Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Rollo bowed low and said: ‘Your majesty does me great honour.’

She corrected him. ‘I do honour to the Church you represent.’

‘Of course.’ Royal etiquette was maddeningly difficult. ‘Forgive me.’

‘But let’s sit down and talk.’ She took a seat herself, and Rollo and Alison followed suit. The queen looked enquiringly at Rollo, waiting for him to open the conversation.

Rollo got straight to the point. ‘His Holiness Pope Clement believes that your majesty may soon be queen of England.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘My husband’s title to the English throne is indisputable.’

It certainly was not indisputable. Mary Stuart had been executed as a traitor, and it was generally accepted that the children of traitors could not inherit titles. Rollo said tactfully: ‘And yet there may be men who oppose him.’

She nodded. She knew the facts.

Rollo went on: ‘His Holiness has instructed English Catholics to support the claim of King James, provided only that he promises to allow us freedom of worship.’

‘His majesty, my husband, is a man of tolerance,’ she said.

A grunt of disgust escaped Rollo at the loathed word tolerance , and he had to smother the noise with a cough.

Queen Anne did not seem to notice. ‘King James has accepted my conversion to the true faith,’ she went on.

‘Wonderful,’ Rollo murmured.

‘King James permits Catholic theologians at his court, and often engages them in debate.’

Rollo noticed Alison nodding discreetly to confirm this.

‘I can assure you, without the least doubt,’ Queen Anne said firmly, ‘that when he becomes king of England, he will allow us Catholics freedom of worship.’

‘That gives me great joy,’ Rollo said with feeling. But in his mind he heard Lenny Price say: But is it true? Rollo really needed to hear it from King James himself.

Then the door opened and James walked in.

Rollo leaped to his feet and bowed low.

King James was thirty-six. He had the plump, fleshy face of a sybarite, and his heavy-lidded eyes had a sly look. He kissed his wife’s cheek fondly.

Queen Anne said to him: ‘Father Langlais, here, comes to tell us that his holiness the Pope supports your claim to the throne of England.’

James smiled at Rollo and spoke with a strong Scots accent. ‘Thank you for bringing us this good news, Father.’ He slobbered a little in his speech, as if his tongue might be too big for his mouth.

Anne said: ‘I have been assuring him that you would grant freedom of worship to English Catholics.’

‘Splendid,’ said the king. ‘My mother was a Catholic, you know, Father Langlais.’

‘ Requiescat in pace ,’ said Rollo, using the Latin formulation of ‘Rest in peace’ that was favoured by Catholics.

‘Amen,’ said King James.

Ned Willard cried when Queen Elizabeth died.

She passed away at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603, in the early hours of a rainy Thursday. Ned was in the room, which was crowded with courtiers, clergymen, and ladies-in-waiting: a queen was too important to die in peace.

Ned was sixty-three. His two patrons, William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, had died years ago, but the monarch still had need of secret intelligence, and Ned had continued to provide it. At the death bed he stood next to Elizabeth’s diminutive, hunchbacked secretary of state Robert Cecil, aged forty, younger son of the great William. ‘My pygmy,’ Elizabeth had called Robert, with the casual cruelty of a monarch. But she had listened to him, for he was as brilliant as his father. Old William had said of his two sons: ‘Thomas can hardly rule a tennis court, but Robert could rule England.’

We’re all pygmies now, Ned thought sorrowfully; Elizabeth was the giant, and we just served her.

Elizabeth had been in bed for three days, and unable to speak for most of that time. She had fallen asleep at about ten o’clock the previous evening. Now it was three in the morning, and she had simply stopped breathing.

Ned could not control his sobs. The woman who had dominated his life was gone. For the first time in years he recalled the moment when he had glimpsed the young Princess Elizabeth getting out of her bath, and he was pierced by a pain that was almost physical to think that the lovely girl he had seen then was now the lifeless husk that lay in the bed in front of him.

Robert Cecil left the room the moment the doctors declared her dead, and Ned followed, wiping his wet face with the sleeve of his coat. They had no time to mourn. There was too much to do.

They took a painfully slow barge to London in the darkness. Despite the royal ban on discussion of the succession, the council had agreed long ago that James of Scotland should be the next king of England. But it had to be done quickly. The ultra-Catholics knew the queen was dying and they, too, might have made elaborate plans.

There was no plausible rival to James as king, but there were other ways for the succession to be disrupted. The likeliest scenario was that the ultras would try to kidnap James and his eldest son, Prince Henry. Then they would either kill James or force him to abdicate, and declare his son king — which was how James himself had come to the throne of Scotland as a baby. Prince Henry was only nine years old, so, obviously, an adult would have to rule as his regent, and that would, of course, be one of the senior Catholic noblemen, perhaps even Ned’s stepson, Earl Bartlet of Shiring.

Then the Protestants would form an army, civil war would break out, and England would see all the horror and bloodshed of the French wars of religion.

Ned and Cecil had spent the last three months taking precautions against this dreadful scenario. Ned had made a list of the most powerful Catholics and, with Cecil’s approval, had put them all in jail. An armed guard had been set about the Exchequer. Cannons had been test-fired at the palace of White Hall.

Ned reflected that the three great women of the sixteenth century were now dead: Elizabeth, Queen Caterina of France, and Margherita of Parma, governor of the Netherlands. They had all tried to stop men killing one another over religion. Looking back, it seemed to him that their achievements had been pitifully limited. Evil men had always frustrated the efforts of the peacemakers. Bloody religious wars had raged for decades in France and the Netherlands. Only England had remained more or less at peace.

All Ned wanted to do, with what remained of his life, was to keep that peace.

Daylight dawned while they were still on the river. When they reached White Hall, Cecil summoned the Privy Council.

The council agreed a proclamation, and Robert Cecil wrote it out in his own hand. Then the councillors went out to the green opposite the Tiltyard, where a crowd had gathered, no doubt having heard rumours. A herald read out the announcement that Elizabeth had died and James of Scotland was now king.

After that they rode to the city, where again crowds had gathered in places where proclamations were usually made. The herald read the statement outside St Paul’s Cathedral then again at Cheapside Cross.

Finally, the council went to the Tower of London and formally took possession of the fortress in the name of King James I of England.

The reaction of Londoners was subdued, Ned observed with relief. Elizabeth had been popular, and they were sad. London merchants had prospered under Elizabeth, and their main wish was for no changes. James was an unknown quantity: a foreign king, though Scots was better than Spanish; a Protestant, but with a Catholic wife; a man, but rumoured to have womanly ways.

Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was held while James was still on the long journey from Edinburgh.