Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

A thousand official mourners escorted the hearse on its short journey to Westminster Abbey, and Ned estimated that at least a hundred thousand people watched the procession. The coffin was covered in purple velvet and surmounted by a coloured wax model of Elizabeth in formal robes.

Ned had a designated place in the cortege, but when they entered the cathedral he was able to slip away and find Margery. He held her hand during the service and drew strength from her like warmth from a fire. She was grieving too, for she had come to share Ned’s conviction that peace between Christians was more important than doctrinal disputes, and Elizabeth had symbolized that life-saving creed.

When the coffin was lowered into its grave in the Lady Chapel, Ned wept all over again.

He considered what he was weeping for. It was partly for Elizabeth’s idealism, which had also been his own. He grieved because those ideals had been so grubbily compromised, over the years, by the demands of everyday politics; for, in the end, Elizabeth had put to death almost as many Catholics as Queen Mary Tudor — ‘Bloody Mary’ — had killed Protestants. Mary had killed them for their beliefs, whereas Elizabeth had killed them for treason, but the line was too often blurred. Elizabeth was a flawed human being, and her reign had been a patchwork. All the same, Ned had admired her more than anyone else under heaven.

Margery passed him a handkerchief for his tears. It was embroidered with a design of acorns and he recognized it, with a little jolt of surprise, as one he had given her for the same purpose almost half a century ago. He wiped his face, but it was like trying to dry the beach at Combe Harbour: the tears kept flowing with the relentlessness of the incoming tide.

The chief officers of the royal household ritually snapped their white staves of office and threw the pieces into the grave after the coffin.

As the congregation began to leave, it struck Ned that his life had been worth living because of the people who had loved him, and of those the most important were four women: his mother, Alice; Queen Elizabeth; Sylvie; and Margery. Now he was stricken with grief because Elizabeth was the third of them to die; and he clung hard to Margery as they walked together away from the great cathedral, for he realized that she was all he had left.

A year after the death of Queen Elizabeth, Rollo Fitzgerald swore that he would kill King James.

James had broken his vows to Catholics. He had renewed Elizabeth’s laws against Catholicism and had enforced them with extra savagery, as if he had never promised anyone tolerance or freedom of worship. Whether Queen Anne’s undertakings had been sincere Rollo would never know, but he suspected not. Together James and Anne had duped Rollo, and the community of English Catholics, and the Pope himself. Rollo’s rage came from the knowledge that he had been fooled, and had been used as the instrument of deceiving others.

But he was not going to give in. He would not concede victory to the lying James and the spiteful Puritans, the blasphemers and the rebels against the true Church. It was not over yet.

The idea of shooting or stabbing James was hazardous: in getting close to the king there was too much risk of being interfered with by guards or courtiers before the deed was done. On the roof of the tower at Tyne Castle, Rollo brooded over how the assassination could be managed, and as he did so his lust for revenge sharpened and his plan grew monstrously ambitious. How much better it would be to wipe out Queen Anne as well. And perhaps the royal children, too: Henry, Elizabeth and Charles. And the leading courtiers, especially Ned Willard. He wished he could shoot them all together with a double-shotted cannon as had been used against the armada. He thought of the fireships, and wondered if he could set light to a palace when they were all gathered together.

And, slowly, a plan began to form in his mind.

He travelled to New Castle and put the plan to Earl Bartlet and the earl’s elder son Swifty, who was eighteen. As a boy, Bartlet had hero-worshipped Rollo, and Rollo still had strong influence over him. Swifty had been told since he was old enough to talk that the fortunes of the Shiring earldom had shrunk under Elizabeth. Father and son were grievously disappointed that James was continuing Elizabeth’s persecution of Catholics.

Bartlet’s younger brother, Roger, was not present. He worked in London for Robert Cecil and no longer lived at New Castle — which was a good thing. Much influenced by his mother Margery and his stepfather, Ned Willard, Roger might have disapproved of Rollo’s plan.

‘The opening of Parliament,’ Rollo said, when the servants had gone and the three men were alone after dinner. ‘We get them all together: King James, Queen Anne, Secretary of State Robert Cecil, Sir Ned Willard, and the members of that heretical blaspheming Parliament — all dead with one fatal blow.’

Bartlet looked puzzled. ‘It’s a tempting prospect, of course,’ he said. ‘But I can’t imagine how it could possibly be achieved.’

‘I can,’ said Rollo.

Ned Willard was on the alert, looking anxiously around the chapel, studying the wedding guests, watchful for danger signs. King James was expected to attend, and Ned was as afraid for James’s life as he had been for Elizabeth’s. The secret service could never relax its vigilance.

It was three days after Christmas, 1604.

Ned did not much like King James. The new king had turned out to be less tolerant than Elizabeth, and not just of Catholics. He had a bee in his bonnet about witches — he had written a book on the subject — and he had brought in harsh legislation against them. Ned thought they were mostly harmless old women. All the same Ned was determined to protect James in order to prevent the civil war he dreaded.

The bridegroom was Philip Herbert, the twenty-year-old son of the earl of Pembroke. Philip had caught the eye of King James in the embarrassing way that charming young men often took the fancy of the thirty-eight-year-old king. A court wit had said: ‘Elizabeth was king, now James is queen,’ and this wisecrack had been repeated all over London. James had encouraged young Philip to get married, as if to prove that his interest in the boy was innocent — which no one believed.

The bride was Susan de Vere, granddaughter of the late William Cecil and niece of secretary of state Robert Cecil, Ned’s friend and colleague. Knowing that James was coming, bride and groom waited at the altar, for the king had to be the last to arrive. They were at a chapel within White Hall Palace, where it would be all too easy for an assassin to strike.

Ned was hearing rumours from his spies in Paris, Rome, Brussels and Madrid: English Catholic exiles all over Europe were conspiring to get rid of King James who, they felt, had betrayed them. But Ned had not yet learned the details of specific plots so all he could do, for the time being, was keep his eyes open.

If he had thought, when young, of what life would be like when he was sixty-five, he would have assumed that his work would be done. Either he and Elizabeth would have succeeded, and England would be the first country in the world to have freedom of religion; or he would have failed, and Englishmen would again be burned at the stake for their beliefs. He had never anticipated that the struggle would still be as fierce as ever when he was old and Elizabeth was dead; that Parliament would still be persecuting Catholics and that Catholics would still be trying to kill the monarch. Would it never end?

He glanced at Margery beside him, a bright blue hat set at an angle on her silver curls. She met his eye and said: ‘What?’

‘I don’t want the groom to see you,’ Ned murmured teasingly. ‘He may want to marry you instead of the bride.’