Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Jack was twenty-seven and single. To the surprise of his family he had chosen to be a builder, and had prospered. There were famous builders in the family’s past: heritage again, perhaps.

Now he sat in front of Ned and said: ‘I have some important news, Grandfather. I’m going away.’

‘Why? You have a successful business here in Kingsbridge.’

‘The king makes life uncomfortable for those of us who take the teachings of the Bible seriously.’

What he meant was that he and his Puritan friends stubbornly disagreed with the English Church on numerous points of doctrine, and King James was as intolerant of them as he was of Catholics.

‘I’ll be very sorry to see you go, Jack,’ Ned said. ‘You remind me of your grandmother.’

‘I’ll be sorry to say goodbye. But we want to live in a place where we can do God’s will without interference.’

‘I spent my life trying to make England that kind of country.’

‘But it’s not, is it?’

‘It’s more tolerant than any other place, as far as I know. Where would you go in search of greater freedom?’

‘The New World.’

‘God’s body!’ Ned was shocked. ‘I didn’t think you were going that far. Sorry about the bad language, you startled me.’

Jack nodded acknowledgement of the apology. He disapproved almost as much as the Catholics of the blasphemous exclamations Ned had learned from Queen Elizabeth; but he said no more about it. ‘A group of us have decided to sail to the New World and start a colony there.’

‘What an adventure! It’s the kind of thing your grandmother Margery would have loved to do.’ Ned felt envious of Jack’s youth and boldness. Ned himself would never travel again. Luckily he had rich memories — of Calais, of Paris, of Amsterdam. He recalled every detail of those journeys even when he could not remember what day of the week it was.

Jack was saying: ‘Although James will continue to be our king theoretically, we hope he will take less interest in how we choose to worship, since it will be impossible for him to enforce his rules at such a distance.’

‘I dare say you’re right. I wish you well.’

‘Pray for us, please.’

‘I will. Tell me the name of your ship, so that I can ask God to watch over it.’

‘It’s called the Mayflower .’

‘The Mayflower . I must try to remember that.’

Jack went to the writing table. ‘I’ll note it down for you. I want us to be in your prayers.’

‘Thank you.’ It was oddly touching that Jack cared so much about Ned’s prayers.

Jack wrote on a scrap of paper and put down the pen. ‘I must leave you, now — I’ve got so much to do.’

‘Of course. I’m feeling tired, anyway. I may take a little nap.’

‘Sleep well, Grandfather.’

‘God be with you, beloved boy.’

Jack left, and Ned looked out of the window at the glorious west front of the cathedral. From here he could just see the entrance to the graveyard where both Sylvie and Margery lay. He did not look down at his book. He was happy with his thoughts. They were often enough for him, nowadays.

His mind was like a house he had spent his life furnishing. Its tables and beds were the songs he could sing, the plays he had watched, the cathedrals he had seen, and the books he had read in English, French and Latin. He shared this notional house with his family, alive and dead: his parents, his brother, the women he had loved, the children. There were guest rooms for important visitors such as Francis Walsingham, William and Robert Cecil, Francis Drake, and of course Queen Elizabeth. His enemies were there, too — Rollo Fitzgerald, Pierre Aumande de Guise, Guy Fawkes — although they were locked in the cellar, for they could do him no more harm.

The pictures on the walls were of the times when he had been brave, or clever, or kind. They made the house a happy place. And the bad things he had done, the lies he had told and the people he had betrayed and the times he had been cowardly, were scrawled in ugly letters on the wall of the outhouse.

His memory formed the library of the house. He could pick out any volume and instantly be transported to another place and time: Kingsbridge Grammar School in his innocent childhood, Hatfield Palace in the thrilling year of 1558, the banks of the Seine river on the bloodstained night of St Bartholomew, the Channel during the battle with the Spanish armada. Strangely, the character of Ned that lived in those stories did not remain the same. It seemed to him sometimes that quite a different person had learned Latin, someone else had fallen under the spell of young Princess Elizabeth, another character had stabbed a man with no nose in the graveyard of the church of St-Julien-le-Pauvre, and yet another had watched the fireships scatter the galleons off Calais. But of course they were all just different versions of himself, the owner of the house.

And one day soon the place would fall down, as old buildings did, and then, quite quickly, it would all turn to dust.

With that thought he drifted off to sleep.

My historical advisors for A Column of Fire were: Mercedes García-Arenal on Spain; the late Roderick Graham on Scotland; Robert Hutchinson on England; Guy Le Thiec on France; and Geoffrey Parker on the Netherlands.

I was also helped by: Anne-Laure Béatrix and Béatrice Vingtrinier at the Louvre in Paris; Dermot Burke at Hatfield House; Richard Dabb and Timothy Long at the Museum of London; Simon Lennox, Trisha Muir and Richard Waters at Loch Leven Castle; Sarah Pattinson at Carlisle Castle; Les Read on English sixteenth-century theatre; and Elizabeth Taylor at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

My editors were: Cherise Fisher, Leslie Gelbman, Phyllis Grann, Neil Nyren, Brian Tart and Jeremy Trevathan.

Friends and family who gave advice included: John Clare, Barbara Follett, Emanuele Follett, Tony McWalter, Chris Manners, Charlotte Quelch, John Studzinski, Jann Turner and Kim Turner.

All of you helped me write a better book, and I give you my heartfelt thanks.

Readers sometimes ask me which of the characters in a novel are real historical figures and which are fictional. For those who are curious about this, here’s a list of the real people in A Column of Fire .

Mary Tudor, queen of England

Elizabeth Tudor, her half-sister, later queen

Tom Parry, Elizabeth’s treasurer

Sir William Cecil, advisor to Elizabeth

Robert Cecil, William’s son

Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster

Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton

Nicholas Heath, Lord Chancellor

Sir Francis Drake, sea captain

Sir John Hawkins, naval commander, also said to be a pirate

Sir Francis Throckmorton

George Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury

Bess of Harwick

Sir Amias Paulet

Gilbert Gifford, spy

William Davison, temporary secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth

Anthony Babington, traitor

Margaret Clitheroe, Catholic martyr

Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral

Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke, earl of Montgomery

Edmund Doubleday

Guy Fawkes

Thomas Percy

François, duke of Guise

Henri, son of François

Charles, cardinal Lorraine, brother of François

Marie de Guise, sister of François and mother of Mary Queen of Scots

Louis ‘Bottles’, Cardinal de Guise

Anna d’Este, duchess of Guise

Henri II, king of France

Caterina de’ Medici, queen of France

Diane de Poitiers, mistress of King Henri II

Children of Henri and Caterina: