Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

She wished with all her heart that she had not kept Rollo’s secret so long. She should have told Ned the truth years ago. It would have been an earthquake, whenever she did it, but this was the worst time, after he had become so much a part of her that she could not manage life without him.

At last she saw him. He arrived with a small group of men in heavy coats — Privy Councillors, perhaps. His expression was grim. Perhaps it was an illusion, but he seemed to have aged in a week, his face creased with worry lines, grey stubble on pale cheeks.

She stepped in front of him and he stopped. She watched his face, reading his feelings. He was at first just startled. Then his expression changed and he looked angry. Instinct told her that he had been trying to forget about her and what she had done, and now he disliked being reminded. Was there any sign of softening, any hint of mercy? She was not sure.

She spoke the question she had come to ask. ‘Have you found Rollo?’

‘No,’ said Ned, and he brushed past her and went inside.

Sadness engulfed her. She loved him so much.

She drifted away from the gates of the palace. In a daze of grief she wandered down to the muddy beach of the Thames. The river was tidal, and right now there was a fast downstream current, making the surface restless and troubled.

She thought about walking out into the water. It was almost dark now, and probably no one would see her. She had never learned to swim; her life would end in a few minutes. It would be cold, and there would be a long moment of gasping panic, but then her agony would be over.

It was a sin, a mortal sin, but hell could not be worse than this. She thought of a play she had seen in which a girl drowned herself after being rejected by the prince of Denmark, and a pair of comic gravediggers discussed whether she should have a Christian burial. There would be no burial for Margery if she went into the river now. Her body would be swept away by this strong current, perhaps all the way to the sea, where she would float gently down to the deep bottom, to lie with the sailors killed in the battle of the Spanish armada.

And who would say Mass for her soul? Protestants did not believe in prayers for the dead, and Catholics would not pray for a suicide. She would be damned as well as dead.

She stood there for a long moment, pulled painfully in opposite directions by her yearning for the peace of death and her horror of incurring God’s eternal wrath. At last she seemed to see her great-aunt, Sister Joan, coming towards her across the mud, not as she had been in life but walking upright, without the aid of sticks. Although it was dark, Margery could see Joan’s face, which was younger, and smiling. The vision did not speak, but silently took Margery’s arm and led her gently away from the water. As they approached White Hall Margery saw two young men walking along together, laughing raucously at something; and she turned to ask Joan whether they, too, could see her; but Joan had gone, and Margery was alone again.

In the afternoon of Monday, 4 November, Rollo sat with Guy Fawkes on the floor in the middle of the storeroom and gave Fawkes his final instructions.

Rollo produced a long match made of touchwood — dried rotted wood that was highly flammable — plus a tinder box. He took out his knife and notched the match in divisions each equal to the width of his thumb. Then he said: ‘Fawkes, light the tinder, then say the Lord’s Prayer, neither quickly nor slowly but just as you would in church.’

Fawkes lit the match. ‘ Pater noster ,’ he began, and said the words of the prayer in Latin.

When he had finished the match had burned almost to the first mark. Rollo blew it out.

‘Now,’ said Rollo, ‘how many paternosters will it take you to get clean away from here?’

Fawkes frowned. ‘To leave here, close the doors, and walk to the river, two paternosters,’ he said. ‘To get into the boat, untie the rope, and deploy the oars, two more. Another six, maybe, to row far enough to be safe from the blast. Say ten altogether.’

‘Then you must cut the match to a length of ten thumb widths.’

Fawkes nodded.

Rollo stood up. ‘It’s time to broach the gunpowder.’

Fawkes pulled the table over, stood on it, and started to remove bundles of firewood from the top. He passed them down to Rollo, rather than toss them on the floor, because they were needed intact to rebuild the barrier — just in case of a second search.

Rollo had a strange feeling in the pit of his belly. It was really happening, now, at last. They were going to kill the king.

After a few minutes they had made a passage through the stack to the barrels.

Rollo had with him a crowbar and a gardening tool like a small shovel. He levered off the top of a gunpowder barrel and tipped it over, spilling the dark grey powder on the ground. With the shovel he laid a trail of gunpowder from the barrel to the front of the stack. This would act as the fuse. He had been careful to pick a wooden shovel: an iron tool might have struck sparks from the slabs of the stone floor and blown them all up in a heartbeat.

It was now terrifyingly real, and Rollo felt his whole being thrill to the knowledge. Here was the gunpowder, and the match; above was the chamber; tomorrow was the day. The explosion would rock the kingdom and end English Protestantism. The triumph Rollo had sought for half a century was within his grasp. In just a few hours, his life’s work would be done.

‘We must put the firewood back carefully,’ he said. ‘The end of the gunpowder trail needs to be just under the front bundle.’

Together they rebuilt the stack and adjusted it until he was satisfied.

Rollo said to Fawkes: ‘Tonight the rest of us leave for the shires, to be ready to start the uprising.’

Fawkes nodded.

‘Tomorrow morning, as soon as you’re sure the king is in the chamber above, you simply light the match, place it on the floor with the unlit end securely embedded in the powder trail, and leave.’

‘Yes,’ said Fawkes.

‘You’ll hear the explosion from the river.’

‘Yes,’ Fawkes said again. ‘They’ll hear it in Paris.’

In the long gallery at White Hall, just a few minutes’ walk from Westminster Yard, there was calm, but Ned’s instincts were sounding a raucous, insistent alarm.

Robert Cecil thought Thomas Percy was an untrustworthy character, but he saw no harm in a stack of firewood. The earl of Suffolk was worried about the political ructions that would result from a false accusation against the earl of Northumberland. But Ned was sure someone intended to kill the king, and he knew that person had not yet been found.

Fortunately, King James shared Ned’s heightened sense of danger. He had an iron undershirt that he often wore in situations that made him feel vulnerable, and he decided he would wear it tomorrow to the opening ceremony. That was not enough for Ned, and late in the evening he got the king to agree to a second search of the House of Lords.

Those Privy Councillors still worried about causing unnecessary alarm insisted that the party be led by a Westminster Justice of the Peace, Thomas Knevett, and that he pretend to be looking for some missing ceremonial robes belonging to the king. Ned did not care what they pretended as long as he was part of the group.

The others carried lanterns, but Ned took a blazing torch, drawing frowns of disapproval from those worried about discretion. ‘A search is a search,’ he said stubbornly. ‘If you can’t see, you can’t find anything.’

As they walked the short distance from the palace of White Hall to Westminster Yard, their lanterns casting restless shadows, Ned thought about Margery. She was always on his mind, even while he struggled to save the life of the king. He was terminally angry with her, but he missed her agonizingly. He hated going to a noisy tavern every evening and sleeping alone in a strange bed. He wanted to tell her things and ask her opinion. His heart ached for her. He was secretly glad to be living through a major emergency, for it occupied his mind and distracted him from his misery.