Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Ned said: ‘And now it’s time for me to leave. I must get back to London. Goodbye, Lady Ross.’

Alison had not known he was about to leave. ‘Goodbye, Sir Ned,’ she said.

He went into the house.

Alison returned to Queen Mary. Together they watched through the window. Ned came out of the house with a pair of saddlebags presumably containing his few necessaries. He spoke to a groom, who brought out his horse.

He was gone before the deliverymen finished their dinner.

‘What a relief,’ said Queen Mary. ‘Thank God.’

‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘We seem to have got away with it.’

Ned did not go to London. He rode to Burton and took a room at the Lion’s Head.

When his horse was taken care of and his bags unpacked, he explored the inn. There was a bar opening on to the street. An arched vehicle entrance led to a courtyard with stables on one side and guest rooms on the other. At the back of the premises was a brewery, and a yeasty smell filled the air. It was a substantial business: the tavern was full of drinkers, travellers arrived and left, and drays were in and out of the yard constantly.

Ned noted that empty barrels from incoming drays were rolled to a corner where a boy removed the lids, cleaned the insides with water and a scrubbing brush, and stacked the barrels upside down to dry.

The owner was a big man whose belly suggested that he consumed plenty of what he brewed. Ned heard the men call him Hal. He was always on the move, going from the brewery to the stable, harrying his employees and shouting orders.

When Ned had the layout of the place in his head, he sat on a bench in the courtyard with a flagon of beer and waited. The yard was busy, and no one paid him any attention.

He was almost certain the messages were going in and out of Chartley Manor in beer barrels. He had been there for a week and had watched just about everything that went on, and this was the only possibility he could see. When the beer arrived he had been partly distracted by Alison. It could have been a coincidence that she chose to chat to him just at that moment. But Ned did not believe in coincidences.

He expected that the draymen would travel more slowly than he had coming from Chartley, for his horse was fresh and the carthorses tired. In the end it was early evening by the time the dray entered the courtyard of the Lion’s Head. Ned stayed where he was, watching. One of the men went away and came back with Hal while the others were unhitching the horses. Then they rolled the empty barrels over to the boy with the scrubbing brush.

Hal watched the boy remove the lids with a crowbar. He leaned against the wall and looked unconcerned. Perhaps he was. More likely, he had calculated that if he opened the barrels in secret his employees would know that he was up to something seriously criminal, whereas if he feigned nonchalance, they would assume it was nothing special.

When the lids came off, Hal looked into each barrel. Bending over one, he reached inside and brought out two bottle-shaped objects wrapped in rags and tied with string.

Ned allowed himself a satisfied sigh.

Hal nodded to the boy, then crossed the courtyard to a doorway he had not used before and went inside.

Ned followed rapidly.

The door led to a set of rooms that appeared to be the publican’s home. Ned walked through a sitting room into a bedroom. Hal stood at an open cupboard, obviously stashing the two items he had taken from the barrel. Hearing Ned’s step on the floorboards, he spun round and said angrily: ‘Get out of here, these are private rooms!’

Ned said quietly: ‘You are now as close as you have ever come to being hanged.’

Hal’s expression changed instantly. He went pale and his mouth dropped open. He was shocked and terrified. It was a startling transformation in a big, blustering fellow, and Ned deduced that Hal — unlike poor Peg Bradford — knew exactly what kind of crime he was committing. After a long hesitation he said in a frightened voice: ‘Who are you?’

‘I am the only man in the world who can save you from the gallows.’

‘Oh, God help me.’

‘He may, if you help me.’

‘What must I do?’

‘Tell me who comes to collect the bottles from Chartley, and brings you new ones to send there.’

‘I don’t know his name — honestly! I swear it!’

‘When will he next be here?’

‘I don’t know — he never gives warning, and his visits are irregular.’

They would be, Ned thought. The man is careful.

Hal moaned: ‘Oh, God, I’ve been such a fool.’

‘You certainly have. Why did you do it? Are you Catholic?’

‘I’m whatever religion I’m told to be.’

‘Greed for money, then.’

‘God forgive me.’

‘He has forgiven worse. Now listen to me. All you have to do is continue as you are. Give the courier the bottles, accept the new ones he brings, send them to Chartley, and bring back the replies, as you have been doing. Say nothing about me to anyone, anywhere.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You don’t need to understand. Just forget that you ever met me. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, and thank you for being merciful.’

You don’t deserve it, you money-grubbing traitor, Ned thought. He said: ‘I’m going to stay here until the courier comes, whenever that may be.’

He arrived two days later. Ned recognized him instantly.

It was Gilbert Gifford.

It was a dangerous business, recruiting men to join a conspiracy to kill the queen. Rollo had to be very careful. If he picked the wrong man he could be in the deepest kind of trouble.

He had learned to watch for a certain look in the eyes. The look combined noble purpose with a high-minded disregard for consequences. It was not madness, but it was a kind of irrationality. Rollo sometimes wondered whether he had that look himself. He thought not: he was cautious to the point of obsession. Perhaps he had had it when young, but he must surely have lost it, for otherwise he would by now have been hung, drawn and quartered like Francis Throckmorton and all the other idealistic young Catholics Ned Willard had caught. In which case, he would by now have gone to heaven, like them; but a man was not permitted to choose the moment he made that journey.

Rollo thought that Anthony Babington had the look.

Rollo had been observing Babington for three weeks, but from a distance. He had not yet spoken. He had not even gone into the houses and taverns that Babington frequented, for he knew they would be watched by Ned Willard’s spies. He got close to Babington only in places that were not Catholic haunts, and among groups of people so large that one extra was not noticeable: in bowling alleys, at cockfights and bear-baiting, and in the audience at public executions. But he could not carry on taking precautions for ever. The time had come when he had to risk his neck.

Babington was a young man from a wealthy Derbyshire Catholic family that harboured one of Rollo’s secret priests. He had met Mary Stuart: as a boy Babington had been a page in the household of the earl of Shrewsbury, at the time when the earl was her jailer; and the boy had been captivated by the charm of the imprisoned queen. Was all that enough? There was only one way to find out for sure.

Rollo finally spoke to him at a bullfight.

It took place at Paris Gardens in Southwark, on the south side of the river. Entrance was a penny, but Babington paid twopence for a place in the gallery, removed from the jostling and smell of ordinary folk in the stalls.

The bull was tethered in a ring but otherwise unconstrained. Six big hunting dogs were led in and immediately flew at the bull, trying to bite its legs. The big bull was remarkably agile, turning its head on the muscular neck, fighting back with its horns. The dogs dodged, not always successfully. The lucky ones were simply thrown through the air; the unlucky ones impaled on a horn until shaken off. The smell of blood filled the atmosphere.