Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Both Earl Bart and Margery were on this list.

But the list was too long. Most of these people were innocent of treason. Ned sometimes felt he had too much information. It could be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. He turned to the alphabetical register of Catholics in London. In addition to those who lived here, Walsingham received daily reports of Catholics entering and leaving the city. Visiting Catholics usually stayed at the homes of resident Catholics, or lodged at inns frequented by other Catholics. Doubtless the list was incomplete. London was a city of a hundred thousand people, and it was impossible to have spies in every street. But Walsingham and Ned did have informants in all the Catholics’ regular haunts, and they were able to keep track of most comings and goings.

Ned leafed through the book. He knew hundreds of these names — lists were his life — but it was good to refresh his memory. Once again, Bart and Margery appeared, coming to stay at Shiring House in the Strand when Parliament sat.

Ned turned to the daily log of callers at the French embassy in Salisbury Square. The house was under surveillance day and night from the Salisbury Tavern across the road and had been ever since Walsingham had returned from Paris in 1573. Starting from yesterday and working backwards in time, Ned cross-checked every name with the alphabetical register.

Margery did not appear here. In fact, neither she nor Bart had ever been found to contact foreign ambassadors or other suspicious characters while in London. They socialized with other Catholics, of course, and their servants frequented a Catholic tavern near their house called The Irish Boy. But there was nothing to link them with subversive activities.

However, many callers at the French embassy could not be identified by name. Frustratingly, the log had too many entries of the form Unknown man delivering coal, Unidentified courier with letters, Woman not clearly seen in the dark. Nevertheless, Ned persisted, hoping for some clue, anything.

Then he was struck by an entry two weeks ago: Madame Aphrodite Housse, wife of the deputy ambassador .

In Paris, Ned had known a Mademoiselle Aphrodite Beaulieu who appeared fond of a young courtier called Bernard Housse. This had to be the same person. And if it was, Ned had saved her from a gang of rapists during the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

He turned back to the alphabetical register and found that Monsieur Housse, the deputy French ambassador, had a house in the Strand.

He put on his coat and went out.

Two questions wracked him as he hurried west. Did Aphrodite know the name of the courier to Sheffield? And, if she did, would she feel sufficiently indebted to Ned to tell him the secret?

He was going to find out.

He left the walled city of London at Ludgate, crossed the stinking Fleet River, and found the Housse residence, a pleasant modest house on the less expensive north side of the Strand. He knocked at the door and gave his name to a maid. He waited a few minutes, considering the remote possibility that Bernard Housse had married a different Aphrodite. Then he was shown upstairs to a comfortable small parlour.

He remembered an eager, flirtatious girl of eighteen, but now he saw a gracious woman of twenty-nine, with a figure that suggested she had recently given birth and might still be breast-feeding. She greeted him warmly in French. ‘It is you,’ she said. ‘After so long!’

‘So you married Bernard,’ Ned said.

‘Yes,’ she answered with a contented smile.

‘Any children?’

‘Three — so far!’

They sat down. Ned was pessimistic. People who betrayed their countries were normally troubled, angry individuals with massive grudges, such as Alain de Guise and Jerónima Ruiz. Aphrodite was a happily married woman with children and a husband she seemed to like. The chances were slim that she would give away secrets. But Ned had to try.

He told her that he had married a French girl and brought her home, and Aphrodite wanted to meet her. She told him the names of her three children, and he memorized them because he was in the habit of memorizing names. After a few minutes of catching up, he steered the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go. ‘I saved your life, once, in Paris,’ he said.

She became solemn. ‘I will be grateful to you for ever,’ she said. ‘But please — Bernard knows nothing of it.’

‘Now I’m trying to save the life of another woman.’

‘Really? Who?’

‘Queen Elizabeth.’

She looked embarrassed. ‘You and I shouldn’t discuss politics, Ned.’

He persisted. ‘The duke of Guise is planning to kill Elizabeth so that he can put his cousin Mary Stuart on the throne. You can’t possibly approve of murder.’

‘Of course not, but—’

‘There’s an Englishman who comes to your embassy, collects letters sent by Henri de Guise and takes them to Mary in Sheffield.’ Ned hated to reveal how much he knew, but this was his only chance of persuading her. ‘He then brings back Mary’s replies.’ Ned looked hard at Aphrodite as he spoke, studying her reaction, and thought he saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes. ‘You probably know the man,’ he said insistently.

‘Ned, this is not fair.’

‘I have to know his name,’ Ned said. He was dismayed to hear a note of desperation in his own voice.

‘How can you do this to me?’

‘I have to protect Queen Elizabeth from wicked men, as I once protected you.’

Aphrodite stood up. ‘I’m sorry you came here, if your purpose was to get information out of me.’

‘I’m asking you to save the life of a queen.’

‘You’re asking me to be a traitor to my husband and my country, and betray a man who has been a guest at my father’s house!’

‘You owe me!’

‘I owe you my life, not my soul.’

Ned knew he was defeated. He felt ashamed for even trying. He had attempted to corrupt a perfectly decent woman who liked him. Sometimes he detested his work.

He stood up. ‘I’ll leave you,’ he said.

‘I’m afraid I think you should.’

Something was nagging at the back of his mind. He felt she had said something important that he had overlooked in the heat of the argument. He wanted to prolong his visit and ask more questions until she said it again, but she was looking angrily at him, visibly impatient to see the back of him, and he knew that if he did not go, she would just walk out of the room.

He took his leave and dejectedly returned to the city. He climbed Ludgate Hill and passed the Gothic bulk of St Paul’s Cathedral, its grey stones turned black by the soot from thousands of London fireplaces. He came within sight of the Tower, where traitors were interrogated and tortured, then he turned down Seething Lane.

As he entered Walsingham’s house, he remembered what Aphrodite had said: ‘You’re asking me to be a traitor to my husband and my country, and betray a man who has been a guest at my father’s house!’

A man who has been a guest at my father’s house .

The very first list Ned had made, when he arrived in Paris with Walsingham eleven years ago, had been a register of English Catholics who called at the home of the count of Beaulieu in the rue St Denis.

Walsingham never threw anything away.

Ned ran up the stairs to the locked room. The book containing the Paris list was at the bottom of a chest. He pulled it out and blew off the dust.

She must have been referring to her father’s Paris house, must she not? The count had a country house in France but, as far as Ned knew, that had never been a rendezvous for English exiles. And Beaulieu had never appeared in the register of Catholics living in London.