Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Mary was pale and shaking. ‘Am I to be executed?’ she said in a trembling voice.

Alison wanted to cry.

Paulet looked at Mary contemptuously. After a cruelly long pause he answered her question. ‘Not today.’

The arresting party got ready to move off. One of them kicked Mary’s horse from behind, causing the beast to start, jolting Mary; but she was a good rider, and stayed in the saddle as the horse moved off. The others went with her, keeping her surrounded.

Alison cried as she watched Mary ride away, presumably to yet another prison. How had this happened? It could only be that Babington’s plot had been uncovered by Ned Willard.

Alison turned to Paulet. ‘What is to be done with her?’

‘She will be put on trial for treason.’

‘And then?’

‘And then she will be punished for her crimes,’ said Paulet. ‘God’s will be done.’

Babington proved elusive. Ned searched every London house where the conspirator had lodged without finding any clues. He set up a nationwide manhunt, sending a description of Babington and his associates to sheriffs, harbourmasters and lord lieutenants of counties. He dispatched two men to Babington’s parents’ home in Derbyshire. In every communication he threatened the death penalty for anyone helping any of the conspirators to escape.

In fact, Ned was not particularly concerned about Babington. The man was no longer much of a danger. His plot had been smashed. Mary had been moved, most of the conspirators were now being interrogated in the Tower of London, and Babington himself was a fugitive. All those Catholic noblemen who had been getting ready to support the invasion must now be putting their old armour back into storage.

However, Ned knew from long and dismal experience that another plot might readily grow in the ashes of the old. He had to find a way to make that impossible. The treason trial of Mary Stuart ought to discredit her in the eyes of all but her most fanatical supporters, he thought.

And there was one man he was desperate to capture. Every prisoner interrogated had mentioned Jean Langlais. All said he was not French but English, and some had met him at the English College. They described him as a tallish man of about fifty going bald on top: there seemed nothing very distinctive about his appearance. No one knew his real name or where he came from.

The very fact that so little was known about someone so important suggested, to Ned, that he was extraordinarily competent and therefore dangerous.

Ned now knew, from interrogating Robert Pooley, that both Langlais and Babington had been at Pooley’s house minutes before the raid. They were probably the two seen, by the men-at-arms, running away from the neighbouring church, their escape aided by an obstructive flock of sheep. Ned had just missed them. But they were probably still together, along with the few conspirators remaining at large.

It took Ned ten days to track them down.

On 14 August a frightened rider on a sweating horse arrived at the house in Seething Lane. He was a young member of the Bellamy family, well-known Catholics but not suspected of treason. Babington and his fellow fugitives had turned up at the family’s home, Uxendon Hall near the village of Harrow-on-the-Hill, a dozen miles west of London. Exhausted and starving, they had begged for shelter. The Bellamys had given them food and drink — compelled to do so under threat of their lives, they claimed — but had then insisted that the runaways leave the house and travel on. Now the family were terrified they would be hanged as collaborators, and eager to prove their loyalty by helping the authorities catch the conspirators.

Ned ordered horses immediately.

Riding hard, it took him and his men-at-arms less than two hours to reach Harrow-on-the-Hill. As the name suggested, the village was perched on top of a hill that stuck up out of the surrounding fields, and boasted a little school started recently by a local farmer. Ned stopped at the village inn and learned that a group of suspiciously bedraggled strangers had passed through earlier, on foot, heading north.

Guided by young Bellamy, the party followed the road to the boundary of the parish of Harrow, marked by an ancient sarsen stone, and through the next village, which Bellamy said was called Harrow Weald. Beyond the village, at an inn called The Hare, they caught up with their quarry.

Ned and his men walked into the building with swords drawn ready for a fight, but Babington’s little group offered no resistance.

Ned looked hard at them. They were a sorry sight, having cut their hair inexpertly and stained their faces with some kind of juice in a poor attempt at disguise. They were young noblemen accustomed to soft beds, yet they had been sleeping rough for ten days. They seemed almost relieved to be caught.

Ned said: ‘Which one of you is Jean Langlais?’

For a moment no one answered.

Then Babington said: ‘He’s not here.’

Ned was frustrated to breaking point on the first day of February, 1587. He told Sylvie he was thinking of leaving the service of the queen. He would retire from court life, continue as member of Parliament for Kingsbridge, and help Sylvie run her bookshop. It would be a duller but happier life.

Elizabeth herself was the reason for his exasperation.

Ned had done everything possible to free Elizabeth from the menace of Mary Stuart. Mary was now imprisoned at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire and, although in the end she had been allowed to have her servants with her, Ned had made sure that the flinty Sir Amias Paulet also went with her to impose strict security. In October, the evidence he had assembled had been presented at Mary’s trial, and she had been convicted of treason. In November, Parliament had sentenced her to death. At the beginning of December, news of the sentence had been broadcast all over the country to general rejoicing. Walsingham had immediately drafted the death warrant Elizabeth would need to sign to authorize the execution. Ned’s old mentor William Cecil, now Lord Burghley, had approved the wording.

Almost two months later, Elizabeth still had not signed it.

To Ned’s surprise, Sylvie sympathized with Elizabeth. ‘She doesn’t want to kill a queen,’ she said. ‘It sets a bad precedent. She’s a queen herself. And she’s not the only one who feels that way. Every monarch in Europe will be outraged if she executes Mary. Who knows what revenge they may take?’

Ned could not see it like that. He had devoted his life to protecting Elizabeth, and he felt she was rejecting his efforts.

As if to support Sylvie’s point of view, ambassadors from both France and Scotland came to see Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace on 1 February to plead for Mary’s life. Elizabeth did not want to quarrel with either country. She had recently signed a peace pact with King James VI of Scotland, who was Mary’s son. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s own life was still under threat. In January, one William Stafford confessed to plotting to poison her. Walsingham had publicized this, making it seem closer to success than it had ever really come, in order to bolster public support for Mary’s execution. Exaggeration aside, it was still a chilling reminder that Elizabeth could never feel truly safe while Mary lived.

After the ambassadors had left, Ned decided to present Elizabeth with the death warrant again. Perhaps today she might be in the mood to sign it.

He was working with William Davison, who was standing in for Walsingham as secretary of state because Walsingham himself was ill. Davison agreed to Ned’s plan — all Elizabeth’s advisors were desperate for her to get it over with. Davison and Ned inserted the death warrant into the middle of a bundle of papers for her to sign.