! You! Take my horse.’ He dismounted.

The startled boy took the bridle.

Pointing, Ned said: ‘I presume I’ll find the earl in that building?’

‘Yes, sir. May I ask the name?’

‘Sir Ned Willard, and you’d better remember it.’ With that Ned stalked off.

He pushed open the wooden door of the house and entered a small hall with a smoky fire. To one side an open door revealed a gloomy medieval great hall with no one in it.

The elderly porter was not as easy to bully as the groom. He stood barring the way and said: ‘Good day to you, master.’ He had good manners, but as a guard he was next to useless: Ned could have knocked him down with one hand.

‘I am Sir Ned Willard, with a message from Queen Elizabeth. Where is the earl of Shrewsbury?’

The porter took a moment to size Ned up. Someone with nothing but ‘sir’ in front of his name was below an earl on the social scale. On the other hand, it was not wise to offend a messenger from the queen. ‘It’s an honour to welcome you to the house, Sir Ned,’ said the porter tactfully. ‘I’ll go immediately to see whether the earl is ready to receive you.’

He opened a door off the hall, and Ned glimpsed a dining room.

The door closed, but Ned heard the porter say: ‘My lord, are you able to see Sir Ned Willard with a message from her majesty Queen Elizabeth?’

Ned did not wait. He opened the door and barged in, stepping past the startled porter. He found himself in a small room with a round table and a big fireplace — warmer and more comfortable than the great hall. Four people sat at breakfast, two of whom he knew. The extraordinarily tall fortyish woman with a double chin and a ginger wig was Mary Queen of Scots. He had last seen her fifteen years ago when he had gone to Carlisle Castle to tell her that Queen Elizabeth had made her a prisoner. The slightly older woman next to her was her companion Alison, Lady Ross, who had been with her at Carlisle and even earlier at St Dizier. Ned had not met the other two but he could guess who they were. The balding man in his fifties with a spade-shaped beard had to be the earl, and the formidable-looking woman of the same age was his wife, the countess, usually called Bess of Hardwick.

Ned’s anger doubled. The earl and his wife were negligent fools who put at risk everything Elizabeth had achieved.

The earl said: ‘What the devil...?’

Ned said: ‘I am a Jesuit spy sent by the king of France to kidnap Mary Stuart. Under my coat I have two pistols, one to murder the earl and one the countess. Outside are six of my men hiding in a cartload of hay, armed to the teeth.’

They did not know how seriously to take him. The earl said: ‘Is this some kind of jest?’

‘This is some kind of inspection,’ Ned said. ‘Her majesty Queen Elizabeth has asked me to find out how well you’re guarding Mary. What shall I tell her, my lord? That I was able to enter the presence of Mary without once being challenged or searched and that I could have brought six men with me?’

The earl looked foolish. ‘It would be better if you did not tell her that, I must admit.’

Mary spoke in a voice of queenly authority. ‘How dare you act like this in my presence?’

Ned continued to speak to the earl. ‘From now on she takes her meals in the turret house.’

Mary said: ‘Your insolence is intolerable.’

Ned ignored her. He owed no courtesy to the woman who wanted to murder his queen.

Mary stood up and walked to the door, and Alison hurried after her.

Ned spoke to the countess. ‘Go with them please, my lady. There are no Jesuit spies in the courtyard at the moment, but you won’t know when there are, and it’s as well to get into good habits.’

The countess was not used to being told what to do, but she knew she was in trouble, and she hesitated only a moment before obeying.

Ned pulled a chair up to the table. ‘Now, my lord,’ he said. ‘Let us talk about what you need to do before I can give Queen Elizabeth a satisfactory account.’

Back in London, at Walsingham’s house in Seething Lane, Ned reported that Mary Stuart was now better guarded than she had been.

Walsingham went immediately to the heart of the matter. ‘Can you guarantee that she is not communicating with the outside world?’

‘No,’ Ned said with frustration. ‘Not unless we get rid of all her servants and keep her alone in a dungeon.’

‘How I wish we could,’ Walsingham said fervently. ‘But Queen Elizabeth won’t permit such harshness.’

‘Our queen is soft-hearted.’

Walsingham’s view of Elizabeth was more cynical. ‘She knows how she could be undermined by stories about how cruel she is to her royal relative.’

Ned was not going to argue. ‘Either way, we can do no more in Sheffield.’

Walsingham stroked his beard. ‘Then we must focus on this end of the pipeline,’ he said. ‘The French embassy must be involved. See what English Catholics are among the callers there. We have a list.’

‘I’ll get on with it right away.’

Ned went upstairs, to the locked room where Walsingham kept the precious records, and sat down for a session of study.

The longest list was that of well-born English Catholics. It had not been difficult to make. All families who had prospered under Mary Tudor and fallen from favour under Elizabeth were automatically suspected. They confirmed their tendencies in several ways, often openly. Many paid the fine for not going to church. They dressed gaudily, scorning the sombre black and grey of devout Protestants. There was never an English-language Bible in a Catholic house. These things were reported to Walsingham by bishops and by Lord Lieutenants of counties.