A Column of Fire (40 page)

Carlos lit the fire, Ebrima poured in the iron ore and lime, and Barney whipped on the two harnessed horses that drove the bellows mechanism.

As before, there was a long, nail-biting wait.

Barney and Carlos fidgeted nervously. Ebrima struggled to maintain his habitual impassivity. He felt as if he had staked everything on the turn of a single card.

The spectators became a bit bored. Evi started talking to Hennie about the problems of having adolescent children. Jan’s three sons chased Albert’s daughter around the yard. Albert’s wife, Betje, offered oranges on a tray. Ebrima was too tense to eat.

Then the iron began to flow.

The molten metal inched slowly from the base of the furnace into the prepared stone channels. At first, the motion was agonizingly slow, but soon the flow strengthened, and began to fill the ingot-shaped hollows in the ground. Ebrima poured more raw materials into the top of the furnace.

He heard Albert say wonderingly: ‘Look at that – it just keeps coming!’

‘Exactly,’ Ebrima said. ‘As long as you keep feeding the furnace, it will keep giving you iron.’

Carlos warned: ‘It’s pig iron – it has to be purified before it can be used.’

‘I can see that,’ Albert said. ‘But it’s still impressive.’

Jan said incredulously: ‘Are you telling me that the king of Spain turned up his nose at this invention?’

Carlos replied: ‘I don’t suppose King Felipe even heard of it. But the other iron makers in Seville felt threatened. Spanish people don’t like change. The people who run our industries are very conservative.’

Jan nodded. ‘I suppose that’s why the king buys so many cannons from foreigners like me – because Spanish industry doesn’t produce enough.’

‘And then they complain that the silver from America arrives in Spain only to leave again right away.’

Jan smiled. ‘Well, as we’re Netherlands merchants rather than Spanish grandees, let’s go into the house, have a drink, and talk business.’

They went inside and sat around the table. Betje served them beer and cold sausage. Imke gave the children raisins to keep them quiet.

Jan said: ‘The profits from this new furnace will be used first to pay off my loan, with interest.’

Carlos said: ‘Of course.’

‘Afterwards, the money should be shared out between Albert and yourselves. Is that how you see it?’

Ebrima realized that the word ‘yourselves’ was deliberately vague. Jan did not know whether Ebrima was to be included as an equal partner with Carlos and Barney.

This was no time for humility. Ebrima said: ‘The three of us built the furnace together: Carlos, Barney and me.’

Everyone looked at Carlos, and Ebrima held his breath. Carlos hesitated. This was the real test, Ebrima realized. When they had been on the raft, it had cost Carlos nothing to say
You’re a free man, Ebrima
, but this was different. If Carlos acknowledged Ebrima as an equal, in front of Jan Wolman and Albert Willemsen, he would be committed.

And Ebrima would be free.

At last Carlos said: ‘A four-way split, then. Albert, Barney, Ebrima and me.’

Ebrima’s heart bounded, but he kept his face expressionless. He caught Evi’s eye, and saw that she was looking pleased.

That was when Barney dropped his bombshell. ‘Count me out,’ he said.

Carlos said: ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You and Ebrima invented this furnace,’ Barney said. ‘I hardly did anything. Anyway, I’m not staying in Antwerp.’

Ebrima heard Imke gasp. She would be disappointed: she had fallen in love with Barney.

Carlos said: ‘Where will you go, Barney?’

‘Home,’ said Barney. ‘I’ve had no contact with my family for more than two years. Since we arrived in Antwerp, Jan has confirmed that my mother lost everything when Calais fell. My brother, Ned, no longer works in the family business – there is no business – and he’s some kind of secretary in the court of Queen Elizabeth. I want to see them both. I want to make sure they’re all right.’

‘How will you get to Kingsbridge?’

‘There’s a Combe Harbour ship docked here in Antwerp at the moment – the
Hawk
, owned by Dan Cobley, captained by Jonas Bacon.’

‘You can’t afford passage – you haven’t got any money.’

‘Yesterday I spoke to the first mate, Jonathan Greenland, who I’ve known since I was a boy. One of the crew died on the voyage here, the ship’s blacksmith and carpenter, and I’ve taken his job, just for the journey home.’

‘But how will you make a living back in England, if your family business is gone?’

Barney gave the devil-may-care grin that broke the hearts of girls like Imke. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of something.’

*

B
ARNEY QUESTIONED
Jonathan Greenland as soon as the
Hawk
was out at sea and the crew were able to think about something other than steering the ship.

Jonathan had spent last winter in Kingsbridge, and had left to rejoin the ship only a few weeks ago, so he had all the latest news. He had called on Barney’s mother, expecting Alice to be as eager as ever for reports from overseas. He had found her sitting in the front parlour of the big house, looking out at the west front of the cathedral, doing nothing; surrounded by old ledgers but never opening them. Apparently, she attended meetings of the borough council, but did not speak. Barney found it hard to imagine his mother not doing business. For as long as he could remember, Alice had lived for deals, percentages and profits; the challenge of making money by trading absorbed her completely. This transformation was ominous.

Sir Reginald Fitzgerald, who had plotted Alice’s ruin, was still mayor of Kingsbridge, and living in Priory Gate, his vast new palace, Jonathan said. However, Bishop Julius had been brought down. Queen Elizabeth had broken all her promises and returned England to Protestantism. She required all priests to take the Oath of Supremacy, swearing allegiance to her as the supreme governor of the Church of England: refusal was treason. Almost all the lower clergy had agreed, but most of the old Catholic bishops had not. They could have been executed, but Elizabeth had vowed not to kill people for their faith, and she was keeping to that – so far. Most of the bishops were merely dismissed from their posts. Julius was living with two or three former monks in a house attached to St Mark’s church in northern Kingsbridge. Jonathan had seen him drunk in the Bell Inn on a Saturday night, telling anyone who would listen that the true Catholic faith would return soon. He made a sad figure, Jonathan said, but Barney thought the malevolent old priest deserved a worse fate.

Jonathan also explained to Barney the attractions of life at sea. Jonathan was at home on board ship: he was sunburned and wiry, with hard hands and feet, as nimble as a squirrel in the rigging. Towards the end of the war against France, the
Hawk
had captured a French vessel. The crew had shared the profits with Captain Bacon and Dan Cobley, and Jonathan had got a bonus of sixty pounds on top of his wages. He had bought a house in Kingsbridge for his widowed mother and had rejoined the crew in the hope of more of the same.

‘But we’re no longer at war,’ Barney said. ‘If you capture a French ship now, you’re guilty of piracy.’

Jonathan shrugged. ‘We’ll be at war with someone before too long.’ He tugged at a rope, checking the security of a knot that was evidently as tight as it could be, and Barney guessed that he did not want to be questioned too closely about piracy.

Barney changed the subject and asked about his brother.

Ned had come to Kingsbridge for Christmas, wearing an expensive new black coat and looking older than twenty. Jonathan knew that Ned worked with Sir William Cecil, who was Secretary of State, and people in Kingsbridge said Ned was an increasingly powerful figure at court, despite his youth. Jonathan had talked to him in the cathedral on Christmas Day, but had not learned much: Ned had been vague about exactly what he did for the queen, and Jonathan guessed he was involved in the secretive world of international diplomacy.

‘I can’t wait to see them,’ Barney said.

‘I can imagine.’

‘It should be only a couple of days now.’

Jonathan checked another rope, then looked away.

No one expected to get into a fight on the journey along the Channel from Antwerp to Combe Harbour, but Barney felt he ought to work his passage by making sure the
Hawk
’s armaments were ready for action.

Merchant ships needed guns as much as any other vessel. Seafaring was a dangerous business. In wartime, ships of one combatant nation could legitimately attack ships of the enemy; and all the major countries were at war as often as they were at peace. In peacetime, the same activity was called piracy, but it went on almost as much. Every ship had to be able to defend itself.

The
Hawk
had twelve guns, all bronze minions, small cannons that fired a four-pound shot. The minions were on the gun deck, immediately below the top deck, six on each side. They fired through square holes in the woodwork. Ship design had changed to accommodate this need. In older ships, such gun ports would have seriously weakened the structure. But the
Hawk
was carvel-built, an internal skeleton of heavy timbers providing its strength, with the planks of the hull fastened to the skeleton like skin over ribs. This type of structure had the additional advantage that enemy cannonballs could make multiple holes in the hull without necessarily sinking the ship.

Barney cleaned and oiled the guns, making sure they were running freely on their wheels, and made some small repairs, using the tools left behind by the previous smith, who had died. He checked stocks of ammunition: all the guns had the same size barrel and fired interchangeable cast-iron balls.

His most important job was to keep the gunpowder in good condition. It tended to absorb moisture – especially at sea – and Barney made sure that there were string bags of charcoal hanging from the ceiling on the gun deck to dry the air. The other hazard was that the ingredients of gunpowder – saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur – would separate over time, the heavier saltpetre sinking to the bottom, making the mixture harmless. In the army Barney had learned to turn the barrels upside down once a week.

He even ranged the guns. He did not want to waste ammunition, but Captain Bacon let him fire a few balls. All cannon barrels rested on trunnions, like handles sticking out both sides, which fitted into grooved supports in the gun carriage, making it easy to tilt the barrel up and down. With the barrel at an angle of forty-five degrees – the attitude for maximum distance – the minions would fire a four-pound ball almost a mile, about one thousand six hundred yards. The angle was changed by propping up the rear end of the barrel with wedges. With the barrel level, the ball splashed into the water about three hundred yards away. That told Barney that each seven degrees of elevation from the horizontal added just over two hundred yards to the range. He had brought with him from the army an iron protractor with a plumb line and a curved scale for measuring angles. With its long arm thrust into the barrel, he could measure the gun’s angle precisely. On land it worked well. At sea, the constant motion of the ship made shooting less accurate.

On the fourth day, Barney had nothing more to do, and he found himself on deck with Jonathan again. They were crossing a bay. The coast was on the port bow, as it had been ever since the
Hawk
had left the Westerschelde estuary and entered the English Channel. Barney was no expert in navigation, but he thought that by now they should have the English coast on the starboard bow. He frowned. ‘How long do you think it will be before we reach Combe Harbour?’

Jonathan shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

An unpleasant possibility crossed Barney’s mind. ‘We are headed for Combe Harbour, aren’t we?’

‘Eventually, yes.’

Barney’s alarm grew. ‘Eventually?’

‘Captain Bacon doesn’t confide his intentions to me. Nor to anyone else, come to that.’

‘But you seem to think we might not be going home.’

‘I’m looking at the coastline.’

Barney looked harder. Deep in the bay, just off the coast, a small island rose steeply out of the water to a precarious summit where a great church was perched like a giant seagull. It was familiar, and he realized, with dismay, that he had seen it before – twice. It was called Mont St Michel, and he had passed it once on his way to Seville, three years ago, and again on his way back from Spain to the Netherlands two years ago. ‘We’re going to Spain, aren’t we?’ he said to Jonathan.

‘Looks like it.’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t know. And besides, we need a gunner.’

Barney could guess what they needed a gunner for. And that explained why Bacon had hired him when there was so little work for him to do as ship’s blacksmith. ‘So Bacon and you have tricked me into becoming a member of the crew.’

Jonathan shrugged again.

Barney looked north. Combe Harbour was sixty miles in that direction. He turned his gaze to the island church. It was a mile or two away, in waves of at least three feet. He could not swim it, he knew. It would be suicide.

After a long moment, he said: ‘But we’ll come back to Combe Harbour from Seville, won’t we?’

‘Maybe,’ said Jonathan, ‘maybe not.’

11

While Odette gave birth, painfully and loudly, Pierre planned how to get rid of the baby.

Odette was suffering God’s punishment for her unchastity. She deserved it. There was some justice on earth, after all, Pierre thought.

And as soon as the baby arrived, she would lose it.

He sat downstairs in the small house, leafing through his black leather-bound notebook, while the midwife attended to Odette in the bedroom. The remains of an interrupted breakfast were on the table in front of him: bread, ham and some early radishes. The room was dismal, with bare walls, a flagstone floor, a cold fireplace and one small window on to a narrow, dark street. Pierre hated it.

Normally he left straight after breakfast. He usually went first to the Guise family palace in the Vieille rue du Temple, a place where the floors were marble and the walls were hung with splendid paintings. Most often he spent the day there or at the Louvre palace, in attendance on Cardinal Charles or Duke François. In the late afternoon he frequently had meetings with members of his rapidly growing network of spies, who added to the list of Protestants in the black leather notebook. He rarely returned to the little house in Les Halles until bedtime. Today, however, he was waiting for the baby to come.