A Column of Fire (107 page)

In the market square he looked up at the west front of the cathedral. I might have been bishop here, he thought bitterly.

He went mournfully inside. The church was a drab and colourless place under the Protestants. Sculptured saints and angels in their stone niches had had their heads chopped off to prevent idolatry. Wall paintings were dimly perceptible through a thin coat of whitewash. Amazingly, the Protestants had left the gorgeous windows intact, perhaps because it would have cost so much to replace the glass; but the colours were not at their best on this winter afternoon.

I would have changed all this, Rollo thought. I would have given people religion with colour and costume and precious jewels, not this cold cerebral Puritanism. His stomach churned with acid at the thought of what he had lost.

The church was empty, all the priests having gone to the play, he thought; but, turning around, he looked back the length of the nave and saw that the woman who had stared at him in the market square had followed him into the cathedral. When he met her eye again, she spoke to him in French, and her words echoed in the vaulting like the voice of doom. ‘
C’est bien toi – Jean Langlais?
Is it really you – Jean Langlais?’

He turned away, mind racing. He was in terrible danger. He had been recognized as Langlais. It seemed she did not know Rollo Fitzgerald – but she soon would. At any moment she would identify him as Langlais to someone who knew him as Rollo – someone such as Ned Willard – and his life would be over.

He had to get away from her.

He hurried across the south aisle. A door in the wall there had always led to the cloisters – but now, as he jerked on the handle, it remained firmly shut, and he realized it must have been blocked off when the quadrangle had been turned into a market by Alfo Willard.

He heard the woman’s light footsteps running up the nave. He guessed that she wanted to see him close up – to confirm her identification. He had to avoid that.

He dashed along the aisle to the crossing, looking for a way out, hoping to disappear into the town before she could get another look at him. In the south transept, at the base of the mighty tower, there was a small door in the wall. He thought it might lead out into the new market but, when he flung it open, he saw only a narrow spiral staircase leading up. Making a split-second decision, he went through the door, closing it behind him, and started up the steps.

He hoped the staircase would have a door leading to the gallery that ran the length of the south aisle, but as he went farther up he realized he was not going to be that lucky. He heard footsteps behind him, and had no option but to carry on up.

He began to breathe hard. He was fifty-three years old, and climbing long staircases was more difficult than it had been. However, the woman chasing him was not much younger.

Who was she? And how did she know him?

She was French, evidently. She had addressed him by
toi
rather than
vous
, meaning either that she knew him intimately – which she did not – or that she did not think he was entitled to the respectful
vous
. She must have seen him, probably in Paris or Douai.

A Frenchwoman in Kingsbridge was almost certainly a Huguenot immigrant. There was a family called Forneron, but they were from Lille, and Rollo had never spent any time there.

However, Ned Willard had a French wife.

She must be the woman panting up the stairs behind Rollo. He recalled her name: Sylvie.

He kept hoping that, just around the curve, there would be an archway leading off the staircase to one of the many passages buried in the massive stonework, but the spiral seemed to go on forever, as if in a nightmare.

He was panting and exhausted when at last the steps ended at a low wooden door. He threw the door open, and a blast of cold air struck him. He ducked under the lintel and stepped out, and the door blew shut behind him. He was on a narrow stone-paved walkway at the top of the central tower that rose over the crossing. A wall no higher than his knees was all that stood between him and a drop of hundreds of feet. He looked down to the roof of the choir far below. To his left was the graveyard; to his right the quadrangle of the old cloisters, now roofed over to form the indoor market. Behind him, hidden from his view by the breadth of the spire, was the marketplace. The wind flapped his cloak violently.

The walkway ran around the base of the spire. Above, at the point of the spire, was the massive stone angel that looked human-sized from the ground. He went quickly around the walkway, hoping that there might be another staircase, a ladder, or a flight of steps leading away. On the far side he glanced down into the marketplace, almost deserted now that everyone was in the Bell watching the play.

There was no way down. As he arrived back where he started, the woman emerged from the doorway.

The wind blew her hair across her eyes. She pushed her locks off her face and stared at him. ‘It
is
you,’ she said. ‘You’re the priest I saw with Pierre Aumande. I had to be sure.’

‘Are you Willard’s wife?’

‘He’s been searching for Jean Langlais for years. What are you doing in Kingsbridge?’

His surmise had been right: she had no idea that he was Rollo Fitzgerald. Their paths had never crossed in England.

Until today. And now she knew his secret. He would be arrested, tortured, and hanged for treason.

And then he realized that there was a simple alternative.

He stepped towards her. ‘You little fool,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know what danger you’re in?’

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she said, and she flew at him.

He grabbed her by the arms. She screamed and struggled. He was bigger, but she was a spitfire, wriggling and kicking. She got one arm free and went for his face, but he dodged her hand.

He pushed her along the walkway to the corner, so that her back was to the low wall, and somehow she squirmed around him. Then his back was to the sheer drop, and she shoved him with all her might. He was too strong for her, and forced her back. She was screaming for help, but the wind took her cries, and he was sure no one could hear. He pulled her sideways, so that she was off balance, then got on the other side of her, and almost had her over the edge, but she foiled him by going limp, and slumping to the floor. Then she twisted out of his grasp, scurried away, got to her feet and ran.

He followed her, careering along the walkway, darting around the corners, with the fatal drop just one misstep away. He could not catch her. She reached the doorway, but the door had blown shut again and she had to stop to open it. In that split second he got hold of her. He grabbed her collar with one hand, and with the other grasped a fistful of the skirt of her coat, and jerked her out of the doorway back onto the walkway.

He dragged her backwards, her arms flailing, her heels dragging along the stone floor. She repeated her trick of going limp. However, this time it did not work, only making it easier for him to pull her. He reached the corner.

He put one foot on the top of the wall and tried to drag her over. The wall was pierced at floor level by drain holes for rainwater, and she managed to get her hand into one and grab the edge. He kicked her arm and she lost her grip.

He managed to pull her until she was half over the edge. She was face down and staring at the drop, screaming in mortal terror. He released her collar and tried to grab her ankles so that he could tip her over. He got hold of one ankle but could not grasp the other. He lifted her foot as high as he could. She was almost over now, clinging to the top of the wall with both hands.

He grasped one arm and pulled her hand off the wall. She tipped over, but grabbed his wrist at the last minute. He almost went over the side with her, but her strength failed her and she released him.

For a moment he teetered, windmilling his arms; then he was able to step back to safety.

She overbalanced in the other direction and tilted, with nightmare slowness, off the parapet. He watched, with a mixture of triumph and horror, as she fell slowly through the air, turning over and over, her screams a faint cry in the wind.

He heard the thud as she hit the roof of the choir. She bounced, and came down again with her head at a queer angle, and he guessed her neck was broken. She rolled limply down the slope of the roof and off the edge, struck the top of a flying buttress, fell to the lean-to roof of the north aisle, tumbled off its edge, and at last came to rest, a lifeless bundle, in the graveyard.

There was no one in the graveyard. Rollo looked in the opposite direction; he saw nothing but rooftops. Nobody had seen the fight.

He stepped through the low doorway, closed the door behind him, and went down the steep spiral staircase as fast as he could. He stumbled twice and almost fell, but he had to hurry.

Reaching the bottom he stopped and listened at the door. He could hear nothing. He opened the door a crack. He heard no voices, no footsteps. He peeped out. The cathedral seemed empty.

He stepped into the transept and closed the door behind him.

He hurried along the south aisle, raising the hood of his cloak. He reached the west end of the church and cracked the door open. There were people in the market square but no one was looking his way. He stepped outside. Without pausing he walked south, past the entrance to the indoor market, deliberately not looking around him: he did not want to meet anyone’s eye.

He turned around the back of the bishop’s palace and made his way to the main street.

It crossed his mind to leave town instantly and never come back. But several people knew he was here, and that he was planning to leave in the morning with a group of travellers; so if he now left precipitately, it would be sure to throw suspicion on him. The town watch might even send horsemen to catch up with him and bring him back. He would do better to remain and act innocent.

He turned towards the market square.

The play had ended and the crowd was coming out of the Bell courtyard. He spotted Richard Grimes, a prosperous Kingsbridge builder who sat on the borough council. ‘Good afternoon, alderman,’ he said politely. Grimes would remember that he had seen Rollo coming up the main street from the direction of the riverside, apparently having been nowhere near the cathedral.

Grimes was surprised to see him after so many years, and was about to start a conversation, when they both heard cries of shock and dismay coming from the graveyard. Grimes went in the direction of the hubbub, and Rollo followed.

A crowd was gathering around the body. Sylvie lay with arms and legs visibly broken, and one side of her head a horrible mass of blood. Someone knelt beside her and felt for a heartbeat, but it was obvious that she was dead. Alderman Grimes pushed through the press of people and said: ‘That’s Sylvie Willard. How did this happen?’

‘She fell from the roof.’ The speaker was Susan White, an old flame of Rollo’s, once a pretty girl with a heart-shaped face, now a grey-haired matron in her fifties.

Grimes asked her: ‘Did you see her fall?’

Rollo tensed. He had been sure no one was watching. But if Susan had glanced up she would probably have recognized him.

Susan said: ‘No, I didn’t see, but it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

The crowd parted, and Ned Willard appeared.

He stared at the body on the ground for an instant, then roared like a wounded bull: ‘No!’ He fell to his knees beside Sylvie. Gently, he lifted her head, and saw that part of her face was pulp. He began to weep then, still saying ‘No, no,’ but quietly, between sobs that came from deep inside.

Grimes looked around. ‘Did anyone see her fall?’

Rollo got ready to make a run for it. But no one spoke. The murder had not been witnessed.

He had got away with it.

*

M
ARGERY STOOD
at Sylvie’s graveside as the coffin was lowered into the ground. The day was still and cold, with a feeble winter sun breaking through clouds intermittently, but Margery felt as if she were in a tornado.

Margery was heartbroken for Ned. He was weeping into a handkerchief, unable to speak. Barney stood on his right, Alfo on his left. Margery knew Ned, and she knew that he had loved Sylvie with all his being. He had lost his soulmate.

No one knew why Sylvie had chosen to climb the tower. Margery knew that her brother Rollo had been in town that day, and it crossed her mind that he might be able to answer the question, but he had left the day after Sylvie’s death. Margery had casually asked several people whether they had seen Rollo before he left, and three of them had said something like: ‘Yes, at the play, he was standing near me.’ Ned said that Sylvie had always wanted to see the view from the tower, and perhaps she had disliked the play and had chosen that moment to fulfil her wish; and, on balance, Margery thought that was the likeliest explanation.

Margery’s sorrow for Ned was made even more agonizing by this knowledge: that the tragedy might, in the end, bring her what she had craved for the last thirty years. She felt deeply ashamed of the thought, but she could not blind herself to the fact that Ned was now a single man, and free to marry her.

But even if that happened, would it end her torment? She would have a secret that she could not reveal to Ned. If she betrayed Rollo she would be condemning her sons. Would she keep the secret, and deceive the man she loved? Or would she see her children hanged?

As the prayers were said over the broken body of Sylvie, Margery asked God never to force her to choose.

*

It was an amputation. I would never get back the part of me that vanished when Sylvie died. I knew the feeling of a man who tries to walk having lost a leg. I would never shake off the sense that something should be there, where the missing limb had always been. There was a hole in my life, a great gaping cavity that could never be filled.

But the dead live on in our imaginations. I think that’s the true meaning of ghosts. Sylvie was gone from this earth, but I saw her every day in my mind. I heard her, too. She would warn me against an untrustworthy colleague, mock me when I admired the shape of a young woman, laugh with me at a pompous alderman, and cry over the illness of a child.